Editor’s note: The following was written by Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, in their publication, City Journal. It is reprinted with their kind permission.
Following the French Revolution, the British philosopher Edmund Burke signaled a note of caution, warning that the desire for progress, uninhibited by convention, can lead to disaster. Revolutions in the name of lofty ideals—liberty, equality, science—can yield their opposites. A revolution in our time merits similar consideration: the transformation of human sexuality and, in particular, the rise of so-called transgender medicine.
The gender surgery program at Oregon Health & Science University, a public teaching hospital in downtown Portland, provides a productive tableau for analysis. The program is led by Blair Peters, a self-described “queer surgeon” who sports neon-pink hair, uses “he/they” pronouns, and specializes in vaginoplasty (the creation of an artificial vagina), phalloplasty (the creation of an artificial penis), and “non-binary” surgeries, which nullify the genitals altogether. Peters and his colleagues have pioneered the use of a vaginoplasty robot, which helps efficiently castrate male patients and turn their flesh into a “neo-vagina.”
Business is booming. According to Peters, OHSU’s gender surgery clinic has “the highest volume on the West Coast,” and his robot-assisted vaginoplasty program can accommodate two patients per day. His colleague Jens Berli, who specializes in phalloplasty, boasts a 12- to-18-month waiting list for a consultation and an additional three- to six-month waiting list for a surgical appointment.
This openness marks a revolution in manners and morals. In the past, transgender theorists acknowledged that their surgical transformations were disturbing and anti-normative. “I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” wrote the male-to-female transgender theorist Susan Stryker in 1994. “I will say this as bluntly as I know how: I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster.”
Such views no longer prevail. Today’s transgender medical providers conceal the barbarity of their practices in euphemisms. They are not postmodern Dr. Frankensteins but providers of “life-saving, gender-affirming care.” The model patient is no longer the middle-aged autogynephile but the troubled teenager, sold a new identity, mediated through technology, that promises to resolve deep-seated sexual anxieties—and advance the political cause of transgender activists.
The dismal metaphysics that lies beneath OHSU’s castration machines is academic queer theory, which holds that human beings are mere vehicles of “performativity” and that their nature can be molded and reshaped at will. In other words, the queer theorists argue, there is no “human nature” that cannot be transcended or obliterated through the application of culture and science.
OHSU’s castration machines must be seen in this light. The university’s doctors and surgeons believe that they can harness the advances of modern medical science to sublate the basic categories of human sexuality and replace them with a variety of synthetic forms: the artificial phallus; the artificial vagina; the dual phallus-vagina; nullification of both.
The technique for the robot-assisted vaginoplasty is gruesome. According to a handbook published by OHSU, surgeons first cut off the head of the penis and remove the testicles. Then they turn the penile-scrotal skin inside out and, together with abdomen cavity tissue, fashion it into a crude, artificial vagina. “The robotic arms are put through small incisions around your belly button and the side of your belly,” the handbook reads. “They are used to create the space for your vaginal canal between your bladder and your rectum.” The illustrated surgical literature is a catalog of horrors—peruse at your own risk.
This procedure is plagued with complications. OHSU warns of wound separation, tissue necrosis, graft failure, urine spraying, hematoma, blood clots, vaginal stenosis, rectal injury, fistula, and fecal accidents. Patients must stay in the hospital for a minimum of five days following the procedure, receiving treatment for surgical wounds and having fluid drained through plastic tubes. Once they are home, patients must continue on transgender hormone treatments and manually dilate their surgically created “neo-vagina” in perpetuity; otherwise, the tissue will heal, and the cavity will close.
One question provokes particular dread: Are the surgeons at OHSU using these machines on children? The answer appears to be yes. In an interview, Peters acknowledged that, in recent years, he has seen “a lot of adolescents presenting for surgical intervention” and that he has performed genital surgeries, including the robot-assisted vaginoplasty, on “a handful of puberty-suppressed adolescents.” Peters further stated that OHSU is “just putting [its] first series together” related to adolescent vaginoplasty and that “no one has published on it yet.” (When reached for comment, OHSU declined to respond.)
All this grisly detail is obscured through manipulative language. To the general public, Peters and his colleagues present their case in therapeutic terms—gender, affirmation, trauma, care, health, joy—and wrap themselves in the movement’s light blue, pink, and white flag. By comparison, the old transgender theorists were more honest. They saw themselves in Frankenstein and, in their struggle to overcome natural limits, brushed against them.
We can return to Burke for a final word. Besides his analysis of revolution, Burke’s other major contribution to the history of ideas was his theory of the sublime. The sublime, he argued, did not stimulate love, but terror. The vast darkness, the brewing storm, the dangerous tyrant—all elicited a complex reaction of astonishment and fear, especially that of human finitude.
Transgender surgery provokes a similar sentiment: awe of the mechanical mastery, horror at the raw human barbarism. But when the haze of emotions passes, the true nature of these interventions is revealed—they are a work of pure hubris, part of a scientific revolution that has sought to transcend all moral bounds. The revolution’s works, like Dr. Frankenstein’s, will inevitably leave behind a profound human tragedy.
As Luke Rudkowski says: "If your genitals don’t determine your gender, why does cutting them off do?"
For a less elevated and more sensational view of OHSU and its "queer surgeon" (LOL), take a look at the "Daily Mail" piece titled:
"Pink-haired Portland surgeon who performs sex-change surgery on trans CHILDREN admits they face lifetime of infertility, incontinence and sexual dissatisfaction, in now-deleted video." https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12299393/Portland-surgeon-dubbed-Dr-Frankenstein-reveals-drawbacks-genital-ops-trans-adolescents.html
You call tell the doctor is queer because he has queer pink hair and oversized queer glasses. His studied look further cements the notion that queer is really just another youth scene that has no claim whatsoever to be taken seriously. It's as if one's Spanish professor showed up dressed in full Mariachi.
OHSU's so-called "Transgender Health Program" doesn't need to display Dr. Queer Surgeon on its site to show that it's all in on trans/queer culture. Parents who have drunk the gender-identity KoolAid and minors doing an end-run around their mean non-affirming parents will know they've come to the right place when they see the trans poster child who's there to greet them. He/she/they/it is/are so risibly queer that he/she/they/it make/makes Dr. Queer look as mainstream as Ben Casey. See for yourself: https://www.ohsu.edu/transgender-health
Now, this isn't just about making fun of people's appearance. In which other field of medicine or, for that matter, in which other learned profession do practitioners feel compelled to wear their ideology on their sleeves in this manner? Oh, wait - in the mid-80s, before legal research materials went online, I relied on the old Multnomah County Law Library. So did the Bhagwan's legal team. And yes, like all other members of that cult, they dressed head to foot in shades of pink and maroon. Some things never change.
In closing, as elegant and compelling as Rufo's writing is here, his name is anathema to most liberals and all progressives. As a consequence, so is his message. In single-party Oregon, barring a SCOTUS decision that cripples the gender-identity movement or, God help us, a Trump victory in 2024, none of the many excesses of trans activism will be rolled back until and unless enough left-of-center voters undergo a sea change in their outlook on trans issues that there can be veto-proof majorities to block gender medicine, kick trans indoctrination out of our schools, protect female athletes, and so on.
I do not know who that persuasive messenger will be or when they'll have an opening to be heard. Sadly, that opportunity may arise when Dr. Queer Cutter's victims begin to come forward the way detransitioners have in other states and countries.