Detransitioning

In one sense very little of what Andrew Sullivan says about transgenders detransitioning is new. I have said as much for as long as I have been following the public debate. Yet, it matters that another influential intellectual is willing to denounce the transgender rights movement for the moral abomination that it is. Mutilating children under the aegis of science is very bad indeed. It needs to be stopped. Perhaps Sullivan’s opinion will encourage others to shed some light on the subject.

As he puts it, the current social contagion seems mostly to be encouraging young women to transition. It encourages them to see themselves as male and to start hormone therapy. With the aid of organizations like Planned Parenthood they have little difficulty getting the right prescriptions.

Obviously, the treatments are a medical horror. When these young women wake up and discover that they are not really  men, then they face another horror, detransitioning.

Sullivan writes:

They’re women who, in their teens, realized that they were actually men, socially transitioned to the other sex, and then underwent hormone therapy to change their bodies, faces, and voices to become transgender men. After varying amounts of time, however, they all realized they had made a big mistake, stopped testosterone therapy, and “detransitioned” back to being who they were before. They are now embarrassed, they say, but not ashamed. “I don’t identify as anything,” one of them told me. “I just have two X chromosomes in the bag.”

Of course, they did not realize anything of the sort. They were brainwashed into believing something that defied reality. As for being embarrassed, but not ashamed, it’s a distinction without a difference. Embarrassment is simply a milder form of shame.

The medical consequences of their decisions are none too pretty:

These women live every day with the consequences of their decision: tenacious facial hair (one has to shave every three days) and body hair, deeper voices, permanently enlarged clitorises. They also suffer from the effects of “binding,” i.e. wearing a breast corset of sorts, to flatten their chests, so they can pass more easily as men. “I have back issues, lower lung capacity, and permanent dents around my shoulders,” one told me. “Every now and again, I have to push a rib back in to breathe,” another recounts. “I have permanent bruising,” another explains. “Serious back issues,” says another, who cannot carry a backpack for long without pain. “We get ‘sir’ed at Dunkin’ Donuts every time,” one joked.

Of course, we are told, Sullivan continues, that this is all taking place under the most strict medical supervision. Poppycock… as they say:

And yet all these women became trans quite suddenly after puberty, found affirmation immediately, and got testosterone easily. One says she told her mom one evening that she was having a sleepover with friends, but instead drove hundreds of miles to a Planned Parenthood through the night in search for help with transitioning. Within a couple of hours, after telling her life story, she says she was diagnosed as trans by a social worker, who was impressed by her tenacity in driving so far, and was started on testosterone therapy before even getting any results from blood work. Another got diagnosed online, and got testosterone in the mail.

It is so obviously a social contagion that only the Australian Psychological Society does not accept the obvious. Statistics from Great Britain tell the story:

In 2009–2010, there were reportedly 32 girls and 40 boys referred to the center for treatment. Since 2018, there have been 624 boys and 1,740 girls, overwhelmingly in their teens. One explanation is that, as stigma declined, more transgender kids identified themselves as such. But the shift toward girls, compared with boys, suggests that something else may be going on. Why should the female share of transgender patients suddenly shift from 44 percent to 74 percent girls in a decade?

Since teenage girls are so obviously the victims of this contagion, you would expect that feminist thought leaders would be up in arms about it. They are not. It tells you something about today’s feminism and the urge for ideological conformity.

As we have noted in other studies, a large number of these children are really gay. Their transgender identification appears therefore to be a form of homophobia.

All the women I spoke with who detransitioned now date women or don’t date at all. Their transition was based entirely on how they felt at the moment, which they now regard as a false signal about their long-term identity. Which prompts the question: How much of the extraordinary surge in transgender girls is related to their discomfort with being a lesbian? What role does homophobia play in enabling transition?

 Sullivan continues:

“Fast-track” transitioning — some kids are brought by their parents to socially transition as early as 2 years old — has also unnerved some gay men and lesbians. The vast majority (studies range from 63 to 94 percent) of gender dysphoric kids turn out to be gay after puberty. So how can you tell which gender-dysphoric kid is gay and just needs to be left alone, and which one is trans and needs urgent treatment? Since the brain doesn’t fully develop until you’re 25, how do we ever truly know who’s really trans and who’s gay before then?

The last sentence is chilling. The human brain does not develop until early adulthood. And yet, we as a society are willing to subject children to treatments that will alter their biology forever… on the say so of their parents and social workers. 

You recall the recent case in Texas where a women, a mother and a pediatrician, has decided that she will force her seven-year-old son to transition into girlhood… and where her estranged husband sued her for custody. Keep in mind this woman is not some rube from the sticks. She is a licensed physician.

One day our legal profession is going to see this as a pot of gold and is going to sue these physicians and counselors for everything they have. It will be one of the few occasions when we will be on the side of the lawyers.