Support Detransitioner Awareness Day on March 12th

It was 4 p.m., and I was rushing to meet Helena for dinner. Yes, Helena, the detransitioner who writes beautifully, has been interviewed on the podcast Gender: A Wider Lens, and has been one of the many bold and selfless young people who are willing to expose their inner selves, flaws, and strengths. She is such a courageous woman, I was feeling nervous about being in her presence. As I dressed and ran through the questions that I would ask her, I hoped they were interesting and poignant. I don’t think that I could have been more excited had I been meeting a movie star.

On the way there, I called the other ROGD mom who was going to the dinner to see if she felt the same way I did. Of course, she did. All of us parents who are horrified by society’s willingness to disfigure our children hang on every detransitioners’ and desisters’ words. We want to learn from this incredibly resilient group because they are so wise and have X-ray vision through the door of our children’s pain. They can enable us to better understand and help our children.  

We are not looking at the detransitioners to be our saviors or warriors, as they have earned their right to stay out of the political fray—but their stories do provide us with guidance and hope. Hope is a feeling in short supply for us.

Every parent who is struggling to find a pathway out of this new-world gender jungle remembers the date, place, and method of his or her child’s trans announcement, similar to the general populations’ memories of 9/11, the first Covid-19 lock-ins, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Following Pronouncement Day, we all searched online to find out what the $%^& was going on. We wondered how our child, who exhibited no prepubescent body discomfort or previous identity angst, suddenly became determined to adopt a new identity. We racked our brains to discern whether our child experienced some trauma and asked ourselves what we did wrong as parents. We read any and all available books, joined parent groups, and desperately sought out non-affirming therapists.

Now we obsessively listen to Benjamin Boyce’s 30-plus interviews with detransitioners. We binge on detransitioners’ YouTube videos, hanging on every word. While their transition experiences sadden and horrify us, we are encouraged by the courageous journeys they took to detransition, and we know they are uniquely capable of helping us understand our own suffering children and become better parents to them.  

We hear their raw emotions as they explain how society failed them. We hear the detransitioners’ misplaced guilt. None of us believe that they are to blame—not one iota, not even a teeny tiny bit. The term “trans scum” sickens us. We know that they were lured with false promises and given easy access to harmful drugs. It matters not whether they were minors or middle-aged when they got caught up in the web. Like the Sirens beckoning the sailors to their destructive shores, the purveyors of quick-fix medicine calls were irresistible, relentless, and widespread. No other passage was offered. Only one side of the narrative was presented (and still is). Yes, we know “transitioners” are completely and utterly blameless. They didn’t stand a chance.

One cannot turn on the TV without a program showcasing a trans person, e.g. Billions. trans person. Even cartoons have trans themes.  Jeopardy announces the "winningest woman", a man who believes that he is a woman. New Yorker Magazine covers glorify and help promulgate trans identified people. Movies glamourize “trans” and make it seem edgy and modern, e.g  Sex in the City reboot. Red carpets showcase Jazz Jennings. Democrats have LGBTQ+ key words and their preferred pronouns in their profiles, e.g. Beto O'Rourke, and Katie Porter.  The Ivy League institutions and the masses pretend that William is a woman as he cheats his way to notoriety swimming for Penn.

Ironically, detransitioners are banned from participating in this new inclusive world. Their existence is barely allowed to be mentioned in the media. James Caspian’s research was shut down. UCLA stopped a study on detransitioners, in response to trans activists claiming it was harmful to the subjects and could create gate-keeping. Jack Turban of Stanford makes a career out of manipulating data so as to reach his desired false conclusions. Madeline Deutsch, M.D., the newly elected president of USWPATH when referencing detransitioners, motioned air quotes, a clear indication that this group does not really exist in her mind. During the USPATH 2021 Scientific Symposium’s Virtual Town held on November 7, 2021 which was open to the public, she outright banned any discussion about “detransitioners”.  

WE HAVE THE DETRANSITIONERS’ BACKS AS THEY HAVE HAD OURS  

We, the parents, say thank you to the detransitioners: the brave and outspoken; the fragile and isolated; the angry and frightened, the misunderstood and abandoned, and the unseen and unheard. We see them. We hear them. We will fight for them. We will stand up for them and with them.  

On March 12, 2022, the second annual Detransition Awareness Day, we will support detransitioners. We have created a website and a YouTube channel to commemorate the day and give an easy step tutorial for those who want to create an event. It’s easy to show support, a poster and selfie will suffice. We will be in towns and cities holding signs and banners, showing the country that they exist and that their needs are unmet. We will explain that our government and medical establishment failed them.

We will be mailing out post cards to spotlight their day. We will be wearing our T-Shirts designed by Laura Becker, a detransitioner. We will be passing out the brilliant Post Trans booklet, Gender Detransition a path towards self-acceptance. We will be contacting the press to see if the mainstream media will finally recognize detransitioners’ existence. On Detransition Awareness Day, we will tweet and post our events with the hashtags #detransawareness, #detransitionawarenessday, and #canaryinthecoalmine.  

We will keep protesting at the office of Jack Turban, the fellow at Stanford who claims that detransitioners are few and rare and who publishes articles announcing his biased and inaccurate “scientific” conclusions. We will continue to fund panels that discuss detransitioners’ stories. We will help raise funds for films about detransitioners produced by The Center for Bioethics and Culture.

We will continue to challenge WPATH concerning its failure to acknowledge in its alleged standards of care the tens of thousands of detransitioners. We will amplify the detransitioners’ voices in the insurance arena in order to assist in their efforts to obtain detransition health care. We will do our best to assist detransitioners with the costs of medical detransition, like breast reconstructions and implant removals while insurers continue to eagerly pay for transition, but not detransition. We will continue to donate to fundraising campaigns to pay for detransitioners’ legal fees, like we did for Gabe, a brave detransitioner suing the doctors who harmed him, and we will help detransitioners find legal counsel so they can hold the parties who maimed them accountable.

We know about the vitriol thrown at detransitioners. We know about their isolation and deep sense of loss. We feel it too; so on this March 12, 2022, and every day, we stand with the detransitioner community, and join in the hope that, one day, our children will also see their way through to the other side of the gender cult, and detransitioners will be given the respect and help that they desire