A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - The Detransitioner Panic

00:00:00.000 It pisses me off when people say like, oh, you just have to make it like harder to access care.

00:00:03.820 No, no, because what I identified as trans for 14 years before I detransitioned. Come on.

00:00:16.240 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. My name is Matt Bernstein, and I am so happy that

00:00:23.200 you're here today. So let's just get right into it. Detransition is the process through which

00:00:28.300 someone who previously identified as transgender works to reverse their transition through social,

00:00:34.880 medical, and legal means. And detransition can happen for a whole bunch of different reasons,

00:00:39.700 right? For some people, it's regret. For some people, it's social pressure to not be trans,

00:00:45.440 you know, discrimination for being trans, that maybe they had medical complications. There's

00:00:49.380 all sorts of reasons why this happens. But if you have heard about people who have detransitioned, 1.00

00:00:54.980 it's probably because they've become the center of this culture war, right? Where conservative

00:01:00.000 politicians have been weaponizing their stories over the last couple of years to argue why

00:01:05.740 essentially gender-affirming care should be illegal for everyone because it didn't work

00:01:09.920 out for these select people. Just a few weeks ago, PragerU, the massively influential and

00:01:16.500 well-funded right-wing media website. They made this documentary called Detrans, which has a

00:01:24.860 million and a half views in the last three weeks on YouTube. A select few detransitioners, some of 1.00

00:01:29.880 whom we'll talk about in this episode, are trotted out in front of governments all across the United

00:01:35.980 States over and over and over and over and over again to testify about their stories of detransition

00:01:41.340 to persuade these governments to pass bills that will ban gender-affirming care for everybody. 0.94

00:01:45.880 some of these detransitioners are making careers out of it in right-wing media which i've talked 1.00

00:01:51.880 about before on this podcast is shockingly easy to do so detransitioning has become a moral panic 0.99

00:01:58.500 and a moral panic by definition is a widespread feeling of fear often an irrational one that some

00:02:04.860 evil person or thing threatens the values interests or well-being of a community or society 0.85

00:02:11.180 So in this case, it's, you know, the trans agenda, the gay agenda, it's going to come 0.97

00:02:15.920 for all of your kids, and it's coming for all the young people, and they're all going 0.99

00:02:18.580 to start transitioning, and then they're all going to regret it later on, they're all going 0.96

00:02:21.760 to have to detransition, and they will have forever changed their bodies in ways that

00:02:25.680 are irreversible.

00:02:26.640 And this is something that you need to care about now, because it's coming for your kids

00:02:30.020 too.

00:02:30.740 So in this episode, I want to make clear two things before we talk about anything else.

00:02:36.540 One is that detransitioners do exist.

00:02:40.760 And their stories matter. And that's why we're talking about them today. And their stories don't matter in the sense that they should be weaponized to take gender affirming care away from everyone and all the, you know, millions of trans people whose lives have been saved by it. But they matter because they can benefit public health for trans and detrans people. They can inform the way that medical professionals think about gender care. 1.00

00:03:05.040 And they matter because they're these people's experiences.

00:03:08.560 You know, all sorts of medical procedures have regret rates.

00:03:13.180 In fact, all of them do.

00:03:14.900 And talking about regret is important.

00:03:17.680 So their stories matter, and we're going to talk about them.

00:03:21.100 The second thing I want to make clear is that detransitioning is rare.

00:03:26.680 And so I want to get into just some statistics really quick.

00:03:29.120 In an Associated Press review of 27 different studies

00:03:32.100 surveying 8,000 teens and adults who had gender-affirming surgeries, 1% regretted them.

00:03:38.860 Now, like I just said, every medical procedure has a regret rate. And so I'm going to run through a

00:03:43.420 few. Tattoos, which I don't know if you consider that a medical procedure, but it's something

00:03:47.740 minors can do with parents' permission. Tattoos have a 12% regret rate. Knee replacements have a

00:03:53.320 20% regret rate. 21% of people regret their corrective spinal surgery. 14% of people regret

00:04:00.280 their surgeries across all categories. That's like the flat regret rate for all surgeries.

00:04:05.320 And then, you know, not a medical thing, but 52% of people regret taking out their student loans,

00:04:10.720 which they take out, mind you, as minors. This is all to say, I just think this idea that we should

00:04:16.320 ban or severely restrict gender-affirming care because of 1% of people who seek it out regret it,

00:04:23.380 it's just a flimsy argument. Do we ban everything that anyone has ever regretted having?

00:04:29.220 Still, detrans stories are important, not to fuel hysteria around banning trans healthcare

00:04:35.380 for everyone.

00:04:36.160 But, you know, trans people and people who have detransitioned share a lot of similar

00:04:41.160 struggles.

00:04:42.040 I was reading the study in the National Library of Medicine about how a lot of detrans people 0.50

00:04:47.600 struggle to share their experiences.

00:04:49.400 They feel stigmatized, and they struggle to have their physical and mental healthcare

00:04:53.920 needs met because of the stigma and shame they feel for having detransitioned.

00:04:58.080 All of these feelings, as this study noted, are really similar to the ones that people

00:05:03.320 who are actively transitioning face.

00:05:05.400 They wrote, quote,

00:05:06.400 Ongoing debates and the politicization of gender care have resulted in the depiction

00:05:10.800 of trans and detrans people as completely distinct groups with divergent needs and experiences,

00:05:16.660 and who are doomed to conflict.

00:05:18.800 However, we believe that trans and detrans people are more similar than different, and

00:05:23.020 that detransition research holds value for advancing the healthcare of all those who

00:05:26.740 transition, and for responsibly moving gender care research and practice forward. And so yeah,

00:05:32.220 conservative politicians would like you to think that every person who has ever detransitioned

00:05:36.920 immediately turns into some anti-trans activist. And that's just not the case. And that's really

00:05:43.900 why I wanted to make today's episode. So today, we are joined by Lucy, who I actually found on

00:05:49.500 Twitter. She had posted a mirror selfie wearing a black dress with the caption,

00:05:54.600 as a detrans woman, the last thing I want to be seen as is a victim. I live by my choices and I

00:06:00.140 see that just because detransition was the right path for me doesn't mean it is for everyone. 1.00

00:06:04.920 Fuck transphobia. Lucy, welcome to A Bit Fruity. Thank you, Matt. I'm really, really happy to be 0.99

00:06:11.840 on here. So we are going to discuss a lot today, but I want to start for myself and for the listener,

00:06:19.460 Like, I want to hear about you, about your journey, about your transition, about your detransition, how old you were.

00:06:27.640 Like, just tell me about yourself and I'll ask questions as I see fit.

00:06:32.640 It all started when I was 11 years old and I found out that being trans was a thing.

00:06:37.340 I learned that there were people out there who were born as one gender and then decided that they wanted to transition to another.

