A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Detransitioner Panic

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

99% of people who transition continue identifying as transgender for the rest of their lives. The very small amount of people who stop or reverse their transitions — known as “detransitioners” ��� have become the center of a moral panic about children, gender, and medicine. Lucy, a detransgender woman, joins us to unpack what’s real and what’s hysteria. Find Lucy on TikTok, Twitter & Instagram Find more of A Bit Fruity. Find more of Matt. Watch the video of this episode on YouTube. Huge thanks to Blueland for sponsoring this episode. Get 15% off a cuter, more sustainable way to clean at www.Blueland.com/fruity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It pisses me off when people say like, oh, you just have to make it like harder to access care. No. No, because what? I identify trans for 14 years before I detransitioned. Come on. Hello, hello. And welcome back to A BitFruity. My name is Matt Bernstein and I am so happy that you're here today. So let's just get right into it. Dtransition is the process through which someone who previously identified as transgender works to reverse their transition through social, medical, and legal means. And detransition can happen for a whole bunch of different reasons, right? For some people,

it's regret. For some people, it's social pressure to not be trans, you know, discrimination for being trans, that maybe they had medical complications. There's all sorts of reasons why this happens. But if you have heard about people who have detransitioned, it's probably because they've become the center of this culture war, right? Where conservative politicians have been weaponizing their stories over the last couple of years to argue why. Essentially, gender-affirming care should be illegal for everyone because it didn't work out for these select people. Just a few weeks ago, Prager You, the massively influential and well-funded right-wing media website, they made this documentary called D-Trans, which has a million and a half views in the last three weeks on

YouTube. A select few detransitioners, some of whom we'll talk about in this episode, are trotted out in front of governments all across the United States over and over and over and over and over again to testify about their stories of detransition to persuade these governments to pass bills that will ban gender-affirming care for everybody. Some of these detransitioners are making careers out of it in right-wing media, which I've talked about before on this podcast, is shockingly easy to do. So detransitioning has become a moral panic. And a moral panic by definition is a widespread feeling of fear, often in a rational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society.

So in this case, it's, you know, the trans agenda, the gay agenda. It's going to come for all of your kids, and it's coming for all the young people, and they're all going to start transitioning, and then they're all going to regret it later on. They're all going to have to detransition, and they will have forever changed their bodies in ways that are irreversible, and this is something that you need to care about. because it's coming for your kids too. So in this episode, I want to make clear two things before we talk about anything else. One is that detransitioners do exist and their stories matter.

And that's why we're talking about them today. And their stories don't matter in the sense that they should be weaponized to take gender affirming care away from everyone and all the, you know, millions of trans people whose lives have been saved by it. But they matter because they can benefit. public health for trans and detrans people. They can inform the way that medical professionals think about gender care. And they matter because they're these people's experiences. You know, all sorts of medical procedures have regret rates. In fact, all of them do. And talking about regret

is important. So their stories matter and we're going to talk about them. The second thing I want to make clear is that detransitioning is rare. And so I want to get into just some statistics. really quick. In an associated press review of 27 different studies, surveying 8,000 teens and adults who had gender affirming surgeries, 1% regretted them. Now, like I just said, every medical procedure has a regret rate. And so I'm going to run through a few. Tattoos, which I don't know if you consider that a medical procedure, but it's something minors can do with parents' permission. Tattoes have a 12% regret rate. Knee replacements have a 20% regret rate. 21% of people regret their corrective spinal surgery.

14% of people regret their surgeries across all categories. That's like the flat regret rate for all surgeries. And then, you know, not a medical thing, but 52% of people regret taking out their student loans, which they take out, mind you, as minors. This is all to say, I just think this idea that we should ban or severely restrict gender affirming care because of 1% of people who seek it out regret it. It's just a flimsy argument. Do we ban everything that anyone has ever regretted?

having. Still, detrans stories are important not to fuel hysteria around banning trans health care for everyone, but, you know, trans people and people who have detransitioned share a lot of similar struggles. I was reading the study in the National Library of Medicine about how a lot of detrans people struggle to share their experiences. They feel stigmatized, and they struggle to have their physical and mental health care needs met because of the stigma and shame they feel for having detransitioned. All of these feelings, as this study noted, are really similar to the ones that people who are actively transitioning face. They wrote, quote, ongoing debates and the politicization of gender care have resulted in the depiction of trans and detrans people as completely distinct groups with divergent needs and experiences, and who are doomed to conflict. However, we believe that trans and detrans people are more similar than different and that detransition research holds value for advancing the health care of all.

those who transition and for responsibly moving gender care research and practice forward. And so, yeah, conservative politicians would like you to think that every person who has ever detransitioned immediately turns into some anti-trans activist. And that's just not the case. And that's really why I wanted to make today's episode. So today, we are joined by Lucy, who I actually found on Twitter. She had posted a mirror selfie wearing a black dress with the caption, as a detrans woman, the last thing I want to be seen as is a victim. I live by my choices, and I see that just because detransition was the right path for me doesn't mean it is for everyone. Fuck transphobia. Lucy, welcome to A BitFruti. Thank you, Matt. I'm really, really happy to be on here.

So we are going to discuss a lot today, but I want to start for myself and for the listener. I want to hear about you, about your journey, about your transition, about your detransition, how old you were, like, just tell me about yourself and I'll ask questions as I see fit. It all started when I was 11 years old and I found out that being trans was a thing. I learned that there were people out there who were born as one gender and then decided that they wanted to transition to another. And I had an instant recognition of like, oh, that's me because I had such an alienation to my body at the time. For context, I was born in Australia and I moved to the Netherlands when I

was eight and I had a lot of struggles with like social connection as well. So I was like just not feeling like I fit in anywhere. And this was something that I was just like, oh, okay. I finally understand why I feel so much malaise. Like what, like what's wrong with me? Yeah. Was that through the internet that you discovered trans topic? No, actually, this was in sex ed when I was 11 in primary school. I had a very progressive teacher who was like, oh yeah, like, you know, there's people out there who, who transition. Like, this is a thing that exists. I was like, oh, my God, that's me. I have such vivid memories of that.

