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IN MY ORBIT: DeTransitioners Are a Thing, and Could Blow the Lid off the Rush Towards Transgenderism

(AP Photo/Wilson Ring, File)

I have been listening to and reading stories about DeTransitioners: People who went through gender reassignment surgery, then had a change of mind and heart, and went back to their gender of birth. Those stories received a wider audience when March 12 was declared, “DeTransAwarenessDay”. These individuals used social media platforms to express their journey back to a new/old life.

These individual’s stories are heartbreaking ones. Having personally known three people who have chosen to change their gender, it is not surprising that detransitioning happens more than our Woke society wishes to acknowledge. While I love and support people no matter what, I also recognize that this push towards altering one’s body in such a drastic way cannot be healthy, and generally never ends well. The people I have known who have chosen this path are far from happy with their new bodies, and their lives are often adrift rather than anchored.

The toll embodied in the expense, psychological scars, and the butchery of the human body has yet to be quantified, because DeTransitioners and their stories are not welcome and are too often suppressed.

It’s a subject that is as messy as the actual transition or detransition process. Thanks to people like Keira Bell who transitioned to male, then detransitioned back to female, more light is being shone on this subject. Light that others would rather be extinguished.

Quillette tells some of her story:

“I look back with a lot of sadness,” says Keira Bell. “There was nothing wrong with my body. I was just lost and without proper support. Transition gave me the facility to hide from myself even more than before. It was a temporary fix.”

In the debate about transitioning children who experience gender dysphoria, Ms. Bell’s case represents an important turning point. Ms. Bell, now 23, was 16 years old when she presented to the Tavistock Centre in London, which runs Britain’s Gender Identity Development Service. In a landmark ruling delivered earlier this month, a British court upheld her claim that she’d been rushed through gender reassignment without proper safeguards. In addition to receiving treatments that left her with facial hair and a deep voice, Ms. Bell had a double mastectomy at age 20, and now faces a host of possible long-term side-effects, including infertility. As a result of the court’s judgment, Tavistock has suspended referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for young patients. Treatment will remain available, but new cases now will be subject to court authorization.

Keira Bell’s lawsuit has set a tremendous precedent and could pave the way for a change in not only the narrative, but in policy. Keira has also set up a crowdfunding website whose stated goal is to “protect gender dysphoric children from experimental treatment”.

Bell is a British subject, where gender transition is embedded in the NIH doctrine. Here in the United States, we are consistently being pushed in the direction of funding others’ gender dysphoria, and attempts to normalize it in the areas of sports, and most dangerously, the military. As my colleague Scott Hounsell wrote:

Frankly, I don’t give a crap what you do with your life.  What I don’t want is to be responsible for your own personal decisions, or for you to milk some government system for yet another freebie.  Just a few weeks ago, when it was announced that transgendered individuals were to be allowed to serve in the military, I posted my displeasure with this decision on social media.  Is it because I don’t like transgendered individuals?  No.  Again, I frankly don’t care what you do with your life as long as you don’t ask me to pay for it or require that I condone it.  Knock yourself out.

Indeed. But it has gotten to the point that the consequences of such a decision, the subsequent regret, and the fallout has not only affected the individual, but the society at large—especially when it comes to women’s sports and the military. The greater evil is forcing people of conscience to pay for such actions. It will be the Little Sisters of the Poor on steroids, and with the Leftist push toward censoring voices and labeling any opposition as “hate”, the odds are not in our favor.

So the fact that DeTransitioners are making themselves known, and also pushing a conversation on gender dysphoria is a welcome change. The current push toward transitioning people without exploring other avenues that could mitigate or cure the dysphoria, as well as the damage done when this happens, needs to be investigated.

The Quillette article continues,

As the data belatedly released by Tavistock itself show, blocking puberty is associated with a variety of adverse medical outcomes. This is hardly surprising, since puberty is a critical development period for many parts of the body, from the reproductive organs and skeletal system to the brain. In particular, puberty is a critical period for the development of strong bones that help prevent fractures and osteoporosis in adulthood. From a medical point of view, artificially halting puberty is a dangerous shot in the dark. Yet endocrinologists and other medical experts who’ve raised the alarm about puberty blockers in recent years have routinely been smeared as transphobic. We know of no other area of health policy in which alerting the public to clear and well-established health risks (among children, no less) is stigmatized in this way.

Thanks to voices like Keira Bell, as well as Walt Heyer, a man who transitioned to a woman and then back to a man, the stigma is being lessened, and the smear of being transphobic is losing its sting.

Heyer was one of the very first to launch a resource website for people looking for answers on how to change their lives back to what God intended. His story is a compelling one, and others have shared their story on the website as well.

Dr. Lisa Marchiano, a licensed clinical therapist and social worker, also works with detransitioners. While she does not work to stop anyone from choosing gender transition or detransitioning, from her years of practice and research, she feels this rush to label youth as transgender is misguided.

“We do need to make a space to help people,” she said in a BBC Documentary, The DeTransitioners.

Dr. Marchiano thinks it would be wise to,

“Slow transition down for adolescents and young adults, say under about the age of 25. We know that the pre-frontal cortex doesn’t finish developing until around then.”

“The truth is life is long. If you wait until you’re 25 the option is still open to you.”

She makes an excellent point. What is the rush? There are enough regrets that will occur in life, and even in our sexuality. Totally altering one’s body in order to correct a soul issue should not be one of them.


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