By Andrea Widburg
When my kids were growing up, I knew a young man who was charming, funny, sociable, and quite obviously going to be gay. Exactly no one was surprised when, at 13, he came out of the closet. All would have been well if COVID hadn’t hit when he was in college. Isolated and depressed, he signed up for therapy, ending with a therapist who informed him that he was actually a woman. (I’m sure social media algorithms, such as Chinese-run TikTok’s, helped steer him in that direction.)
This young man has now had hormones and two surgeries. He’s stacked up top and empty down below. The big question is whether he will find happiness.
Sadly for my young friend, the odds are against him, at least according to a massive study done in Houston and published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, an outlet of Oxford Academic, which is, in turn, part of Oxford University Press. In other words, a big study published on a reputable forum. According to that study, once the surgery is over, and once the euphoria associated with realizing a dream has passed, the post-surgical patients are deeply depressed.
The study examined information from 107,583 patients, using the TriNetX database. (Electronic medical records are very helpful for looking at large population segments.) The study examined people over age 18 with gender dysphoria, and broke them into six useful categories for data analysis.
WPATH, the largest organization pushing “transgender” ideology on doctors and hospitals, along with the usual collection of activists, would undoubtedly predict that the study showed increased levels of happiness among post-surgical people. They surely would argue that so-called “transgender” people who had surgery would magically be less depressed, less inclined to substance abuse, and less likely to commit suicide.
In fact, the opposite was true, and not just a little true, but very true. Those who had surgery were markedly less happy than their so-called “transgender” peers who stopped short of slicing and dicing their bodies:
From 107 583 patients, matched cohorts demonstrated that those undergoing surgery were at significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders than those without surgery. Males with surgery showed a higher prevalence of depression (25.4% vs. 11.5%, RR 2.203, P < 0.0001) and anxiety (12.8% vs. 2.6%, RR 4.882, P < 0.0001). Females exhibited similar trends, with elevated depression (22.9% vs. 14.6%, RR 1.563, P < 0.0001) and anxiety (10.5% vs. 7.1%, RR 1.478, P < 0.0001). Feminizing individuals demonstrated particularly high risk for depression (RR 1.783, P = 0.0298) and substance use disorders (RR 1.284, P < 0.0001).
Sadly, the study pulls back from stating the obvious conclusion, which is that so-called transgenderism is a mental condition, not a physical one. Mutilating one’s body, even if that mutilation is deeply desired and ostensibly conforms to a perceived “better body,” does not address the underlying problems of gender dysphoria.
Or as the old saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are.” You cannot outrun yourself with surgery. Surgeries are good for fixing distinct medical conditions (e.g., a broken hip or clogged heart), or even making little cosmetic tweaks (e.g., a nose job), but they will not fix a broken psyche.
But again, the study will not or cannot acknowledge that. Instead, it believes the post-surgical problems arise, in part, from “stigma and lack of gender affirmation.” That cannot be right, because the stigma and lack of gender affirmation logically exist before the mutilating surgery as well as after. Ignoring logic, the study recommends “ongoing, gender-sensitive mental health support for transgender individuals’ post-surgery.” The same logic says this won’t help either.
Again, wherever you go, there you are. Cutting off your breasts or castrating yourself will not change that, no matter how much you sign up for “mental health support” from ideologues who, like the therapist my young friend saw, are effectively hammers who believe everything is a transgender nail.
Transgender madness will pass, as all societal delusions must. However, it will leave so many broken lives in its wake.
Currently, my young friend is living a narcissist’s dream, taking endless photos of his feminized self to affirm that, yes, he really is a girl. Eventually, though, those photos won’t help. I fear that this once brilliant, funny, sociable young man will fall into an abyss as he looks down at his eunuch’s body and realizes there is no going back.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/03/so_called_gender_affirming_surgery_is_bad_for_people_s_happiness.html