00:06:44.280 and i had an instant recognition of like oh that's me because i had such an alienation to my body at

00:06:49.600 the time for context i was born in australia and i moved to the netherlands when i was eight and i

00:06:55.880 had a lot of struggles with like social connection as well so i was like just not feeling like i fit

00:07:00.600 in anywhere and this was something that i was just like oh okay i finally understand why i feel so

00:07:05.480 much malaise like what like what's wrong with me yeah was that through the internet that you

00:07:10.920 discovered trans topics no actually this was um in um sex ed when i was uh 11 in primary school

00:07:19.140 um i had a very progressive teacher who was like oh yeah like you know there's people out there who

00:07:24.080 uh who transition like this is a thing that exists i was like oh my god that's me i remember i have

00:07:28.860 such vivid memories of that like i remember i was where i was sitting in the classroom did you grow

00:07:33.720 up like quote unquote feeling like a boy or was it kind of just like a more profound mismatch with

00:07:40.200 your body or something else i guess like i have like a lot of sisters i have four sisters um and

00:07:47.360 comparatively like i was a little bit more tomboyish and i just kind of thought like and you

00:07:52.600 know i like wanted to shop at the boy section and the interesting thing is is that my parents also

00:07:56.460 have memories of me saying like i'm a boy so like like even before that as young as even three like

00:08:03.900 when i was talking i was like yeah i'm a boy so this is not something that was just

00:08:09.720 completely new i was like oh yeah i i maybe i am one so i learned about it at 11 and i came out to

00:08:17.600 my dad at 12 and the first thing he asked me was why do you feel that way and i had researched and

00:08:24.400 i had come to describe what i was feeling as dysphoria like i felt this intense mismatch

00:08:29.980 with how my body was and how i felt that it should be so shortly after that i went to

00:08:35.740 uh my my gp and we uh discussed um putting me on the track to transition my mom wasn't like

00:08:43.420 super on board with it you were 12 at this point i was 12 i was really young but i was also like

00:08:49.360 a very um mature child that's what i was told at least so i was like oh yeah well makes sense i

00:08:54.700 have been doing a lot of introspection and i've come to this conclusion so makes sense so i was

00:08:59.460 put on a waiting list so because i live in the netherlands my parents were like okay we're going

00:09:03.900 follow like the dutch protocol which is basically being assessed by multiple doctors in order to get

00:09:11.460 hormones or anything right to start like any form of medical transition you have to go through like

00:09:17.280 a lot of hoops and barriers from the ages of like 12 to 15 16 i was on a waiting list i was constantly

00:09:23.900 in therapy i was always talking to a psychologist i think like weekly a lot of psych appointments

00:09:29.440 for a young teen. And then when I was 16, around the time I was allowed to start my diagnostic

00:09:37.580 process. And in that time, I was assessed by three different psychologists who each individually

00:09:44.140 came to the conclusion that I had gender dysphoria. And upon coming to that conclusion,

00:09:50.060 a few months later, I started hormone blockers. I think I had just turned 17 at that point.

00:09:54.980 so this is now you're five years into your sort of realization yeah like five like privately

00:10:01.740 identifying with it at 11 to like yeah 16 starting hormone blockers and hormone blockers were not a

00:10:08.400 cakewalk um like not in the slightest because you essentially become menopausal if you especially

00:10:13.900 if you like been going through puberty uh for a while at that point so i went through menopause

00:10:18.760 at 16 that was great wow 16 17 and uh shortly like i think six months after that on december

00:10:26.680 16th 2013 uh i got my first shot of testosterone it took about a year and a half before i was

00:10:33.700 allowed to have my first surgery which is what i was looking forward to for the longest time

00:10:38.520 i had top surgery at 19 which is a double mastectomy double mastectomy yes and then

00:10:45.760 six months after that i believe no march and then october so wait sorry you were 19 when you got

00:10:53.820 your double mastectomy indeed so i was actually but i did start hormones like under the age of 18

00:11:00.840 so i was in essence a minor who was um accessing medical transition march my top surgery and then

00:11:09.640 October I had my a radical hysterectomy and a radical hysterectomy is not only the removal of

00:11:17.500 the uterus but also of the ovaries so basically that was it for me I considered myself done with

00:11:24.780 my transition at that point so yeah for the next god from 19 to 26 seven years I identified as

00:11:35.180 trans mask a trans man trans mask non-binary always aligned with feeling more male than female

00:11:42.660 whatever that means I guess and in 2020 during the pandemic I had a top surgery revision because I

00:11:51.420 uh I had some issues with my initial top surgery and I was not entirely satisfied with the results

00:11:56.700 so that needed to be corrected which is like relatively common with top surgery and like

00:12:01.800 all sorts of procedures for real yeah this a lot of people do this so i was just like oh yeah this

00:12:06.080 is this is normal this is fine and it wasn't until last year i guess yeah no it's this started like

00:12:14.440 around 2021 october that i was like leaning more like yeah like more trans masculine binary but

00:12:21.200 still like presenting as male to basically the entire world and i guess it started when i started

00:12:29.160 noticing that i wasn't really happy with like having facial hair and i was just like you know

00:12:32.280 what i feel like my brand of androgyny is like having like a bit of muscle um having a smooth

00:12:38.760 face like i want to get laser on my face so i started that process oh my god i'm the same way

00:12:44.940 i also want a bit of muscle but never facial hair right right okay see like there you go so

00:12:52.480 other people feel this way too so i was like yeah i rationalized like oh yeah i'm still i'm still a

00:12:57.960 boy it's still me so started getting laser on my face i also met my ex-boyfriend around that time

00:13:05.060 and he came from quite a conservative background for belgian people who may be listening he was a

00:13:11.660 fan of flam's belong which is a very right-wing party but i was not aware of that and i was kind

00:13:18.040 of like ah like he's still sweet it's fine but the thing is his family and his circles were like

00:13:23.640 very binarist so they were not really cool with like anything non-binary so they kind of like

00:13:29.540 saw me as his girlfriend even though he would like refer to me as his partner um like either by

00:13:35.600 gender neutral terms or masculine terms like he would not actually refer to me as his girlfriend

00:13:39.640 so through interactions with his family and the people around him i was like maybe it isn't that

00:13:44.900 bad to occupy a feminine social role maybe this is something that i'm cool with so i just rolled

00:13:51.340 with it but all of the I guess like dysphoria that was mounting in the background plus this

00:13:57.680 like realization that I was cool with being seen as a woman it kind of culminated in me watching

00:14:03.980 movie everything ever all at once and that was like my light bulb moment of like oh but what if

00:14:12.540 I just decided to teleport myself to a universe in which I am a woman like what would that mean

00:14:19.300 what would that look like and yeah like two days after that one of my closest friends came out to

00:14:23.480 me as a trans woman and the next day i called her up and was like girl i need to tell you something

00:14:27.220 i came out to her trans she was like i'm trans and you were like and i'm not

00:14:33.120 basically basically but yeah uh i think that her coming out and me coming out right after

00:14:41.200 was very instrumental and like i guess my philosophy surrounding detransition

00:14:46.280 in that she said like we're going to go through the same things we're both going to be taking

00:14:51.140 estrogen we're both going to have to like contend with like facial hair removal yeah we have to do

00:14:56.680 with like a little bit of voice training maybe like we got to do stuff that looks very similar

00:15:01.900 so we're the same and uh yeah that's uh that's kind of like the transition and detransition like

00:15:08.500 well it is so interesting that you mentioned your friends transitioning the same time that

00:15:13.560 you decided to detransition and like finding the unity in that because with detransitioners

00:15:19.140 becoming this chess piece in a culture war around transphobia it is so like you know the the picture

00:15:26.260 is painted by conservative media that all detrans people like hate trans people hate the idea that

00:15:32.400 people can be trans they're like fundamentally against trans people existing like chloe cole

00:15:38.100 who we're about to talk about but the reality and some you know researchers are starting to arrive

00:15:42.160 at this is that like the process that trans and just the things that trans people go through and

00:15:47.660 the things that detrans people go through as far as social stigma as far as medical stigma and not

00:15:53.300 being able to access the care you need because you know your stories are so marginalized whether

00:15:57.900 you're trans or detrans are so similar and can inform one another so i think that that's played

00:16:04.180 out in real life for you yeah basically i i think that it's it's so bizarre to me that we're like

00:16:10.400 detrans people are just like oh yeah we're supposedly seen as like transphobes but it's

00:16:14.280 like this was 14 years of my life 15 if you count the time that I was not out to anyone