Like, I remember where I was sitting in the classroom. Did you grow up, like, quote unquote, feeling like a boy? Or was it kind of just like a more profound mismatch with your body or something else? I guess, like, I have like a lot of sisters. I have four sisters. And comparatively, like, I was a little bit more tombs. boyish and I just kind of thought like I wanted to shop with a boy section and the interesting thing is is that my parents also have memories of me saying like I'm a boy so like like even before

that as young as even three like when I was talking I was like yeah I'm a boy so this is not something that was just completely new I was like oh yeah I maybe I am one so I learned about it at 11 and I came out to my dad at 12. And the first thing he asked me was, why do you feel that way? And I had researched and I had come to describe what I was feeling as dysphoria. Like I felt this intense mismatch with how my body was and how I felt that it should be. So shortly after that, I went to my GP and we discussed putting me on the track to transition. My mom was like super on board with it. You were 12 at this point? I was 12. I was really young, but I was also like a very mature child. That's what I was told at least. So I was like, oh yeah, well, makes sense. I have been doing a lot of introspection and I've come to this conclusion. So makes sense. So I was put on a waiting list. So because I live in the Netherlands, my parents were like, okay, we're going to follow like the Dutch protocol, which is basically being assessed by multiple doctors. In order to get hormones or anything.

Right. To start like any form of medical transition, you have. have to go through a lot of hoops and barriers. From the ages of like 12 to 15, 16, I was on a waiting list, I was constantly in therapy, I was always talking to a psychologist, I think like weekly, a lot of psych appointments for a young teen. And then when I was 16 around the time, I was allowed to start my diagnostic process. And in that time, I was assessed by three different psychologists who each individually came to the conclusion that I had gender dysphoria. And upon coming to that conclusion,

a few months later, I started hormone blockers. I think I had just turned 17 at that point. So this is now you're five years into your sort of realization. Yeah, like five, like privately identifying with it at 11, like yeah, 16 starting hormone blockers. And hormone blockers were not a cakewalk, like not in the slightest, because you essentially become menopausal, if you, especially if you've been going through puberty for a while at that point. So I went through menopause at 16. That was great. Wow. 16, 17.

And shortly, like, I think six months after that, on December 16th, 2013, I got my first shot of testosterone. It took about a year and a half before I was allowed to have my first surgery, which is what I was looking forward to for the longest time. I had top surgery at 19. Which is a double mastectomy? Double mastectomy, yes. And then six months after that, I believe, no, March and then October. So wait, sorry, you were 19 when you got your double mastectomy? Indeed. So I was actually, but I did start hormones like under the age of 18.

So I was, in essence, a minor who was accessing medical transition. March, my top surgery, and then October I had my radical hysterectomy. and radical hysterectomy is not only the removal of the uterus, but also of the ovaries. So basically, that was it for me. I considered myself done with my transition at that point. So, yeah, for the next, God, from 19 to 26, seven years, I identified as transmask, a trans man, transmask non-binary, always aligned with feeling more male than female. whatever that means, I guess.

And in 2020, during the pandemic, I had a top surgery revision because I had some issues with my initial top surgery and I was not entirely satisfied with the results. So that needed to be corrected. Which is like relatively common with top surgery and like all sorts of procedures. Real. Yeah. A lot of people do this. So I was just like, oh yeah, this is this is normal.

This is fine. And it wasn't until last year, I guess. Yeah, no, this started like around 2021 October that I was like leaning more like, yeah, like more transmaskedon binary, but still like presenting as male to basically the entire world. And I guess it started when I started noticing that I wasn't really happy with like having facial hair and I was just like, you know what? I feel like my brand of androgyny is like having like a bit of muscle, um, having a smooth face. Like I want to get laser on my face. So I started that process.

I'm the same way. I also want a bit of muscle, but never facially. Right, right? Okay, see, like, there you go. So other people feel this way too. So I was like, yeah, I rationalize it. Like, oh, yeah, I'm still a boy. It's still me.

So started getting laser on my face. I also met my ex-boyfriend around that time. And he came from quite a conservative background for a Belgian people who may be listening. He was a fan of Flamps Belong, which is a very right-wing party. But I was not aware of that. And I was kind of like, ah, like, he's still sweet. It's fine. But the thing is, his family and his circles were, like, very binarist.

So they were not really cool with, like, anything non-binary. So they kind of, like, saw me as his girlfriend, even though he would, like, refer to me as his partner, like, either by gender neutral terms or masculine terms. Like, he would not actually refer to me as his girlfriend. So through interactions with his family and the people around him, I was like, maybe it isn't that bad to occupy a feminine social role. Maybe this is something that I'm cool with. So I just rolled with it. But all of the, I guess, like, dysphoria that was mounting in the background, plus this, like, realization that I was cool with being seen as a woman, it kind of culminated in me watching movie, everything ever all at once.

and that was like my light bulb moment of like, oh, but what if I just decided to teleport myself to a universe in which I am a woman? Like, what would that mean? What would that look like? And yeah, like two days after that, one of my closest friends came out to me as a trans woman, and the next day I called her up and was like, girl, I need to tell you something. I came out to her trans. She was like, I'm trans and you were like, and I'm not.

basically, basically. But yeah, I think that her coming out and me coming out right after was very instrumental in, like, I guess my philosophy surrounding detransition in that she said, like, we're going to go through the same things. We're both going to be taking estrogen. We're both going to have to contend with like facial hair removal. Yeah. We have to do with like a little bit of voice training maybe. Like we've got to do stuff that looks very similar. So we're the same.

And yeah, that's kind of like the transition and detransition. Well, it is so interesting that you mentioned your friends transitioning the same time that you decided to detransition and like finding the unity in that. Because with detransitioners becoming this chess piece in a culture war around transphobia, it is so like, you know, the picture is painted by conservative media that all detrans people like hate trans people, hate the idea. idea that people can be trans, they're like fundamentally against trans people existing, like Chloe Cole, who are about to talk about. But the reality and some, you know, researchers are starting to arrive at this is that like the process that trans and just the things that trans people go through and the things that detrans people go through as far as social stigma, as far as medical stigma and not being able to access the care you need because, you know, your stories

are so marginalized, whether you're trans or detrans are so similar and can inform, one another. So I think that that's played out in real life for you. Yeah, basically. I think that it's, it's so bizarre to me that we're like, like, detrans people are just like, oh yeah, we're supposedly seen as like transphobes. But it's like, this was 14 years of my life, 15, if you count the time that I was not out to anyone. I would not want to turn my back on the community that held me when I was the most fragile in my life. Like, I know I've like summarized the events, but what I'm cutting out of this story is the amount of depression and pain I felt in what I thought was my gender dysphoria when I was young. That was not easy. I was struggling and being trans saved my life.

