New study: trans women’s self-ending rate doubles after sex surgery

I just finished reading the third edition of Frank Turek’s “Correct, Not Politically Correct: About Same-Sex Marriage and Transgenderism”. The book talks about the effects of taking drugs and undergoing surgeries to deny your biological sex. It costs a lot of money. It creates chronic pain. It requires continuous visits to the doctors ($$$ for them). And there’s higher risk of self-ending.

Here’s the latest study published in the peer-reviewed journal American Urological Association. They don’t like people quoting their web site, so I had to look for a mainstream news report about it.

The Daily Caller reported on the study:

The suicide rate for men identifying as transgender women in California doubled among those who receive vaginoplasty, a new study found.

More than twice as many men who identify as transgender women had attempted suicide after receiving the surgery when compared to those who had not undergone the procedure, according to AUA Journals.

If you don’t know what a vaginoplasty is, Daily Caller had a helpful blurb about it:

Vaginoplasty “involves the removal of a man’s penis, testicles and scrotum” to sculpt a “feminine-appearing” vaginal canal and vulva, according to John Hopkins Medicine.

Basically, the idea is to create the appearance of being the opposite sex. But these are not as sensitive as the real things, they require constant painful and expensive maintenance, and they are expensive. We are all paying for these procedures, when our health insurance goes up to pay for the people who are getting them.

More:

“Rates of psychiatric emergencies are high both before and after [surgery]. Although both the phalloplasty and vaginoplasty patients have similar overall rates of psychiatric encounters, suicide attempts are more common in the [latter]. In fact, our observed rate of suicide attempts in the phalloplasty group is actually similar to the general population, while the vaginoplasty group’s rate is more than double that of the general population. Patients undergoing [vaginoplasty] with a history of prior psychiatric emergencies or feminizing transition are at a higher risk and should be counseled appropriately,” study authors concluded.

Why is the suicide rate higher for men? I think I have the answer. Men seem to enjoy and desire sex more than women. I think the men are surprised and confused that the thing that looks like a woman’s vagina doesn’t actually work to produce sexual pleasure.

Now, when I go to buy a car, I don’t do it on the basis of feelings. I do it on the basis of user reviews, long-term driving evaluations, warranty ratings, etc. I cannot imagine how blind a person would have to be to chop off a functioning reproduction organ and think that they will be able to enjoy sex as much as they could before. And I can’t imagine why the doctors would go along with it, except that they want lots of insurance company money. And why don’t the insurance companies stop it? Oh, because they just raise the premiums of the other people who use health care responsibly.

 

William Lane Craig debates Austin Dacey: Does God Exist?

Here is the video and summary of a debate between Christian theist William Lane Craig and Austin Dacey at Purdue University in 2004 about the existence of God.

The debaters:

The video: (2 hours)

The video shows the speakers and powerpoint slides of their arguments. Austin Dacey is one of the top atheist debaters, and I would put him second to Peter Millican alone, with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong in third place. This is the debate to show people who are new to apologetics. The debate with Peter Millican is better for advanced students, and that’s no surprise since he teaches at Oxford University and is familiar with all of Dr. Craig’s work. The Craig-Dacey debate is the one that I give to my co-workers.

By the way, you can get the DVDs and CDs for the first Craig-Dacey debate and the second Craig-Dacey debate and the second Craig-Sinnott-Armstrong debate. The Peter Millican debate is not available on DVD, but the link above (Peter Millican) has the video and my summary.

Dr. Dacey’s 5 arguments below are all good arguments that you find in the academic literature. He is also an effective and engaging speaker, This is a great debate to watch!

SUMMARY of the opening speeches:

Dr. Craig’s opening statement:

Dr. Craig will present six reasons why God exists:

  1. (Contingency argument) God is the best explanation of why something exists rather than nothing
  2. (Cosmological argument)  God’s existence is implied by the origin of the universe
  3. (Fine-tuning argument) The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life points to a designer of the cosmos
  4. (Moral argument) God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values and objective moral duties
  5. (Miracles argument) The historical facts surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
  6. (Religious experience) God’s existence is directly knowable even apart from arguments

Dr. Dacey’s opening argument:

There are two ways to disprove God’s existence, by showing that the concept of God is self-contradictory, or by showing that certain facts about ourselves and the world are incompatible with what we would expect to be true if God did exist. Dr. Dacey will focus on the second kind of argument.

  1. The hiddenness of God
  2. The success of science in explaining nature without needing a supernatural agency
  3. The dependence of mind on physical processes in the brain
  4. Naturalistic evolution
  5. The existence of gratuitous / pointless evil and suffering

One final point:

One thing that I have to point out is that Dr. Dacey quotes Brian Greene during the debate to counter Dr. Craig’s cosmological argument. Dr. Craig could not respond because he can’t see the context of the quote. However, Dr. Craig had a rematch with Dr. Dacey where was able to read the context of the quote and defuse Dr. Dacey’s objection. This is what he wrote in his August 2005 newsletter after the re-match:

The following week, I was off an another three-day trip, this time to California State University at Fresno. As part of a week of campus outreach the Veritas Forum scheduled a debate on the existence of God between me and Austin Dacey, whom I had debated last spring at Purdue University. In preparation for the rematch I adopted two strategies: (1) Since Dacey had come to the Purdue debate with prepared speeches, I decided to throw him for a loop by offering a different set of arguments for God, so that his canned objections wouldn’t apply. I chose to focus on the cosmological argument, giving four separate arguments for the beginning of the universe, and on the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. (2) I reviewed our previous debate carefully, preparing critiques of his five atheistic arguments. In the process I found that he had seriously misunderstood or misrepresented a statement by a scientist on the Big Bang; so I brought along the book itself in case Dacey quoted this source again. I figured he might change his arguments just as I was doing; but I wanted to be ready in case he used his old arguments again.