00:16:19.000 I would not want to turn my back on the community that held me when I was the most fragile

00:16:24.740 in my life like I know I've like summarized the events but what I'm cutting out of this story is

00:16:31.480 the amount of depression and pain I felt in what I thought was my gender dysphoria when I was young

00:16:38.020 like that was not easy i was struggling and being trans saved my life regret is a word that comes up

00:16:46.180 so often around these conversations and i want to emphasize that detransition and regret are not

00:16:52.220 synonymous you know and i'm saying this for the listener people transition for all sorts of reasons

00:16:56.600 and regret can be one of them and regret can be part of it and i want to know for you like you

00:17:04.260 said that transitioning at a certain point in your life did save your life and like that didn't turn

00:17:09.280 out to be the long-term decision that was best for you but do you have regret involved because

00:17:14.320 you know obviously people are going to ask you know you had a medical transition

00:17:18.140 that was invasive and so when you I guess look back on your transition your detransition like

00:17:27.080 is regret part of that story I think that the regret that I have is mostly centered around like

00:17:32.900 later medical decisions because in hindsight if I hadn't gotten my top surgery revision I

00:17:38.220 might have been better off with like you know having a bit of extra loose skin so that my

00:17:42.480 boobs could grow back a little bit better that is literally it but if I look at the man that I once

00:17:48.620 was the identify the identity that I used to hold it protected me from so much of the world and it 0.90

00:17:54.100 allowed me to experience the world in a way that I simply would not have if I hadn't transitioned

00:17:59.220 it's like, there's no reset button on this. So if I regret, then I'm only holding myself back from

00:18:05.880 my healing. And I only see that there is a way forward. But regret isn't really it for me.

00:18:12.520 Yeah. So would you say that you like, what, how do you identify now? I mean, do you identify

00:18:19.120 as a cis woman? Do you identify as a detransitioner? Like what language do you use,

00:18:26.460 if any, to describe, you know, your experience? Well, first and foremost, I use she, they, 0.98

00:18:33.780 and he pronouns. Might as well get that out of the way. I do identify myself as queer, 0.90

00:18:38.860 but I specifically identify myself as detransgender in opposition to the term

00:18:43.920 detransitioner. There are things that I experience that are uniquely tied to my experience as a

00:18:48.860 detrans person. Like my dating experience is certainly different from most other people I

00:18:53.740 know, just to name an example, I actively identify with my detransition. And also to further clarify 0.89

00:19:00.320 the term detransgender, I want to use this term in opposition to TERFs who would want to weaponize me

00:19:05.720 for their causes. Because if I call myself detransgender, a word that contains the word

00:19:11.260 transgender, they won't want to associate themselves with me. Also to further define 0.99

00:19:16.980 de-transgender the d it's not a negative prefix it means of or from so of transgender origin

00:19:25.400 that's what it means and so i don't actually like the term de-transitioner for myself but if other

00:19:32.000 people use it it's like okay you can call me that but i consider myself something else because you

00:19:37.260 think of it less as like undoing something and more progressing onward from something i'm post

00:19:43.460 trance it's uh something else and you mentioned to me we were on the phone the other day preparing

00:19:53.420 for the recording and i want to mention part of why you told me that you're here today which is

00:19:59.820 that we're going to talk about the prager you documentary later but you were part of you were

00:20:05.400 interviewed for a documentary in where you live in europe where well do you want to explain your

00:20:11.020 experience with that right so for for the listeners i live in the netherlands and there is a show on

00:20:18.100 the public network called zembla and this is like a investigative journalism type show very hard

00:20:24.960 hitting um and they released an episode called um het transgender protocol or the transgender

00:20:31.460 protocol and um it was basically researching the scientific validity or scientific basis for the

00:20:38.840 use of purity blockers in minors. And I went into this documentary hearing from the journalists that

00:20:44.940 they had interviewed a detrans person who regretted their transition, and a trans person who was

00:20:51.240 content with their transition. So like, wow, diverse opinions, I would like to be a part of

00:20:56.440 this, I want to add my voice to the pile. But when it was released, I felt as though that all the

00:21:03.500 happiness from my story had been edited out and they really want to focus on framing me as

00:21:10.100 someone who had undergone permanent changes that i was not happy with and it's really funny to me

00:21:16.560 because they also explicitly say in the documentary like she has to take um female

00:21:21.820 hormones for the rest of her life and the funny thing is is like i i see benefits i see upsides

00:21:27.220 the fact that i take hrt have you any idea how nice it is not to have a hormone cycle and always

00:21:31.740 be stable it's great um so they took all the good out of my story and just framed it in such a

00:21:38.280 negative way and uh just another thing the way they edited it they didn't tell the audience at

00:21:44.160 the beginning that i was de-trans nor did they refer to me as queer they presented me as an

00:21:49.600 unhappy trans woman in the beginning and then you get the little gotcha surprise at the end where

00:21:55.020 it's like oh but actually she was she's afab like oh there's a lot there's a lot they kind of do like 0.92

00:22:02.580 a caricature of your experience to like feed into this like that's really that's really awful i'm 0.99

00:22:09.480 sorry that it was done that way it's fucked up but now you're here and we're not going to fuck 0.93

00:22:14.280 you up in the edit exactly and the netherlands is not a very litigious country i'm not going to sue 0.95

00:22:20.060 them. It's unheard of to do that kind of thing here. So instead, I'd much rather leverage new

00:22:24.640 media to fight old media. So thank you so much for having me on here. Yeah, of course. I'm so

00:22:30.200 happy that you're here. Before we continue, this show is only made possible through the help of

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00:24:11.300 I found you through this tweet where you were basically like, I'm a detrans person. This is my

00:24:16.400 experience. But I, you know, it's my experience. It's not the experience of trans people. And,

00:24:22.900 you know, you've basically kind of created a presence online, affirming trans people,

00:24:28.980 and doing so from the perspective of someone who detrans and not affirming them in spite of your

00:24:33.840 detransition. But like, it feels like it's very informed by your detransition. And so,

00:24:39.340 you know things like the tweet that i found you from that kind of circulated like what is your

00:24:43.960 motivation for for being outspoken in that way so the main reason why i decided to like be so

00:24:50.340 public with it is that i realized that there isn't well at least i have not seen a pro trans pro

00:24:57.340 lgbtq plus detrans voice and i feel like that there is a need to bring more nuance to this

00:25:03.060 conversation because it is so reductive to say well this thing didn't work for me it's not going

00:25:07.840 to work for anyone when I have people in my life like that friend who came out to me like a friend

00:25:13.800 who who is a trans man and I give him his testosterone shots because I did that for years

00:25:19.340 so and he's scared of needles or doesn't want to do it himself so I do it for him and I just figured

00:25:25.040 that there have to be more people out there like me and that's why I started making TikToks about

00:25:29.760 my experience and I've managed to reach an audience of people who feel the same I've met

00:25:35.440 people who have a similar timeline to me people who reach out and saying like I recognize myself

00:25:39.920 in your experience I was like wow clearly there's something that's being said and they're not giving

00:25:45.080 the entire story like these conservatives are only showing one piece of a very large puzzle

00:25:51.800 yeah that's my main motivation I just want to show that like you can detransition it doesn't

00:25:56.420 mean you're transphobic it doesn't mean that you're trying to take health care away from people

00:26:00.020 Well, speaking of the one piece that conservatives do like to parade around, I want to talk about a woman named Chloe Cole. 0.99

00:26:11.180 What do you know about Chloe Cole? 1.00

00:26:12.920 I know that she is often speaking out against trans healthcare. 1.00

00:26:19.180 I know that she is a detransitioner. 1.00

00:26:22.500 And I've heard, and I cannot confirm this, that she gets paid to do so or that she gets 0.94

00:26:28.980 some kind of monetary compensation.

