Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep4: Diversity of Trans* Part 4 : Detransition and Gender Ideology

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Helena is one of many females who have experienced “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” where gender dysphoria seems to come out of nowhere and is allegedly brought on, in part, through social contagion. Helena talks honestly and opening about her journey where, as a teenager, she used to identify as trans* but later renounced that identity and detransitioned back to her biological sex as female. Helena believes she was brainwashed into this identity through various online social media sites such as Tumblr and Reddit. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. This is part four of our ongoing series called The Diversity of Trans, where we are highlighting just that, a diversity of people who are in some way in, in, or were in, or related to the broader trans conversation. One of my underlying points in the series is to show that there is just that, a diversity of perspectives and voices in the trans conversation. And on today's show, I have a new friend, somebody who I just met a few months ago, Helena Kirshner. Helena has a remarkable story. She is a growing, has a remarkable story. Uh, she is a growing, uh, one of a growing number of, uh, young females who experienced what psychologists have called, uh, rapid onset gender dysphoria, where they, according to Helen, his own story, as you'll hear, um, was, as she puts it, brainwashed by certain voices, especially media, social media voices,

into a certain gender ideology. She lived as trans for a couple of years, socially transitioned to cross-sex hormones and then detransitioned. cross-sex hormones and then detransition. And Helena is a, how do I say it? An outspoken critic of certain strands of a, of trans, certain aspects of trans ideology, if I can put it like that. I don't want to put words in her mouth.

I'll let her explain her story. She's incredibly sharp, very wise. Helena does not have like a, she's not, doesn't claim to be a Christian. Okay. So that I think it will help give a bit of context to her testimony, but I just had such an incredibly fascinating time talking to Helena. I've been following her on social media and reading lots of her stuff and she's all, she's fascinated. I've actually tried to get on the show for months and finally I got a hold of her. So Helena, thank you for finally answering my email. But this was a very, very provocative conversation. So I'm so excited for you to engage it. If you

would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw support show for as little as five bucks a month. And also, oh, today, today's the day. Today's the day. Today is February 1st, which means my book, Embodied Transgender Identities, the Church and What the Bible Has to Say, is officially out. It is launching today. It is available for order on Amazon or where books are sold, which basically means Amazon. So yeah, check it out and I hope you enjoy this show. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm here with Helena, and I feel like I need to give just a brief backstory. I've been watching lots of videos and testimonies from Helena for a couple years. Helena kind of doesn't have a clue who I am, so she said she was kind of nervous coming on like a religious podcast. And those of you who follow this podcast and YouTube channel are probably laughing at her nervousness because some of you are nervous about religious podcasts as well. So I just want you to, in your own private moment, give a huge warm welcome to Helena. Helena, seriously, thanks so much for being on this show. I'm so excited to finally talk to you. Thank you for having me. I'm really really interested and excited curious about how this is gonna go i really like talking about a lot of this stuff so and just maybe just to set my just to just to

get stuff out of the way for my audience like you you do have a catholic slash religious-ish background but you don't have like an explicit Christian commitment now. Yeah. 100% fine. My audience will be like yawning, like, great. Yeah, me too. You know, but just so my audience knows that that's where Helen is coming from. So why don't you, so I want to talk about your story as it pertains to the broader transgender conversation, but more in particular, for those who might know the term, the rapid onset gender dysphoria, or let's just forget terminology because that can be problematic, but just there has been a massive increase among teenagers, especially biological female teenagers identifying as trans or non-binary, gender fluid, gender queer. And that's that's raised a lot of debates and conversations and some have been really volatile.

And your story really does kind of intersect with that in really amazing ways. So why don't we just go back and I would love to hear your story and how you ended up identifying as trans, went down that route for a little bit and then ended up coming back and leaving behind that identity. Is that a good place to start? Is that a good way to set it up? Yeah, absolutely. So I'll try to give like a brief overview because it's actually like five plus years of just complete crazy. So when I was about 14, I was going through a period of my life that was pretty difficult. I was having a really hard time at school. I wasn't making good grades. I was being kind of like bullied and ostracized by mainly other girls,

but some boys too. And I ended up actually leaving school in the second semester of my freshman year of high school and just being at home, going to work with my mom and stuff like that while we tried to figure out what to do for my next year of school. And I was doing a lot of school online. And so during this time, and specifically over the summer, right before my freshman year, and then leading into that period where I wasn't at school, I started using Tumblr a lot. So I was spending a lot of time alone, a lot of time on my computer. I was really unhappy. a lot of time alone, a lot of time on my computer. I was really unhappy and I just felt really, really lonely and alone. So I started using Tumblr and at first it was just to look at stuff that I was interested in. So at the time I was just like little Christian girl. I really liked classic rock. I liked the Beatles. I like Elvis. I was really into like old Hollywood movies and stuff. Like I was very time warped. I would do like pin curls in my hair and stuff. I was like totally obsessed with that. And so I got on Tumblr because there was a small community of other like young girls who were similarly just weird and into that kind of thing. There wasn't a lot of us, I promise. But there was that little community of like 14, 15 year old girls who were

obsessed with the Beatles. And so it started off just me being in that community. But as I kind of started seeing what other interests people were having, like what books they were reading, what shows they were watching, I started branching out into some of that other stuff. And then as I started enjoying a lot of this, this new content and this new media, I started following more people and branching outside of that tight knit community of time warp teenagers because they were not social justice warriors. They were not, I guess, politically conservative, but there wasn't a lot of interest in all the gender nonsense. Like we were very much kind of like how to respect for the olden days, I guess. And so as I got really into Harry Potter and a couple of BBC shows, and so I started following that kind of stuff.

I really expanded what I was looking at. And that's when kind of the social justice stuff started coming into my worldview, my attention. And at first I thought it was very, um, I just didn't understand it. It wasn't a point of view that I was really familiar with. Um, I learned about civil rights when I was in school and stuff. And I kind of thought that was behind us. And then all this stuff started kind of hitting me. And there's a lot of stuff saying like, Oh no, racism is still a huge issue. Racism is still like the biggest issue that America is facing. Homophobia is the biggest issue.

Transphobia is the biggest issue. And so I kind of started feeling really guilty that I had ignored these huge, these apparently huge issues. And so I started educating myself more. And so I just went deeper and deeper and deeper and learning about all this social justice stuff. I made it a point to make social justice, um, something that I talked about a lot because I felt like it was my duty as a straight cisgender white girl. Um, and so once I had already fully adopted that kind of social justice worldview, then I started being able to relate to what they were saying about their bodies and their lives and their mental health

and how they were relating that to being trans. And I started making that connection personally for myself that I might be trans. So that's kind of how I started identifying as trans. It started out with me identifying as non-binary. So first I called myself a demigirl, which if you're unfamiliar with like all the crazy gender stuff, that just means you're like 90% girl, 10% not girl. Okay. So do with that what you want.

