With teens increasingly identifying as non-binary and transgender, this other side of the story needs to be told. Don Johnson’s new documentary Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind the Transgender Explosion does just that—and much more. Through a combination of powerful personal stories and interviews with top-notch scholars and medical experts, Dysconnected explores why transgenderism is on the rise, the understanding of human nature that is driving it, and how Christianity’s vision of male and female provides a much richer alternative.

As puberty hits for a young girl, imagine the additional earth-shaking and existential uncertainty caused by wondering whether she might actually be a man trapped in a woman’s body. She starts on puberty blockers, moves on to cross-sex hormones, and even goes through with top surgery (a double mastectomy). But she realizes shortly thereafter that these extreme and invasive interventions didn’t relieve her distress. The euphoria of each phase was short-lived as the familiar struggles returned and nothing really improved. This is the tragic story of many young people today who are being steered into so-called “gender affirming” care, only to realize that it doesn’t work in the long run.

With teens increasingly identifying as non-binary and transgender, this other side of the story needs to be told. Don Johnson’s new documentary Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind the Transgender Explosion does just that—and much more. Through a combination of powerful personal stories and interviews with top-notch scholars and medical experts, Dysconnected explores why transgenderism is on the rise, the understanding of human nature that is driving it, and how Christianity’s vision of male and female provides a much richer alternative.

Daisy’s Detransition Story

The film begins with gripping video footage from a teen named Daisy who followed the exact “gender-affirming” progression explained above. Hearing and seeing the real video she recorded of her teenage self as she documented her F2M (female-to-male) transition made me sit up in my chair and lean in. Her first-person account is captivating and offers an ideal launching-off point for exploring the many factors that lie behind this transgender moment.

Daisy’s story is woven throughout the film and her frank and clear articulation of her experiences and the broader societal issues is one of the most compelling aspects of the film. And, as the film concludes, Daisy’s recent life events make for a wonderfully surprising and redemptive ending—or perhaps more accurately, a merciful gift and new beginning. The film’s conclusion brought my wife and me to tears.

DSM Depathologization

One of the insidious aspects of transgenderism uncovered in the documentary is medicine’s bowing the knee to the LGBT agenda. Plastic surgeon Patrick Leppert shines throughout the film in exposing exactly how this has happened. He explains that by the time plastic surgeons have patients referred to them for gender transition surgeries, the diagnosis and treatment plans are already well-established, frequently originating from a child’s self-diagnosis many years prior. Leppert explains:

You’ve got a thirteen, fifteen, seventeen-year-old young lady who’s going to have a mastectomy, and the plastic surgeon is relying on a diagnosis that was made by that child perhaps ten years before. And nobody has waived a flag on this and said, ”Wait a minute, what are we doing here?” The plastic surgeon at that point is a technician, and that is contrary to everything I learned as a surgeon.

Leppert also explains how the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the definitive text used for psychological diagnoses) has been modified not because of any new research or data, but to fit the transgender narrative. Gender Identity Disorder has been depathologized into the more nebulous and neutral Gender Dysphoria, which then gives way to affirming a cross-gender identity, rather than treating what really is a body dysmorphic disorder.

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