Ben Carson Says Being Transgender ‘Doesn’t Make Any Sense’

By Kenrya Rankin Jul 19, 2016

Former presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson seems to have a pretty strong opinion on what it means to be transgender. According to The Hill, on Monday (July 18), Carson said that it “doesn’t make any sense.”

“For someone to wake up and think that they belong to a different sex because they feel different that day is the same as if you woke up and said, ‘I’m Afghani today because I saw a movie about that last night, and even though my genetics might not indicate that, that’s the way I feel, and if you say that I’m not, then you’re a racist,’” Carson told The Hill.

“It’s the same kind of situation,” he continued. “What we ought to do is utilize our brains, utilize our common sense as human beings. We’ve known what men are and what women are for thousands of years. So we don’t know anything, everything is relative—this doesn’t make any sense.”

This isn’t the first time Carson has weighed in on the lived experiences of transgender people. The Huffington Post reports that last November, Carson said American cities should build transgender-only bathrooms, because it’s “not fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable.”

Carson is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention tonight (July 19) as part of day two’s proceedings, themed: Make America Work Again.