Just to clarify too, I guess from my audience, when you say 90% girl, 10% not girl, you're not talking about like a biological sex. You're not talking about like an intersex or medical condition where you have some ambiguity in your biology you're talking about like i mean i don't know how else to frame it but like you might resonate with gender stereotypes more on one end than the other i mean is it is it more complex than that or is that basically at the end of the day kind of what's going on there like um that's basically a way that you can look at it but it's less because the relationship that this worldview has to gender stereotypes is not as cut and dry as some outsiders make it seem it's more like gender or how you identify as is your subjective experience you define it however you want if you personally

define it along the lines of gender stereotypes that's valid but if you define it some other way that's valid too the whole point is that there is no objective standard or definition for these genders and they're all a personal subjective experience oh that's so that's helpful yeah when i said i was 90 girl in my head obviously i was connecting it to gender stereotypes but that's not really how i thought about it at the time i thought that like whatever girl meant i related to it a lot but not 100 so i wasn't sitting there saying oh well okay so i like wearing makeup but i don't like this or that i wasn't doing that kind of math that way it was purely just kind of like my personal emotions towards the idea of girl okay yeah that's good yeah yeah would you say you experience sorry i

wanted to i want you to keep going through a story i keep interrupting you but would you say you experience gender dysphoria at that time or a mild form of it? At that time? No, not really. So the closest thing that I experienced a gender dysphoria by that point was just kind of, um, being uncomfortable with my body, not specifically like the sexed aspect of my body, but just my body in general. Um, I was a little bit overweight and that was like the bane of my existence. I really despised my weight and my appearance at that time. So I had a huge problem with that. And I also, I've always just been very reserved with my body. And I didn't like the fact that I was getting sexual attention, both from boys my age, but also like occasionally like the random skeevy drunk dude. I absolutely hated it.

It grossed me the hell out. And the only other thing that I would say kind of I won't call it gender dysphoria because I think they're very normal experiences and they shouldn't be pathologized as gender dysphoria. But with the addition of the ideology, it ended up morphing into actual gender dysphoria. But so when I was a little, little kid, I was super like rambunctious and crazy. was super like rambunctious and crazy. And I was I had a very like, domineering attitude. And I just didn't really get along with other girls that well, like they didn't like me. And so I kind of ended up gravitating towards a lot of young boys. And that was kind of who I was friends with. And we would be doing crazy stuff, getting on our teachers' nerves, like trying to be as outlandish and crazy and destructive and rambunctious as possible. I just found that very fun. I found their style of playing a lot more fun than what I was seeing girls do, like kind of just sitting around on the playground and talking as opposed to like playing.

as opposed to like playing. And so as I kind of grew into puberty, the weird feelings about my body kind of made the experience of puberty even worse because I started noticing that my male friends were kind of looking at me differently now. Like it was kind of this transition from we're all kids, we're all just doing whatever. It's fine. It's chill to, Oh, now like you're a girl and your body is so different. And like, you're like, this is so different. And not that any of them were ever mean to me or anything. It was just like, like you just kind of the road diverges a little bit, or at least it's supposed to. And I didn't want to go the way in which I was seeing girls go. So that was really stressful for me. Um, but I, again, I think that's pretty normal. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't, you don't know this, but I've got three

teenage daughters and, um, I don't, I don't, yeah. I mean, based on personal experience, based on who I talked to, I think just, especially for females for some reason, I mean, true for males too. But going through puberty is not easy at all. Like especially in this day and age in our Instagram Photoshopped day and age, there's just so much pressure. And again, I think it is more for females i don't i don't think that's a inaccurate assumption but um my gosh it's brutal um yeah i know very few females who oh i love getting my period for the first time or i love my developing body or i love this

attention i'm getting from creeps and you know it it's just, it's anyway, it's, it's extremely difficult. But, um, and I speak obviously from somebody looking, looking from the outside, but, um, yeah, so yeah, I want to, yeah, I want to keep going. What, um, yeah. So you started noticing on Tumblr and Reddit and stuff, some trans people talking about their experience and you started to resonate with that. Can you, would love to hear more about that. Yeah. So it's kind of, it's very difficult to explain the kind of dynamics that there are on Tumblr.

The way that I look at it is Tumblr specifically is a universe of its own. Like it is its own little world they have their own almost like society with its own hierarchies and its own classes and social structures and customs and traditions and it's very much just like this alternate universe and so that does come into play with part of the reason why I was so inclined to interpret myself through the lens of how these other trans identified girls were interpreting themselves. little bit of a tradition on tumblr um of romanticizing and glorifying different dysfunctional ways of dealing with emotional distress so like um one that people are a little bit more familiar with is like the self-harm trend so back in like around 2008 2009 2010 it was a really big trend on Tumblr for mainly young girls, but some young boys too, to self-harm themselves and then make artistic photos and videos and

GIFs of the graphic self-harm that they were doing. And this was a very robust community of people that were doing this. People had entire blogs dedicated to doing this to themselves and sharing the art that other people were making with it. And it's actually there's a lot of research done into it that it correlates with the rise in self-harm in young girls, that it's like a social contagion, similarly to the trans thing but there's something that really appeals to young girls especially on tumblr about taking all of your teenage angst and kind of funneling it into this very romanticized idealized almost artistic almost spiritual way of handling it and of expressing it. So similarly to like the kind of self-harm thing, now it's like the same mechanism of people doing that, but it's with gender dysphoria. So you have these girls just like very overtly romanticizing the fact that they're trans and how hard it is to be trans and how they wear their binders for 16 hours a day and it hurts and they can't breathe, but they do it anyway.

And it's just like this very, I don't know, there's something very collective and like I said, almost spiritual about the way that they approach their distress using these mechanisms. And so as I was observing this, I was feeling myself having an intense desire to participate in that. And I was just looking at how much fun they seem to be having, bonding socially over this shared pain and this kind of like shared self-destruction that they also glamorize as being, you know, like becoming your authentic self, living your truth. Like, oh, it's so hard to describe, but I was observing that and I really just wanted to take part in it. And it seemed like the way that they were handling it, they were developing a community, they were finding meaning, they were finding purpose, and they were having the same exact kind of problems that I was having.