Regret is a word that comes up so often around these conversations. And I want to emphasize that detransition and regret are not synonymous. You know, and I'm saying this for the listener. People transition for all sorts of reasons. And regret can be one of them and regret. can be part of it. And I want to know for you, like, you said that transitioning at a certain point in your life did save your life. And like, that didn't turn out to be the long-term decision that was best for you. But do you have regret involved? Because, you know, obviously people are going to ask, you know, you had a medical transition that was invasive. And so when you, I guess, look back on your transition, your detransition, like, is regret part of that story? I think that the regret,

that I have is mostly centered around like later medical decisions because in hindsight if I hadn't gotten my top surgery revision I might have been better off with like you know having a bit of extra loose skin so that my boobs could grow back a little bit better that is literally it but if I look at the man that I once was the identity that I used to hold it protected me from so much for the world and it allowed me to experience the world in a way that I simply would not have if I hadn't transitioned. It's like there's no reset button on this. So if I regret, then I'm only holding myself back from my healing. And I only see that there is a way forward. But regret isn't really it for me. Yeah. So would you say that you, like, how do you identify now? I mean, do you identify as a cis

woman? Do you identify as a detransitioner? Like, what language do you use, if any, to, to describe your experience. Well, first and foremost, I use she, they, and he pronouns. Might as well get that out of the way. I do identify myself as queer, but I specifically identify myself as detransgender in opposition to the term detransitioner. There are things that I experience that are uniquely tied to my experience as a detrans person. Like, my dating experience is certainly different from most other people I know, just to name an example. I actively identify with my detransition. And also to further clarify the term D-transgender, I want to use this term in opposition to TERFs

who would want to weaponize me for their causes. Because if I call myself D-transgender, a word that contains the word transgender, they won't want to associate themselves with me. Also to further define D-transgender. The D, it's not a negative prefix. It means of or from. So of transgender origin, that's what it means.

And so I don't actually like the term detransitioner for myself. But if other people use it, it's like, okay, you can call me that, that I consider myself something else. Because you think of it less as like undoing something and more progressing onward from something. I'm post-trans. Hmm. So it's something else. And you mentioned to me, we were on the phone the other day preparing for the recording. And I want to mention part of why you told me that you're here today, which is that we're going to talk about the Prager U documentary later, but you were part of, you were interviewed for a documentary in where you live in Europe, where, well, do you want to explain your experience with that?

Right. So for the listeners, I live in the Netherlands, and there is a show on the public network called Zemble. And this is like a investigative journalism type show. very hard-hitting. And they released an episode called Hitzrondrenner Protocol, or the Transgender Protocol. And it was basically researching the scientific validity

or scientific basis for the use of purity blockers in minors. And I went into this documentary hearing from the journalist that they had interviewed a detransperson who regretted their transition and a trans person who was content with their transition. So I was like, wow! diverse opinions. I would like to be a part of this. I want to add my voice to the pile. But when it was released, I felt as though that all the happiness from my story had been edited out,

and they really want to focus on framing me as someone who had undergone permanent changes that I was not happy with. And it's really funny to me, because they also explicitly say in the documentary, like, she has to take female hormones for the rest of her life. and the funny thing is, it's like, I see benefits. I see upsides to the fact that I take HRT. Have you any idea how nice it is not to have a hormone cycle and always be stable? It's great. So they took all the goad out of my story and just framed it in such a negative way.

And just another thing. The way they edited it, they didn't tell the audience at the beginning that I was detrans, nor did they refer to me as queer. They presented me as an unhappy trans woman in the beginning, and then you get the little gotcha surprise at the end where it's like oh but actually she was she's a fab like oh there's a lot there's a lot they kind of do like a caricature of your experience to like feed into this like that's really that's really awful i'm sorry that it was done that way it's fucked up but now you're here and we're not going to fuck you up in the edit exactly and the netherlands is not a very litigious country i'm

not going to sue them. It's unheard of to do that kind of thing here. So instead, I'd much rather leverage new media to fight old media. So thank you so much for having me on here with this. Yeah, of course. I'm so happy that you're here. Before we continue, this show is only made possible through the help of our sponsors. And so I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of today's episode, Blue Land. The holidays are a time obviously of giving, but also a time of a lot of waste. And if you're looking for an option that holds those two conflicting truths together at once in, in my opinion, a very chic bottle, might I suggest to you, Blue Land? Blue Land is on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials

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I'm currently using the Blue Land foaming hand soap in my kitchen. I'm using it in the scent evergreen, which is just delicious for this time of year. Right now, Blue Land has a special offer for a bit fruity listeners. Right now, you can get 15% off your first order by going to blu land.com slash fruity. Again, that is blu land.com slash fruity for 15% off, blu land.com slash fruity. Online, you, as I said, you know, I found you through this tweet where you were basically like, I'm a detrans person. This is my experience. But, I, you know, it's my experience. It's not the experience of trans people. And, you know, you've basically kind of created a presence online affirming trans people and doing so from the perspective of someone

who detrans and not affirming them in spite of your detransition. But like it feels like it's very informed by your detransition. And so, you know, things like the tweet that I found you from that kind of circulated, like what is your motivation for being outspoken in that way? So the main reason why I decided to be so public with it is that I realize that there isn't, or at least I have not seen a pro-trans, pro-LGBQ plus detrans voice. And I feel like that there is a need to bring more nuance to this conversation because it is so reductive to say, well, this thing didn't work for me. It's not going to work for anyone.

When I have people in my life, like that friend who came out to me, like a friend who was a trans man, and I give him. his testosterone shots because I did it for years. And he's scared of needles or doesn't want to do it himself. So I do it for him. And I just figured that there have to be more people out there like me. And that's why I started making TikToks about my experience. And I've managed to reach an audience of people who feel the same.

I've met people who have a similar timeline to me, people who reach out and saying, like, I recognize myself in your experience. And it's like, wow. Clearly, there's something that's being said and they're not giving the entire story. These conservatives are only showing one piece of a very large puzzle. Yeah, that's my main motivation. I just want to show that you can detransition. It doesn't mean you're transphobic.

It doesn't mean that you're trying to take health care away from people. Well, speaking of the one piece that conservatives do like to parade around, I want to talk about a woman named Chloe Cole. What do you know about Chloe Cole? I know that she is often. speaking out against trans health care, I know that she is a detransitioner. And I've heard, and I cannot confirm this, that she gets paid to do so, or that she gets some kind of monetary compensation. But I could be wrong about that. I would like to be corrected about any

misconceptions I have. So Chloe Cole is a 19-year-old woman who detransitions a few years ago, and she is like the face of the de-trans culture war. You know, she is paraded around Fox News and around the country. She gets flown left and right to testify in front of like different governmental bodies, state governments, federal governments across the United States to testify in favor of bills that seek to limit trans health care. And basically she just repeats her experience and her trans health. trauma of detransitioning in front of all of these different people, in front of the internet,

in front of everyone, and finishes everything with like, you know, let my story be a warning. I want to talk about her now because I feel like on paper your stories are not very different. But you have arrived at very different ideological places. So Chloe Cole began transitioning when she was 12, and this is like a legitimately horrible thing that happened. she was sexually assaulted when she was in eighth grade and afterwards began binding her breasts. She was prescribed hormones when she was 13 and she took them for two years before getting a double mastectomy with her parents' permission at 15. And then when she was 17, a few years later, she realized that she might want to breastfeed and that she was running the risk of not being

able to. And so at 17, she began detransitioning. And she's kind of parlayed this obviously, first of all, that's a really, really, really tight timeline of her story, which I'm sure has, you know, all sorts of detail and nuance to it that, you know, we don't have time for today. But case in point, she transitioned, she detransitioned, and she now kind of parlayed that experience into what is ultimately becoming a career in politics, a career in right-wing politics at that. So I want to show you, Lucy, a video, a little clip from Chloe Cole, this was published by the Daily Caller, which is Ben Shapiro's news outlet. And she was testifying before a governmental body, again, like in favor of one of these bills that's trying to limit trans health care.

And so for most of her testimony, she is describing her detransition and how harrowing it was. And then at the end, she says, today, I should be at home with my family celebrating my 19th birthday. And instead, I'm making a desperate plea to my elected representatives. Learn the lessons from other medical scandals like the opioid process. To recognize that doctors are human, too, and sometimes they are wrong. My childhood was ruined, along with thousands of detransitioners that I know through our networks. This needs to stop. You alone can stop it.

Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience. Please let me be your final warning. So what is your reaction to that? I don't think that a warning is what it should be. I think that this is information and an experience that should be taken on board to benefit gender care, to improve gender care, to allow us to develop a better understanding of why some people might detransition over people who don't, people who identify as trans and are trans. Because I don't want to like, not that I'm trying to make it about myself. Make it about yourself. That's why you're here. Sure. Okay, fine. Right.

So one thing that stopped me from realizing that I needed to detransition was the fact that I, to my knowledge, at least, had never been sexually assaulted over the course of my life. That was not something in my history, but I read many times online like, oh yeah, a lot of people who detransition are survivors of sexual abuse. And because that was not a thing for me, it's just like it never even occurred to me that. I might need to detransition. And from what I hear in what she's saying here is that she's still in a lot of pain and she's trying to save people from her perspective. And that's a very, I can see that that's a noble thing to want to do to save other people. However, it's not conducive to overall public health because there are people who desperately need to transition because it is life-saving to them. It was life-saving to me. If I had not access trans-health care,

I probably wouldn't be here today. Like that's, it's real. When I watched that the first time I made a note and I, you know, she was, she said, enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience, which, okay, first of all, this is not pseudoscience. Every major medical organization in the United States and globally supports the idea that trans health care is life-saving for the vast majority of people who seek it out. the vast majority of people don't detransition.

And this is life-saving. And so I just wrote how many kids have been victimized by being denied healthcare. You hit the nail on the head there. The other thing is she compares the trans health care to the opioid crisis. She is very rhetorically skilled. I will say that. And she is preparing herself for a very lucrative career on the conservative talk show circuit. I have thoughts about that.

Tell me. So my main issue when I see other detrans people speaking out on the right wing is that, honey, they don't see you as human. They don't. They dehumanize you. That's why they want you to call yourself broken and mutilated and destroyed and ruined. The whole thing is like you are there to be paraded around as a not trying. I don't refer to myself like this. I don't see anyone this way.

This is just like me parroting their rhetoric. They want to see you as a freak show. They want to see you so that they can be like, look, this is what, like, she's ruined. Because like, I get transphobia thrown at me by right-wingers who would be like, what are you male or female? And it's like, well, traditionally you would see me on your side because you see me as validating your point of view, right? But you trying to be insultive and, like, rude to me is not really winning you any favors with me liking you more. They don't see you as your own. They don't see you as their own.

They just want to hold you up as like an example of, look what happens when it goes wrong. One of the most amazing things to me about the kind of detransitioner moral panic is you constantly have all of these people being like, they're detransitioning in mass. Like everyone is detransitioning. This is a huge problem for thousands and thousands and thousands of people like everywhere. They're all going to detransition.

And it's like if everyone is detransitioning, why do you only ever have Chloe Cole? It's only ever this one girl. There's maybe, like, if you count all of the people who have made more than one media appearance, there's like maybe 10. But every time they talk about how this is like the biggest problem that's going to be hitting the airwaves. And then it's just like, Chloe Cole again. And I'm like, Chloe Cole's story matters.

Lucy, your story matters. All of the detrans stories matter. But if there are so goddamn many of them, why are we only ever hearing from Chloe Cole? like why do we need to fly Chloe Cole into all of the 50 states to testify for detransitioner bills? Shouldn't there be detransitioners in those states who are willing to speak out?

It's just Chloe Cole. Yeah. Yeah, no, but like there's nothing I can really say to that. They are showing the same people over and over again, but I would hope that the reason for that is that other detrans people recognize that it's not conducive to your own personal healing after, you know, processing whatever it is that was the original reason that you transitioned,

whatever that may be, that it's better to do that in a private setting and not on a national stage for everyone to critique you, criticize you, to nitpick your appearance. Like, I've heard some, like, people will say really nasty thing about detrans people. Yeah. And, like, just continue to open that wound that they're feeling of like, oh, the regret that they feel. it's not healthy. Yeah. And I mean, if Chloe Cole wasn't using her story and her perspective to really honestly,

violently strip away rights from other people, like my heart would truly go out to her. My heart does go out to her because, like I said, her story is harrowing. But my heart also goes out to her because I think to your point, she is being dehumanized by these people who are propping her up. They see her as, I think, this fundamentally broken mistake of a human being. I don't think they see her as a human being. They aren't. And I think as soon as the microphones get cut off and the lights go down and everyone goes home,

I don't think her story from the perspective of public health, from the perspective of humanity, you know, I don't think her story matters to them in any way other than advancing their own political goals. And I would, if I were in her shoes, I would struggle to sit with that. If they actually gave a shit about her, they would be like, honey, not here. Let's go to a therapist and let's talk about this so that you can do it healthily. The fact that she's 19 also, like, strikes me as like something quite interesting because I remember when I was younger, like maybe not 19, but maybe more like 16 or so, I was very

dogmatic about identity. I was very binarist in my thinking, and I really don't like the person that I was when I was that age. Okay, does anyone like who they are when they're 19? No, no. I think being 19 is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Basically.

But the fact that she's so young, and having this, like, biners mindset, what I've noticed as well in, like, reactions to my own detrans identity from everyone who's, like, in that age bracket is that they're like, oh, you're sis. Like, they're telling me, they're forcing an identity on me. And she's, like, also, like, very binous in her thinking. So I think that part of her dogmatic kind of way of speaking about this has to do with

her age. I feel like if you gave her, like, put her in a more, you know, caring environment for, like, eight years or so, maybe she would, like, kind of align a bit more with, like, yeah, well, people have different experiences and it didn't go that way for me. And I think that it's just an aspect of, like, maturing as like a human being as an adult. Speaking of the 10 people that the right-wing media apparatus parades around, there is another one who I would like to introduce to the conversation with a video.

Joy. If you had a one-on-one with a child who was struggling with gender dysphoria, what would you say to them? I would just say just remain strong, find love within your hearts. You know, also going to church is very helpful. when you hear the teachings of Jesus from the Bible, it's just very positive. And some kids, they feel lost, they feel confused. So I would just say to the kids, you know, you will get through this, stay strong,

this is just the phase. You know, you one day are going to be a great successful person. You're going to have a great career. You're going to have a great education. So just please hang in there, be strong and just know that there's people out there that will support you. You know, family, friends, there are psychiatrists, there are people out there to help. So, you know, if any kids is watching this and feeling confused or lost, just know that there's people out there that can help. Do you know who that is?

I know exactly who that person is. And my heart rate just, I just kicked up, like, I don't know, by like 30 beats per minute or something like that. That, I have a very visceral reaction to Ollie London. Okay. So visceral. It is Ollie London. Tell me what you know about Ollie London. I know that OLLie London probably altogether has spent over 130,000 pounds on plastic surgery.

So no, I know who Olly London is. And when I tell you that here's the reason why I started making TikToks, I am being dead serious. Let me give for the listener, I'm going to give the basic overview of Oliver London, who is who you just heard speaking. Ollie London is one of the ten people who are paraded around. And the fact that he gets taken seriously in this conversation of trans issues and specifically detransitioning is a miracle. And I think a scathing indictment of how little genuine effort and research goes into these stories from the right-wing politicized perspective on this issue. So, Ali London is a white, British, gay, 33-year-old. I apologize if he no longer identifies as gay.

I can't keep up with him, but, you know, he in the mid-2010s began idolizing the K-pop star Jimin, Jimin, from BTS. I'm sorry, I'm not a big K-pop person, but I know that it's the whole thing. So in 2013, he started also this entire story. by the way, is incredibly racist, and I apologize on behalf for, like, having to deliver it in a straightforward way. Just, just know that I'm acknowledging how racist this whole thing is. But basically, in 2013, he started getting surgeries to make himself look Korean. In total, over the, you know, last decade has gotten 32 surgeries, including six nose job,

an eye surgery, a facelift, a brow lift, a temple lift, a teeth procedure, which I assume they're referring to veneers. and skin whitening injections. Which is just fucking wild. In 2021, he began identifying as transracial. In March 2022, okay, again, I'm sorry. This is like so fucking racist. Like, I was researching it and I was like,

how do I tell this without reproducing the racism of Ollie London? But okay, so just... Can I also just like say, as a half white, half Asian person, I have extra amounts of, there's layers to my feelings towards Aldi London, just so much. So in March 2022, he announced that he had plans for a penis reduction surgery, stating that, quote, in Korea, the average penis is like 3.5 inches. People say, oh, you can't be Korean. You're not 100% Korean. And I just want to be 100% Korean. I would even have a penis reduction, so I'm like, quote, the Korean average. Okay, this is the person who gets taken seriously by Fox News.

Like, he's literally been on Fox News to discuss detransitioners. We're not even done, though. Again, so that was in March 2022. And then shortly thereafter, he briefly started identifying as a trans woman and announced plans for surgeries to start looking like, is it Rose from Black Pink? Rose, yeah. Rosee, yeah, who's another K-pop star, a female K-pop star. And then by October of the same year, so we're less than six months in of him going from

transracial to transracial trans woman. He said that he was transitioning back to male. So now he's starting his detransition. In November, one month later, he began identifying as a detransitioner and publicly converted to Christianity and announced that he was getting baptized. And I looked at, so this is November. of last year. This is just over a year ago. And I looked at some of the like Christian and conservative media outlets reporting on this. And they just like reported on it straightforwardly at the

time. They were like, detransitioner, Ali London, bravely converts to Christianity and announced baptism plans. And it's like, oh my God. Guys, he identified as Korean and spent like hundreds of thousands of dollars on certain. This is not someone that we should be taking seriously in the gender conversation. This is, he's like a little bit, loony tunes. He's very loony tunes. And I don't know that this is the person we need to be turning into a mascot,

but we're not done. In August of 2023, so just a few months ago, he published a book called, quote, gender madness, one man's devastating struggle with woke ideology and his battle to protect children, which like, first of all,

Fuck the publisher who decided to give that the go ahead because there are a lot of people responsible for putting a book out to market and letting someone who is so transparently not serious about any of this and is solely looking to make any decision that he needs to make along the way to make his experience the most profitable that it can be. Not doing a hint of research into that and just like being like, yeah, let's publish a book. He's a detransitioner. Let's publish a book called Gender Madness. Like, are you kidding me?

So now he, yeah, he's a book. yeah, he's a conservative talk show circuit guy, as I just showed you. He self-identifies as a detransitioner and kind of an expert on the detransition culture war. I find it interesting. We apparently decided to detransition around the same times. However, my detransition was preceded by nearly a decade and a half of transition. And as you said, he's completely unsurious about it. And it made me so angry because, to my knowledge, there aren't any other European detrans people, detransition is whatever you want to call us. Who speak out?

Who speak out. So it really bothered me that this is what people think when they think European detrans person, they think Olly London. So I was like, no, no, no, no, this cannot be. I have to add my voice to the conversation. So I started posting TikToks after reading it. I forget what tweeted it was of his, but I was like, no, this cannot, this cannot be. I need to say something.

So thank you, Olly London, for kick-starting my video creation journey, but also fuck you for all the damage that you're doing to detrans people, our image. Like, this is not conducive to the public image of detrans people, nor is it conducive to improving gender care for anyone. And also, like, the whole transracial thing, it's just, it's just too much. It's just too much. Like, no, you don't get to cosplay someone else's else's. ethnicity. What is wrong with you, mate? I struggle. I don't really struggle, but I struggle a little bit because I don't want to get in the place of like, I just categorically, I'm a, I'm a very like, your experience is yours and I'm not here to tell you that it's invalid. If there was ever a person

for whom I was to maybe qualify that belief on, it would be Ali London. I do not think his experience. Well, do you think his experience is valid? Do you think he is a valid voice? in the detrans world for having identified as a female Korean pop star for six months. Matt, I'm like you. I also don't want to like call people's stories or experiences invalid or anything. But yes, categorically to Ollie London, absolutely. Like, I remember when he like came out as like this transracial person. And I remember seeing like his attempts at K-pop videos.

And at the time, I think I was still into K-pop. I was not pleased with it. I was like, well, this is just yellow face. And then later down the line that he starts identifying. First, it was like, I think I identified as non-binary at some point. He used they-them pronouns. Yeah, I think that was for maybe a month or something. Yeah.

So I was like, okay, maybe there's like some gender issues happening and that's okay. But then, but then all of this went down and it was just horrifying to see. I think that if I wanted a career in right-wing media and I wanted guest spots on Fox News, I could see how in the span of like a year and a half being like I'm white. No, I identify as Korean. No, I identify as rosé from Black Pink. Now I saw the light. Now I identify as a Christian conservative who's baptized. I think, like I said, it's such an indictment of the people who platform him on these shows to be like, this is a legitimate voice in this conversation. He is an expert. Why is anyone publishing his fucking book? I think it really is, I mean, look, ultimately, like, no, I mean, I really think he is a damaging person.

Because, like you said, I think the stories of detransitioners are. important, not for politics, but for public health, for gender care. And he's not interested in public health, obviously. I don't think he's interested in anything but himself, but in the process, he is enriching himself culturally with cultural capital and actual capital. He is dangerous in being one of the loudest detrans voices with no interest in, you know, doing anything but profiting from a culture war. Differently from Chloe Cole, I feel like it's just to use a very archaic,

internet term. It's for the lulls. He's doing it for funzies. And he doesn't see that the weight of his words, it has a massive impact for people who want to listen to him for these right winger. Because they can uphold him as like, look, he used to be like a complete freak. And now he's one of us. I was watching videos of him in preparation for this podcast. I was like, what is the world really making of Ali London. He's so easy for people like us, especially people who have followed his kind of character arc to like just kind of giggle at him and be like, whatever, like, whatever. But the videos of him, there are thousands of comments of people being like, wow, it is so brave of him to own up to his decisions and his mistakes. And I'm like, Jesus fucking. And each of those comments will have

like thousands of likes and people are like, wow, what a guy. And I'm like, oh my God. Anyway, Can we talk about this Prager You documentary? Let's. I haven't seen it. Well, so, okay, basically, I've talked about Prager You a bunch before, but if you, the listener, don't know what Prager You is, it's a conservative content farm. It's Prager University is what it's called, but it's not a university, and I always like to make that clear. It's a media company that makes these right-wing videos about all sorts of things. they make videos that like for kids that are like one of them was like slavery wasn't that bad it like that kind of thing it's very history denial it's very culture war now in florida they're allowing

that those videos are played in schools it's a hellfire but they put out three weeks ago they put out a documentary they called a documentary it was 20 minutes long it's called detrans and it is about all the things that we've been talking about today one thing that i didn't really realize what so basically when it came out a few weeks ago if you went on twitter or x or whatever the fuck there was a period of a few days where you were forced to see ads for this short film detrans it was like every single ad space on twitter was occupied by prager you promoting this film and that was weird because it came up for me and you know ads tend to be targeted like that's why when you go on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, and it's like, if you've been looking at

Fuzzy Sox for the holidays on other websites, you're going to get ads for fuzzy socks. I do not look at D-Trans stuff. I do not look at Prager You. I do not look at right-wing stuff unless I'm researching for the podcast. And so I was like, why the hell is this coming up in my ad spots? And it's because Prager You spent $1 million to promote this film. And God knows Elon Musk needs the money right now because Twitter's like falling through the cracks. but it's interesting. So yeah, they publicly said they, it's a $1 million ad campaign to promote this detrans video.

YouTube rejected the money. And it's playing on YouTube. It has a million and a half views on YouTube, but it's not advertised anywhere on YouTube. But Elon was like, you know what? And it's also not even for the million dollars for him. He also just like hates trans people. He hates his daughters.

Yeah, right. He hates his trans daughter. And so I'm sure he was very excited to promote. this. But basically, I watched it. It's, you know, it's kind of what you would expect. It's like a couple stories of detrans people who are like, I was mutilated. I hate myself forever because of this. This needs to be banned. This is dangerous. They're transing all the children and they're all going to regret it. You know, and it has this very like, it's filmed very dramatically. It has like very dark music. It kind of reminds me of like, do you remember those in the early 2000s?

had kind of like the don't do drugs like public service announcements in the netherlands we didn't have those oh well but i'm i'm aware of the this is your brain on drugs exactly like the fried egg yeah so it's like dramatic sting cut to someone looking really really sad with like a blue wash over it like i know i know exactly what you're talking about yes that was the whole it was very this is your brain on drugs and in fact that was my brain after i finished watching the video. But anyway, Ollie London and Chloe Cole both make appearances. It's not about either of them. And I knew they were going to include Chloe Cole. But I was like, okay, Ali London, like, really? Your, any credibility in this video is kind of shot itself in the foot. But one of the main

subjects of the film is a woman named Daisy Strongen. Do you know who she is? I became aware of her through the de-trans documentary, and as I said, I hadn't seen it, but from what I understood, she may have detransitioned, but she still experiences gender dysphoria, and that's all I know. Yeah, so it's interesting. So she describes, you know, like all of these things, she describes her experience, she always kind of didn't feel like other girls growing up, and she experienced really severe depression. and at some point she discovered, you know, trans topics on the internet and really identified with them and started seeking hormones and eventually got her double mastectomy. And, you know, the theme under the whole kind of film is this like, I was rushed and I went to the doctor once and they handed me the knife and they cut me up and it was all so easy. And so what's interesting is like I was looking her up after I watched the documentary and

she didn't start hormones until she was 18, which is a legal adult in the United States. And so, and she didn't get, she took them for two years before getting her double mastectomy when she was 20. And so I think to make her one of the subjects of a film that ostensibly is about how dangerous trans health care is for minors, but she wasn't even a minor. Like she was fully an adult. And so I don't know what I'm supposed to conclude from her story. like she regrets something that she did as an adult and so should we strip everyone of their rights

anytime anyone regrets anything basically i also just had a realization i am aware of uh daisy strongman but more specifically i know of a video that if i'm not mistaken i know a video she made before she detransitioned if i'm not mistaken she made a video about jordan peterson and how she was she understood his perspective on pronouns oh great i just remembered that. So there are, like you mentioned, there were some tweets. I can't even say tweets that surfaced, but there are like recent tweets from September and November of this year that people after the detrans documentary came out where she was basically like scorching the earth around trans issues. So in September, she tweeted, I don't want people to think that just because I've detransitioned

and chosen a more traditional path, I am now cured. I still deal with self-loathing. I'm still sick of being me. I'm still depressed. I'm still a miserable, wretched sinner. The mental ailments that led me to transition still plagued me today. I still fantasize about being a guy at least a few times a week. I'm often a guy in my dreams. But now I know that I can't indulge those fantasies. I have to be the best mother-slash-wife I can be. Jesus Christ is my only hope. He is your only hope, too. And that makes me sad to read. To me, it doesn't feel like a gotcha. It feels like this is someone who is obviously still in the throes of a lot of things. And why is she being featured in a documentary that's weaponizing her story,

which is clearly ongoing? It's very painful to hear that, to hear that she's, like, struggling with itself, loathing, with this perspective on herself as a sinner, as if she's, like, done something wrong. When, from my perspective, and this is the perspective that I kind of hold towards my transition of like I was working with the information that I had and I was ignorant to what would actually work for me, I guess. But ultimately it turned out okay. But like in her case, it's just like,

you're using the things that are helping you and then you're taking them away from yourself. But for what? Wouldn't, if you do believe, like wouldn't your God want you to be happy? Also for context, like Netherlands is like, what, 44% atheists? So a lot of like the that just stuff really doesn't land for me. Right. It's fine. This isn't like a theology podcast. Yeah.

One thing that strikes me as interesting is that like the detransitioners that they feature, they don't seem markedly happier in their detransition because that's one thing that at least I've experienced and I've at least observed in detrans people who I know, like their lives is that post-detransition or like post-transition, whatever you want to call it, they're a lot happier because they've like come to know themselves better. they feel more aligned with themselves. And I'm not seeing that in these stories that are presented by the right wing. If detransition is such a good path, wouldn't you want to show happy detrans people

who have evolved in their identity and come to feel at one with themselves? She also, another tweet from November 2nd of this year, she wrote, so this is right after the documentary came out. For the record, the Breaker U documentary focuses mainly on the transgender medicalization of minors. I didn't say this in the future, but I do not think there is a single person. person, whether they're eight years old or 80, who should medically transition. And then an attached tweet, dot, dot, dot, dot, also everyone should become Catholic. Daisy, I'm sending Daisy love.

I really, really am. And in the same way that I send Chloe Cole love with the pain that she obviously continues to grapple with, I struggle in doing that because they are weaponizing, their grief, their pain, all of those things which are extremely real in which I have no interest in in legislating to take rights away from other people. Dot, dot, dot, dot, also everyone should become Catholic? Mass conversions and baptisms now, please. Okay, so I want to play you a little clip from the documentary.

It's a short one, I promise I won't subject you to more of this than any of us want to be subjected to. I'll watch the full thing after, so it's completely fine. You know, just to get an idea of what's going on, I guess. Okay, there's a video clip. Part of the problem is that the current cohort of teenagers that are being transitioned under the affirmative protocol, which lacks guardrails, which takes kids at their word when they say I'm trans, which doesn't do proper mental health assessments. In fact, double mastectomies on teenage girls went up 13-fold between 2013 and 2020.

Between 2016 and 2019 alone, these procedures went up by 500%. So that was Leor Sapir from the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative think tank. They use this study and they're like the amount of kids getting gender affirming care is skyrocketing. It went up 500% year over year. They don't actually tell you the amount of kids. They tell you the percent increase, which I think is a really important to study. because if one kid in the world gets a double mastectomy one year, and then the next year, five kids get a double mastectomy, that is a 500% increase.

And one of the telltale signs to me of a moral panic is floating around really kind of of these like inflammatory fearmongering numbers that inspire a fear that numbers that numbers that more accurately describe a situation don't. So according to an October 2022 report from Reuters, 282 adolescents from age 13 to 17 received a gender affirming mastectomy in 2021. 282 kids in the whole country of the United States. This is not a big number. And in the study that they were referencing, so they had, you know, the citation for the study they were talking about that talked about it increased 500% I went to that study and I read that study so that study uh over the course of seven years from 2013 to 2020 followed 209 people who received double mastectomies

for gender affirming reasons and they were all checked in on after with you know a year after their procedure and then you know the years beyond that how many of the 209 do you lose think regretted it or expressed regret. Um, what was the number again? 209. Yeah. Maybe like six or so. Two.

Two. Wow. Two. I estimated. Two. Two. And so like even the study that you're using to stoke fear doesn't actually stoke fear.

Two people. That is less than one percent of people expressed regret. And neither of them pursued any sort of reversal. Interesting. So, I don't know. It just, you probe any of this stuff and it's just fear-mongering. Okay, so when I say that I'm detrans, a lot of people assume that I just like literally walked into a doctor's office, like on the internet, because they don't know how like trans healthcare in the Netherlands works. They assume that it, it went so quickly for me. But like, I went through a very rigorous, like, diagnostic period before I was even allowed to start any kind of

hormonal care, let alone access any, like, surgeries and stuff. I had to do a psyche about before I had surgery, every surgery that I did. And it's interesting because, like, even when you put these barriers in place, you do not stop the appearance of detrans people. It is a statistical inevitability that if you have a system in place that allows people to transition, there will be people who detransition. It is just a numbers game. So, yeah, no, it pisses me off when people say, like, oh, you just have to make it, like,

harder to access care. No. No, because what? I identify trans for 14 years before I detransitioned. Come on. Like, they're always going to be there. I mean, you, you, I think that's so important because it's like, they really do make it this thing where it's like, we need to make them jump through an extra hoop, and then there will be no detransitioners. But what it really is, though, what is the only way to make sure there are zero detransitioners is to make sure that there are zero people who ever transition, which is ultimately what these people want. Oh yeah, absolutely. It's not about a genuine love and care for people who detransition. It is because they want to, you know, indulge in their queer phobia and just take away rights from everybody because it's ultimately, ultimately about control of female bodies because you don't hear them crying out or parading around, well, besides Ollie London, but does he really count? No.

they don't really present M to F to MD trans people. And I know a few, and they're not transphobic. It is ultimately about the loss of fertile wounds that we could use to continue the existence of preferably with the white Christian race. Can I say that? Yeah, of course. Yeah, because that's basically what it is. It's not for anyone's joy, because if that were the case, then we would see happy. be detransitioners, but we don't. There is this big politicized culture warrior narrative that

all detransitioners are Chloe Cole, that they're all Ali London, that they're all Daisy strong in, who are these people who have like committed their life's work to making sure that nobody can ever detransition again like them, which means that nobody will ever transition. What is your experience like in community with other detrans people? Like, are they all transphobic? I'm sure there's no consensus, but what's your experience? Here's the thing. I have yet to actually speak to another D-Trans individual who wants to ban all trans health care. I know some people who have differing thoughts about how trans health care should look, like what kind of hurdles are supposed to be in place and blah, blah, blah, like there's diversity there. But I don't know anyone personally who's trying to ban all trans health care.

And here's the thing. I would love to have a conversation with Chloe Cole with literally, maybe not Ollie London, but like Daisy Strong in. Maybe not. Ollie London can meet me in the pit. I don't know any detrans people who are trying to ban, who want to ban trans health care. All we see is like this just individually did not work out for us, but that doesn't mean that it's a net negative to society to allow people to transition full stop. Yeah. And before we close out, Lucy, what do you want anyone listening who this might be a new conversation for or who might have kind of bought into? the right-wing panic about detransitioners, like, what do you want them to know? From your experience,

what do you want them to take away? There's something that I say quite often now. I started saying it when I detransition because I was like pondering what it meant for me. And I say there is joy in reinvention. And what I mean by that is that I experienced detrans joy. I have experienced a happiness that I never thought was possible before through the rediscovering of my own identity. And what I want to impress on people is that gender joy can thrive at any stage, whether that's trans joy or detrans joy. Basically, don't ban trans health care. We need it. We need it. And ultimately, we all suffer under queerphobic oppression. My God. Like, I just want to also point out to people like, yeah, even though I've detransitioned, I'm not always perceived as a cis woman in society. I still suffer. under transphobia. And all these right-wingeres who are so vehemently against trans people, they're not going to check what's in my pants before they hate crime me, to put it bluntly.

And the thing is, there are also cis people who suffer under transphobia. Yeah. So it's not conducive to anyone to continue with all this hate. It makes no sense. Anyway, love wins, always. Love wins. Love does win. Lucy, thank you so much for being here today.

and not just for being here, but for, you know, being out in the world with your story, providing what I think is a really necessary counter to this idea that all detransitioners are transphobic and want the end of trans health care to be available to anyone. I think you're doing such important work. Where can people find more of you? Where can people support your work? Well, I have a TikTok where I post a lot of videos about my detrans experience. also just like daily life things.

I'm also on Twitter, as long as that still exists by the time that this podcast is up. And I'm also on Instagram. All at the same handle, I'm assuming that Matt will have all of my links in the description. Yes, of course. Sorry. Yes. Yeah, well, thank you for being here, Lucy. Thank you.

Well, that's our show for today. If you made it this far, I am truly so, so appreciative. I hope you learned something. I hope maybe you laughed. I hope you, you know, were provided with some solid arguments for when your mom or your uncle over the holidays is like, you know, a lot of people are detransitioning. We really have to start worry about this. We really should start banning the I hope that I gave you something that you can retort with thoughtfully. And I love you. If you like the show, feel free to give us a rating. And if not, then, you know, keep it moving. Don't give us a rating. I love you, and until next time, stay fruity.