How Many Detransitioners Are Too Many?

Repost: PITT occasionally revists post from the past. This essay was originally posted on July 9, 2021

How many Detransitioners are too many before people start listening to parents?

I’m a parent of a trans identifying teen, and I know a lot about this subject and why a child would come to the conclusion that they are trans. I just want you to listen.

When I was a young girl I wanted to change my identity many times. I daydreamed about having different parents, different siblings and looking completely different. I also dreamed about being popular and hanging out with the rich and cool kids. In fact I journaled it. I wrote about my new name as well as the names of my new family.  I wrote many stories and fantasied about this new family and friends. If someone said take this pill and you could have this new life, I would have happily done that.  Would I have really left my family to have these things and would this have really brought me happiness?

I don’t see how promising vulnerable young children and teens a new body will make them happier. It certainly can’t possibly be healthier to take hormones and have body altering surgeries. But that is what is happening and encouraged with the transgender ideology today.

It’s not that there was anything wrong with my family, but the grass always seems greener on the other side, especially when you are young. I wasn’t trying to escape my family; I just was trying to escape myself - because I was unhappy. I was socially awkward, self-conscious, and only had a few friends. But as I grew up, along with maturity came confidence and acceptance. Having a little discomfort is not a bad thing. It builds resilience and character.

When I had my son, I wanted so much for him to never feel this way. I worked on his social skills and he was very social and happy. But something happened when he went through puberty; he became self-conscious and awkward. In today’s society, when kids look on-line they are told that if they are uncomfortable, they must be trans. So, when my son looked online, he too came to this conclusion.

My son was looking for a reason why he did not fit in with the crowd. Trans seemed to be his answer. Sadly and much to my dismay, all the adults in his life, except his parents, affirmed his self-diagnosis.

Kids who conclude out of the blue that they are trans have no proof that they will feel this way forever. Does an identity, which can change, of a developing young person, need to be medicalized? It might be an act of rebellion, or internalized homophobia, or an attempt to be different in order to fit in. There is a lot of evidence that this is, indeed, the case.

These kids who feel trans are often the ones who get bullied at school. They are the nerds, the gay kids, the autistic kids, and even the smart ones. Children are seen being influenced and groomed to transition in droves. It’s no surprise that, like most teen identities, when kids grow and mature, they reassess, just like I did when I realized I did not actually want to be a different person with a new family. It would have been disastrous for me if I had been encouraged and enabled to actually make this happen. And this is why there are now thousands of young adults detransitioning. There are 20,000 people on this detransitioner site alone, and many detransitioners agreed to be interviewed for 60 minutes recently, shining a light on this sad and difficult situation.

Parents, like me, are grateful for the detransitioners who have bravely been speaking out and telling their stories. We support you and hope your messages and videos somehow find their way to our children and influence them the same way the transition videos convinced them they were born in the wrong body. Our children need to know that the distress they feel today may not be a permanent condition. That others that have gone down that path have later regretted it deeply, sometimes after making irreversible changes to their bodies, and causing damage to their mental wellness.

It’s time for the public to take heed. Teenagers and young people are not suddenly wise, with fixed personalities and identities. Adolescence is a time of exploration and identity formation. Teens will always try on new identities for size, mix with the wrong crowd and learn from it, and rebel against their parents. This is no different and I think deep down we all know that gender ideology has no place in our kids upbringing. Please listen to informed parents, detransitioners, and researchers so that more young people do not mistakenly harm themselves. Drugs and surgery are not the answer. Safeguards need to be reinstated to prevent further needless suffering and to give kids what they deserve - a childhood with the space for them to grow and mature into their healthy bodies, and to move into adulthood with healthy bodies and minds.