So they were interpreting the fact that they hated their weight, they hated their breasts, they hated being hit on by drunk dudes, they didn't fit in, they were bullied, they were ostracized, they, you know, had different interests and this made them feel othered. construct of this trans identity within this worldview of social justice where trans people are the martyrs, the victims, but also like the people that you need to look up to and give to and support. So that's my really weird, complicated explanation of how that happened, but I hope it made any sense. And did you, so you ended up fully identifying as you said, first non-binary and then trans. And then did you begin to transition on some level or? Yeah. So at first, like I said, it was demigirl. And then I switched to agender, which means you have no gender.

I felt very special for that at the time. And then around my junior year of high school, so this was maybe like a year and a half to two years into identifying as trans in the first place. Then I started identifying as a trans guy, a trans man, a trans male, what have you. And this, I believe, is because I actually started developing gender dysphoria. So all of those kind of body image issues that I was talking about before and that feeling of just not fitting in with girls and and as a child especially preferring to be around boys so much that feeling was something that the identity and the ideology really magnified so that feeling is what tied me to my community of other trans identified girls so despite the fact that i was kind of using the trans identity to cope with it,

it also became very magnified because of how important it was to maintaining that social circle. And so I started shifting from hating my hips because they were fat to hating my hips because they were female. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, sort of. Yeah, I can see the difference. I can cognitively notice the difference.

But experientially, yeah, there's going to be a distance. But that's it. So, I mean, I don't want to jump. I want you to keep telling your story. But when I hear your kind – and your story is not – your story is your story. And I want to, I guess your story, but I, when I hear your kind and your story is not, your story is your story. And I want to, I guess, reemphasize that like, this is descriptive, not prescriptive. This is one story and one story is one story. And yet your story is very similar to many stories. I feel like I keep hearing in my question, well, I've got about a thousand questions, but, um, um the line between gender dysphoria and simply body

dysmorphia or some kind of uncomfortableness with your emerging body especially teenage females that that's kind of blurry especially from somebody on the outside looking on it's like you know i'm developing breasts and i'm. I don't like guys looking at me. I don't like the fact that I have a period. I, you know, my hips are getting, my legs are getting, I feel uncomfortable. I feel a little overweight. Like all these things, I keep hearing older cisgender women kind of shrugging their shoulders and saying, welcome to womanhood. And yet there is something distinct called gender dysphoria and yet when you describe gender it's almost like it was kind of nurtured brought brought on even and nurtured by your social environment so it's hard for me looking on from the outside to

understand the stark difference between gender dysphoria and just simply body dysmorphia and simply being a teenage female in 2020. What am I missing or is my confusion somewhat legitimate? No, you're actually not missing anything. And you're looking at this in a much more correct way than a lot of the people who talk about gender dysphoria do, because there is an inherent problem in the diagnosis of gender dysphoria as it is listed in the DSM, where the symptoms that are supposed to make up gender dysphoria are so broad and so commonly experienced that technically you can have someone who, you know, like I have friends who are transitioning they identify as trans and

they have like literally I don't know how else to describe it but the way that their mind projects their body is the opposite sex to which like they literally like there's just something where they don't register themselves as the sex that they were born at and they never ever have. And they tell me about how like being a child, they were just like confused, not so much like distressed and suicidal and all this stuff that the trans activists try to play up, but just like they always interpreted themselves as the opposite sex. So you can have someone like that technically be diagnosed with the same exact thing as someone

like me who I didn't have that. I just had discomfort with my body that I later retroactively interpreted as discomfort with my sex. And so when we have this diagnosis of gender dysphoria that is so broad, this is kind of the logical conclusion where we're going to have people who are having perfectly normal experiences being pathologized as having a legitimate mental disorder and gender dysphoria in, you know, like kind of the, the way that I would prefer it be looked at, um, is a mental disorder. And there's even evidence. Um, I wish I remembered who did this study, but there was a study that, um, was looking at the neurology of people with gender dysphoria and found that they actually had differences in their brains in the areas that map, um, like your, your spatial understanding.

So how you understand where your body is in space and time, people with gender dysphoria actually have neurological differences in that part of the brain. So there is some truth to the fact that they're, they're literally just interpreting themselves differently than someone without gender dysphoria. Um, so that's a completely different situation than what I went through. And a lot of people don't like the diagnosis of gender dysphoria because it is, um, it's conflating something that actually might be, uh, a psychological or even a neurological disorder with perfectly normal experiences that are just part of growing up and getting used to your body and your social situation.

So I've got a few friends, what you're saying makes actually perfect sense. Um, to, to, from what I've learned over the years by talking to people, I mean, I've got friends who have had lifelong innate early onset gender dys early-onset gender dysphoria. Early-onset gender dysphoria as opposed to adolescent-onset gender dysphoria. These are kind of two broad categories psychologists make. I mean, early-onset can come,

it can be experienced as early, I think as two or three years old. The very earliest manifestations and experience of one's own sexed body and gender role, gender identity, whatever, has been of the opposite sex. And oftentimes, according to the studies, right, I mean, that can go away after adolescence. But for those that it doesn't, that it remains profound in a, I mean, severe, for lack of better terms the the i could think right now one two three friends of mine who have that story and when they hear stories of people maybe like yourself or people who have gone through this kind of like more social contagion and i want to come

back to that term too and hear your thoughts on that. They just have no red. They're like, I don't, I don't have any, I don't resonate with that at all. For me, being trans was not a glorified experience. It wasn't, I wasn't socialized into it. It was something that I hated. I wanted to go away. I've only felt from within and it's just, it's just very different. And yet what you're, I think what you're saying is that currently the medical diagnosis doesn't really distinguish between those two. Would that be correct, that there is a sloppiness that might be a little strong? Maybe it's not too strong. I'll let you define, put whatever word you want. And perhaps because of politics is not distinguishing between these two kind of somewhat different, maybe very different strands of gender dysphoria. Would that be accurate or would love to hear your thoughts on that?

Yeah, absolutely. I do think that this is very politically motivated because I don't know. Are you familiar with the fact that it was changed from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria? 2013. So yeah, exactly. And that's 2013 is actually incidentally the year when the, um, the spike in adolescent girls looking to transition skyrocketed. So it makes sense that broadening that diagnosis would correlate with – sorry, my cat is like – You can bring your cat in.

Your cat could totally be in the show if you want. Hey, buddy. He'll come back. He'll definitely be back. I want to see your cat before the show is over. Sure, sure. He likes ignoring me until I'm recording. He likes ignoring me until I'm recording.

