Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Transgender Who Wasn't" with KC Miller

Transcript

"The Transgender Who Wasn't" with KC Miller · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Can I humans welcome the safe space to dangerous ideas, and this is a doozy for the dangerous
• 0:07
  conversation.
• 0:09
  I'm gonna get a lot of hate for even talking to someone like this, because their story's
• 0:21
  not supposed to be heard.
• 0:24
  But I do think it's important just to hear the actual experiences of people who are
• 0:31
  collateral damage in our big fancy, beautiful, fabulous culture wars.
• 0:38
  And in a week like this, when if you live in Sydney, you're only just coming down from
• 0:43
  a two or three week extravaganza of pride in everything that the LGBTQIA plus community
• 0:51
  has achieved, there has been not a whisper of dissent from just the sheer relentless
• 1:03
  fabulousness of it all, the sequins, the feather boars, the waxed oiled chests and pectoral
• 1:09
  muscles of drag queens sitting astride gigantic inflatable penises.
• 1:14
  It's been marvelous, I gotta tell you.
• 1:17
  And I kicked the whole extravaganza off on ABC, the national broadcaster, three weekends
• 1:24
  ago, at Fair Day, which is the family friendly LGBTQIA plus event.
• 1:31
  Come one, come all, grandma and the kids.
• 1:34
  Here about how fantastic it is to be trans, I interviewed several trans people on the
• 1:38
  air live and they were fabulous people and God bless them.
• 1:46
  And I have since hung out with several of my trans friends.
• 1:51
  Some of those people are binary, some of those people are non-binary, I'm very much, I think
• 1:57
  I learned my bona fide is in the in the trans space in terms of making it clear that
• 2:03
  I have absolutely no problem with transgender people, I did an entire segment, an entire
• 2:09
  episode rather about JK Rowling, which copped me shit from both sides, but I made it absolutely
• 2:16
  clear that trans people are real and exist and deserve to transition and deserve all of
• 2:21
  our support and no prejudice or bigotry or discrimination.
• 2:26
  And at the same time, and at the same time, because I am a person who likes to deal
• 2:32
  in nuance and detail instead of arm waving hysteria, it is possible that in our zeal
• 2:47
  to make life better for traditionally shatter upon communities.
• 2:52
  That's the technical term if you're an anthropologist, a traditionally shatter upon community
• 2:57
  of which I am a member, I'm married to a guy, my grandparents survived the Holocaust,
• 3:04
  I've got the Jew card, I've got the Gay card, I've got a number of cards, I'm working
• 3:09
  on the disability card maybe, if I could figure out a way to lose a leg.
• 3:14
  Anyway, I won't let you in on too much of my future plans, they'll call me Hoppe Long's
• 3:19
  Heps, it'll, I think I've had my bona fide is in supporting people who have been traditionally
• 3:24
  shatter upon and nonetheless, it just irks me when there's an insistence that there
• 3:31
  is no problem when a problem may exist.
• 3:35
  So then I go sniffing around to see whether or not it's true that there is no problem.
• 3:41
  And the no problem that my community insists does not exist is an over identification
• 3:52
  of transness, perhaps a haste on the part of the medical profession to validate the trans
• 4:01
  identity of young people who may simply be confused about their gender or sexuality, who
• 4:10
  may be, who may have internalized homophobia and they may be lesbians, a disproportionate
• 4:15
  number of them are on the autism spectrum, the possibility that in our enthusiasm for
• 4:25
  affirming the lived experience of gender dysphoric people, we may also be catching up in our
• 4:34
  net of sparkles and glitter, a certain proportion of people who really don't belong on the
• 4:43
  train, the train to transition.
• 4:47
  And Casey Miller is one of them, Casey's a female, a male and now back to female, de-transitional,
• 4:57
  who is speaking out about the pediatric transition situation, and Casey asked their followers
• 5:06
  on Twitter who the followers would like them to talk to, and my name popped up.
• 5:16
  Casey first came to my attention in a viral video that they posted in October, last
• 5:21
  October, and I noticed it, it's a video Casey looks, is sitting in a car staring straight
• 5:27
  at the camera and sharing some of their experiences.
