I started speaking on Twitter about my detransition and my ill-fated medical transition experience in April, 2022, when I was 17. I have since testified in the California State Senate Judiciary Committee against Senator Weiner’s harmful, anti-American, and anti-family bill, SB 107. This bill makes California a “sanctuary state” for minors seeking irreversible gender surgeries, which would allow what happened to me to happen to any confused or misguided child in the United States. Many statements by those purporting to be “medical experts” testifying in support of the bill have been shown to be without scientific basis.
For those not familiar with my story, I began identifying as a boy at 12 years old (without medical intervention). Immediately after expressing this cross-sex identity, I was fast-tracked into medical transition. At 13 I was prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone, and an 15 went under the knife for a double mastectomy. When I was 16, about 11 months post-op, I came to the realization that I had been lead down a horrific path of medical mistreatment, and I now speak openly about my darkest days to help educate families, lawmakers, and everyday citizens about the dangers of transitioning children.
Ennis wants people to believe that my experience is merely an “outlier compared to the vast majority of positive outcomes.” But she uses low quality and irrelevant studies on transition regret in adults to justify her claim, which bear no resemblance to the new “rapid onset” cohort of children now being medically transitioned. In just over a decade, the number of children referred to gender clinics has shot up between 2000 and 4000 percent. Even the New York Times, summarizing a report based on new CDC survey data, refer to this “sharp rise in transgender young people in the U.S.” There are currently no good data on transition regret for this new cohort, and until there is it is impossible for anyone—much less a child—to meaningfully consent to permanent, life-altering, damaging, and unethical medical treatments.
Ennis also repeats the widespread and well-rehearsed falsehood that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries are “lifesaving medical treatments.” This emotionally manipulative “affirm-or-suicide” narrative, which asserts that trans-identified minors are destined to commit suicide if they are denied “affirming” medical treatments, is something that many parents—including my own—fall victim to. But this is a myth rooted in the false comparison of kids with gender dysphoria to normal, mentally healthy children. When the suicide rates of trans-identifying children are compared to children with similar mental health profiles who do not identify as trans, the disparity in suicidal ideation shrinks dramatically, demonstrating that failing to “affirm” a child’s trans identity does not appear to cause suicidal behavior.