00:26:31.700 But I could be wrong about that.

00:26:33.280 I would like to be corrected about any misconceptions I have.

00:26:37.700 So Chloe Cole is a 19-year-old woman who detransitioned a few years ago, and she is 0.99

00:26:46.280 like the face of the detrans culture war. 1.00

00:26:50.860 You know, she is paraded around Fox News and around the country. She gets flown left and right to testify in front of like different governmental bodies, state governments, federal governments across the United States to testify in favor of bills that seek to limit trans health care. 0.96

00:27:09.860 and basically she just repeats her experience and her trauma of detransitioning in front of

00:27:16.780 all of these different people in front of the internet in front of everyone and finishes

00:27:21.740 everything with like you know let my story be a warning i want to talk about her now because i

00:27:26.560 feel like on paper your stories are not very different but you have arrived at very different

00:27:35.080 ideological places. So Chloe Cole began transitioning when she was 12. And this is

00:27:41.320 like a legitimately horrible thing that happened. She was sexually assaulted when she was in eighth

00:27:47.700 grade, and afterwards began binding her breasts. She was prescribed hormones when she was 13.

00:27:53.880 And she took them for two years before getting a double mastectomy with her parents permission

00:27:58.440 at 15. And then when she was 17, a few years later, she realized that she might want to

00:28:04.780 breastfeed, and that she was running the risk of not being able to. And so at 17, she began

00:28:09.900 detransitioning. And she's kind of parlayed this, obviously, first of all, that's a really,

00:28:15.740 really, really, really tight timeline of her story, which I'm sure has, you know, all sorts of

00:28:20.940 detail and nuance to it that, you know, we don't have time for today. But case in point,

00:28:25.860 she transitioned, she detransitioned, and she now kind of parlays that experience into what

00:28:31.420 is ultimately becoming a career in politics um a career in right-wing politics at that so i want

00:28:38.080 to show you lucy uh video a little clip from chloe cole she this was published by the daily

00:28:46.760 caller which is ben shapiro's news outlet and she was testifying before a governmental body

00:28:54.400 again like in favor of one of these bills that's trying to limit trans health care and so

00:28:58.840 for most of her testimony she is describing her detransition and how harrowing it was and then at

00:29:05.320 the end she says today i should be at home with my family celebrating my 19th birthday

00:29:11.400 and instead i'm making a desperate plea to my elected my elected representatives learn the

00:29:17.260 lessons from other medical scandals like the opioid crisis to recognize that doctors are human

00:29:22.860 too. And sometimes they are wrong. My childhood was ruined along with thousands of detransitioners

00:29:29.400 that I know through our networks. This needs to stop. You alone can stop it. Enough children 1.00

00:29:35.520 have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience. Please let me be your final warning.

00:29:41.400 So what is your reaction to that? I don't think that a warning is what it should be. I think that

00:29:49.520 this is information and an experience that should be taken on board to benefit gender care to improve

00:29:56.500 gender care to allow us to develop a better understanding of like why some people might

00:30:01.640 detransition over people who don't people who identify as trans and are trans because I don't

00:30:08.540 want to like not that I'm trying to make it about myself make it about yourself that's why you're

00:30:12.020 here sure okay fine right so one thing that stopped me from realizing that I needed to

00:30:17.840 detransition was the fact that I to my knowledge at least had never been sexually assaulted over

00:30:25.180 the course of my life that was not something in my history but I read many times online like oh

00:30:31.420 yeah a lot of people who detransition are survivors of sexual abuse and because that was not a thing

00:30:38.080 for me it's just like it never even occurred to me that I might need to detransition and from what I

00:30:43.920 hear in what she's saying here is that she's still in a lot of pain and she's trying to save people

00:30:50.360 from her perspective and that's a very i i can see that that's a noble thing to want to do to

00:30:55.100 save other people however it's not conducive to overall public health because there are people

00:31:00.000 who desperately need to transition because it is life-saving to them it was life-saving to me

00:31:04.660 if i had not accessed trans health care i probably wouldn't be here today like that's

00:31:11.260 it's real like when i watched that the first time i made a note and i you know she was 0.95

00:31:17.820 she said enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience which

00:31:23.140 okay first of all this is not pseudoscience every major medical organization in the united states

00:31:28.800 and globally supports the idea that trans health care is life-saving for the vast majority of

00:31:35.580 people who seek it out the vast majority of people don't detransition and this is life-saving and so

00:31:39.940 I just wrote how many kids have been victimized by being denied health care.

00:31:44.080 You hit the nail on the head there.

00:31:46.280 The other thing is she compares the trans health care to the opioid crisis.

00:31:52.600 She is very rhetorically skilled.

00:31:56.040 I will say that.

00:31:57.120 And she is preparing herself for a very lucrative career on the conservative talk show circuit.

00:32:05.740 I have thoughts about that.

00:32:07.460 Tell me. 1.00

00:32:08.300 so my main issue when i see other detrans people speaking out on the right wing is that honey 1.00

00:32:17.320 they don't see you as human they don't they dehumanize you that's why they want you to call 0.81

00:32:23.620 yourself broken and mutilated and destroyed and ruined the whole thing is like you are there to

00:32:30.360 be paraded around as a not try i i don't refer to myself like this i don't see anyone this way 0.69

00:32:36.220 this is just like me parroting their rhetoric they want to see you as a freak show they want

00:32:40.400 to see you so that they can be like look this is what like she's ruined because like i get

00:32:45.160 transphobia thrown at me by right-wingers who would be like what are you male or female and

00:32:50.040 it's like well traditionally you would see me on your side because you see me as validating your

00:32:54.680 point of view right but you trying to be insultive and like rude to me is not really winning you any

00:33:01.200 favors with me liking you more they don't see you as your their own they don't see you as their own

00:33:06.620 they just want to uphold you up as like an example of look what happens when it goes wrong one of the 1.00

00:33:12.640 most amazing things to me about the kind of detransitioner moral panic is you constantly 1.00

00:33:18.060 have all of these people being like they're detransitioning in mass like everyone is

00:33:23.180 detransitioning this is a huge problem for thousands and thousands and thousands of people 0.97

00:33:27.320 are like everywhere they're all gonna detransition and it's like if everyone is detransitioning

00:33:31.900 why do you only ever have chloe cole it's only ever this one girl there's maybe like if you count 0.73

00:33:37.980 all of the people who have made more than one media appearance there's like maybe 10 but every

00:33:42.500 time they talk about how this is like the biggest problem that's going to be hitting the airwaves

00:33:46.320 and then it's just like chloe cole again and i'm like chloe cole story matters lucy your story

00:33:53.060 matters all of the detran stories matter but if there are so goddamn many of them why are we only

00:33:58.540 ever hearing from chloe cole like why do we need to fly chloe cole into all of the 50 states to

00:34:06.660 testify for detransitioner bills shouldn't there be detransitioners in those states who are willing

00:34:10.880 to speak out it's just chloe cole yeah i yeah no but like there's nothing i can really say to that

00:34:19.820 they are showing the same people over and over again but i would hope that the reason for that 1.00

00:34:25.400 is that other detrans people recognize that it's not conducive to your own personal healing 0.98

00:34:30.360 after you know processing whatever it is that was the original reason that you transitioned 0.50

00:34:35.760 whatever that may be that it's better to do that in a private setting and not on a national stage

00:34:41.280 for everyone to critique you criticize you to nitpick your appearance like i've heard some

00:34:47.840 Like people will say really nasty thing about D trans people just,

00:34:51.920 and like,

00:34:52.620 just continue to open that wound that they're feeling of like,

00:34:55.800 Oh,

00:34:56.520 the regret that they feel it's,

00:34:59.260 it's not healthy.

