I was a child and believed gender transition would heal my pain. It became a new trauma
In medicine, there are moments when speed is not only appropriate, but lifesaving. A patient in cardiac arrest cannot wait for medical attention. A child victim of a car wreck cannot afford debate around pulling her from the car. Doctors are trained to move quickly in true emergencies, where delay costs blood and oxygen. Speed in those moments is a true expression of care.
What I’ve had to wrestle with in detransition is how my gender dysphoria was treated with such unrelenting urgency that it became a manufactured emergency.
At age 11, I discovered the darkest corners of the internet. In these chatrooms, I was sexually groomed by adult strangers who used my love for art against me. I made friends with other little girls on art forums around the same time, many of whom had similar experiences. One such girl began identifying as transgender. She told me she felt like "a boy trapped in a girl’s body."
We both liked to cosplay, wearing costumes and make-up to help us look like our favorite characters. Sometimes, we brainstormed characters of our own, coming up with all sorts of names and faces. Trans identity was very similar to this ritual, except the characters were ourselves. It let us take our hard experiences—in my case, loss of innocence—and turn them into something neat.
When medical professionals got involved and affirmed our pretend with medicine, "neat" became "streamlined." The culture began to shift dramatically, and everywhere I turned, I was told that the discomfort I felt in my own skin was not the product of instability at home, or adolescence, or even trauma. It was proof I was transgender—and I needed to convince everyone around me, lest I die.
I was a child. I didn’t have the tools nor the mental capacity to interrogate these claims. What unsettles me now, at age 23, isn’t how I "bent gender" through costume like the rock star Prince. It’s how quickly adults with credentials validated bunk narratives and led me to medicalize my biological sex as a teen.
I was convinced the hormones and surgeries doctors gave me were carefully considered, evidence-based, and even lifesaving. Yet, anyone who has followed the stories of detransitioners knows that the risks are substantial: internal bleeding, chronic pain, tissue death, infertility, loss of sexual function, challenging pregnancy. These are not rare events, either. Most people who traverse this path experience myriad side effects—unsurprising, given we’re amputating healthy body parts and shocking our endocrine systems with hormone surgery.
My experience was no exception. My drain-free "top surgery" resulted in massive complications, forcing me to seek help in the emergency room while my original surgeons completely dismissed me. It was there, lying under the fluorescent lights, that clarity began to break through the fog. The surgery that had been presented as the solution to my distress had become its own trauma.
The emergency I had been warned about was never my original body—the emergency was what had been done to it.
201 HOUSE DEMOCRATS VOTE AGAINST BLOCKING MEDICAID DOLLARS FOR KIDS' TRANSGENDER SURGERIES
For years, aesthetic alterations in the name of "gender-affirming care" were seen as therapeutic treatments. Surgeons began removing body parts and "creating" new ones without sustained, if any, exploration of underlying causes. What was this child’s home life like? Are they on too many medications? What could we do to treat their depression that isn’t as drastic as surgery? These questions were too often bypassed in favor of easier affirmation.
We know the tides are turning for the general public. Still, many activists struggle to admit they’re losing grip. Media coverage often includes a familiar refrain: that major medical institutions still recommend "gender-affirming care." The implication is that dissent must therefore be fringe. But that consensus is fracturing. International reviews, evolving guidelines, and legal scrutiny tell a more complicated story than headlines suggest.
THE MEDICAL SYSTEM PUSHED TRANSGENDER SURGERY ON KIDS — NOW IT'S FACING LEGAL JUSTICE
Both the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association have issued statements signaling concern around gender surgeries on minors—an acknowledgment that should have come long before irreversible practice became normalized.
While mainstream medical institutions seem to be reconsidering their stances, top Democrat officials have reintroduced the so-called "Transgender Bill of Rights." The timing is striking. We already have civil rights protections in this country—protections based on sex, race, color, and creed. Equal protection under the law does not require redefining medicine or compelling doctors to ignore blatant risk. When sweeping new federal guarantees are proposed in the middle of mounting medical malpractice cases, it begins to look less like necessity and more like virtue signaling.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
On February 11, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in part of my case against the providers who facilitated my medical transition. One of my attorneys, John Ramer, articulated what has felt obvious to me for years: accountability for doctors does not vanish because a patient "wanted it." During arguments, it was difficult to miss that even the defense doesn’t believe their own words.
Like most people, I don’t take joy in the process of litigation. I didn’t set out to become a plaintiff, or to get rich quick. But when an industry moves at emergency speed absent an emergency—when irreversible interventions are offered to adolescents facing temporary pain—someone has to make the call to let time run its course.
True emergency medicine saves lives because it responds to objective danger. The physicians who treated my mastectomy complications in the emergency room were swift and conscientious. What’s happened in pediatric gender "care" is different. A generation of young people was told that discomfort requires surgical intervention; and their parents, teachers, and medical professionals were told that any form of hesitation would be lethal.
I was taught that compassion meant affirming every belief I held about my body. What I’ve learned now is that compassion sometimes means restraint. It means asking hard questions. It means protecting children from decisions they cannot yet comprehend.
The law now has an opportunity to examine what medicine rushed past. Speed can be merciful. But when speed overrides caution, reflection, and evidence, it is no longer care.