With the arrival of transgenderism as a fad—parents seeking to corner their children’s place on the oppression pyramid early by announcing that their three-year-old is transgender, for example—we are beginning to see the first indicators of what will follow this fad: Brokenness. In fact, the sex change surgeries which are currently all the rage may well be contributing to the transgender suicide rate, as the trauma of the surgery combined with increasing numbers of people who are realizing that they actually are the sex they were born with creates a group of people filled with hopelessness and confusion. One “de-transitioning woman,” Cari Stella, admitted as much in a heartbreaking YouTube video: “I am a real, live 22-year-old woman, with a scarred chest and a broken voice and a five o’clock shadow because I couldn’t face the idea of growing up to be a woman, that’s my reality.” But the so-called trans rights movement is right there to make sure that scalpels and drugs and a society willing to go along with anything are ready to perpetuate any delusion or confusion rather than offer genuine assistance.
There are already academics who are warning that this will not end well. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson predicts massive lawsuits by the grown-up children and adolescents of this insane time, where children who were not allowed to drive or vote were allowed to irreversibly mutilate their own bodies and pump their bodies full of drugs and hormone blockers. Accusations of negligence are inevitable when parents who do not allow their children to choose their bedtime or their dinner think that their children can choose their sex. Dr. Camille Paglia, a radical feminist lesbian who considers many of her own personality traits to be transgender, actually warns that this transgender craze amounts to wicked child abuse and quite possibly the collapse of culture.
Trans activists are quite willing to treat those who realize the damage of their ideology with viciousness, as well. Another de-transitioning woman, Carey Callahan, fired back after transgender journalist Julia Serano insisted that she and others who were de-transitioning were still transgender and only attempting to reverse their sex changes due to “transphobia” and hatred in the culture at large. Callahan responded in blunt terms, pointing out the self-defeating nature of Serano’s double standard: “If self-definition is a human right, I don’t know how much louder we can shout to the world that we’re not trans. And for me, if you say that I’m on the transgender spectrum, what you’re doing is you’re erasing everything I’m telling you about my life and my story.”
That life and story is a sad, tragic one. “I had trauma that led to me disassociating from my female body, Callahan says. “And…the longer I chased that disassociation, the more I asked people to call me special pronouns, the more I tried to change my body, the more I ensconced myself in a community that would affirm a trans identity, the worse I felt.” Serano’s refusal to affirm her story, Callahan points out, is obviously ideological: “It’s a central story in my life, and you’re erasing it to make me fit your ideology. Your set of ideas of how the world works is not worth acting like I don’t exist, or acting like you get to define my gender for me. No, that’s not how it works. I’m a real person, and you have to deal with my existence.”
Another heartbreaking story from The Daily Wire illustrates the fundamental cruelty of trans ideology—especially when applied to children. “Ria” Cooper, originally born Brad Cooper, has now swapped his sex three different times:
Cooper, a biological male, was put on the fast-track to change his sex at the young age of 15, making him “Britain’s youngest sex-swap patient,” reports The Mirror. The confused young man then reversed the sex change process at 18-years-old after compounding confusion and, sadly, two suicide attempts. And, now, at age 23, Cooper has decided to switch his sex for a third time. At the young age of 15, “doctors controversially backed her belief she was a girl in a boy’s body,” notes The Mirror. “She was given blockers to stop her going through puberty, followed by injections of female hormones to impede face and chest hair and trigger the formation of breasts.”
But of course, Cooper’s troubles were not fixed by a medically-induced “sex-swap.” The boy attempted to commit suicide twice, got hooked on drugs, and even became a prostitute before the age of 18, in part to pay for his lavish wardrobe, he said. Finally, he decided to stop his hormone treatments and switch back to his biological male sex.
“On the surface I was hard as nails, but underneath it hurt like hell,” explained Cooper. “The puberty blockers and hormones made me moody and angry, I was all over the place. My mum supported me, but I moved out and went wild, drinking and taking drugs to cope with being different. I made so many mistakes.”
Cooper says he engaged in relationships with men but was never accepted by their friends and family. He said he felt used for sexual pleasure, thus he turned to prostitution.
“I fell in love with a guy from the Army and he even introduced me to his family,” he said. “We didn’t talk about my past, but they knew who I was and accepted it. Then his friends found out and that was it. … It was the same pattern every time I met someone. So I decided if the only use men had for me was sex, then I’d charge them.”
“It all became too much,” said Cooper. “I decided it would just all go away if I became male again.”
Now, at 23, Cooper wants to revert back to being a “woman.” He says being female is his true identity and wishes to be get married and have children one day.
“It just felt wrong,” he said of changing back to his biological sex. “I came to the realisation pretty quickly I was doing it because I wanted all the problems associated with being transgender to go away. I was no longer able to hide who I really am. Not for family, or friends or potential boyfriends. I have to be true to myself.”
“I’d love a child of my own,” he said. “I’d love to have a baby to cuddle and love and look after as they grow up. It’s not going to happen overnight, I know that. But I can dream, can’t I?”
After receiving criticism for taking government money for previous changes, Cooper says he will pay for his sex-change without the government’s help. “She has paid £5,000 to get her dream 34EE breasts, and will have an op next year for her genital transformation,” notes The Mirror. But the young man blames society’s bigotry for his depression, confusion, and back-and-forth sex-swaps.
“I wasn’t confused,” declared Cooper. “But people around me confused me….I know some people would say it was all too much, too young. But you know your own mind. You know when you’re living life in the wrong body…It’s not just playing with dolls or wearing make-up. It’s absolutely who you are.”
It’s hard to see a bright future for this poor victim. Transgender people suffer from an astronomical attempted suicide rate of 40% (eight times the rate of non-trans folks) and are much more likely to experience homelessness. Moreover, it’s clear that Cooper’s 15-year-old experience only compounded his problems. Upwards of 80% of children who suffer from gender dysphoria grow out of such confusion before adulthood; should Cooper have been cared for as a 15-year-old in a manner that thoroughly addressed the condition psychologically, instead of opting for medical means to “change” his biological sex, perhaps Cooper would have had a different future.
Although gender dysphoria is a mental disorder and people cannot actually change their biological sex, at the very least Cooper could have been spared the back-and-forth sex-swaps if he were actually cared for properly as a youth, and then made an informed decision in adulthood.
Think about that for a moment. Over 80% of children who suffer from gender dysphoria will grow out of this confusion—as long as that confusion is not affirmed by trans activists, progressive parents, and post-modern educators. These people would actually allow a child to undergo surgical genital mutilation, puberty suppression, and dangerous drug diets in order to attempt the confirmation of something that most children grow out of. Considering the rapid spread of this fad—the number of those who identity as transgender in the United States has more than doubled in the last several years, this is going to end in tragedy after tragedy.
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For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.
The transgender madness is a ghastlier version of another current mad trend: tattooing: Do it now, repent later on.