The narrative surrounding so-called "gender-affirming care" is fast collapsing. While gender ideologues have dug their heels into the movement's sandy foundations, others have begun taking a second look at the evidence long hidden in plain sight.

Benjamin Ryan is a gay health reporter with bylines in various publications who has been viciously attacked for questioning the left's dogma concerning transgenderism. Ryan recently gave new life to a glossed-over 2021 study that made abundantly clear that sex-change genital mutilations were a recipe for disaster.

Fatal transitions

Sex changes have been touted by activists as a way of saving lives. It turns out that they may actually boost the suicide rate among men.

Urologists Karyn Eilber, Kai Dallas, Victoria Scott, and Polina Reyblat and sex-change surgeon Jennifer Anger set out to assess rates of "psychiatric emergencies before and after gender affirming surgery in a large population-base cohort." The American Urological Association's Journal of Urology published their damning findings in September 2021.

In the study, the researchers reviewed datasets pertaining to men and women undergoing sex changes in California between 2012 and 2018. The researchers also identified corresponding emergency room and inpatient psychiatric encounters — "psychiatric encounters" — including suicide attempts.

The researchers calculated the rates of these encounters before and after sex-change surgeries.

"Overall, 869 and 357 patients were identified undergoing vaginoplasty and phalloplasty with 193 (22.2%) and 74 (20.7%) having at least one psychiatric encounter," said the study.

"Although the overall proportion of those experiencing a psychiatric encounter was similar between the vaginoplasty and phalloplasty groups, suicide attempts were more common in the vaginoplasty group."

In the context of sex-change procedures, a vaginoplasty is the procedure by which a man's penis and testicles are mangled and refashioned into a cavernous wound.

A phalloplasty, alternatively, is the procedure by which a woman's vagina is mangled and refashioned into a mock penis, often with the addition of skin peeled from the victim's arm, leg, or side. Sometimes, the female patient may also undergo a corresponding hysterectomy, ovary removal, and surgical sealing of the vaginal entrance.

The rate of a psychiatric encounter taking place after these procedures was 33.9% for men and 26.5% for women.

"The overall rates of suicide attempts doubled (3.3% vs 1.5%, p=0.017) after vagionoplasty (effect not observed after phalloplasty," said the study.

Among the 869 whose cases were reviewed, 74 men had psychiatric events before their surgeries; 81 had such events afterward; 38 patients had the psychiatric episodes both before and after. The overall risk before was rated at 12.8%, and the risk afterward was rated at 13.7%.

Nine of the male patients attempted to off themselves before the surgery; 25 attempted to kill themselves afterward. Four patients attempted to kill themselves both before and after.

Of the 357 women in the study, three attempted to commit suicide before their surgeries and three attempted to commit suicide afterward.

The researchers noted that the rates of psychiatric emergencies "are high both before and after gender affirming surgery"; however, the rate of suicide attempts in the vaginoplasty group "is more than double that of the general population."

Benjamin Ryan highlighted this study Monday on X. At the time of publication, his post had over 1 million views.

Blaze News reported last month that LGBT activists have lashed out at Ryan for drawing attention to the breakdown of gender ideologues' core claims. GLAAD's New York-based senior communications director Anthony Morrison, for instance, accused Ryan of peddling "junk science" and hating himself.

Other activists, including Taneja College of Pharmacy assistant professor Kevin Astle, have accused the gay health reporter and former HIV test counselor of "transphobia."

Rather than shy away from the fight, Ryan appears to have gone on a tear, overloading activists with indications that they have been pushing unethical pseudoscience.

Unethical pseudoscience

It has been a tough few weeks for LGBT activists, pharmaceutical reps, and sex-change surgeons. After all, the core claims underpinning their public support for genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers have virtually all been debunked.

Weeks after Finland's leading child psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala told her government that the vast majority of kids will grow out of the delusion that their gender and sex are misaligned, England's top health authority made a similar point.

National Health Service England banned puberty blockers for minors Tuesday in all but experimental trials, highlighting a dearth of evidence to support their efficacy and the good possibility that "children who meet the criteria for gender incongruence / gender dysphoria ... may not continue to experience the conflict between their physical gender and the one with which they identify into adolescence and adulthood."

NHS England also made clear that puberty blockers don't work as advertised, stating — on the basis of nine observational studies — "there was no statistically significant difference in gender dysphoria, mental health, body image and psychosocial functioning in children and adolescents treated with GnRHA."

Rather than help, NHS England said puberty blockers "may reduce the expected increase in lumbar or femoral bone density during puberty."

Last month, a Finnish study published in the esteemed quarterly journal BMJ Mental Health concluded that "medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk."

"All-cause and suicide mortalities did not differ between those gender referred who had and had not proceeded to [sex change surgeries] when psychiatric treatment history was accounted for," wrote the researchers.

Not only has the "gender-affirming care" narrative been demolished by scientific authorities and research, but by its leading exponents.

Leaked documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, long regarded by activists as the authority on transgenderism, revealed that its members have been freewheeling when it comes to science and ethics.

Members can be seen in the files admitting that minors cannot provide informed consent to the surgeries; that there are various debilitating side effects of sex-change procedures; and that various nightmarish procedures, all of which are elective, don't have a basis in nature.

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