Category: Transgender Ideology

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Suicide Shock and Study Correction

Originally posted Sept 5, 2021

Transgender activists often claim if the “affirmative care model” is not followed the mental health of those suffering from gender dysphoria will worsen and increase the likelihood of suicide.

Parents are shocked into action when told by health professionals that puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, and eventually “gender affirming surgery” may be the only way to prevent their children from committing suicide. Starting them on a medicalized pathway from their “sex assigned at birth” to the sex they now identify with is the most beneficial and humane course of action, parents are instructed.

[Please view this post which rebuts the “assigned at birth” fiction]

In 2019 one of the few major studies on this issue released its findings. The study analyzed health records of 2,679 Swedes diagnosed with gender dysphoria between 2005 and 2015 to determine whether hormonal or surgical treatments improved their mental health over time.  This was one of the first longitudinal studies done about the efficacy of cross-sex hormonal therapy and sex reassignment surgery. And the largest population study to date. Plus it was done in perhaps the most Trans-friendly country on the planet, Sweden.

The original study conducted by a researcher from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and a researcher from the Yale School of Public Health was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2019. (The Karolinska Institute is the same institute that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine and in May advised its hospital to stop hormone treatments and surgery for young people under 18!) The study concluded that “Transgender individuals who undergo gender-affirming surgery are significantly less likely to seek mental health treatment for depression and anxiety disorders or attempt suicide in the years following the procedure.”

Still from the perspective of the “affirmers” the results were decidedly mixed.

We learned two things from this study.

The main finding of the study was that hormonal transition showed no signs of mental health improvement for “gender incongruent” patients. This “no improvement” finding was largely ignored by the news media and trans-activists.

Administering cross-sex hormones to gender confused folk did not improve their mental health.

But the 2019 study did show that gender affirming surgery improved the mental health of those in the study. Patients from 2005-2015 who underwent surgical procedures to assist their transition to the opposite sex showed an overall 8 percent improvement.

This was widely reported as evidence that the “affirmative care model” works!

You may think an 8% improvement for those who underwent radical irreversible surgery is not a lot to “hang one’s hat on.” But this result was widely used to denounce Gender Critical viewpoints like mine as anti-science. (read on)

Study Correction

That was then. This is now. (as of August 2020)

After criticism for the study’s flawed methodology, the American Journal of Psychiatry was forced to retract those findings. What was the flawed methodology? For starters: No control group! The researchers looked at a large group of transgender patients over a 10 year period, making it a good longitudinal study. But they failed to compare those results with a control group of transgender patients who had not undergone body altering surgery. Once that was done the rather small 8 percent improvement evaporated. 

“the results [of the reanalysis] demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts” - AJP correction

Surgery did not improve psychological well-being. It did not decrease suicide attempts relative to those transgender patients who went the non-surgical route. (Remember this is a study of Swedish patients in the most trans-friendly country on Earth so blaming unaccepting social factors as a cause for continued distress doesn’t work.)

Hormones & mutilating surgery did not improve outcomes for transgender patients!

Here’s a link to the correction. And here is an assessment by the Society For Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) an international group of over 100 clinicians and researchers. Their assessment is worth your careful attention. For those of you interested in the details of the flawed methodology make sure you click on the “click here for more” link in the section labeled “Vigorous Debate Leads to Correction of Key Finding.”

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So, after the retraction how did the media respond?

Crickets….

Journalists, like scientists can be biased too.

But sadly parents are still being pressured by pediatricians, gender clinics and Trans-activists into accepting a single medicalized pathway if they want to prevent their kids from committing suicide.

In my research this past year I’ve noticed parents and confused young people hear the following statement all the time from social media influencers and medical professionals:

“Do you want a live “son” or a dead daughter?

That will cause any parent to sit up and take notice! But that is a bald assertion with no evidence to support it. Yes, there is a much higher incidence of suicide among this population but that is because they are psychologically troubled to begin with. Social transitioning, hormones and surgery doesn’t change that reality. My recommendation to parents is get non-affirming treatment and “hold your ground.” Your children and teens are confused.

You’ll meet some of those parents in my next post. They are distraught over the advice they and their children have been given by health care providers.

Obviously, it’s hard to know whether the flaws of the above study were just human error or whether the scientists involved desired a preferred outcome. If you read the end of my last post you’ll find one of our top Psychiatrists admitting that when it comes to questions about “Sex and sexual behavior” many scientists who view humans as infinitely malleable would rather not look too hard for empirical evidence to back up their claims. Ideology drives some of them, just like the activists.