So it makes sense that broadening that definition, that diagnosis of dysphoria and changing it from something that is focused on the overall incongruence, that like profound and total incongruence between the self-perception and the physical reality to a model of individual experiences of distress does that make sense yeah yeah totally yeah as uh profound and total incongruence between sorry hold on jesus okay i'll start my sentence over that's so funny you're awesome like so i i live in a really small apartment so i try to find him as much stimulation as i can and so the way i feed him is i put his kibble in like a little ball and then he rolls it around and i didn't want to be talking with him like slamming this ball against the wall oh that's so funny um oh shoot what was my last sentence uh you well yeah you're describing kind of people people that experience kind of this periodic discomfort versus this kind of total innate ongoing yeah

or even just like individual aspects of discomfort so what i classified as dysphoria was um you know at times hating my breasts wishing i had a flat chest fantasizing about um how freeing it might be to be flat chested and male and be able to wear loose tank tops and just like feel the wind on my skin and just like fantasizing about stuff like that and or like fantasizing about um just different experiences that I thought I might be able to have if I were male or um you know, disliking a certain part of my body. So I coped with that by wishing that it was, you know, like the male version of that body part as opposed to just like a complete identity mismatch. So I think like that that has to be a distinction. And especially if there is research showing that people with that kind of gender dysphoria have neurological differences, like we have to be aware of these differences in these distinctions because that might be the difference between someone who finds, you know, relief in a cosmetic physical transition versus someone who needs therapeutic help.

who needs therapeutic help. Thank you for that. That's super helpful. You made a reference to, you used the phrase social contagion. I think most of the people listening can probably understand what that means. But I just, I mean, you know this, but just my audience knows this,

like that, the idea that gender dysphoria could be a result of social contagion, that's super volatile right now. I mean, that can get you canceled. It can get you blasted, can get hate mail, maybe even death threats. you saying that for your individual experience, and I think you would say probably for other friends of yours and other people that you know in your community, or maybe a community that you used to be a part of, you would say that that, at least for some people, maybe a lot of people, social contagion has played a role, if not a causative role in the gender dysphoria. Can you just, I just want you to just unpack that for us. What is social contagion? How did it play a role in your story? And do you think that this is a factor in

especially teenage females identifying as trans today? So social contagion is a very wellocumented phenomenon, especially in the case of adolescent females. This population is well-known throughout history to have these kind of socially contagious methods for understanding distress. And that's really what it's based in. It's a way of understanding your distress in a way that connects you to other people. And this can be observed in anorexia and bulimia. This can be observed in self-harm. This can be observed in, you know, like the witchcraft crazes and various psychiatric crazes. This capacity for young girls who are going through unbelievably confusing amounts of chaotic

emotions. And oftentimes, if they don't have a supportive parental figure who is attuned to their emotions and is handling them in the right way that matches their needs, they're going to look for an alternative way to find social support for those emotions. And a lot of times, especially with the Internet nowadays, it's very easy to find people and naturally gravitate towards people out of this massive pool of millions and millions and millions of people that use the Internet. It's easy to gravitate towards people who are psychologically going through very similar things to you. And then along comes an idea that seems to really explain, really put the pieces of the puzzle together and makes you feel like you have a grasp on what you're going through. Like you have something to explain it. And even better with transition and anorexia and stuff like that, you have what you perceive as a concrete solution.

So you've got these young girls together, and young girls are highly, highly social creatures, more so than boys. Even though there is a version of the social contagion amongst boys, it just looks different. I'm not as familiar with it. But young girls are incredibly social. That period of adolescence is a major period for social development. So the urge to fit in socially and the urge to do things and make sacrifices and put in effort to find social acceptance is very well established through research to be a primary driving, motivating factor in adolescence. So you get all these adolescent girls together on Tumblr where there's no adults, there's no standards. It's like its own freaking universe of its own. You get them all together. They start socializing with who they're going to socialize with,

and they naturally gravitate towards other girls who are having the same issues as them. And then they start observing how other girls may be identifying as trans and interpreting themselves as trans. They feel the pressure to identify with some kind of marginalized identity because it's very uncool and it gets you socially ostracized to be, you know, to check all the boxes of privilege like me, except women. But women isn't really valued as oppressed that much on Tumblr. But straight, white, you don't really want to be any of those categories.

And if you are, remember, it's its own little society. You're almost like a second class citizen. You don't get to have opinions, any emotional issues that you're going through, they don't matter because your privilege basically cancels it out theoretically. And so you have a lot of incentive to look for ways to victimize yourself, to legitimize yourself in the social hierarchy. And so there's that aspect, the social aspect, the ideological aspect, all of those incentives to kind of victimize yourself. And then there's also the clinically understood model of social contagion in which young girls interpret their distress in a group setting.

Yeah. So I've read several studies that have documented the spike in teenage females identifying as something other i mean you can take the most okay so this is a kind of christian podcast you can take some very liberal atheist anti-christian bible hating jesus hating scientists who say okay um this is not like this is not there's something going on here like i have no problem with somebody transitioning i am all for trans rights this is not just normal what's going on here so what what like again as an outsider looking on i'm like this seems pretty disastrous because these females it seems like are being fast-tracked in some context maybe many context to medically transition whether it's extended use of cross-sex hormones maybe even top surgery typically not bottom surgery but um i mean these are um irreversible in many ways um that that just seems it seems concerning yeah do you see i mean you've been through this and i want to talk about your kind of

detransition stage two we haven't gotten there yet I mean, when you look at what's going on, I mean, are you concerned? Are you troubled? Like, I just would love to hear you speak into that. Because to me, looking on, it just seems very Orwellian. It seems very like, does anybody else see this? Like, is this – I can't believe we're doing this in a free society. Like, this is crazy that this is happening. Absolutely.

Absolutely. we're doing this in a free society like this is crazy that this is happening absolutely absolutely it um i'm i'm very concerned just because i was a part of this identity for so long and i had so many friends who were exactly the same as me doing when i look back on my friends that I used to have when I was trans online, they were going through the same mental process as me. They didn't have that theoretical form of gender dysphoria that might, you know, like we were talking about earlier, where it might be reasonable for someone like that to physically transition. They didn't have that. They were, you know, going through, you know, bullying. They had childhood trauma. They had a history of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, body dysmorphia. I had a best friend who like now is, you know, like she's had all her surgeries and they were botched and it's so sad, but she was raped in middle school. But she was raped in middle school. And it's so clear to me now that the reason that she, you know, did all these things to herself and saw herself the way that being on Tumblr and I remember being in LGBT groups that I used to be in. And then I juxtapose that with these skyrocketing numbers.

I just know in my heart that 99.9% of the young girls who are transitioning should not be doing so and it's going to hurt them in some way physically psychologically socially with their families it's gonna do more harm than good in the long run and that is my opinion yeah i feel it's true and i'm i'm you know it might sound a little bit harsh, but that's the truth. So, yeah, this podcast, I don't even know the name of the podcast. It's called Theology in the Raw. We're allowed to be super raw. As my audience knows, I often think out loud and I might change my mind next week.

Like, and it's OK. This is a free thinking podcast. So I appreciate your honesty. I mean, you I obviously it was kind of a casual remark but 99.9 percent like that's pretty bold like some people would say well no the studies show that the opposite that 98 percent of people are happy with their transition that yes you have a few odd cases of detransitioners you also have a few people that got autism through a vaccine but that doesn't mean like vaccines cause autism how would you respond to that perspective that sure helena that's your story and maybe you

have two or three friends that have a similar story but that for the overwhelming majority of even well we'll just say i'll just play the narrative teenagers who are pursuing transition who have gender dysphoria if they didn't do this, they would kill themselves. They would commit suicide. They would be self-harming. They would be clinically depressed. And for the overwhelming majority, this is actually helpful. In fact, your message, Helena, is very harmful. I'm sure you get that a lot. And for me to respond to that, I'm a cisgender white male i'm even have one lower check mark than you do on the intersectional um hierarchy um yeah would let me hear your

thoughts on on that kind of argument so there's a lot to unpack there because that entire argument that you just uh laid out for me is not based in any reality or truth whatsoever. So when you look at the studies, and I'm familiar with most, if not all of them, these studies about how many people regret and how many people transition, they are done in an extremely dishonest way. So one of the most popular ones that people get, I think the statistic of like 0.2% of people regret how they measured regret. First of all, their pool of people that they took this from was people who were actively enrolled in their gender clinic. A lot of times what happens when you detransition

is you just stop going. That's what I did. I just stopped going. I didn't continue going to the same place that was just going to, you know, push me down the same road that I had just been going on because I was realizing, oh, my God, this is a mistake. This is ideological. I was having all these realizations. And there was just no purpose for me to go back to that clinic and continue enrolling myself there. There was no purpose at all. So what they did was they only asked people who were actively like actively going to appointments for their gender transition. Obviously, the amount of people who are going to express regret in that scenario is low, because most of the people who regret don't just keep going back to their same gender clinic, they go find a real doctor. same gender clinic they go find a real doctor and the other point is that the way that they measured regret was people who get reversal surgeries done and there's a lot of people

who don't get reversal surgeries done because there's not really such thing as a reversal surgery if you get a mastectomy you can go get silicone implants but it's not going to be the same thing as your breasts and a lot of, they don't want silicone implants. They want their freaking breasts back. So they don't end up doing that. Or with, you know, God forbid, a bottom surgery that you regret, there's really nothing that you can do. Like, it's just, you just have to live with it. And I guess there's technically some experimental something that they can do. But most people, they're not going to put their bodies through that. They already feel damaged enough.

They're not going to do it. So they usually just stop going to the clinic. They try to find a real doctor who isn't just going to, you know, be like, oh, I don't know. They try to find a real therapist who isn't going to be like, oh. But most of the time these people are just kind of stuck aimlessly wandering around looking for help and so when you have a study like that that it one um takes a sample size that is not going to be representative of people really and and these experiences and then you measure regret in a way that does not really measure regret and is

not really in tune to the experience of people who do regret their transition to me that seems intentionally dishonest it's not an honest attempt to understand what people are going through how many people are having what kind of experiences and the data reflects that it doesn't reflect the true reality of what's happening because i know just from like my personal friend groups from when i was trans it's way more than 0.2 percent of people detransitioning really okay it's more like almost all of my close friends really close friends not people close friends desisted before they ended up going on hormones or anything or detransitioned and it's just like the

the community of detransitioners has blown up in the last two years and it continues to blow up there continue to be more and more and more people. Recently, there were two popular trans YouTubers, trans men who detransitioned. YouTubers that I used to watch, who influenced me, ended up detransitioning recently in the last six months or so. One of them is a personal friend of mine now. So when I look at the reality that I see, and I look at the dishonest organization of a lot of these studies and then I look at the data that these studies are trying to reflect and then I look at the people who are conducting these studies who are very ideologically biased yeah that just to me um shows that there is no real objective data into this phenomenon and we need to go by what our eyes see we need to face reality would you so when i look at the studies now i've probably

read a lot of the same stuff you have when it comes to somebody who has experienced severe early onset ongoing gender dysphoria where it hasn't desisted through adolescence okay so since they're two or three that kind of like deep down in a they go through adolescence they still experience dysphoria it is extremely severe they wait it out they try to whatever get therapy and they end up maybe transitioning in early adulthood that um the six i mean i'll put in quotes success rate of that kind of transition might look different than the population that you're a part of this kind of you know teenage you know last few years um rapid onset gender dysphoria, you know, there's some sort of social contagion and they transition, um, without really a solid, you know, diagnosis. It's kind of like they come in and I'm going to talk to you about how easy it is to get testosterone, but, um, you

know, they come in maybe a half hour consultation, maybe, maybe a two hour consultation, but they're diagnosed with gender dysphoria, bam, they're given the prescription. Those seem like really two different cases. So my question is, are these studies of regret and detransitioning, are they distinguishing between these two very different kinds of gender dysphoria? I think the answer is no, that they're not. And in a sense, the rapid onset stuff is so recent that it's almost like we can't we don't we can't do any longitudinal studies like have you been satisfied for the last

10 years like well i just transitioned three years ago you know i'll let you know in seven years um would that be accurate to say that they're not really distinguishing between two different kinds of just gender dysphoria or transgender phenomenon? Yeah, absolutely. There really isn't any distinction. A lot of the times it's because the studies were just done like 20 years ago. Like there's one that gets cited that was done in something like 1994. And it's like that has nothing to do with the current demographics

of who is transitioning. Most of these people were adult men, not teenage girls. Very different situation. And then what was I going to say? Well, the longitudinal too. There's only been a couple studies, I think, that have been longitudinal that are actually asking people like 10 years after the transition and doing a legitimate sample size with a control group and so on. I don't see that. I mean, the few that have had been done have shown a lot more regret, I think, than the

ones that, you know, as they're walking out of the clinic, are you happy? Yeah, dude, I'm thrilled. Or even, and maybe this is a good segue, testosterone. When females take testosterone, testosterone just, from what I understand, chemically produces extreme euphoria short term. Like early on, if anybody injects themselves with high doses of testosterone that that that's going to feel amazing for a month six months maybe even a year um i forget how long i think you were on testosterone for a couple years can you walk us through just your individual experience with testosterone what did that look like? Feel like? Um,

yeah. So in the beginning, you're kind of right. I wouldn't describe it as a euphoria because I was still like, I was really unhappy and I was really uncomfortable, but it's almost like a sense of like strength. Like you just kind of feel a little bit more aggressive. You feel a little bit less like sensitive. You feel less, um less like sensitive you feel less um like things people say hurt your feelings you kind of just you respond more angrily as opposed to like you know when i'm not on testosterone if someone says something that hurts my feelings like i'm more likely to you know take it personally and get down on myself whereas when i was on testosterone and something hurt my feelings i didn't have that like soft emotional reaction. I had more of like what the fuck kind of reaction.

And so that does make you feel good in a way. But for me personally, I didn't really enjoy the way it felt because it was also just so foreign. It was so different. It was so confusing. And it was such a strong and overpowering feeling. It wasn't like minor changes. It was like, I felt like a different person. And so that was really, really uncomfortable for me. But for the first few months, I did have like a little honeymoon period, like probably for

the first three or so months, I was just like, yay, woohoo. I love my life. I love being trans. But eventually, like, yeah, it just caught up to me. And a lot of the like situations in my life that I was avoiding caught up to me. And I just became seriously, severely miserable and dysfunctional. Really? So how long did you maintain testosterone? And when did you end up getting off of it and what did that feel like? I was on it for 17 months. So a little over like a year and yeah, whatever that is. 17 months. I was trying to do the math too. And I was like three years, 12 months.

Like what? I think it's about a year and a half. Let's it's about a year and a half. Let's just say about a year and a half. Yeah, let's go with that. So I was on it from August 2016 to late February in 2018. Okay. Yeah, that sounds about right. And then, yeah, around late February 2018 I decided to go off of it because I had the big regret wash over moment where like I had been trying to repress it and not

think about it and just like use all sorts of excuses as to why like it wasn't true like I wasn't actually regretting it if i just kept going it would be okay and then eventually i had a moment where it just all came out and i had this major reconcile reconciliatory moment with how much i regretted what i did wow how did that um how did that go over with your new friend group the community that you're involved in like i i've heard um that people who used to identify as trans umbrella terms on some level when they detransition the community that once surrounded them and loved them and were committed to them um it doesn't go well would that be your experience and and why i'm curious why why

you think that is because again one story is one story is one story like this is your individual narrative we're supposed to respect individuality individual narratives like what is it about your if it was if it didn't go well like why can't they say hey um i love being trans but if this isn't working for you then great how can i support you um that seems like the normal human response but um it's kind of like two things at play so So one is like the ideological issues. So people are more likely to accept that you've detransitioned if your views on transition and gender and the trans community, if you don't express anything against any of that. If you completely toe the line ideologically, you just simply choose not to be on testosterone anymore. you just simply choose not to be on testosterone anymore, that is more likely to be accepted than if you detransition and you start thinking, hey, this whole thing is kind of a sham.

That is oftentimes what really gets you excommunicated more so than the act of detransitioning itself. But for a lot of people, the changes in beliefs coincide with the detransition because the experience of detransitioning shows you how flawed those beliefs are so it's it's rare that you'll find a detransitioner who is you know still completely in favor of kind of like the trans queer social justice sphere um and then on the other hand there there is kind of this feeling, like I described earlier of like misery loves company. Like you want, you are bonding with people because you're together in that like shared misery of your oppression and your dysphoria and all this kind of stuff. So when someone, you know, leaves that or, you know, find something better

for themselves, it's really easy for people who are still stuck in that place to lash out. And I know that that's what I did to friends who had detransitioned before I did. Or I remember like, I had a friend who she, she hasn't detransitioned fully, but there was a time when she was having like a crisis moment and she texted me and she was like, I think I need to do transition. Oh my God. Like, I think I'm, I think I regret this. And I spent like two hours talking to her, talking her down from detransitioning. And when I look on it, I know when I look back on it, it's because I was afraid of losing someone who was my one of my best friends in that like miserable pool that we shared together. I was afraid of her growing and leaving me. OK.

And so I tried to keep her in there. And there have been other friends who have just totally desistered, detransitioned. And they said, fuck this. I don't want to. This isn't my thing anymore. And I actually did lash out against them because I was like, how dare you? How dare you leave me? And so there's kind of there was kind of it's kind of a feeling like that alongside the intolerance for dissenting opinions. What would you say? I appreciate that.

That's that's super helpful. What would you say to the critic who thinks that rapid onset gender dysphoria? And again, I guess we haven't really unpacked that term too much. I've talked about it on the podcast before, but this, you, I mean, people like you who have gone through some kind of social contagion, being nudged towards identifying as trans, this rapid spike in teenage females, especially identifying as trans. What would you say to the person who says, I think this is a myth. This is wrong. This is made up. This is harmful. The whole idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria or everything that you're saying, okay, maybe this is, yeah.

What would you say to somebody who just doesn't really believe that this is a thing? Have you, first of all, have you seen that? Cause I feel like I see it quite a bit and I'm kind of shocked. It's like you, you can acknowledge that people,

there are actual trans people, like people would experience dysphoria and that transitioning might produce a more happy life for lack of better terms. You can acknowledge that and acknowledge that there is a thing called rapid onset gender dysphoria. What would you say to this person who doesn't believe that this thing exists? Well, it's really difficult to talk to people like that because oftentimes the reason that they're denying it is for personal emotional reasons. And it's difficult to use a logical argument against them because if they were capable of thinking logically about this, they would see that it's not a myth. And that, you know, a complete demographic shift from transitioners being majority adult men to being vast majority teenage girls and then

looking at the documented clinically recognized phenomenon of social contagion in this particular population in the exact same way like if you look you know, the social circles online that cause girls to develop anorexia, it's, it's such a parallel to the gender dysphoria thing. I've written about this a lot on like my Twitter and stuff. Like I've even taken, um, popular posts from both communities and compared them and they're like fricking the same thing verbatim about different aspects of the body. So you just look at this and you just, through virtue of common sense, you can see that there's something going on here. And for someone to completely deny that and say that it's all a right-wing myth and transphobic dog whistles and stuff like that,

there's just no really logic in with them. You brought in right-wing. I guess I don't even know the answers to this but just just curious so my audience knows i mean would you consider yourself right wing republican uh probably not republican but i do kind of i have more of a conservative, I guess, like orientation. Like I just kind of, I, I gravitate towards, and apart from my social justice phase, um, that kind of was a weird one-off where I got like possessed. But before that as a younger person and then now, like I just have,

I have more of an inclination towards, you caution temperance like respect for um you know yeah past and order and hierarchy and standards and taboos like i have kind of a respect for that and i don't really see progress for the sake of progress as a good thing. I don't really see a lot of the like kind of more emotional, like compassion-based approaches to policy and views to be in line with how I look at things. So in that sense, I would say I lean more conservative, but I don't see myself as belonging to any sort of political ideological group. I love it.

