PragerU’s Million Dollar Detransitioner Wants You to Convert to Catholicism

Daisy Strongin’s social media presence illuminates some aspects of her detransition lifestyle not mentioned in the anti-trans PragerU documentary.

by Evan Urquhart

As we and others reported yesterday, a 20-minute video on the topic of detransition was heavily promoted by PragerU, a conservative nonprofit, who claim to have spent $1 million dollars promoting the video. While it featured interviews with two detransitioners and several anti-trans activists, the story of one detransitioned woman, Daisy Strongin, formed the heart of the video. Strongin then capitalized on the attention PragerU bought by tweeting that she doesn’t think anyone should transition, at any age, and that everyone should convert to her religion, which is Catholicism. (According to a version of her story as told by the anti-trns activist group Independent Women’s Forum, Strongin came out as trans as a teenager, started testosterone at 18, and had top surgery at 20.)

screenshot from twitter.com

Strongin has also recently tweeted things that suggests she continues to experience gender dysphoria, and connecting that experience of gender dysphoria with her religion, writing just this past September: “Transition still plague me today. I still fantasize about being a guy at least a few times a week. I’m often a guy in my dreams. But now I know that I can’t indulge those fantasies. I have to be the best mother/wife I can be. Jesus Christ is my only hope. He is your only hope too.” The tweets also mentioned that she still experiences depression and deals with “self-loathing.”

Assigned reached out to Strongin for common on the tweets she’d made about her continued feelings about wanting to be a man and about her religious statements. In her response, Strongin denied having detransitioned because of religion, and explained that she is not currently “miserable or still severely dysphoric” and that her thoughts of wanting to be a man are “superfician and fleeting.” She also reiterated her call for everyone to convert to Catholicism, as she has.

screenshot of an email from Daisy Strongin

However, Strongin’s statements about the role religion played (or didn’t play) in her detransition don’t seem entirely in line with how she presented that decision at the time. In a nearly half-hour long YouTube video posted by Strongin on October 26, 2020 where she announced her decision to detransition to her video audience she spoke at length about her growing religious belief. “My interest in Christianity emerged alongside my doubtful feelings about my transition,” Strongin says at one point, and also describes reading the bible and “watching Christian lifestyle videos on youtube” as activities she links to her decision. Strongin describes her former trans identity as having been like a false religion, one where she sought to control everything, and describes her detransition as being “for god” describing herself as surrendering to the way god created her.

Assigned followed up with Strongin to ask about the seeming contradictions in how she presented her detransition as unconnected in her comment and her statements at the time which linked her religious awakening and her detransition very strongly. We will update the story with any clarifications or subsequent comments.

While Strongin certainly linked faith and religion to her detransition at the time it was happening, it does seem to be technically true that she converted after detransitioning. In the 2020 video she does not mention Catholicism at all, and refers to being “born again” which is a phrase not typically associated with Catholic christianity. Strongin’s official conversion to the faith she currently holds seems to have happened quite a bit later. On April 9, 2023 Strongin tweeted that she and her husband and son were “officially Catholic.”