The second annual “Detransition Awareness Day” was held Saturday, March 12. People who had started medical “transitioning,” attempting to look like and live as the opposite sex with drugs, hormones and surgeries, told their stories of “detransitioning” – accepting and going back to their true biological sex.
The stories are heartbreaking, as individuals – often adolescent and young adult women – who struggle with sexual identity confusion for a variety of reasons, have been rushed into medical interventions that have irreparably changed and damaged their bodies.
Here are a few of their stories:
Laura B. writes at the website Detrans Voices, talking about the turmoil of her early life, her deep emotional problems, and the lack of help from therapists in dealing with trauma and despair. Instead, she was moved along the medical conveyor belt of opposite sex hormones and surgery. She says,
I’m a straight woman in my early 20’s. I identified as trans for 3 years. I questioned whether I was trans for 5 years before I formally transitioned. I was on testosterone for 7 months and I had a double mastectomy at age 20. I regret all aspects of transition and have had to do a lot of reflection about why it happened and how my evolution has gotten to where I am today.
Laura describes her struggles with depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, a verbally and emotionally abusive father, and a diagnosis of being on the higher end of the autism spectrum.
She writes,
Testosterone did not make me feel any better. I had a little happiness thinking of growing a beard but it made me even moodier than I already was. I became more reckless, angry, and impulsive, started drinking and smoking weed a lot, driving intoxicated, doing petty theft, and getting into fights.
A double mastectomy didn’t help her feel any better, either.
Laura, after accepting her female identity, says,
Now I have accepted and admitted that transition was a horrible idea that I made when I was immature, irrational, and hopeless. I don’t blame myself for it. I don’t fully blame the professionals who “treated” me, because I think most of them were well intentioned, but I do blame them for being so unhelpful in treating my dysphoria with therapy. They did NOT know what they were doing and signed letters to my surgeon knowing how suicidal I was, the self hate I had, and the other mental illnesses and environmental issues there were.
Helena wrote about her story in an article titled, “By Any Other Name.” She explains how she was drawn into transgender ideology on social media. She writes,
The short version of my detransition story for those who want the bare details is that when I was fifteen, I was introduced to gender ideology on Tumblr and began to call myself nonbinary. Over the next few years, I would continue to go deeper and deeper down the trans identity rabbit hole, and by the time I was eighteen, I saw myself as a “trans man,” otherwise known as “FtM” [female to male].
Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood to begin a testosterone regimen. At my first appointment, I was prescribed testosterone, and I would remain on this regimen for a year and a half. It had an extremely negative effect on my mental health, and I finally admitted what a disaster it had been when I was 19, sometime around February or March 2018.
When the disillusionment fully set in, I stopped the testosterone treatment and began the process of getting my life back on track. It has not been easy, and the whole experience seriously derailed my life in ways I could never have foreseen when I was that fifteen-year-old kid playing with pronouns on Tumblr.
Michelle used Twitter to tell her story. She describes the difficulties she had growing up and about a diagnosis of major mental health issues – but only after she’d been on male hormones for seven years. She writes,
I grew up as a tomboy who didn’t fit in. I was keenly aware of this by the time I was 7. I was too loud, too bossy, too impulsive, too emotional. The girls I made friends with felt conditional, like they would leave me the moment I did something wrong (and they did).
When I was a newly-minted adult, I started to explore identity and aesthetic. Particularly, I was drawn towards men’s clothing, wanting to recapture the style that I was comfortable with when I was younger.
My mental health was terrible throughout this and had been since I was a child. I was making suicide plans the year prior to transition. The natural conclusion to me, of course, was that if I pursued transition, my mental health would improve. It would fix everything.
Seven years after I started hormones, I had a psychoeducational assessment in which I was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, major depressive disorder, anxiety, and symptoms of BPD and post-traumatic stress. Suddenly why I never “fit in” started to make sense.
On a recent episode of Dr. Phil, Christian author and activist Matt Walsh was asked by a professor why he cares about the transgender rhetoric. He said, “I care about the truth…I care about children and these insane ideas about gender are being foist on kids…I care about the women who are having their opportunities stolen from them.”
Those are good reasons. And the stories of these three women, who were led to mutilate their bodies with opposite sex hormones and surgeries, give us another reason to care.
They represent thousands, across the country and around the world, who have deep emotional, psychological, relational and spiritual problems and turn to transgender ideology as a solution.
Many of them come to their senses – often in their early twenties. But by then, their female bodies have been damaged by male hormones and surgeries.
Related resources and articles:
Focus on the Family has many Transgender Resources to help those struggling with these complex issues, as well as information and support for their families, friends and churches.
To request a conversation with Focus on the Family’s Counseling Department, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Mountain Time), or complete our Counseling Consultation Request Form. Please be prepared to leave your contact information for a counselor to return a call to you as soon as possible. The consultation is available at no cost to you due to generous donor support and will be with one of our licensed or pastoral counseling specialists.
‘Detransition Awareness Day’ Highlights Those Embracing Their True Identity
Hospitals and Doctors “Transition” Hundreds of Children with Drugs, Hormones and Surgery
Planned Parenthood Finds Another Group to Harm – People Struggling with Sexual Identity Confusion
Questioning Drugs, Hormones and Surgery for Youth Confused about Their Sexual Identity
