As I once wrote in The Stream, the premise of almost every horror movie is: Don’t mess with the Natural Law. Starting with Frankenstein and going through The Exorcist and Hereditary, horror films often reinforce positive social norms and warn against violating them. (Yes, most are too violent and crazy to recommend to Christian audiences.)

Greed, pride, defying God’s natural order and dipping into the occult all get punished. As I noted:

Frankenstein warns us not to play God and try and reverse the inevitability of death. The Exorcist teaches us to not dabble with demons, as Regan did via a Ouija board. In slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, the kids who get knocked off in them are the usually ones who are drunk, promiscuous or mean. Re-Animator and countless similar flicks punish those who grasp at immortality.

When considering the horror that has befallen the victims of transgenderism, the movie that comes to mind is The Fly. In this 1986 classic, a scientist conducts experiments that defy reason, physics and the human body. In a moment of euphoria, he thinks he has made a breakthrough that will “transform humanity and the world.” Then (surprise!) his body and mind degenerate into something monstrous.

To back up: Scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) invents a teleportation device, and tests it on himself. A housefly accidentally slips in during the process, leading to a merger of man and insect. Initially Brundle is ecstatic as the fly’s cells begin to take over his body. Brundle’s girlfriend (Geena Davis) watches in horror as the person she once loved deteriorates into a monster.

The Horror of Violating Natural Law

This is the pattern followed by many victims of the current transgender mania. It was recently in the news that Jazz Jennings, a famous transgender person with a TV show, appeared to be having a mental breakdown. Captured video shows Jazz crying and saying “I can’t ever get out of my head” and pleading, “I don’t ever feel like me.” Jazz is “all over the place.” Jazz’s mother tries to console Jazz, but mom is way out of her depth here.

Mom is also the one who insisted Jazz, then a child, get into the teleportation machine to see what would happen — even though the technology had never been tried and went against common sense and the natural law.

Born male, Jazz began “transitioning” as a small child and started taking puberty blockers at age 11. There followed several surgeries. If you want to see footage that will give you nightmares, look up Jazz’s surgeries and how they went wrong. (How could such a thing ever go right?)

The witch doctors are arguing with each other while they are performing the procedure — “Wait, why are you cutting that?” There are complications, of course, resulting in the reality that Jennings may never have sexual satisfaction. Jennings is a victim here, just like Chloe Cole, whom I interviewed for The Stream. 

Gender Ideology is the Monster

Watching The Fly, it was remarkable how many parallels there were to the transgender cult. After his “transformation” in the teleportation pod, Seth Brundle has a period of euphoria and off-the-chart confidence. His libido is boundless, he can work out for hours, picks up women easily and defeats men who seem much stronger. He “loves who he is.” When someone asks if he’s a body builder, he says yes: “I build bodies then I tear them apart.”

It’s not enough for Seth to have done the experiment; everyone else has to affirm it — and even do it themselves. Seth’s mania, his pushiness that will not tolerate dissent, is a precursor to the angry, shouting, modern trans activists.

Then, reality sets in. Something is wrong with Seth’s body. He’s growing sharp hairs on his back, an ear falls off, his skin takes on ridges and teeth randomly pop out. It echoes the nightmarish medical consultations that happen after Jennings’ grotesque surgeries.

At her talk at the Heritage Foundation I attended, Chloe Cole said she sometimes saw herself as “a monster.” Jazz says something similar: “Sometimes my mind is just a monster.” Then a friend of Jazz’s puts it more bluntly: “I know some people that after they did their transition just went crazy.” But these people aren’t the monsters in this story. Save that term for their parents, their doctors, and our callous Dr. Frankenstein elites.

We Knew Better, Back in the 80s

It’s important to point out to my fellow Christians that we need to be merciful and kind to people suffering from gender dysphoria. It is a real mental condition that I began to see 30 years ago, when I worked in a record store in a largely gay neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

Most of the people suffering from dysphoria were not activists and, back then, did not get butchered by insane and evil doctors. They were people hurting and struggling with a mental health issue. Yet we knew enough to not do something crazy like putting these people under the knife. It was the 1980s. We had seen The Fly. That film didn’t end with Seth Brundle as head of Harvard Medical School. He wound up in hell.

Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C. His new book is The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.