• 5:32
  What you see is a young-ish, fresh-faced, what looks like a young man with male-patent
• 5:37
  baldness, and this is how the video goes.
• 5:41
  So I got out of my hair cut, because my hair was driving me nuts, and I shaved it because
• 5:47
  I'm tired of watching my hair thin out, and it's less stressing if I shave it.
• 5:52
  So when I talk about being too far gone, I don't really know what else to call it.
• 5:57
  This is what I mean, this is how deep my voice is.
• 6:01
  It's gotten deeper over time, and it's settled.
• 6:05
  This is what I mean by hair loss, and it just keeps getting worse, it keeps thinning, it
• 6:09
  keeps receiving backwards.
• 6:11
  You know, and I'm not exactly sure that's coming back.
• 6:16
  Those are the main things when I talk about being energized to a point of no return.
• 6:22
  I really don't see those being fixable.
• 6:24
  So that's when I talk about, you know, just kind of staying how I am, regardless of how
• 6:30
  I feel.
• 6:32
  That's why, just because I don't really see me personally being able to come back from
• 6:36
  what's happened so far.
• 6:37
  So I hope that's a little explanatory, just to kind of give a little bit more of a kind
• 6:46
  of the, I mean, reward that.
• 6:48
  Just to kind of, you know, talk about, give more awareness to the situation, kind of
• 6:57
  so you can see where I'm at.
• 6:58
  Words are not working well with me right now.
• 6:59
  I'm just going to cut this off.
• 7:02
  There you go.
• 7:04
  You know, this is what happens when you give a woman testosterone.
• 7:07
  This is for five years.
• 7:08
  This is what happens, essentially.
• 7:10
  So, you know, that's it, stay safe.
• 7:15
  So that's the first time I saw Casey and when I got an email from them, I was confronted
• 7:22
  with a little bit of a conundrum of journalistic integrity, right?
• 7:27
  Many people who have the loudest voices on this issue say, and I have some sympathy for
• 7:32
  this view that it that we shouldn't do interviews like this one, because to do so is to sort
• 7:40
  of play into the hands of transphobic conservatives who want to undermine justice for trans people
• 7:47
  altogether by shining a spotlight on a vanishingly rare number of cases who should never have transitioned
• 7:54
  in the first place.
• 7:55
  And I get that and I get that that dynamic is happening and that there are bad actors
• 7:59
  on the right, Matt Walsh in America, Tucker Carlson, people who have never had the interest
• 8:06
  of trans people, or just of general human flourishing, frankly, in mind.
• 8:14
  And who will cherry pick and present and amplify all of the flaws of the trans community.
• 8:23
  And every single little case where someone has been misled in order to try to present that
• 8:29
  as being the norm and inflate the scale of the crisis.
• 8:32
  And Matt Walsh was on Joe Rogan's podcast.
• 8:34
  He overestimated the number of transgender procedures and detransitioners by something
• 8:40
  like a thousandfold or 10,000fold.
• 8:42
  I mean, the man has spent so long, he's an anti-trans activist, that it's been so long
• 8:47
  focusing on this crisis.
• 8:49
  The only people he speaks to are the people who have had problems in this area and who
• 8:53
  have detransitioned.
• 8:54
  Those are the people who reach out to him.
• 8:55
  That he has a complete skewed vision of the landscape of what's actually going on.
• 9:03
  But I don't think I do.
• 9:04
  I mean, these are my friends, these are my people, this is my community, I'm a journalist,
• 9:12
  it's also largely my beat.
• 9:14
  I don't think I'm a voice who spends a lot of time banging on about how we have to
• 9:20
  save the children, save the children from the transgender ideology that's coming to get
• 9:24
  them.
• 9:26
  Most people who come out as trans are trans and need to be trans and we'll be happier
• 9:33
  being trans and that's fine, all credit to him.
• 9:37
  But I'm not going to throw under the bus, a cohort of people who either have mental health
• 9:45
  issues or are finding it difficult to come out as gay or lesbian or queer or bi or are
• 9:54
  on the spectrum or our social outcasts or excluded or having behavioral issues or having problems
• 10:00
  at home.