00:35:01.240 Yeah.

00:35:01.880 And I,

00:35:02.280 I mean,

00:35:03.220 if Chloe Cole wasn't using her story and her perspective to really honestly, 1.00

00:35:10.360 violently strip away rights from other people,

00:35:12.680 like my heart would truly go out to her.

00:35:16.000 My heart does go out to her.

00:35:17.840 Because like I said, her story is harrowing.

00:35:21.240 But my heart also goes out to her because I think to your point, she is being dehumanized

00:35:27.260 by these people who are propping her up.

00:35:29.240 They see her as, I think, this like fundamentally broken mistake of a human being.

00:35:36.480 I don't think they see her as a human being.

00:35:38.420 They don't.

00:35:39.300 And I think as soon as the microphones get cut off and the lights go down and everyone

00:35:44.100 goes home i don't think her story from the perspective of public health from the perspective

00:35:51.300 of humanity you know i don't think her story matters to them in any way other than advancing

00:35:57.840 their own political goals and i would if i were in her shoes i would struggle to sit with that 0.93

00:36:02.640 if they actually gave a shit about her they would be like honey not here let's go to a therapist and 0.97

00:36:09.040 let's talk about this so that you can do it healthily the fact that she's 19 also like 0.95

00:36:13.920 strikes me as like something quite interesting because i remember when i was younger like maybe

00:36:19.220 not 19 but maybe more like 16 or so i was very dogmatic about identity i was very binarist in

00:36:25.820 my thinking and i really don't like the person that i was when i was that age okay does anyone

00:36:32.440 like who they are when they're 19 no no i think being 19 is the worst thing that can happen to

00:36:38.380 anyone basically but the fact that she's so young and having this like binary mindset what i've

00:36:48.980 noticed as well in like reactions to my own detrans identity from everyone who's like in that

00:36:54.080 age bracket is that they're like oh you're cis like they're telling me they're forcing an identity 0.93

00:36:59.420 on me and she's like also like very binary in her thinking so i think that part of her dogmatic kind

00:37:05.760 of way of speaking about this has to do with her age. I feel like if you gave her like put her in

00:37:10.600 a more, you know, caring environment for like, eight years or so, maybe she would like kind of

00:37:17.440 align a bit more with like, yeah, well, people have different experiences. And it didn't go that

00:37:21.100 way for me. And I think that is just as an aspect of like, maturing as like a human being as an

00:37:26.580 adult. Speaking of the 10 people that the right wing media apparatus parades around, there is

00:37:34.340 another one who i would like to introduce to the conversation with a video joy if you had a one-on-one

00:37:42.060 with a child who was struggling with gender dysphoria what would you say to them i would

00:37:47.220 just say just remain strong uh find love within your heart you know also going to church is very

00:37:53.860 helpful when you when you hear the teachings of jesus from the bible it's it's just very positive

00:37:58.520 and you know some kids they feel lost they feel confused so i would just say to the kids you know

00:38:03.600 you will get through this stay strong this is just the phase you know you one day are going to be a

00:38:09.100 great successful person you're going to have a great career you're going to have a great education

00:38:13.320 so just please hang in there be strong and just know that there's people out there that will

00:38:17.680 support you you know family friends there are um psychiatrists there are people out there to help

00:38:23.580 so you know if any kid is watching this and feeling confused or lost just know that there's

00:38:28.420 people out there that can help do you know who that is i know exactly who that person is and my

00:38:34.720 heart rate just i it just kicked up like i know by like 30 beats per minute or something like that

00:38:40.760 that i had a very i have a very visceral reaction to ollie london okay so visceral it is ollie london

00:38:48.560 tell me what you know about ollie london i know that ollie london probably altogether has spent

00:38:54.360 over 130 000 pounds on plastic surgery so no i know who ollie london is and uh when i tell you

00:39:03.280 that he is the reason why i started making tiktoks i am being dead serious let me give for the

00:39:09.120 listener i'm gonna give the the basic overview of oliver london who is who you just heard speaking

00:39:16.220 ollie london is one of the 10 people who are paraded around and the fact that he gets taken

00:39:23.500 seriously in this conversation of trans issues and specifically detransitioning is a miracle

00:39:28.940 and i think a scathing indictment of how little genuine effort and research goes into these

00:39:39.300 stories from the right-wing politicized perspective on this issue so ollie london is a white british

00:39:47.280 gay 33 year old i apologize if he no longer identifies as gay i can't keep up with him but

00:39:52.840 you know he in the mid 2010s began idolizing the k-pop star jimin jimin from bt from bts i'm sorry

00:40:03.800 i'm not a big k-pop person but i know that it's the whole thing so in 2013 he started also this

00:40:11.800 entire story by the way is incredibly racist and i apologize on behalf for like having to deliver

00:40:17.680 it in a straightforward way just just know that i'm acknowledging how racist this whole thing is 0.83

00:40:22.080 But basically in 2013, he started getting surgeries to make himself look Korean in total over the last decade has gotten 32 surgeries, including six nose job, an eye surgery, a facelift, a brow lift, a temple lift, a teeth procedure, which I assume they're referring to veneers and skin whitening injections, which is just fucking wild.

00:40:45.200 in 2021 he began identifying as transracial in march 2022 okay again i'm sorry this is like so 0.85

00:40:56.960 fucking racist like i was researching it and i was like how do i tell this without reproducing 0.71

00:41:01.780 the racism of ollie london but okay and so just can i also just like say as a half white half 0.98

00:41:08.100 asian person i have extra amounts of there's there's layers to my feelings towards all the 0.90

00:41:15.940 london just so much so in march 2022 he announced that he had plans for a penis reduction surgery 0.98

00:41:25.780 stating that quote in korea the average penis is like 3.5 inches people say oh you can't be korean 0.99

00:41:34.480 you're not a hundred percent korean and i just want to be 100 korean i would even have a penis 0.97

00:41:40.260 reduction so i'm like quote the korean average okay this is the person who gets taken seriously 0.98

00:41:47.120 by fox news like he's literally been on fox news to discuss detransitioners we're not even done

00:41:52.900 though again so that was in march 2022 and then shortly thereafter he briefly started identifying

00:41:59.240 as a trans woman and announced plans for surgeries to start looking like, is it Rosé from Blackpink?

00:42:07.900 Rosé, yeah.

00:42:08.840 Rosé, yeah. Who's another K-pop star, a female K-pop star. And then by October of the same year, 1.00

00:42:14.860 so we're less than six months in of him going from transracial to transracial trans woman,

00:42:19.560 he said that he was transitioning back to male. So now he's starting his detransition.

