WATCH: Shapiro Challenged On Transgender Data. Here’s His Response.

On Tuesday night, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro spoke at Susquehanna University, and during the Q&A after his speech engaged in a dialogue with the president of the University’s College Democrats, who tried to claim that Shapiro was incorrect when he claimed that in general, suicide rates among transgender individuals do not drop post sex-reassignment surgery.

Shapiro immediately pointed out that the study the questioner cited was flawed because it simply did not allow enough time post-op for a valid judgment to be made as to the efficacy of the surgery for the patient psychologically. He also noted that some statistics could be flawed because the studies thenselves were self-reported, asserting, “Questionnaire studies are not as good as behavioral studies.”

Here is the exchange:

Questioner: Hi. Mr. Shapiro.

Shapiro: Howdy.

Questioner: I’m actually the president of the College Democrats here.

Shapiro: Well, thank you for coming and thank you for co- sponsoring. I appreciate it. (leading the applause).

Questioner: Thank you for coming.

Shapiro: Now, quick question, are you the guy who protested me outside?

Questioner: We were having a bake sale, actually.

Shapiro: Oh, really? Well, were the cookies good, at least?

Questioner: Yup. Great.

Shapiro: Okay, good. Fantastic. (pause) Were they legal? (laughter)

Questioner: Not yet. Give it time. So my question to you relates specifically to the transgender issue that you brought up during your speech.

Shapiro: Sure.

Questioner: You cite the UCLA study and claim that it doesn’t show in any way that suicide rates go down post-op; you say that there’s no evidence verifying this. However, during your speech—

Shapiro: I said there’s mixed evidence; I said there’s mixed evidence about the drop in suicide rates.

Questioner: Well, during your speech I pulled up a study on my phone as well as a bevy of other studies, looking at research from the Karolinska Institute, from Berlin scientists that actually seems to suggest, specifically the Berlin study, that suicide attempt rates drop from 26% to 3% in post-op—

Shapiro: Right. So I’ve seen that study also. One of the problems with that particular study is that it’s not longitudinal. That study is only about, like one year after the surgery. What the statistics tend to show, at least according to scientists on the other side, is that you have to wait ten years to find out whether the surgery “takes” or not, essentially, that there is an adjustment period, that of course you’re really enthused in the year after you get a surgery that you feel you’ve been needing your entire life, but there’s a readjustment period that happens. So, for example, here’s another longitudinal study; it’s a Cohort study from Sweden. It was released in 2011; it covered sex reassignment surgeries from 1973 to 2003, so it was a thirty-year longitudinal study, and it found that transgender surgery recipients were still nineteen times more likely to die by suicide than the general population, and it found that “sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism.” As I say, there is mixed data; I’m not saying those studies don’t exist; I’m saying I do find severe flaws in some of the studies that are cited. A lot of them are cited due to small sample size or not enough time in the longitudinal.

You can follow up; that’s fine.

Questioner: Thank you. But specifically regarding the UCLA study, it actually suggests that when people are in supportive environments their suicide attempt rates go down. You said that you do not believe that feeding into their “delusion” will support them. How do you respond to the UCLA study you yourself use suggesting that it, in fact, does?

Shapiro: I don’t tend to believe self-reported studies about treatment, meaning how people treat you. Questionnaire studies are not as good as behavioral studies. So the more important statistic from that study, the one that I usually cite, is the one about whether people can identify you as transgender or not. If they can identify you as transgender it’s a 45% lifetime suicidality, suicide attempt rate, and if you are not identified as transgender, there’s a 40% lifetime suicide attempt rate.

Now that doesn’t mean that if people are mean to you that your life isn’t worse, or that your suicide rate may not go up, maybe it does, but I think that the evidence is not particularly strong on that score, and the level of bullying — you’d have to have some sort of third-party documentation as to the level of bullying, because there’s also the possibility, the significant possibility, that the people who are more likely to commit suicide are also more likely to feel sensitive to bullying that other people might not feel sensitive to.

Video below: