Morning Wire - Transgender Regret | Sunday Special | 6.18.23

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Proponents of transgender surgeries and treatments for minors and young adults claim such medical interventions are necessary and even “life-saving,” but as the procedures become more common, an increasing number of young people are expressing regret over the permanent changes made to their bodies. In this episode of Morning Wire, we hear first-hand accounts from two individuals who underwent these gender treatments and now regret it. Both appear in the documentary “No Way Back: The Reality of Gender Affirming Care”. You can learn more at NoWayBackFilm.com.   Indeed: Start hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit with Indeed at  https://indeed.com/wire Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MorningWire Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An 18-year-old female is suing doctors at Kaiser Permanente who removed her breasts when she was just 13 years old. She's the latest of a number of so-called detransitioners who regret the procedures and surgeries performed on them when they were minors. Proponents of transgender surgeries and treatments for minors and young adults claim such medical interventions are necessary and even life-saving. But as the procedures become more common, an increasing number of young people are expressing regret over the permanent changes made to their body. My health isn't a not wire when I have to deal with every day. I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy. In this episode of Morning Wire, we hear firsthand accounts from two individuals, Abel and Laura, who underwent gendered treatments and even surgeries and eventually decided to detransition. Abel and Laura both appear in a documentary called No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care.

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's June 18th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the issue of transition regret is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestige-Ochamow. So Amanda, before we hear directly from ABLE and Laura, do we know what percentage of people who go through with medical transition eventually decide they want to detransition? Hey, Georgia. Well, this is a really new phenomenon, especially on the scale we're seeing it today. So large long-term studies don't exist yet. We do know that the number of hospitals and child gender clinics offering puberty blockers

and surgeries for minors and young adults has just skyrocketed over this past decade. There are now more than 100 gender clinics for children and some 300,000 minors now identify as transgender. As far as desisting from this gender confusion, we do have research that shows that up to 88% of children with these feelings stop having them by adulthood. While there are some individuals who experience persistent gender dysphoria for a lifetime, the data suggests they are a very small subset. When it comes to young people post-cuberty blockers, hormones and surgery, there is this odd consensus echoed in the media that hardly anyone regrets this medical intervention. That's not really true. Again, the mass embrace of this medical intervention for kids and young people

is fairly unique, so long-term studies are just not there. Most of the studies cited about regret, just track patients three months post-op. We don't yet have data on how these treatments affect people as they move through different phases of life. For example, when young people reach the age where they might want to have children. That said, there are a few high-profile detransitioners speaking out about their experiences and even suing hospitals. Right. Now, let's get to that. You spoke with two people who've experienced this kind of regret. What did they share about their experience. Yeah, that's right. One of those people is a young man named Abel. He experienced gender confusion as a child and then suffered a sexual trauma that intensified his desire to leave

his body. Abel told me he was a shy kid who felt like he didn't fit into what he viewed as Mexican masculinity. He stumbled upon this idea of transgenderism on YouTube when he was in middle school and started to think that's what he might be. He waited until right after high school to see a therapist and on his very first visit, which didn't even last an hour, the therapist told him he was indeed a transgender woman and approved him for a medical transition. I asked her, I think I might be transgender. I don't know.

I just need some help. What she did next was she told me, yes, I am a transgender woman. She had my letter to transition right away. And when I gave some pushback, I was met with, she didn't want to gatekeep me. Abel didn't accept that letter right away, because even though this therapist was apparently sure Abel was a woman,

Abel wasn't sure about his identity. But then he experienced a trauma that made him want to escape his body more than ever before. My father had found out what I was doing as I was trying to keep everything secretive for my family. And his solution to fix me was taking me to Mexico with a prostitute. And having me have sexual relationships with a woman, I realized not then, but a couple years after I had transitioned and detransitioned that that was trauma inflicted on to me that made me want to disconnect from my body. And after that, I waited for every single day until I could finally get away from my parents

and transition, which I eventually did. Abel had hormone treatments and went under the knife for breast implants. He stopped short, though, of facial surgery and so-called breast implants. bottom surgery. That's when a surgeon removes healthy testicles and uses skin from a male's penis to try to create the appearance of a vagina. This, of course, makes the male in question sterile. Oddly enough, Abel was approved for this bottom surgery without even asking for it. I have to say it had to be the voice of God, telling me to take everything slowly, because even though I wasn't sure in the beginning, a part of me wanted to do everything.

Abel told me the breast implant surgery went without complication, and he temporarily felt what he described as a short-lived period of happiness. But within months, he told me he recognized that he was chasing after something he was never going to attain. I went to the bathroom one day, looked at myself, and I asked, what the heck am I doing? I realized that even if I had the breast implants, I had my face done, bottom surgery, got my body looking like that of a woman and had the world recognized me as a woman. I would have never been a woman. I realized that I would have just been a man who was doing a carcature or a cosplay of what a woman looked like. Now, did Abel then try to reverse these treatments? Yeah, he did. He says he got. a lot of pushback from the medical establishment, though, when he brought up detransitioning.

This was a completely different experience than what he encountered when he said he might be transgendered. He met with numerous therapists who told him they would not help facilitate his detransition. Abel believes this had to do with the policies in the state where he was living. Unfortunately, I lived in the state of California at the time, and most of the experts would not touch me with a 10-foot pole. The moment they realized I was trans and I wanted to detransitioned as, doing that in California as a medical professional couldn't be considered conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is a term for therapy

intended to change a person's sexuality. Originally, the term was used to describe therapies that attempt to reverse homosexuality, but now the term has expanded to also describe therapy that tries to turn a trans person, quote, cisgender. A lot of blue states have cracked down on so-called conversion therapy

to the point where practitioners can lose their license over it. What that means is if a gender-confused person says they want to embrace their birth sex, it can be hard to find a therapist who will be willing to help. I spoke to licensed family therapist Stephanie Winn about that. A lot of people are taking a critical look at what are the impacts of banning so-called conversion therapy when conversion therapy has been redefined to this acronym sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts. Clinicians are afraid that by trying to have, help people with gender dysphoria, they could be accused of trying to change that person's gender

identity and therefore get in trouble with the law. I also spoke to a young woman named Laura. She first started feeling distress around her body at age 15, and it was also around that time that she came across the idea of transgenderism on Tumblr. Laura told me she had undiagnosed complex PTSD from childhood abuse, a hormonal disorder called polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she's on the autism spectrum. So the combination of those three factors led to me experiencing deep distress around my body, and I started having some identity issues and identifying as gender queer when I was 15. It escalated in severity, suicidal ideation, rumination around my body and my genital And there was overall a lot of self-hate that was based in trauma.

But at the time, I thought that the explanation for that was called gender dysphoria and that I was actually a trans person. We needed to transition to solve those symptoms. Laura came out as transgender as a teenager and searched without any luck for medical help to deal with her depression. Instead, she ended up on testosterone and soon after had gender surgery. My experience in seeking professional help for the symptoms of gender dysphoria were very inadequate care. In retrospect, I was streamlined and conveyor belted along within the affirmation model. When I was 19, I learned about getting a prescription for testosterone, and I went to an LGBT clinic where they gave me a free prescription of testosterone in a one hour. appointment. I went through all of my mental health conditions, so I told them everything,

even about being suicidal, and they still just affirmed and thought that, you know, it was a good thing for me to get testosterone as quickly as possible to help with these symptoms. So I did get that prescription that same day. Within six months of first receiving testosterone, Laura had a double mastectomy. A surgeon removed her healthy breasts. Unfortunately, there was a complication in Laura's surgery. He had to have a revision surgery to try to fix the issue. Also, whenever her incision scars opened up and it had to be sewn back shut, creating an even larger scar. To make matters worse, Laura's high testosterone dose of 200 milligrams, that was stopped cold turkey. I was just getting this testosterone from this clinic that really wasn't following through or giving me any

oversight in terms of my endocrine care. And when I went cold turkey right before the surgery, I kind of had a mental breakdown and I was in a lot of psychological distress. Despite the complications, Laura said she felt moments of contentment, which she now deems a placebo effect. And that didn't last long. By the time she was 22 years old, Laura realized she was still suffering from the same exact problems before, which were now compounded. And she decided to detransition. The most painful thing that I've dealt with this whole time and including after detransition is really the root of my. my psychological pain, which is my attachment wounds from childhood and having a feeling of abandonment and not feeling loved or not feeling good enough from childhood abuse.

And even though I've detransitioned and come to terms with my body and my womanhood and done a lot of therapy and healing work, that is still the number one problem. I still really struggle to trust other people and. can feel secure in relationships. Laura told me that she believes what was done to her was unethical. My feelings on the therapeutic professionals are that they were not equipped to treat me. They were well-intentioned, but ultimately ignorant in these sorts of issues. And they were clearly uninformed about trauma because no one who's informed about trauma in their right mind

would allow a young person who has a history of abuse to, you know, remove organs because they show a self-hatred about themselves. In terms of the hormone clinic that gave me the prescription and the surgeon, I don't know that they had such well-intentioned motives. I think that at most they're incompetent at the least they're unethical and that they really are callous towards their patients and I don't feel that any of them were ethical regardless if their intentions were good or not. Wynn also expressed concern about how this issue is being addressed in the medical community, specifically when it comes to therapists. As a therapist, I witnessed this trend taking over our field. I remember going to a training. It was around 2017, where we were given some of the same

lines that our field is now infamous for, the line of would you rather have a trans child or a dead child, by the way, which is such a horrific form of psychological manipulation to use against parents who love their kids. And we were basically told that going through the quote unquote wrong sex puberty, meaning your own sex is traumatic to these kids and that they should not have to suffer that fate. There's this idea that there are these kids who know who they are. They know that they're really a boy or really a girl and that you should let the child take the lead. And if a child tells you this about themselves, who are you to stop them? That would be transphobic. That would be bigoted. The most compassionate thing that you can do is help that kid avoid the so-called

trauma of going through the so-called wrong sex puberty. Both Able and Laura had experienced trauma and suffered distress before undergoing transgender surgeries and taking hormones to try to effectively escape their bodies. Wynne told me the initial sharp rise in young people identifying as trans or non-binary, which started about a decade ago, that typically takes hold of the most vulnerable, and that seems to track here. But Wynne also said that with this element of social contagion, really anyone is susceptible. We now live in a time that even kids who might not have been susceptible to this five years ago are catching on. So increasingly, I'm talking with parents of girls, who come from stable homes,

girls who are most likely straight, and girls who don't have as significant a history of other mental health concerns. And for those girls, with the current social pressures, there's so much guilt associated with being a straight, white, middle class girl. So then there's this kind of, I have to take shelter in this victim class

that will make me special and protected. Though politicians and most media have gotten on board with the idea that gender procedures are life-saving, Wynne has some countervailing advice. She says that what young people need is space to grow up. They need the same type of treatment from adults

that any young people do, which is we provide boundaries and senses to play within so that they have room to explore without doing anything that's going to mess up their whole future before their brains have even fully developed, which by the way takes until about 25 before

the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for long-term decision-making and impulse control is fully developed. Laura, having gone through this experience firsthand, she expressed the same sentiment. I'm a very vocal advocate of complete bans for transition procedures for minors, both medical and social, because children are not developed. They do not have the brains or bodies to be able to make long-term decisions about their reproductive and sexual health, and they just are not able to consent to these long-term procedures. And when I asked Abel would advice he'd give someone who's feeling gender confusion and is thinking about gender medical treatment, here's what he told me.

I would tell anyone who wants a transition that the transition will not save them. It would actually destroy their lives. Actually take a step back and think about this. for a while. Think about the actual negative side effects that nobody will tell you. Well, if there are 300,000 kids struggling with this, it sounds like we're going to get a lot more Laura's enables. Yeah, we certainly hope not.

Amanda, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire reporter, Amanda Press to Giacomo. And this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.