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If you’ve just found my blog and are intrigued about this issue, and want to learn more, I highly recommend a book by Abigail Shrier.

Shrier is a graduate of Columbia College who went on to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and a JD from Yale Law School.  Her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was named a “best book” by The Economist and The Times of London. [2020, 2021]

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When Bodies Don’t Matter: The Gnostic Temptation of Our Age

In recent years, I started to notice a common thread running through several major cultural flashpoints: homosexuality, transgenderism, AI, and Covid. At first glance, these topics seem disconnected. But the more I examined them, the more I saw a hidden connection—a way of thinking that undergirds them all. That underlying theme is an ancient Christian heresy: Gnosticism.

What Is Gnosticism?

Gnosticism teaches that salvation comes through secret knowledge (gnosis) and that the physical world is flawed or even evil. In this view, the true self is immaterial, and our bodies are little more than prisons. Early Christians rejected this heresy forcefully. The Apostle John, for instance, insisted that anyone who denies Jesus came in the flesh is not of God (2 John 7).1For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Today, Gnosticism hasn’t disappeared. It’s just morphed into new forms.

Gnosticism and the Sexual Revolution

Take homosexuality and transgenderism. The underlying belief here is that our bodies don’t matter—or at least, they shouldn’t have the final say in who we are. If someone’s desires conflict with their biology, then biology must yield. In transgenderism especially, the body is treated not just as irrelevant but as an obstacle to overcome. It’s a mindset that says, “What I feel on the inside is who I truly am—my body just hasn’t caught up yet.”

This isn’t a scientific outlook. Ironically, it clashes with Darwinian evolution, which says our physical traits exist for a reason. Our anatomy speaks to our purpose. Even noted biologist-atheist Richard Dawkins has made similar observations, emphasizing that male and female bodies evolved for reproduction, and that denying the biological basis of sex is anti-scientific. He certainly doesn’t frame this as a critique of Gnosticism—but the resonance is striking. 

Gnostic thinking rejects the biological basis entirely. It tells us that truth is found in the internal self, not the external form.

Virtual Reality, AI, and the Disembodied Future

This disembodied way of thinking also shows up in technology. Virtual reality is now marketed not just as entertainment but as an alternative to real life. Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley’s top voices, once argued that those who value the physical world are simply enjoying their “reality privilege.” For most people, he claims, the digital world offers more meaning, more justice, and more joy. In a widely shared 2021 interview, Andreessen framed virtuality as a more equitable frontier than physical reality, arguing that investing in digital life is not only desirable but ethically necessary for those lacking “reality privilege.”

Mary Harrington, a feminist critic of transhumanism, connects this to the rise in trans identities. Kids who grow up immersed in virtual spaces—from Minecraft to Instagram—come to believe that the body is endlessly editable. If you can modify your online avatar, why not your real one?

She labels this phenomenon “Meat Lego Gnosticism”, vividly depicting a mindset where our bodies are deconstructed and reassembled, like LEGO blocks, at our own discretion rather than respected as integral, given wholes.

Artificial intelligence takes this logic even further. Some experts now openly ask whether unplugging an AI that claims to be conscious would be morally equivalent to killing a human. Why? Because if humans are just biological computers, then a silicon-based computer might be a person, too. Once again, embodiment is dismissed as unnecessary—or even oppressive.

Christianity Is Embodied

The problem is that this is profoundly anti-Christian. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible insists on the goodness of the body. Creation was called “very good.” Adam and Eve were given bodies with sexual differentiation and purpose. The Law regulated food, clothing, and ritual purity—bodily matters. Circumcision, anointing, sacrifices, baptisms—these are not incidental to the faith. They are expressions of it.

And then came the Incarnation. After creating bodies, and calling them good, God took on a body. He didn’t just give us ideas or a philosophy—He lived, suffered, bled, and died. He rose again with a body, and He gave us bodily sacraments: bread and wine, water and oil.

Christianity is not a disembodied information exchange. It is a flesh-and-blood, incarnational way of life. When we start treating livestreams as a sufficient replacement for church, or when we reduce Christian teaching to mere data transfer, we’re slipping into a Gnostic mindset.

Many in the tech world find the very idea that our nature has been given to us—rather than designed by us—to be a kind of offense. Yuval Harari, for example, boldly declares, “Organisms are algorithms,” and envisions a future where human life is no longer shaped by divine design but by human reengineering: “Science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design—not the intelligent design of some God above the clouds, but our intelligent design.”

