When I began the Detransitioners series for National Review, I expected to hear stories of regret and resentment. I anticipated learning about the nasty side effects of “gender-affirming” care.
But when NR gave me the freedom to dig into the issue without fear or favor, what I unearthed was beyond my wildest imagination.
Before the patients I interviewed went under the knife for mastectomies or began taking cross-sex hormones, they already carried deep scars from childhood. They had experienced intense psychological trauma at a young age.
From exposure to hardcore pornography at four years old to rape by a father at five years old to homelessness following domestic abuse in adolescence, the horrors they endured would be enough to break anyone. Their developing minds were so utterly shocked by what they’d experienced that they felt incongruity with their bodies. Suicidal ideation and self-harm were common themes. They weren’t just questioning their gender; they were questioning their very reality.
Instead of helping them heal, the medical complex kicked them while they were down. Desperate to get rid of the pain, the victims clung to the promises of surgeons and therapists that hormone therapy and reconstructive surgery would fix what was broken inside.
Once they had the injections and the procedures, there was no going back: their voices permanently lowered; their genitals permanently disfigured; their breast tissue permanently numb; their sexual function permanently inhibited.
Eventually, the reality of what had been done to them hit like a ton of bricks. But it was too late. We think it’s important to keep telling these stories. So we hope that you will consider supporting our work exposing these medical interventions as part of our ongoing webathon.
I heard a lot about autism from the detransitioners. Most of them were placed on the spectrum as children, explaining their sensory discomfort with puberty, exacerbated by inappropriate sexual attention from their peers. A finding little discussed by gender activists is that people who identify as transgender are six times as likely to be autistic as those who don’t struggle with gender dysphoria, according to a 2020 study.
I have an autistic brother who has grown into a well-adjusted adult. I’ve been thinking lately about how he might have turned out if he’d fallen down the gender rabbit hole. Thankfully, he had involved, conscientious parents who insulated him from the ugly corners of the internet and affirmed the normalness of his natural body.
But I wonder about the autistic kids who don’t have the privilege of a stable upbringing. Kids who are offered no alternative to the mainstream media’s one-sided approach to covering child gender transition.
Relying on biased scientists and organizations, a recent New York Times article argued that concerns about gender-transition procedures for kids are overblown, whipped up by a handful of detransitioners who are being used as political pawns by conservatives. Reporter Maggie Astor claimed that the detransition rate was low, citing no specific scientific research but likely pulling from a paper by prominent child-gender-transition doctor Jack Turban, whose research is partially funded by pharmaceutical companies that profit from hormone treatments.
PBS News recently aired an interview with Brown University professor of pediatrics and clinician educator Dr. Michelle Forcier, who urged parents to believe children when they say they’re transgender — the same as if they said they have an injury or infection.
“If I had a 10-year-old or an 8-year-old who told me their ear hurt, I wouldn’t look at them and say, ‘You’re only 8 or 10, you don’t know if your ear hurts,’ right?” Forcier said. “It’s important that we listen to kids. It doesn’t mean that a kid says, ‘I’m trans,’ and two hours later they get hormones. It means that we respect kids as individuals.”
Time and time again, NR debunks these misleading narratives, cuts through the euphemism, and shrugs off the intimidation, revealing the awful truth behind “gender-affirming care” for kids.
And we’re just getting started. If you want to help me and my colleagues continue this work, please donate to NR’s webathon. Your support will allow us to follow the money of the gender cash cow and tell the stories of the individuals it has exploited.
The subject area is haunting. Many outlets have shied away from tackling it. NR is not one of them.
For us, there’s no going back.
