Philosophers from Aristotle to Aquinas remind us to begin with first principles: to see things as they really are. Even Marcus Aurelius counseled, “Of each particular thing, ask, what is it in itself?” Strikingly, this same wisdom is expressed in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), albeit through the words of a villain.
In the context of assisting a student detective in tracking down a serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter—both psychiatrist and serial killer—taunts Clarice Starling: “First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius.” The line is frightening because it exposes a perennial truth: evil begins when we refuse to acknowledge the true nature of things. Gender ideology does just this, denying the most basic truth of our humanity: that we are male and female. And as recent school shootings tragically show, such denial does not remain abstract; it can culminate in violence against the most innocent.
Ironically, the film goes further still. In one exchange, Clarice protests, “Dr. Lecter, there’s no correlation in the literature between transsexualism and violence. Transsexuals are very passive.” To which Lecter replies, “Clever girl. You’re so close to the way you’re going to catch him—do you realize that?” Even here, Hollywood conditioned audiences to disconnect transgenderism from violence, even while viewers watched the film’s antagonist, Buffalo Bill, murder women in order to construct a grotesque “woman suit” as a substitute for sex reassignment. The message was clear: gender confusion could be exploited for shock but never acknowledged as having any real-world consequences.
What Hollywood once exploited for shock, society now refuses to confront in reality. And the cost has been devastating. On August 27, 2025, 23-year-old Robert Westman, who’d been wrestling with gender dysphoria, carried out a horrific attack at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. During the back-to-school Mass, Westman, who had his name legally changed to Robin, fired through the church windows with multiple guns, killing two kids and injuring 17 others before ending his own life. The FBI labelled it a hate crime targeting the Catholic community.
Sean Fitzpatrick recently wrote an essay in Crisis Magazine titled “Transmurderer,” highlighting how our culture fosters gender dysphoria and ignores its deadly consequences. Fr. Nick Ward has also reflected on the Annunciation shooting in Crisis Magazine (“Transgenderism and the Ruin of Souls”), offering a primarily pastoral and theological response that emphasizes the demonic roots of transgender ideology. My essay approaches the issue differently: by tracing the recent cultural and psychological dynamics of gender ideology before turning to its theological culmination, showing how in this case the shooter’s own writings explicitly testify to the demonic. The Annunciation atrocity cannot be explained solely by social disintegration; it must be considered an assault on truth itself, rooted in relativism, biological denial, and, ultimately, the demonic.
Cultural Conditioning and Denial
For decades, Hollywood has portrayed sexually ambiguous characters, often linking distorted gender identity to chaos, perversity, horror, or violence. Films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp (1983), Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992), and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In (2011) all returned to these discomforting themes. The Skin I Live In presents a bizarre story where a father kidnaps his daughter’s rapist, subjects him to forced sex-reassignment surgery, and later assaults him, illustrating how gender manipulation can be weaponized, even outside the trope of a deranged killer.
Gene Simmons even played a flamboyant, psychotic hermaphroditic villain in Never Too Young to Die (1986), showing how far pop culture was willing to exploit gender confusion for shock value. At times, the transgender element is explicit, as in Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda (1953) or William Castle’s Homicidal (1961). Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) took a different angle: Al Pacino’s character robs a bank to fund his partner’s sex-reassignment surgery, motivated by his desire to marry him.
It is worth noting that both Psycho’s Norman Bates and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill were inspired by real-life murderer Ed Gein, who committed gruesome acts such as unearthing corpses, killing two women, and crafting a human skin suit to embody his deceased mother. These themes have captivated and horrified the public. Gein’s crimes will soon be depicted in Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025).
Across both mainstream and obscure cinema, the message has been clear: distorted gender identity does not represent true liberation but is a source of danger, ambiguity, and mental instability. Contrast this scenario with modern cinema, television, educational systems, government policies, and mainstream media, where now, all too often, transgender identity is depicted as empowering and heroic. This narrative has become so pervasive that it has led to a cultural contagion, with unprecedented numbers of children and adolescents questioning their identities.
Nevertheless, for years, the cultural imagination was shaped by images of violent men attempting to erase or redefine their sexual identity. Yet when real-world cases emerge, society’s leaders insist there is no connection.
