Protecting Detransitioners

Something in me snapped today.

Almost every week-- and sometimes twice or three times a week--someone calls, texts, or emails me to request that I put them in touch with detransitioners.

Until now, I have done my best to comply. I reach out to those with whom I have contact, and I ask them yet again to share their story.

But something in me snapped today.

I feel complicit in the ongoing damage our society has inflicted on these young people. I don't want to introduce another indignity by asking those who are struggling to heal to tear the bandages off of tender wounds in an attempt to convince society of the horrors they endured at the hands of those entrusted with their care.

It is unbelievable that we live in a world where detransitoners exist, where those suffering from gender dysphoria are told to disassociate from their healthy bodies, damage themselves in untold ways, kill everything about themselves that reminds them of who they really are, and then create an entirely new persona.

Detransitioners were betrayed by healthcare providers who told them that their problems would be cured by these fraudulent interventions. These young men and women have been damaged in unimaginable ways by the very people who were supposed to take care of them.

I am incensed that we have to parade detransitioners in front of legislators in order to persuade these lawmakers that we must criminalize the chopping off healthy young teens' breasts or testicles.

I am enraged that we have to provide personal evidence of the damage done by drugs that block the normal development of a child’s body, when we already have ample evidence of the harms these drugs do to grown-ups.

I am furious that we have to prove that an adolescent’s body is irreversibly harmed by high doses of cross-sex hormones.

When detransitioners talk publicly about their experiences, they are mocked and bullied, belittled and shamed, and told their stories are not real. They are told they are hurting others by their very existence. They are told they are responsible for suicides. And they are largely dismissed as aberrations, or entirely ignored when they tell their stories publicly.