One-way ticket
The Federalist (sorry) on the different tune that detransitioners hear:
After being swarmed by health providers who enabled her to medically transition as a minor, Prisha Mosley now says she’s been abandoned by the medical community as she attempts to navigate a complicated and painful detransition.
Transition is new, exciting, glam, “woke”; un-transitioning is un-all that.
Prisha has a slew of medical complications dating back to the more than five years she spent on testosterone and a double mastectomy that a plastic surgeon performed shortly after she turned 18. Many of those complications surround her endocrine system, which encompasses the hormones that regulate nearly every process in the body, from metabolism to growth and development, emotions, mood, sexual function, and sleep.
“I was hoping that if I could get my endocrine system working, I could be on less psychiatric medicine because low testosterone and estrogen will cause depression and anxiety, both of which I’m medicated for and don’t really like being medicated for,” she said.
Hmm. Makes you think, doesn’t it. Maybe it’s not such a clever idea to mess around with the endocrine system for something as intangible and mutable and in the head as “gender identity.”
Professional organizations that represent many of these providers claim to offer open, inclusive, supportive care for “transgender” and “gender diverse” individuals. That offering, it appears, doesn’t apply to individuals seeking to detransition.
It wouldn’t, though, would it. Inclusive and supportive are for trans people; those going in the other direction don’t need it and don’t deserve it. Right? They’re, like, traitors to The Cause. Affirmation is all, and what the other-directioners are doing is the opposite of affirmation.
It’s also a matter of medical knowledge.
Cat Cattinson, a woman who medically transitioned to a wrong-sex identity in her 20s before realizing it was a major mistake, said access to medical care from providers who are knowledgeable is one of the major barriers detransitioners face:
Because of the experimental nature of gender medicine, doctors know very little about the long-term effects of medical transition and even less about the health-care needs of those who detransition. Surgeries, obviously, are irreversible, but hormonal interventions can also have lasting effects requiring treatment to mitigate. Testosterone caused irreversible changes to my vocal cords, resulting in daily discomfort and pain, but most ENTs [ear, nose, and throat doctors] and other voice ‘professionals’ are not informed about how testosterone affects a female voice or how to help someone in my situation.
But she was given testosterone anyway. What the hell, right? Give it a shot and see what happens. Don’t worry about providing a path back.
Prisha doesn’t know why she’s been turned away from so many doctors and medical providers — whether it’s about money, politics, or a lack of knowledge to help. If it’s the latter, one might ask why medical professionals are allowed to put individuals, including minors, on drugs and “treatments” that they’re unable to later undo or address, should that patient change his or her mind.
One might indeed.
Well, they’re making it up as they go along with transitions. Endocrinology has probably never been such a hopping field. Plastic surgeons are also raking in the cash. There’s been no time to think about the consequences of this gold rush.
I have occasionally agreed on specific issues with people I would rather not be associated with. (Re: The Federalist.)
Same. (Re: The Federalist.)
Any idiot with a prescription pad can induce an endocrine imbalance. Just sign this waiver and here’s your gender juice, so glad we could help you, now who’s the next patient in line, ? But if one of these “patients” ever realizes that no amount of cross-sex hormones will actually change her sex . . . well, then she’s someone else’s problem. It’s a lot harder to undo damage than it is to do it in the first place, not to mention a whole lot less fun. Of course the endocrinologists and surgeons and “gender therapists” who facilitate transition want to wash their hands of detransitioners; doing otherwise would require them to confront the fact that, at least some of the time, they are causing serious harm.
I recently attempted to explain to someone that elevated testosterone is associated with a long list of serious health problems in so-called “cis women,” and there’s no reason to believe that the risk would be lower for any other subset of biologically female people. I was, of course, derided for my bigotry and medical ignorance.
My mind will never cease to boggle at the number of people who are not just unwilling but apparently unable to wonder about the consequences of radically altering a healthy endocrine system. Among other things, I see this as a grotesque failure of common sense. Of course common sense can lead us astray, and of course it’s not the final word on anything, but it’s usually worth taking into account. Back when doctors were still routinely performing lobotomies (mostly on women who were mentally ill or simply malcontent), more people should have had the common sense to ask “Wait, is destroying part of someone’s brain really such a hot idea?”
Did the author write “transitioned to a wrong-sex identity” because of actually agreeing with the present company on B&W that taking cross-sex hormones by definition means taking WRONG-sex hormones? Or did the author write this only because in the end, Prisha detransitioned, and only this demonstrated that the “identity” to which she “transitioned” had been wrong?