I wouldn't call it Republican. Your Twitter picture is hilarious. You must get so many emails on that. Okay, so for my audience, I don't even know your Twitter handle because I have it like it's just in there, but it's LaCroix's or something. I changed it. Oh, you did? Now it's La Croix or something. I changed it. Oh, you did?

Now it's Mental Hellcat. Oh, okay. Yeah, so you can put it in the description or wherever you put that stuff. So I changed it. So it's legible now. People can pronounce it. It's a good thing. Okay.

Do you still have the same picture of Ben Shapiro? Yeah, I do. I'll never take that back. So this girl's got a picture of ben shapiro with the meme of like come to me my trans children it is so amazing i got people like what wait what wait who and yeah so like So like if I can ask, I mean, sexually, do you identify as lesbian, bisexual or? Straight. What's that?

Straight. You do? Yeah. I thought you were bisexual or was that, is that a whole nother podcast? No, it's hard. I used to think I was bisexual, but I realized so. I was in a pretty long relationship with a woman who also used to be a trans man. And like, we got into a relationship when we were both very confused. And like, in my head, a trans man was the same as like a biological man. man. So we ended up like becoming really close friends. And then I guess just like, got confused. And it was a really insane part of my life. So this was we met like right after my mom and I had a huge fight, a huge falling out, where we both ended up blocking each other and not talking to each other for like six to 12 months. And so we met right after this. And I

just really needed like support i really needed someone and she was going through something very similar and we were both like on this trans thing we both called each other like gay trans men or whatever just very very confused and so we ended up just like locking together like very quickly very strongly just like completely merging together and becoming each other's like support system in a pretty unhealthy way um and so that lasted for a long time and it wasn't very good or healthy for either of us and after we ended up breaking up or like probably six months before we ended up breaking up I started realizing that like oh shit I'm not attracted to women this is not working this is not going to happen this is really unhealthy the only reason we're together

like this is because we kind of bonded over these traumatic experiences that happened to us. And so I started realizing I was straight and then we eventually broke up. And then now, now that that's over and I don't have that influencing me anymore, it's very clear that I got majorly confused and I am pretty much straight as it comes. So I, I, I'm sorry. This is, I know this is not on the air like it's live, but this is going to be on the podcast. I have so many questions. This is going to be

for my audience. I'm just going to ask a question that... Is this a question? Okay, so don't cancel me. I mean, would you say in at least let's just say in your individual experience was your sexuality influenced by social contagion or maybe like like nature nurture are you born gay or does society make you gay and all the research says it's a complex blend of both nature and nurture. We don't want to know causation.

We're complex human beings. Let's not try to separate it all out. But would you say that your life experience played a role in nurturing even your sexual identity? Because that's really kind of – and just so you know, I identify – I'm a Christian. I'm an evangelical. I do not endorse reparative therapy. I don't think it's good or healthy to try to change someone's sexual orientation. And yet I would say that sexual attraction is complex.

Lisa Diamond, a lesbian psychologist, has done a lot of research on the fluidity, especially of female sexuality. And even she came out with a paper in 2015 or 16 saying, I was wrong. Male sexuality is pretty darn or damn fluid as well. I forget how she put it. We're complex. Humans are complex. So that's kind of where I'm coming at it from. And yet I don't want to give fodder to those who run, I don't know, ex-gay ministries or whatever.

And I have friends in that arena and God bless you, whatever. But I'm trying to formulate my question. My question is, in your individual experience, would you say your sexuality also had some level of social contagion or social influence? had some level of social contagion or social influence so i think that like in terms of sexuality there is such a thing as like an innate biological sexuality like i don't believe that there is anything you could do to me any brainwashing you could put me under any therapy that you could do to me that would make me not be physically attracted to men. I don't think that exists. But I do think that especially for women,

and especially for women who have either sexual or relational trauma of some sort, there is a way that sexuality can be fluid enough that you can interpret certain strong emotions or connections as attraction or as arousal. Even if you are in a particular situation, I don't think you can just take the average like any person and brainwash them into being a different sexuality. But I think with the right course of events the right mental space the right um just conditions that a certain person is in it is plausible that they can interpret things as attraction that they might not objectively really pursue in an optimal state of social and mental health i read somewhere just recently that there's been studies done on teenage,

young teenage girls, how it's very common for them to have a crush on their, on their female best friend or something like that. And, and, and that, what does that even mean? Crush, like some sort of emotional attachment, some sort of admiration of their body. Is it jealousy? Is it desire? Is it sex? You know know it's just from when i and i think this has been verified by the studies like female typical not exclusive but female typical sexuality blurs together sometimes emotional attraction fantasy attraction envy sexual attraction romantic attraction like all these things are much more blurry whereas guys typically just want to have sex like and again not exclusively but

typically they have these real clear compartments of i want to have sex with this human i don't want to with this human i'm emotionally attracted that human i'm not to that but for women it can be a lot more blurry um i know i don't think that's that debated but it is very unkosher to talk about sexuality in more fluid, flexible terms. I think because of the fear of the ex-gay evangelical kind of doing electric shock therapy to make gay people straight, which again, I think is not okay. So how much more time do you have, Helen? want to i'm already taking you over an hour um are you okay a couple more i'm good you're good okay because i have like about a thousand more questions but i'll only limit it to a couple more what so i i um and i i haven't explained my ministry fully to you the work that i, but I get a lot of emails from parents

with kids that were basically a 14-year-old Helena, 15-year-old Helena. One in particular, I mean, I could tell you dozens of emails that I get, and it's really... I don't know if you can believe me. Oh my gosh. One recently told me um she lives in california she said my 14 year old daughter has demanded that i go get her testosterone and if i don't do this for my daughter and don't use preferred pronouns don't call her by her preferred name don't get her testosterone she's going to report me to child services and in california i will lose custody of my child that's an extreme case but i get a lot of more versions of that basically

my child is so adamant that they are trans non-binary um what what do i do my i guess my question to you is what would you um i want you to speak to parents here for a second um but almost like what would you want somebody to have told your 15 16 year old self when you were wrestling with all this stuff is there is there hope that a parent can get through to their child not necessarily to convince them that they're not trans, but to say, let's not take drastic, irreversible measures while you're 15. What would you say to a parent that's wrestling with that? So this is very complicated. I have written about it a little bit.

