(LifeSiteNews) — “Affirmation Generation” is a documentary exposing the harm done through medical “gender transitions” by showing testimonies of “detransitioners,” or people who regret their decision to seek the treatments and are now trying to reverse them.
The premiere of the movie is set for Novemer 2022. The recently released official trailer is promising in many regards, but it also entails moral dangers, as it affirms certain aspects of the LGBT agenda.
According to the film’s website, the documentary tells the story of six young detransitioners who “sought medical help but instead were irreversibly harmed by their doctors following the one-size-fits-all ‘gender-affirming care’ medical treatment.” The experiences of these victims of transgender medicine are examined and commented on by “leading experts treating gender distressed patients and detransitioners, including medical doctors and psychotherapists, as well as investigative journalists.
The trailer starts with the testimony of Cat, who went through medical transition and now regrets her decision, saying “Based on the information that I had, that medical transition is by far the best treatment, and that you are at risk for suicide if you don’t follow that path, I thought I only really had one path that I could take.”
This theme is repeated throughout the trailer and represents the conventional wisdom of modern gender ideology, which states that the only way to treat someone suffering from gender dysphoria is to use the “gender-affirming-care” protocol. This “treatment” includes mutilating his or her body through gender surgery, e.g. removing healthy female breasts, as well as prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Lisa Marchiano, a psychoanalyst, addresses the assertion that “gender-affirming-care” is the only way to go: “It’s just not true. And in fact, those who had transitioned had suicide rates 19 times higher than population-matched controls. […] That’s what I hear [from the detransitioners]: ‘I have ruined my life; I had a perfectly good body, and now it’s ruined.’”
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Moreover, the trailer highlights how badly people are treated by the health professionals who prescribe these transgender “treatments” and how they often go through a pre-set protocol that does not address their specific situations. Michelle, one of the detransitioners, says: “I saw one of those therapists for probably like an hour, and he wrote a letter subscribing testosterone for me.” Laura, another victim, echoes the same sentiment: “I turned to professional doctors, and I was not helped. I was just ushered along, you know, very mindlessly, and I have permanent damage because of it.”
Psychotherapist Stella O’Malley adds: “These vulnerable people were treated incredibly badly by the professionals. […] It’s not right to medicalize perfectly healthy bodies and make them sicker.” Investigative journalist Jennifer Bileks comments: “They are selling a product, and they are doing a really, really good job. And young people, they are buying it. They’re just buying it.”
Exposing the harm of gender surgery and how the pharmaceutical industry is benefitting from “gender-affirming-care” is certainly great, and the documentary promises to do a good job in that regard. However, the film is produced by “life-long, west coast, liberal Democrats in the entertainment industry”, as it says at the end of the trailer. And this fact is evident when you look at certain quotes from the video.
Dr. Lisa Littman, for instance, says: “There are some people who do benefit from transition, but there are some people who are harmed from transition.” This insinuates that gender surgery and cross-hormone therapy are not wrong per se, they are just not the right treatment for everybody.
READ: European medical officials warn about transgender drugs and surgeries for kids
The idea that acting against the order of creation and scientific facts is the right choice for some people is wrong and dangerous. A man can never really become a woman or vice versa. Walt Heyer was one of the first detransitioners who went public, and he exposed these lies years ago, saying that “It’s a masquerade” to “want to become someone who they can actually never become.” According to clinical psychologist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, many cases of gender dysphoria, like Heyer’s, are caused by early childhood trauma. Other cases, especially in teenage girls, are caused by the desire to fit in with the trend of transgenderism, as best-selling author Abigail Shrier describes.
Furthermore, one of the experts interviewed in the trailer makes a problematic comment: “This is going to harm lesbian, gay, bisexual kids because they’re being pushed down a medical path rather than accepting who they are.” While her remarks do criticize the practice of gender surgery, she also says that being homosexual can be “who they are,” meaning the identity of children.
This plays into two false mainstream narratives. The first is that people are “born gay,” which has been proven false by a recent study that concludes that “it will be basically impossible to predict one’s sexual activity or orientation just from genetics.”
The second narrative implicit in this statement is that whomever you are attracted to, even if that attraction is objectively disordered (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 2358), defines your “identity.” This is wrong and both psychologically and spiritually harmful. It is completely contrary to the message of the Gospel, and it is likely something the devil would want you to think. The evil one would like you to think that your sins and even your sinful or disordered inclinations define you and are your identity, as it implies that you are permanently stuck in that place. As terrible as sin is, Christ has paid the price for our sins with his sacrifice on the cross and we can therefore be redeemed and changed through God’s grace. If we repent, God can cleanse us from our wickedness:
But if we walk in the light, as he also is in the light, we have fellowship one with another: And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity. (1 John 1:7-9)
In conclusion, the documentary appears to be a mixed bag. It exposes the danger of gender surgeries, hormone treatments, and corruption in the medical field, but it does so without challenging the ideological foundation of the LGBT agenda, which undergirds the whole transgender movement. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s documentary “What is a Woman?” does a better job of exposing the lies of transgenderism since it also goes after its ideological roots. Therefore, I would recommend “What is a Woman?” to anyone who seeks to “red-pill” their friends or family members on the issue of gender ideology. But, if you have someone who will not watch anything produced by a right-wing outlet like the Daily Wire, “Affirmation Generation” is a solid alternative.
