Documentary
2021 / 52 minutes
Rating: 7/10

Trans mission is a new, free documentary making the case against the “transitioning” of children – the chemical and surgical alterations of children done in an attempt to make them seem more like the sex they are not.

It makes that case with two key points:

1. it highlights the irreversible damage that is done to children (and adults) when they are put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones
2. it challenges the supposed mental health benefits of “gender transitioning”

The strength of the film is that even as it argues against “gender affirmation therapies” for children, it presents the arguments on the other side, allowing them to make their case in their own words. So, for example, we are assured that puberty blockers are reversible; they are just a pause button to use while a family figures out what they want to do. This is the assurance being given to many confused parents, who are also told frightening statistics about elevated risks of suicide for the “gender non-conforming.” Or, as it has been put to some parents, “Do you want a live son, or a dead daughter?”

After the case for is made, we get to hear what many of these parents never did: that there is no pause button to hit, and that puberty blockers come with risks, have not been well studied for these uses, and “there is no long term evidence showing ‘gender affirmation therapy’ reduces suicide.”

Cautions

The many different examples given of problems with “transitioning” are evidences Christians can readily use, stacking them on the biblical foundation that God, and not Man, decides sex. The weakness with this documentary is that it has no such biblical foundation. They don’t object to “transitioning” itself, but to children doing so, because they are not mature enough to know all the implications of starting on puberty blockers.

That is a good point. Before children are old enough to drive, they are deciding to forgo having children, and to permanently alter their voice and body frame. As the documentary shares, there are many who regret what was done to them, and who are “detransitioning” now because the feelings they had changed over time… but now the damage they’ve done to their bodies can’t be undone.

But what’s the counter to some people regretting the choice they made as a child? Wouldn’t it be others who have the equal and opposite regret? There are those who regret not having “transitioned” earlier. Once a man goes through puberty, his voice gets lower, and his frame gets bulkier, and for men who wish they were women, they may well have regrets that they didn’t start on puberty blockers earlier, so as to maintain their prepubescent body, and better maintain the delusion that they are women.

If this were simply one sort of regret vs. another, how would we decided whose regrets should prevail?

How do you answer that question if you’re unwilling to take a stand on this issue as a Christian?

Conclusion

This is a must-see for Christians. The evidence the filmmakers present, shaky on its own, is useful, and usable once it is stacked atop the Rock-solid biblical foundation. We can show how departing from God’s direction on sex can leading to devastating and lifelong difficulties. We can highlight how, once they are medicalized, these people will need to keep getting these hormones for life, as their own bodies will never produce the other sex’s hormones.  We can explain that “These female people are never going to have a penis that works like a male penis, and these male people are never going to have a vagina that works like a female vagina.”

The film offers a ray of hope at the end, one doctor speaking of a chat he had with the chair emeritus of the Hopkins Psychiatric Division:

“…he and I have had a chance to sit together and talk at length several times. And he said, I will tell you what is going to happen to change the tide. There’s going to be major lawsuits by families or individuals who have been through this, gone down that pathway and come back at the other side. And they are going to take down not only the physicians, but the drug companies and the hospitals, healthcare systems, and the insurance companies that allowed this to happen, and that’s when this will all end.”

This is an attempt, again, to seek a solution apart from God, and it’s worth reiterating, again, that this is a false hope. It’s the sort of hope that might even discourage mutilation of the young while validating it for adults.

Christians can use the evidences presented in this film, but we must not adopt its secular approach to argumentation. The world needs to know that God made us male and female, and that rejecting that Truth will never lead to peace.

Clarifying question

1. Is this film arguing against all “reassignment”?
2. On what basis does the film argue against these surgical or chemical treatments?
3. Could an individual who didn’t get any puberty blockers as a child argue that they didn’t fully comprehend (and thus did not give an informed consent) for what not getting such interventions would do to them?
4. If so, then does the film’s main argument stand well on its own? Or does it need a firmer foundation?
5. What is the real reason such treatments are wrong? (Hint: Gen. 1:27).
6. Christians seem afraid to offer explicitly Christian arguments, but if we aren’t going to do it, then who is going to offer the Truth?