[…]The auditorium was packed that night for the debate, and I later learned that there were overflow rooms, too. To my surprise Dr. Dacey gave the very same case he had presented at Purdue; so he really got clobbered on those arguments. Because he wasn’t prepared for my new arguments, he didn’t even respond to two of my arguments for the beginning of the universe, though he did a credible job responding to the others. I was pleased when he attacked the Big Bang by quoting the same scientist as before, because I then held up the book, specified the page number, and proceeded to quote the context to show what the scientist really meant.

Dr. Craig is always prepared!

Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, MD fires nurse for opposing DEI

Most people in the traditional, pro-marriage camp have noticed that the marriage rate is in a freefall. I’m talking about people like the Daily Wire hosts, Brad Wilcox, etc. They ignore the disincentives facing men, and just slam their fists on the table and cry “Get Married!” to men. But they have no interest in fixing the root cause. They think that shaming men will make them marry.

Here’s a story from the Wall Street Journal (archived) about a male nurse – a good man – who lost his job:

It’s fine to oppose diversity, equity and inclusion as long as you keep it to yourself. The moment you speak out, you have a target on your back. That’s the lesson I learned in February. I made the mistake of questioning DEI on my personal social-media account. The hospital where I worked fired me within days.

I’ve been a registered nurse for 16 years. In 2021 I began working in the emergency department at Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, Md., rising to assistant clinical manager in February 2023. Since I oversaw nurses, my highest priority after providing the best care to patients was protecting my team. That’s what got me into trouble.

I do think it’s important to note that this man made a terrible mistake by thinking that it was safe to work in a blue city in a blue state. He does bear some responsibility for that choice, as well as the choice to speak out from a social media account with his real name. That’s why I use an alias. Sure, he gets into the Wall Street Journal, but at what cost?

Like many states, Maryland has been foisting DEI courses on medical professionals for several years. Since 2022 the state has required that all healthcare professionals take “implicit bias” training, largely in response to worries about black maternal mortality. The state has also committed to reducing disparities in severe maternal morbidity between black and white women over the next three years. My hospital began using a course called “B.I.R.T.H Equity Maryland,” which stands for Breaking Inequality Reimagining Transformative Healthcare.

I took the first session of the course in July 2023. I was bombarded with evidence-free claims that implicit bias has caused a crisis of maternal mortality in black women. The course ignored the complex factors that contribute to higher black maternal mortality, including comorbidities, while defining any death from any cause after a year of giving birth as maternal mortality—a logical stretch.

Overall, the course implied that white nurses like me are killing black mothers. I was supposed to internalize this message and somehow apply it to the management of my team.

It’s funny because you think that when you are going to a health care provider, that they are going to improve your health. But, because they have subscribed to a fact-free mythology, they lie to you to you, which can actually hurt you in the long run.

In January, Meritus sent me materials for another DEI course for hospital leaders. The materials asserted, among other things, that the U.S. is built on “an ideology of White supremacy that justifies policies, practices and structures which result in social arrangements of subordination for groups of color through power and White privilege.”

I quickly decided I wouldn’t spread these hateful messages to the nurses under my supervision. I didn’t attend the course and wasn’t punished for it. A few weeks later, I received an email instructing me to register for an in-person implicit-bias seminar in March. I declined to do so, again with no punishment. The advocacy group Do No Harm has shown how medical professionals are often penalized for not taking such training, so I was grateful I got off easy.

The mounting politicization of the workplace frustrated me, so on Feb. 7 I posted what I thought was an innocuous message to my Facebook page: “No employer has the right to invade the unconscious spaces of it’s [sic] employees minds in an attempt to reprogram them into thinking certain ways. If your employer signs you up for an ‘Unconscious Bias’ aka ‘Implicit Bias’ training, then they are doing exactly that.”

My Facebook page doesn’t link me to Meritus, nor did I mention the hospital by name. I didn’t mention the courses, either. All I did was criticize the idea that people should be forced to accept a hateful worldview.

I would imagine that his reason for speaking out was to provide superior medical care to his patients – to all of his patients. Sadly, his employer had a different goal in mind. Their goal was to virtue signal. And that’s more important to them than serving customers.

That was my mistake—speaking out publicly. The next day I received a call from my manager, who informed me that Meritus had placed me on administrative leave. She said she believed human resources intended to fire me and told me to attend a meeting on Feb. 12. At that meeting, Scott Salzetti, Meritus vice president of team member services, handed down my sentence. He provided me with a document that cited my post and referred to several other posts that “could be reasonably viewed as offensive” or “were misleading, or false.”

I wasn’t told what those posts were, though after reviewing my Facebook account, I suspect it was a January post in which I stated that “corporate healthcare has shifted its focus from patient centered care directives to diversity of the workforce and inclusive excellence training (aka thought reform) for its leaders.” Nothing in that sentence is false or misleading, and again I didn’t mention my employer or a training course. No matter: For openly questioning DEI, instead of keeping my concerns to myself, I was fired. (In response to an inquiry from a Journal editor, a Meritus Medical Center spokeswoman confirmed the termination of my employment but otherwise declined to comment.)

[…]In the meeting where I was fired, a Meritus representative repeatedly said I had waded into “a touchy subject.” That’s exactly my point. DEI is inherently divisive and discriminatory to boot. No hospital or medical provider should touch something so touchy, much less fire someone for daring to question it.

I hope this will help young Christians and conservatives to think carefully about what field they choose to go into, and maybe even where they live. You can’t be guided by your feelings. You have to have a plan to reduce your vulnerability to the secular left fascists.