I was traumatized by so-called 'gender affirming' care. Trump must protect others from this abuse
When I was just 16 years old, I began a journey I will regret for the rest of my life. I was traumatized and depressed, and believed my struggles could be boiled down to gender confusion.
That is, after all, what online activists and even my own health care providers told me. And they assured me that a full gender transition was the solution – the only solution.
Hurting and desperate for solace and community, I listened to them. By the time I was 18, I was on testosterone and had undergone a double mastectomy. The debilitating physical consequences of these procedures still afflict me nearly 10 years later. They likely always will.
It’s stories like mine, which I first shared with Independent Women as part of its vital "Identity Crisis" series, that gender ideologues would rather ignore. Detransitioners such as myself expose the ugly truth of gender medicine. We are proof that so-called "gender-affirming" treatments are not reversible or temporary.
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And most importantly, we are proof that medical interventions do not fix the underlying mental trauma present in so many gender-confused youth. If anything, these interventions actually make things worse, as the scars on my wrists and my chest can attest.
But for the first time in years, I am hopeful things are about to change.
This month, President-elect Trump is set to return to the White House, where he has promised to take swift action against institutionalized "gender-affirming care." He can start by immediately repealing an executive order signed by President Biden that directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to promote "expanded access" to these harmful interventions.
Gatekeeping is safekeeping. Expanded access to an "affirmation only" model of medical fraud just increases the number of detransitioners like me. Hurting children become regretful adults. Vulnerable populations such as those suffering with mental illness, and especially children, deserve our protection - even if they need protection from activist doctors or themselves.
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Trump can also direct his HHS to pressure medical organizations and providers to move away from "gender-affirming care" altogether – which is the exact opposite of what Biden’s HHS did when it bullied the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) into removing age limit guidelines from its treatment recommendations.
Unlike Biden’s administration, Trump’s will have science – and common sense – on its side. An in-depth report by the U.K.’s National Health Services (NHS) last year confirmed what many detransitioners like myself have been saying for years: that "gender-affirming care" for minors lacks sufficient evidence and has lifelong consequences.
Many of the studies activists and doctors have relied on to justify these interventions have been "exaggerated or misrepresented," the author of the report, Hilary Cass, wrote. Lies and misrepresentations have no place in health care.
The truth is consistent. Reality cannot be raged against successfully; eventually it will catch up to your lie. Doctors lied to detransitioners and we, the patients, pay the price when reality comes knocking.
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But Trump shouldn’t stop at just the removal of an expansion of a harmful practice. The incoming president has also suggested he’ll work with the Republican-controlled Congress to pass legislation to "permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for" medical gender interventions, and to prohibit what he rightly calls "child sexual mutilation" in all 50 states.
If such laws had been on the books when I was a kid, I would still have my healthy body intact. I would not have had to suffer vaginal atrophy and dryness from years of testosterone injections. I would not have ended up a lifelong medical patient.
There are plenty of other children and young adults who stand to suffer similar consequences. According to the medical nonprofit Do No Harm, at least 13,395 minors in the U.S. underwent some sort of "gender reassignment" procedure between 2019 and 2023. The youngest patients were 7 years old. And each will suffer the physically and mentally damaging consequences for life.
The incoming administration has the opportunity to stop this catastrophe in its tracks. America’s youth can and must be protected – from activists who seek to use them for ideological goals, from health care providers who stand to profit from invasive and expensive medical interventions, even from themselves and their own confusion.
I am living proof of what happens when those in leadership positions fail to take this charge seriously. I can only hope my story, and the stories of tens of thousands of other detransitioners, will no longer be ignored.