For the modern mind, it’s galling to be told that our identity, limits, and even our flesh have been handed to us. The Christian worldview says we are fearfully and wonderfully made; the new Gnosticism says we are merely constructed—and ought to be reconstructed at will.

Why It Matters Now

Covid accelerated this shift. We were suddenly told that human bodies were dangerous. The ideal became disembodied—stay home, go virtual, avoid touch. What shocked me most was how quickly many Christians accepted this. The body, once central to Christian worship and community, became an afterthought.

But this wasn’t a new temptation. Gnosticism has always haunted the Church. What’s new is how persuasive it’s become in the age of digital technology and identity politics.

When Christians start believing that the body is incidental to the faith—or to being human—we’re not just making a theological mistake. We’re surrendering to the spirit of the age. We’re forgetting that Jesus rose with a body, that the Church is a Body, and that salvation is not just for our souls but for our whole selves.

Embodied Discipleship

What does it mean, then, to resist the Gnostic pull? It means leaning into our createdness. It means honoring our bodies as gifts. It means worshipping in person when we can, serving one another physically, and refusing to reduce faith to a collection of doctrines floating in the cloud.

To be Christian is to be human in the fullest sense—mind, soul, and body. Our world doesn’t need more clever ideas. It needs the witness of embodied lives: people who live out truth in their flesh and bones, who love with their hands and feet, and who follow a Savior who did the same.

Gnosticism says salvation is found in escaping the body. The Gospel says it’s found in the Word made flesh.

And that makes all the difference.

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Speaking for the Body: Medicine, Identity, and the Voice of the Flesh

What is medicine for?

This deceptively simple question sits at the heart of a fierce debate currently playing out in courts, clinics, and the conscience of a culture. A recent case—U.S. v. Skrmetti—confronts this head-on. The lawsuit challenges Tennessee’s law banning medical gender transition procedures for minors. But beneath the legal arguments lies a deeper philosophical fault line:

Is medicine the art of healing a disordered body, or the tool of sculpting a desired identity?

Two Models of Medicine

During oral arguments, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson asked provocative questions: If a teenage girl says, “I don’t want breasts,” is that enough to justify medical suppression of puberty?

That question exposes two competing visions of medicine:

  • The Service Provider Model: The physician delivers treatments to match the patient’s internal sense of self.
  • The Restorative Model: The physician diagnoses and treats real pathologies based on the body’s design and function.

If patient discomfort becomes the metric for medical intervention, anything can be labeled disease—including normal puberty.

Desire Is Not Diagnosis

In her article on Fairer Disputations, Leah Libresco Sargeant argues clearly: wanting something gone does not make it a disease.

A young girl may dislike her breasts due to dysphoria—or due to social pressure, trauma, or confusion. The physician’s job is to discern the difference. A culture that teaches self-avoidance should not be allowed to weaponize medicine against the body itself.

“A good doctor must attend to the body, not simply the feelings about it.” – Leah Libresco Sargeant

Feelings matter, but they are not the final diagnostic authority. Medicine must balance compassion with truth.

Listening to the Body’s Voice

Sargeant reflects personally on her own medical journey. As a teenager, signs of PCOS1PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) is a common hormonal disorder affecting women of reproductive age. It involves a combination of symptoms related to hormonal imbalance, metabolism, and ovarian function. were dismissed as normal. It wasn’t until later—after multiple miscarriages—that the condition was diagnosed.

Her body was speaking clearly. No one listened.

This isn’t just a case of delayed treatment. It’s a paradigm failure. Medicine did not fail to affirm her identity—it failed to honor her body’s reality. True healing requires both discernment and humility.

Medicine Must Be Rooted in Reality

When medicine drifts from diagnosis and healing into affirming personal desires, it risks becoming a mirror of cultural confusion rather than a defender of bodily truth.

We see this elsewhere:

  • Athletes pushed toward surgeries or eating disorders.
  • Cosmetic procedures driven by media-filtered ideals.
  • Adolescents offered radical interventions in response to passing anguish.

The question isn’t just what someone wants—but why they want it. And whether medicine should say yes.

Final Word: Healing, Not Hacking

The body is not a blank canvas. It is not raw material for existential expression. It is a living testimony, created with meaning and wisdom. Our job—especially in medicine—is to listen, learn, and heal.

When medicine speaks for the body, it fulfills its sacred calling.

When it speaks against the body, it becomes something else entirely.

SOURCE: “Speaking for the Body” by Leah Libresco Sargeant on Fairer Disputations.

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Stay Human, Speak the Truth