p/c Daily Wire.
In early 2023, Jordan Peterson (above left) interviewed Chloe Cole (above right) with probably well over 10 million listens across all forums. Chloe is an 18 year old woman who suffered gender-dysphoria and began to chemically “transition” at the age of 12. At the age of 15, she had a double-mastectomy that she described on this interview as “barbaric.” She is now suing her surgeons and Kaiser Permanente of California as they proceeded into mutilating surgeries when she was not able to give informed-consent. Obviously, she could not give informed-consent to a mutilating reproductive surgery firstly because it was a mutilating sexual surgery and secondly due to her age and psychological desolation at the time.
The first half of the two-hour interview was brilliant. However, I am not going to link the interview because in the second hour, Mr. Peterson misuses the Holy Name of Jesus at least three times. Also, I believe he asked her questions way too graphic in regards to her mutated female anatomy and physiology post-surgery. (She was only a teenager at the time of the recording, keep in mind, albeit an adult.) So, let’s pray for Mr. Peterson’s conversion, because he is definitely playing for the right team, but he needs the fulness of Christ and His Catholic Church. (Same with Miss Chloe Cole who is an extremely smart and courageous person.) Although Peterson is a better psychologist than a theologian, he brilliantly (and accidentally) reflects the great advice of St. Igantius of Loyola “to never make decisions in desolation” when helping Miss Cole put together her broken teenage years.
In the first part of this series, Avoiding Desolation: Generalities, I quoted St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises that were held as the gold-standard by many old-school Popes for making retreats and life-decisions: In time of desolation, we should never make any change, but remain firm and constant in the resolution and decision which guided us the day before the desolation, or in the decision to which we adhered in the preceding consolation.—Spiritual Exercises Rule I.5.
Let’s apply this to “transitioning” surgeries and teen hormone treatments in light of the Peterson and Cole interview. Jordan Peterson shows in this interview how many teens come to these life-altering decisions in a state of depression. As explained in part one of this blog post, spiritual desolation is not the same as depression. However, there is significant correlative overlap, even if there is not always causality between psychological depression and spiritual desolation.
The supernatural advice from St. Ignatius of Loyola above may be dimly reflected in the natural advice that Mr. Peterson gave Miss Cole and his audience regarding the gender-dysphoria community making irreversible decisions in desolation. Between minute 50 and 60 in the interview, Chloe Cole explains how she (and even parents) were coerced into hormones and that violent “transition” surgery for her. She explains…
Chloe Cole: “I don’t remember exactly who it was. It was either a therapist or a nurse, I think, somebody who was involved in my transition. Um, they told them that ‘Oh this is pretty much the only means of treating dysphoria…’ My Dad asked about the regret-rates and they side like… ‘There’s less than a one to two percent regret rate.’ And they also told my parents that if I wasn’t allowed to go through with this then I would be at risk of suicide.”
Jordan Peterson: “Ok, so I want to take all of that apart, cuz every single one of those statements is a lie. So, first of all, the American Psychological Association in their guidelines for gender-affirming treatment makes the case (and because of prejudice) that there are no good long-term follow-up studies of transgender individuals. Ok, and they attribute that to prejudice against transgender individuals, which is not the reason, by the way. The reason is that there was a very low base-rate of transgender-dysphoria and the follow-up studies have not been done in large part because the surgical and hormonal treatment regimen is relatively new. But there are no good long-term follow-up studies and they actually complain about that. And then a couple pages in the same document, they say that, well, it’s necessary to affirm an alternate-gender identity because otherwise the client or patient is at heightened risk of suicide. Ok, so first of all, both of those things can’t be true. There’s no way that people can know that suicide-risk is elevated if gender-transition is delayed unless the long-term studies are in place. And they already stated that the bloody long-term studies aren’t in place. So, that’s all just a lie. But it’s worse than that. It’s way worse than that. You see, gender-dysphoria is a variant of the suffering that’s associated with negative emotion—depression and anxiety. Now, depression and anxiety are the primary drivers of suicidal-ideation, not gender dysphoria per se. So, they’re confusing the source. And there’s no evidence whatsoever that transition of the medical-sort actually has a salutary effect on mental-health, partly because the long-term studies simply haven’t been done. And the idea that we actually know from a research perspective that a child is much safer if they start transition than they are if they don’t—again, that’s simply not true. Ken Zucker’s work has showed quite clearly that if you just leave the kids alone then by the time they’re 18 or 19 most of them settle into their biological identities. The reason I’m stressing this because your parents, like many parents in this situation, were put in a very very difficult position. And I would say it’s corrupt to the point of malevolence what the medical professionals are doing on this front, and that is the insistence: ‘Well, would you rather have a live-trans child or a dead-child?’ And I don’t think there’s anything more toxic you can say to a parent than that, because that backs them into a corner. Because their alternatives are then: ‘Well, you can either let your child go ahead with this absolutely life-altering hormonal (and then surgical) treatment, or your child can die. And it’s your fault because you don’t care enough.’ And parents are accustomed to trusting their medical professionals, at least to some degree, and accustomed to assuming that the knowledge that they put forward is valid and reliable. And the information that your family was given was none of those. In fact, it’s pathological to a degree it’s almost imaginable. It’s criminal in my estimation what you were told. Because there is simply no evidence that any of that is the case: There’s no evidence that transitioning kids are less-likely to be suicidal. There’s no evidence that that’s the only treatment-path that works. And there’s certainly no evidence that there’s no alternative to ‘transition or suicide.’ It’s so pathological I can’t believe it.”
Basically, Jordan Peterson holds that such an inclination to a violent surgery is simply an aspect of depression or anxiety. (Of course, he is not considering preternatural realities here.) But we all agree: You don’t treat psychological disorders (or preternatural temptations) with genital-destroying surgeries. And if the parents are not clear-headed enough to see how destructive that surgery is, at least they need to see you don’t let a confused child make decisions in a state of confusion. Of course, there’s never a time for a “transitioning surgery,” but even a secular psychologist with a touch of common-sense can see the wisdom in the words of St. Ignatius: “In time of desolation, we should never make any change, but remain firm and constant.”
Indeed, even for those who have never been tempted to such outrageous mutations, the advice of St. Ignatius and Jordan Peterson remains the same: Don’t make death-decisions when you’re in desolation or depression. Don’t even make big life-decisions in a state of desolation or depression. Things will get better. You will see clearly again.