00:42:24.220 in november one month later he began identify identifying as a detransitioner and publicly

00:42:30.300 converted to christianity and announced that he was getting baptized and i looked at so this is

00:42:36.080 november of last year this is just over a year ago and i looked at some of the like christian

00:42:41.640 and conservative media outlets reporting on this and they just like reported on it straightforwardly

00:42:46.700 at the time they were like detransitioner ollie london bravely converts to christianity and

00:42:52.020 announce baptism plans. And it's like, oh my God, guys, he identified as Korean and spent like

00:42:59.380 hundreds of thousands of dollars on certain. This is not someone that we should be taking 1.00

00:43:03.480 seriously in the gender conversation. This is, he's like a little bit Looney Tunes. He's very 0.98

00:43:10.740 Looney Tunes. And I don't know that this is the person we need to be turning into a mascot,

00:43:15.680 but we're not done in august of 2023 uh so just a few months ago he published a book called quote

00:43:25.180 gender madness one man's devastating struggle with woke ideology and his battle to protect 0.96

00:43:31.900 children which like first of all fuck the publisher who decided to give that the go ahead 0.99

00:43:37.860 because there are a lot of people responsible for putting a book out to market and letting someone 0.99

00:43:44.980 who is so transparently not serious about any of this and is solely looking to make any decision

00:43:50.400 that he needs to make along the way to make his experience the most profitable that it can be

00:43:55.300 not doing a hint of research into that and just like being like yeah let's publish a book he's a

00:43:59.520 detransitioner let's publish a book called gender madness like are you kidding me so now he yeah

00:44:04.400 he's a conservative talk show circuit guy as i just showed you he is self-identifies as a detransitioner

00:44:12.480 kind of an expert on the detransition culture war i find it interesting we apparently decided

00:44:19.640 to detransition around the same times however my my detransition was preceded by uh nearly a

00:44:25.760 decade and a half of transition and as you said he's completely unserious about it and it made

00:44:32.220 me so angry because to my knowledge there aren't any other european detrans people detransitioners

00:44:37.340 whatever you want to call us who speak out who speak out so it really bothered me that this is

00:44:44.740 what people think when they think european de-trans person they think ollie london so i was

00:44:49.020 like no no no this cannot be i have to add my voice to the conversation so i started posting

00:44:53.560 tiktoks after reading it i forget what what tweeted it was of his but i was like no this cannot this

00:45:00.020 cannot be i need to say something so thank you ollie london for uh kick-starting um my uh video 0.97

00:45:06.440 creation journey but also fuck you for all the damage that you're doing to detrans people our 0.94

00:45:12.340 image like this is not conducive to uh the public image of of detrans people nor is it conducive to 0.99

00:45:19.820 improving gender care for anyone and also like the whole transracial thing that's it's just

00:45:25.060 it's just too much it's just too much like no you don't get to cosplay someone else's

00:45:30.960 else's ethnicity what is wrong with you mate i struggle i don't really struggle but i struggle

00:45:38.720 a little bit because i don't want to get in the place of like i just categorically i'm i'm a i'm

00:45:44.620 a very like your experience is yours and i'm not here to tell you that it's invalid if there was

00:45:49.780 ever a person for whom i was to maybe qualify that belief on it would be ollie london i do not

00:45:56.720 think his experience well do you think his experience is valid do you think he is a valid

00:46:02.420 voice in the detrans world for having identified as a female korean pop star for six months

00:46:07.820 um matt i'm like you i also don't want to like call people's stories or experiences

00:46:13.080 invalid or anything but yes categorically to ollie london absolutely like i remember when he like

00:46:20.720 came came out as like this oh um transracial person and i remember seeing like his attempts

00:46:28.640 at k-pop videos and at the time i think i was still into k-pop i was not pleased with it i was 0.81

00:46:33.400 like well this is just yellow face and then later down the line that he starts identifying first it

00:46:38.700 was like i think i identified as non-binary at some point he used they them pronouns yeah i think

00:46:43.500 that was for maybe a month or something yeah so i was like okay maybe there's like some gender

00:46:49.240 issues happening and that's okay but then but then all of this went down and it was just horrifying

00:46:56.520 to see i think that if i wanted a career in right-wing media and i wanted guest spots on fox

00:47:05.200 news i could see how in the span of like a year and a half being like i'm white no i identify as

00:47:16.540 Korean. No, I identify as Rosé from Blackpink. Now I saw the light and now I identify as a

00:47:24.980 Christian conservative who's baptized. I think, like I said, it's such an indictment of the people 1.00

00:47:33.260 who platform him on these shows to be like, this is a legitimate voice in this conversation. He

00:47:40.760 is an expert why is anyone publishing his fucking book i think it really is i mean look ultimately 0.98

00:47:47.900 like no i mean i really think he is a damaging person because like you said i think the stories 0.95

00:47:55.020 of detransitioners are important not for politics but for public health for gender care and he's

00:48:02.420 not interested in public health obviously i don't think he's interested in anything but himself but 0.99

00:48:06.600 in the process he is enriching himself culturally with cultural capital and actual capital he is 0.98

00:48:13.100 dangerous in being one of the loudest detrans voices with no interest in in you know doing 0.91

00:48:19.480 anything but profiting from a culture war differently from chloe cole i feel like it's just 0.98

00:48:24.480 to use a very archaic internet term it's for the lulls he's doing it for funsies and he doesn't

00:48:32.120 see that the weight of his words it has a massive impact for people who want to listen to him for

00:48:39.880 these right wingers because they can uphold him as like look he used to be like a complete freak

00:48:45.460 and now he's one of us i was watching videos of him in preparation for this podcast i was like

00:48:53.160 what is the world really making of ollie london like he's so easy for people like us especially

00:48:59.300 people who have followed his kind of character arc to like just kind of giggle at him and be

00:49:03.240 like whatever like whatever but the videos of him there are thousands of comments of people being

00:49:09.240 like wow it is so brave of him to own up to his decisions and his mistakes and i'm like jesus 0.97

00:49:17.020 fucking and those each of those comments will have like thousands of likes and people are like wow 0.95

00:49:21.260 what a guy and i'm like oh my god anyway can we talk about this prager you documentary let's i 0.98

00:49:28.340 haven't seen it so well so okay basically i've talked about prager you a bunch before but if

00:49:35.800 if you the listener don't know what prager you is it's it's um it's a conservative content farm

00:49:41.540 it's prager prager university is what it's called but it's not a university and i always like to

00:49:46.940 make that clear it's a media company that makes these right-wing videos about all sorts of things

00:49:53.140 they make videos that like for kids that are like one of them was like slavery wasn't that bad it

00:49:58.000 like that kind of thing. It's very history denial. It's very culture war. Now in Florida,

00:50:02.620 they're allowing that those videos are played in schools. It's a hellfire. But they put out,

00:50:08.140 three weeks ago, they put out a documentary. They called it a documentary. It was 20 minutes long.

00:50:14.780 It's called D-Trans. And it is about all the things that we've been talking about today. 0.95

00:50:20.500 One thing that I didn't realize was, so basically when it came out a few weeks ago,

00:50:26.420 if you went on twitter or x or whatever the fuck there was a period of a few days where you were

00:50:32.440 forced to see ads for this short film detrans it was like every single ad space on twitter was 0.82

00:50:41.740 occupied by prager you promoting this film and that was weird because it came up for me and you

00:50:48.660 know ads tend to be targeted like that's why when you go on facebook or instagram or whatever and

00:50:53.300 it's like if you've been looking at fuzzy socks for the holidays on other websites you're going

00:50:57.400 to get ads for fuzzy socks i do not look at detran stuff i do not look at prager you i do not look at

00:51:02.320 right-wing stuff unless i'm researching for the podcast and so i was like why the hell is this

00:51:06.440 coming up in my ad spots and it's because prager you spent one million dollars to promote this film

00:51:14.000 and god knows elon musk needs the money right now because twitter is like falling through the cracks

00:51:19.280 but um it's interesting so that yeah they publicly said they they it's a one million

00:51:25.180 dollar ad campaign to promote this detrans video youtube rejected the money and it's

00:51:31.640 playing on youtube it has a million and a half views on youtube but it's not advertised anywhere

00:51:36.100 on youtube but elon was like you know and it's also not even for the million dollars for him he 0.72

00:51:40.780 also just like hates trans people he hates his daughter yeah right he hates his trans daughter

00:51:47.520 and so i'm sure he was very excited to promote this but basically i watched it um it's you know 0.73