• 10:01
  I'm not going to throw those people who are having issues around gender under the bus
• 10:07
  by saying, okay, in the interests of transgender acceptance, you're going to have to get
• 10:11
  on top of this train and we're going to start doing, we're going to start shoving pills
• 10:15
  in your mouth and performing surgery on you because that's the only way to be happy
• 10:21
  once you start thinking that you're born into the wrong sex, the wrong body.
• 10:28
  I mean, that just strikes me as a horrendous, fasting pact, an awful moral trade off.
• 10:36
  And if you're finding yourself thinking, Josh, stop being such a nuance bro, like that
• 10:42
  is not what's happening.
• 10:44
  Of course, if that was on the other side of the ledger, then we would need to hear more
• 10:48
  stories about it.
• 10:49
  But nobody is having pills shoved down their throat and the experimental surgeries performed
• 10:56
  on them.
• 10:57
  This is nonsense.
• 10:58
  It's not happening.
• 10:59
  Well, maybe that's why you have to receive more emails from the case emails of the
• 11:05
  world.
• 11:07
  And maybe that's why you have to follow your journalistic instinct or your instinct for
• 11:12
  actually understanding issues and just talk to them about what happened to them.
• 11:21
  This episode is in no way intended to imply that Casey's case is the majority of cases
• 11:27
  or is even a significant minority of cases.
• 11:30
  The reality is we don't know, there's no good data on this.
• 11:34
  It's only an end of one, but it is a real human life.
• 11:41
  And Casey's story deserves to be told just as much as the people with sequins and fedabullas
• 11:48
  and beautiful waxed oiled petrol mussels deserve to be told.
• 11:52
  Enjoy this conversation with Casey Miller.
• 12:05
  So I have been in outpatients mental health treatment because obviously coming to the
• 12:15
  realization that decisions that you made as a 16 year old to physically transition to
• 12:21
  the opposite sex and why you came to those conclusions that can definitely have a big
• 12:27
  mental toll on you.
• 12:28
  I was definitely in my fills a lot.
• 12:31
  I knew I needed to seek help and I sought help and I spent several weeks in an intensive
• 12:36
  outpatient program, which I found extremely beneficial for me.
• 12:40
  And now I'm in outpatient behavioral health.
• 12:43
  So that's been a lot.
• 12:45
  What has happened?
• 12:46
  How long does it like how many hours a week does that occupy?
• 12:49
  So there's different levels in the United States.
• 12:52
  There's intensive outpatient adult day program.
• 12:55
  Adult day program is seven hours of group therapy a day five days a week.
• 12:59
  And intensive outpatient is four hours of group therapy a day three days a week.
• 13:06
  It's a lot.
• 13:07
  Yeah, it is a lot.
• 13:09
  It is a lot.
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  It's very tiring.
• 13:11
  You wouldn't feel tiring and also expensive.
• 13:13
  How is that funded, even?
• 13:15
  Actually, my insurance is really good about covering mental health related things.
• 13:22
  So my copay was very small that I think it was like five dollars a day, five dollars
• 13:28
  a day.
• 13:29
  See, this is what a lot of people don't understand in America when they're like, oh, we should
• 13:32
  have universal healthcare like other countries too, like Canada or Australia.
• 13:36
  I mean, there's no way that anything like that would be funded.
• 13:40
  If you have good insurance in America, then actually when I was living there, I found
• 13:44
  that the health insurance system whilst frustrating and like difficult to deal with and it's
• 13:49
  annoying to have to deal with like HIPAA and all these crazy forms and like who takes
• 13:54
  what insurance and stuff.
• 13:56
  Once you're actually in the system getting it, it covers so much more than any place that
• 14:00
  has socialized medicine does.
• 14:02
  So that's good that you're getting the care.
• 14:05
  And how do you spend the rest of your time?
• 14:07
  Do you study?
• 14:08
  Do you have a job?
• 14:09
  What do you do?