I have like a little advice column that I do here and there where I like parents will ask me questions and I'll respond long form. So I can actually link you to that and I'll respond long form. Um, so you, I can actually link you to that and you can put it in your description or on your website or whatever's, um, I welcome the questions. I do ask that people read over the ones that have already been answered before sending in there, but I do welcome them because I think the most important way of helping individual, you know, young people who are in my position is to strengthen, you know, that family connection and strengthen the family communication. Because one of the most destructive things about all of this is the effect that it has on the family. And if my mom could have had someone like me to tell her what to do and what not to do, I would probably be in a better place.

But so there's not really one specific thing that you can say. And I think that a lot of parents, when they're faced with this kind of like emergency situation, because it does feel like an emergency. And in many ways it is like, if you are literally faced with your child is telling you that if you don't let her take cross sex hormones that will affect her for the rest of her life she's going to report you to child services and destroy your whole family if you're faced with that that's an emergency and so what we want to do when we're confronted with an emergency like this is we want to fix the problem we want to know what to say we want to know how do you crack the code? How do I change my daughter and make her not do this? How do I, how do I fix this? And that approach is not going to work most of the time because the reason that these girls are doing

this is not for logical reasons. They're not doing this because, you know, like they've had some kind of years and years of analysis and therapy that has brought them to this logical conclusion. They're doing this because they're swept up in a highly emotional social current. that a young girl can be so angry towards her parent over this trans stuff is because there are some kind of feelings and some kind of tensions between the child and parent that the child is acting out through this and so when you have the parent focusing on how do I stop my child from doing this in the child's perspective that is just yet another example of the parent not listening, of the parent not caring, of the parent trying to control, trying to domineer. So what you need to do in this situation is look underneath the surface level conversation

of, I want testosterone, don't take testosterone. You need to look beneath that and you need to look at what that child is communicating in this very messed up and complex way. And that's going to involve a lot of humility on your part, a lot of, you know, silencing yourself on your part, and a lot of just letting your child talk and listening as much as you possibly can to any kind of information that that child is sharing that is going to help you understand their mental state and understand what emotions they are coming from and what truly is motivating this because they're not really motivated by wanting testosterone

their desire for testosterone is motivated by some kind of emotional complex underneath the surface you need to try to understand that and communicate with that part of the child, if that makes sense. Because if you're just staying on this surface level, arguing over testosterone, telling her, no, it's irreversible, you're going to regret it. That's not addressing the problem. That is just reinforcing the child's belief that you're a transphobe, that you don't care, that you don't want them to be happy. And whether or not they develop that belief through, you know, actual tensions that exist in the family or because of the outside influence of the ideology,

that doesn't matter. They still have that belief and you need to get under it and you need to meet that child on the very emotional level and you need to create a safe and open and welcoming space for all of those confusing and crazy and irrational and illogical emotions to just play themselves out and that's the only way that your child is going to process it and get through it and get to a place where they don't feel like they need or want the testosterone or the transition or the name change anymore because those emotions that are causing that desire and are causing that reliance on the social circle and the ideology are not

going to be strong anymore and they're going to have a foundation aka the relationship with the parent a supportive open loving communication where the child knows that no matter how crazy or confusing their emotions are they can bring them to the parent and the parent will receive it openly instead of criticizing instead of trying to persuade instead of trying to change anything and so that's the most important thing that you need to do there's not really a thing that you can say or show them the more you try to show them articles and videos and make rational arguments, the worse it's going to be, and the more angry and upset you're going to get. And so you really

need to take care of yourself. As a parent, you need to be kind to yourself, you need to, you know, be compassionate with yourself for the mistakes that you probably made up until this point. But you always have a chance to change your approach and to offer your child that safe, emotional landing space that they're looking for in the trans community. Because I promise you, if they can get that from their parent, they will prefer that over the trans community anytime. Helena, for somebody who doesn't identify as a Christian you sure sound a lot like Jesus I mean I yeah I I that could be a whole other podcast that that that's

that's that that was brilliant advice um I i'm curious because i have recommended on a couple of occasions parents who have kids in in your situation early teens wrestling with their gender identity um i have recommended you know what they're like hey can you talk to them i'm like no yeah you don't want a white straight cisgender male who's i'm 44 that's just no matter what i say it's not going to go well but i do know these four um young 20 something females who have been through this it's called the peak resilience project and i push people to your videos um as maybe if they hear somebody who is a few years ahead of where exactly they are, they don't have an explicit religious commitment,

so they can't say, oh, a bunch of religious homophobes. You know, they're just like, no, there's people that are just human and just have been through this. Have you? Is that good advice or no? Would you say that, like, watching you and Dagny and your friends, is it Kiara and others, like, to me it's super powerful. Here's several people who have kind of been through this,

can speak the language, know the language. Would you recommend that or not necessarily? Having a 15-year-old watch some of your guys' videos, have you seen success from that or no? I would recommend showing it to the parents so that the parents can have some more insight, but I wouldn't recommend the parents showing it to their kid. And that is because there is a certain amount of mental readiness that a child needs to have to be open to something

like that. And despite the fact that, yes, it's true, you were in that position and we came out the other side and here is our wisdom and analysis from all that. A child who is closed minded, their literal freaking thinking skills are not developed to the point where they can entertain ideas that are different from the kind of like emotional or rational ideas that they're having right now, because a 15 year old brain is very different from a 21 year old brain. It's just going to make them feel more attacked, more misunderstood. You want to avoid anything that will come across to the child as you're trying to change them. You're trying to persuade them. You want everything you do to be about inviting. You want to invite that child in, not give them stuff and, and, and push stuff onto them from inside you, if that makes sense. Helena, you're amazing. This has been, I want to, yeah, we'll, we'll close out. Thank you so much

for being on the podcast and the YouTube channel. Um, I can't wait for people to watch this and I, I so appreciate you just your heart, your honesty and your wisdom. Seriously. I wasn't just joking. Like you, you're, you're, um, your advice and knowledge. I just want lots of people to tap into that. Cause I think in the work that I do, I've got a lot of people that just need some help and I think they're going to really cling to this conversation. So thank you so much for giving up an hour and 17 minutes of your time to come talk to us. Where can people find you again, if they want to know more about you? Yeah. So my Twitter is, that's the only real social media that I use. It's mental hell cat. So mental hell cat. It's kind of a pun on mental health care, but And a peak resilience. Is that, I mean,

you guys don't put out a lot of videos, but it's there on YouTube. I mean, is that still a thing that's happening? I mean, It's still on YouTube, but we have disbanded. Really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Just due to like wanting to do our own things there was some uh disagreements within the group that just weren't really reconcilable okay okay okay that's peak resilience pi how do you spell peak so there's there's several videos you guys already have out that it would be super helpful even if it's not something that's continuing on.

So thanks so much for being on, Helena. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. Take care. Thank you.