00:51:53.780 it's kind of what you would expect it's like a couple stories of detrans people who are like 0.55

00:51:58.540 i was mutilated i hate myself forever because of this this needs to be banned this is dangerous 1.00

00:52:05.160 they're transing all the children and they're all gonna regret it you know and it has this um very 1.00

00:52:09.620 like it's it's filmed very dramatically it has like very dark music it kind of reminds me of 1.00

00:52:16.660 like do you remember those um in the early 2000s they had kind of like the don't do drugs like

00:52:21.020 public service announcements in the netherlands we didn't have those oh well but i'm i'm aware of

00:52:28.100 the this is your brain on drugs exactly fried egg yeah so it's like dramatic sting cut to someone

00:52:35.660 looking really really sad with like a blue wash over it like i know i know exactly what you're

00:52:40.740 talking about yes that was the whole it was very this is your brain on drugs and in fact that was

00:52:45.500 my brain after i finished watching the video but anyway ollie london and chloe cole both make

00:52:50.980 appearances it's not about either of them and i knew they were going to include chloe cole but i

00:52:56.240 was like okay ollie london like really you're you're you're any credibility in this video is

00:53:02.460 kind of shot itself in the foot but one of the main subjects of the film is a woman named daisy

00:53:11.180 strong in. Do you know who she is? I became aware of her through the Detrans documentary. 0.84

00:53:18.420 And as I said, I hadn't seen it. But from what I understood, she may have detransitioned,

00:53:22.960 but she still experiences gender dysphoria. And that's all I know.

00:53:26.760 Yeah. So it's interesting. So she describes, you know, like all of these things,

00:53:31.660 she describes her experience. She always kind of didn't feel like other girls growing up,

00:53:36.260 and she experienced really severe depression and at some point she discovered you know trans topics

00:53:42.220 on the internet and really identified with them and started seeking hormones and eventually got

00:53:47.540 her her double mastectomy and you know the theme under the whole kind of film is this like i was

00:53:55.660 rushed and i went to the doctor once and they handed me the knife and we they cut me up and it

00:54:00.820 was also easy. And so what's interesting is like, I was looking her up after I watched the

00:54:06.000 documentary and she didn't start hormones until she was 18, which is a legal adult in the United

00:54:12.500 States. And so, and she didn't get, she took them for two years before getting her double mastectomy 0.96

00:54:17.780 when she was 20. And so I think to make her one of the subjects of a film that ostensibly is about

00:54:25.920 how dangerous trans healthcare is for minors, but she wasn't even a minor.

00:54:30.540 Like she was fully an adult. And so I don't know what I'm supposed to conclude from her story. Like 0.87

00:54:34.880 she regrets something that she did as an adult. And so should we strip everyone of their rights

00:54:40.420 anytime anyone regrets anything? Basically. I also just had a realization. I am aware of

00:54:45.860 Daisy Stroman, but more specifically, I know of a video that if I'm not mistaken, I know a video

00:54:51.400 she made before she detransitioned if i'm not mistaken she made a video about jordan peterson

00:54:57.960 and how she was she understood his perspective on pronouns oh great i just remembered that

00:55:05.300 so there are like you mentioned there were some tweets i can't even say tweets that surfaced but

00:55:10.760 they're like recent tweets from september and november of this year that people after the

00:55:18.180 detrans documentary came out where she was basically like scorching the earth around trans

00:55:22.920 issues. So in September, she tweeted, I don't want people to think that just because I've

00:55:28.160 detransitioned and chosen a more traditional path, I am now cured. I still deal with self-loathing.

00:55:33.840 I'm still sick of being me. I'm still depressed. I'm still a miserable, wretched sinner. The mental

00:55:39.740 ailments that led me to transition still plague me today. I still fantasize about being a guy 1.00

00:55:44.680 at least a few times a week. I'm often a guy in my dreams, but now I know that I can't indulge

00:55:49.900 those fantasies. I have to be the best mother slash wife I can be. Jesus Christ is my only hope.

00:55:55.900 He is your only hope too. And that makes me sad to read. To me, it doesn't feel like a gotcha.

00:56:02.400 It feels like this is someone who is obviously still in the throes of a lot of things. And

00:56:08.260 why is she being featured in a documentary that's weaponizing her story, which is clearly

00:56:14.280 ongoing it's very painful to hear that to hear that she's like struggling with his self-loathing

00:56:22.400 with this perspective on herself as a sinner as if she's like done something wrong when from my

00:56:29.400 perspective and this is the perspective that i kind of hold towards my own um transition of like

00:56:34.240 i was working with the information that i had and i was ignorant to what would actually work for me

00:56:40.140 i guess but ultimately it turned out okay but like in her case it's just like you're using the things

00:56:46.180 that are helping you and then you're taking them away from yourself but for what wouldn't if you

00:56:53.100 do believe like wouldn't your god want you to be happy um also for context like netherlands is like

00:56:59.500 what 44 atheist so a lot of like the religious stuff really doesn't land for me right it's fine

00:57:05.260 this isn't like a theology podcast yeah one thing that strikes me as interesting is that like

00:57:10.360 the detransitioners that they feature they don't seem markedly happier in their detransition because 0.99

00:57:16.640 that's one thing that at least i've experienced and i've at least observed in um detrans people

00:57:21.800 who i know like their lives is that post detransition or like post transition whatever

00:57:26.920 you want to call it they're a lot happier because they've like come to know themselves better they

00:57:31.620 feel more aligned with themselves. And I'm not seeing that in these stories that are presented

00:57:36.040 by the right wing. If detransition is such a good path, wouldn't you want to show happy detrans

00:57:41.140 people who have evolved in their identity and come to feel at one with themselves?

00:57:46.920 She also, another tweet from November 2nd of this year, she wrote, so this is right after

00:57:51.440 the documentary came out. For the record, the Breaker U documentary focuses mainly on

00:57:55.560 the transgender medicalization of minors. I didn't say this in the future, but I do not think there

00:58:00.740 is a single person whether they're eight years old or 80 who should medically transition and

00:58:05.380 then an attached tweet dot dot dot also everyone should become catholic daisy i'm sending daisy

00:58:13.240 love i really really am and in the same way that i send chloe cole love with the pain that she

00:58:19.220 obviously continues to grapple with i struggle in doing that because they are weaponizing their

00:58:24.300 grief their pain all of those things which are extremely real in which i have no interest in

00:58:29.680 in legislating to take rights away from other people dot dot dot also everyone should become

00:58:35.860 catholic mass conversions and baptisms now please

00:58:39.760 uh okay so i want to play you a little clip from the documentary it's a short one i promise i won't

00:58:52.760 subject you to more of this than than any of us want to be subjected to i'll watch the full thing

00:58:58.280 after so it's completely fine you know just to get an idea of what's going on i guess okay

00:59:05.820 here's a video clip part of the problem is that the current cohort of teenagers that are being

00:59:10.920 transitioned under the affirmative protocol which lacks guardrails which takes kids at their word

00:59:16.620 when they say i'm trans which doesn't do proper mental health assessments in fact double

00:59:21.920 mastectomies on teenage girls went up 13-fold between 2013 and 2020. Between 2016 and 2019

00:59:31.020 alone, these procedures went up by 500%. So that was Lior Sapir from the Manhattan Institute,

00:59:38.140 which is a conservative think tank. They use this study and they're like, the amount of kids getting

00:59:45.920 gender-affirming care is skyrocketing. It went up 500% year over year. They don't actually tell

00:59:52.240 you the amount of kids. They tell you the percent increase, which I think is a really important

00:59:58.000 distinction because if one kid in the world gets a double mastectomy one year, and then the next