• 14:10
  So I didn't have a job.
• 14:12
  I tried to go back to work.
• 14:14
  So on top of the whole transition stuff and some other mental health issues, I have some
• 14:18
  physical conditions as well, which I thought I'd put in remission.
• 14:23
  So I was originally in nursing school.
• 14:25
  I was going to be a nurse at my associate's degree and that was in 2021 to 2022.
• 14:32
  But I developed POTS, Pustal Orthostatic Techacardia Syndrome starting in the fall of 2021 and
• 14:39
  throughout the spring of 2022.
• 14:42
  It's heart and nervous system.
• 14:44
  So essentially my vasculature just doesn't work correctly.
• 14:49
  So it stays consistently vasodilated and because of that, my heart has to work over time
• 14:55
  just to circulate the same amount of blood into oxygenate everything.
• 14:58
  That's a very gross oversimplification, but the result is increased heart rate.
• 15:03
  We're allowed to have other simplifications work for me.
• 15:09
  Increase heart rate, lightheadedness and just kind of some complications with that chronic
• 15:15
  fatigue.
• 15:16
  That's another really big one.
• 15:17
  We also discovered that I have EDS in our standless syndrome, which is a connective
• 15:21
  dysusorder and that was causing a lot of chronic pain.
• 15:24
  Long and short, I went from being a somewhat fully functional young adult to not being
• 15:30
  able to lift 40 pounds, not being able to stand up for 20 minutes without feeling like
• 15:35
  I want to pass out.
• 15:38
  So I had to medically drop out of nursing school.
• 15:41
  That was kind of a kick of the pads and I've been trying to figure out what to do.
• 15:45
  I was thinking about social work.
• 15:46
  I was thinking about psychology, but now I'm looking to return to school for a biochem.
• 15:53
  Great.
• 15:54
  How old are you?
• 15:55
  I'm 22.
• 15:57
  And did any of these health problems predate your transition like to what is your opinion
• 16:02
  about?
• 16:03
  Is there a causation there or would these things have happened anyway?
• 16:07
  So interestingly enough, I think the pot was more stress related.
• 16:13
  Looking back, I think I had symptoms of it in times of stress as an adolescent, but
• 16:20
  it wasn't an issue at all until like the high stress period in nursing school, which
• 16:27
  sure is just a bunch of stuff going on mentally.
• 16:29
  And I was also looking back the first time that I was even contemplating the idea of transition
• 16:33
  regret.
• 16:34
  I would make jokes like, oh, I'd be really crappy if I regretted this because like look
• 16:39
  at me.
• 16:40
  I would regret this.
• 16:43
  And kind of thinking through that in my head, but really just pushing it back while also
• 16:47
  dealing with basically drinking like through a fire hose and getting all this information
• 16:53
  about like clinical nursing practice and medications and conditions and knowing that if you
• 16:59
  screw up, you could kill somebody and all that stuff all at the same time.
• 17:03
  Yeah.
• 17:04
  Okay.
• 17:05
  Okay.
• 17:06
  Let's just go back to your teens then because I remember seeing that video that you posted
• 17:12
  just in passing as the way that one sees anything that goes viral and has a moment.
• 17:18
  And I thought it was very touching and to take us back to a few years before that I guess
• 17:24
  and at what point in your adolescence like when you went through puberty as a female,
• 17:31
  how did you feel about yourself?
• 17:34
  So I had a lot of conflicting feelings about myself and my body.
• 17:42
  But looking back, I think a lot of that was just normal female insecurity.
• 17:46
  But because of the environment that I was raised in and also having a background of sexual
• 17:54
  abuse as a child, we didn't really talk about body image issues or how common that was.
• 18:01
  So I thought this was just a completely isolated issue.
• 18:04
  I was a pretty shelter kid as well.
• 18:06
  So I just thought that like everybody else was fine with their body and I was having issues
• 18:10
  with my body and only I was having issues with my body.
• 18:13
  I didn't realize that virtually every other teenage girl is going to have issues when they
• 18:17
  hit puberty.
