I disagree with him much more than 15% of the time. I'm glad he's around, he fills a role in society, but half the time he's just a cunt for the sake of it.
Like his opinion on transgender people; I have no problem with it, I agree with some parts of it even, but being transgender is anything but a new phenomenon. I'm fine with people being afraid of things they don't understand, or at least noticing it as weird, but that reaction is undeniably a product of cultural influence. I see lots of things as weird, even when people dress like they do from the 1700s, but obviously no one in the 1700s would have given a shit. Transgender people have existed throughout our time, some cultures even embraced people like that (Native Americans call them Two-Spirits), and they were given positions of honor. So you'd see one and not think it was weird if you were born a Native American pre-slaughter. So to say that we're all transphobic is perhaps correct, but it's not some innate aspect of humanity to think it's weird, and that seems to be the evidence he's using is his own anecdotal experience of living in America during the 20th and 21st century.
Some people obviously do feel they were born the wrong gender. you can call it mental illness, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that they want to do something more drastic about it than just cross-dressing. And I say that people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want to themselves if obviously nothing else is working. Doesn't he think people have tried all his suggestions by now? He's just telling people to be happy with what they have but obviously they can't be.
So calling it a mental illness is just semantics, regardless of if it's an illusory and wrongheaded impulse OR if someone is really born into the wrong body. And denying that they should get surgery is not his prerogative, he has no way to know at all what that feels like and he's not studied it an ounce. And if it IS a mental illness, then him saying they shouldn't get surgery is like me trying to make a decision on what cancer treatment someone should get. He has some interesting opinions but he's often wrong or contradicting himself, or just not doing the research I wish someone so outspoken as him did.