01:00:07.340 year, five kids get a double mastectomy, that is a 500% increase. And one of the telltale signs to

01:00:14.780 me of a moral panic is floating around really kind of these like inflammatory fear-mongering numbers

01:00:24.120 that inspire a fear that numbers that more accurately describe a situation don't. So

01:00:29.540 according to an October 2022 report from Reuters, 282 adolescents from age 13 to 17 received a

01:00:39.180 gender-affirming mastectomy in 2021 282 kids in the whole country of the united states this is

01:00:46.600 not a big number and in the study that they were referencing so they had you know the citation for

01:00:54.780 the study they were talking about that talked about it increased 500 i went to that study and

01:00:59.660 i read that study so that study uh over the course of seven years from 2013 to 2020 followed 209

01:01:07.580 people who received double mastectomies for gender affirming reasons and they were all

01:01:15.400 checked in on after with you know a year after their procedure and then you know the years

01:01:21.800 beyond that how many of the 209 do you lucy think regretted it or expressed regret um what was the

01:01:31.120 number again 209 yeah maybe like six or so two two wow two i underestimated two two and so like

01:01:44.640 even the study that you're using to stoke fear doesn't actually stoke fear two people that is

01:01:50.900 less than one percent of people expressed regret and neither of them pursued any sort of reversal

01:01:56.320 all interesting so i don't know it just you probe any of this stuff and it's just fear-mongering

01:02:06.100 okay so when i say that i'm detrans a lot of people assume that i just like literally walked

01:02:10.700 into a doctor's office like on the internet because they don't know how like trans healthcare

01:02:14.480 in the netherlands works they assume that it went so quickly for me but like i went through

01:02:18.740 a very rigorous like diagnostic period before i was even allowed to start any kind of hormonal

01:02:23.400 care let alone access any like surgeries and stuff i had to do a psyche eval before i had surgery

01:02:28.460 every surgery that i did and um it's it's interesting because like even when you put 0.98

01:02:33.620 these barriers in place you do not stop the appearance of detrans people it is a statistical 1.00

01:02:38.160 inevitability that if you have a system in place that allows people to transition there will be

01:02:43.320 people who detransition it is just a numbers game so yeah no it pisses me off when people say like

01:02:48.520 oh, you just have to make it like harder to access care. No, no, because what I identified

01:02:53.920 as trans for 14 years before I detransitioned. Come on. Like they're always going to be there.

01:02:59.680 I mean, you, you, I think that's so important because it's like, they really do make it this

01:03:04.360 thing where it's like, we need to make them jump through an extra hoop and then there will be no 1.00

01:03:08.440 detransitioners. But what it really is though, what is the only way to make sure there are zero 1.00

01:03:14.240 detransitioners is to make sure that there are zero people who ever transitioned, which is 1.00

01:03:17.560 ultimately what these people want oh yeah absolutely it's it's not about a genuine love 0.97

01:03:23.580 and care for people who detransition it is because they want to you know indulge in their queer phobia 0.86

01:03:30.580 and just take away rights from everybody because it's ultimately ultimately about control of 0.72

01:03:37.140 female bodies because you don't hear them crying out or parading around um well besides ollie london

01:03:43.740 but does he really count no they don't really present m to f to md trans people and i know a

01:03:50.700 few and they're not transphobic it is ultimately about the loss of fertile wombs that we could use

01:03:58.260 to continue um the existence of preferably with the white christian race and can i say that yeah

01:04:05.920 of course yeah because that's because that's basically what it is it's it's not for anyone's 0.99

01:04:12.560 joy because if that were the case then we would see happy detransitioners but we don't there is

01:04:18.820 this big politicized culture warrior narrative that all detransitioners are chloe cole that

01:04:24.820 they're all ollie london that they're all daisy strong in who are these people who have like 0.81

01:04:28.960 committed their life's work to making sure that nobody can ever detransition again like them

01:04:34.780 which means that nobody will ever transition what is your experience like in community with

01:04:40.120 other d trans people like are they all transphobic i'm sure there's no consensus but what's your

01:04:44.780 experience here's the thing i have yet to actually speak to another d trans individual who wants to

01:04:49.600 ban all trans health care i know some people who have differing thoughts about how trans health

01:04:53.900 care should look like what kind of hurdles are supposed to be in place and blah blah blah like

01:04:57.260 there's diversity there but i don't know anyone personally who's trying to ban all trans health

01:05:02.320 care and that's here's the thing i would love to have a conversation with chloe cole with um

01:05:07.700 literally maybe not ollie london but like daisy strong and maybe not ollie london can meet me in

01:05:14.600 the pit um i don't know any detrans people who are trying to ban who want to ban trans health

01:05:23.120 care all we see is like this just individually did not work out for us but that doesn't mean 0.99

01:05:27.880 that it's a net negative to society to allow people to transition full stop yeah and before

01:05:34.240 Before we close out, Lucy, what do you want anyone listening who this might be a new conversation

01:05:39.700 for or who might have kind of bought into the right wing panic about detransitioners?

01:05:45.260 Like, what do you want them to know from your experience?

01:05:48.020 What do you want them to take away?

01:05:49.260 There's something that I say quite often now.

01:05:52.100 I started saying it when I detransitioned because I was like pondering what it meant

01:05:56.600 for me.

01:05:57.340 And I say there is joy in reinvention.

01:06:00.360 and what i mean by that is that i experienced detrans joy i have experienced a happiness that

01:06:07.740 i never thought was possible before through the rediscovering of my own identity and what i want

01:06:14.300 to impress on people is that gender joy can thrive at any stage whether that's trans joy or detrans

01:06:21.600 joy it's basically don't bans trans health care we need it we need it and i like ultimately

01:06:27.900 we all suffer under queer phobic oppression my god like i just want to also point out to people

01:06:34.780 like yeah um even though i've detransitioned i'm not always perceived as a cis woman in society

01:06:41.200 i still suffer under transphobia and all these right-wingers who are so vehemently against trans

01:06:48.340 people they're not going to check what's in my pants before they hate crime me to put it bluntly

01:06:53.120 and the thing is there are also cis people who suffer under transphobia yeah so it's not

01:06:59.160 conducive to anyone to continue with all this hate it makes no sense anyway love wins always

01:07:05.520 love wins love does win lucy thank you so much for being here today and not just for being here

01:07:12.440 but for you know being out in the world with your story providing what i think is a really

01:07:17.740 necessary counter to this idea that all detransitioners are transphobic and want the end

01:07:25.360 of trans healthcare to be available to anyone. I think you're doing such important work.

01:07:30.500 Where can people find more of you? Where can people support your work?

01:07:34.260 Well, I have a TikTok where I post a lot of videos about my detrans experience. Also just like 1.00

01:07:42.360 daily life things um i'm also on twitter um as long as that still exists by the time that this

01:07:48.140 podcast is up and i'm also on instagram uh all at the same handle i'm assuming that uh matt will

01:07:55.080 have all of my links in the description yes of course sorry yes yeah well thank you for being

01:08:02.000 here lucy thank you well that's our show for today if you made it this far i am truly so

01:08:08.940 so appreciative i hope you learned something i hope maybe you laughed i hope you you know

01:08:14.620 were provided with some solid arguments for when your mom or your uncle over the holidays is like

01:08:20.600 you know a lot of people are detransitioning we really have to start worrying about this we really

01:08:24.500 should start banning i thought i i hope that i gave you something that you can retort with 1.00

01:08:29.200 thoughtfully and um i love you if you like the show feel free to give us a rating and uh if not

01:08:36.460 then you know keep it moving don't give us a rating i love you and until next time stay fruity

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - December 05, 2023

The Detransitioner Panic

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