• 18:18
  They're not going to like their periods and they're not going to like how their body develops
• 18:23
  in certain ways or have issues with weight or how their body looks and clothes and how
• 18:30
  boys look at them, I didn't realize that that was a universal issue just because that
• 18:34
  was something that was never talked about.
• 18:38
  And did you have crushes on boys or girls?
• 18:43
  I think I somewhat had crushes on boys but they weren't really as deep as with girls.
• 18:50
  I was mostly attracted to girls which for a little bit of background, I grew up fundamentalist
• 18:54
  Christian and church was not very happy about anything homosexual.
• 19:01
  I was not out in the church.
• 19:03
  They thought I was just like a straight little poster child but in terms of the messaging
• 19:07
  that I had received from an early age about homosexuality, same sex attraction, being
• 19:12
  gay as far as I knew it was a choice, you were a predator, you were disgusting, you were
• 19:18
  an abomination.
• 19:20
  And where are you?
• 19:21
  Where did you grow up, Casey?
• 19:23
  So I was born in Massachusetts and then when I was eight, we moved to Pennsylvania where
• 19:28
  I've lived since.
• 19:30
  Rural Pennsylvania?
• 19:33
  The area that I'm in, not to give myself away too much, it's kind of a weird mix of
• 19:37
  rural and suburban.
• 19:40
  So I don't mean interesting.
• 19:42
  Hi, I only ask because for people who don't know the United States, Pennsylvania is
• 19:46
  a very odd state in that it has its kind of half like the deep south and half like progressive
• 19:52
  cities.
• 19:53
  It's really weird.
• 19:54
  That's why like when trying to describe it, I say like it's generally red with really
• 19:59
  blue pockets ideologically.
• 20:02
  I mean, it's weird because like the town that I live near, we have like a major medical
• 20:06
  center, we have a research university at medical school.
• 20:10
  That area is pretty liberal, pretty accepting.
• 20:15
  But then if you go 20 minutes outside of town, it's the opposite here in very conservative
• 20:21
  backcountry.
• 20:22
  It's an interesting dichotomy.
• 20:26
  And we use, were you questioning your faith when you were in your teens or did you basically
• 20:31
  swallow it hookline and sinko?
• 20:35
  I have a propensity to question everything much to the dismay of my teachers, my preachers,
• 20:40
  everybody, even my science teachers, they would get so annoyed because they would state
• 20:44
  something and I'd be like, well, why?
• 20:46
  And they're like, stop asking why.
• 20:49
  I would always ask questions, but I bought into it.
• 20:52
  I teach it.
• 20:53
  That's a great spirit of academia to instill.
• 20:56
  Stop asking questions.
• 20:58
  Yeah.
• 20:59
  Or, okay, well, how did we come to that conclusion?
• 21:01
  Okay, we came to that conclusion 20 years ago.
• 21:03
  What's the data save out at now?
• 21:05
  And oh, my bio teacher hated me because I would always ask so many questions.
• 21:10
  Anyways, I did ask questions, but generally speaking, I bought into it pretty hard because
• 21:18
  it was just what I had grown up with.
• 21:20
  It was what I knew.
• 21:23
  And you mentioned sexual assault when you were younger.
• 21:25
  What was that?
• 21:26
  I mean, you don't need to talk about it anymore than you're comfortable with, but.
• 21:28
  Oh, no, it's fine.
• 21:30
  I'm relatively an open book with a lot of these things.
• 21:34
  So I was sexually abused by my father from the estimate is about age four and a half
• 21:38
  to seven and a half at which time I revealed the abuse.
• 21:42
  I was removed from the home by my mom and investigation began by an Massachusetts state
• 21:47
  police.
• 21:48
  The four and a half to seven and a half is an estimation based on forensic psychology reports
• 21:54
  in terms of me being interviewed when I was like seven and a half.
• 21:58
  So for all we know, it could have been happening sooner.
• 22:02
  Miranda, so sorry, and was that was that properly dealt with by the authorities?
• 22:06
  Was he charged?
• 22:07
  Yes.
• 22:08
  He was charged.
• 22:09
  He's currently incarcerated in prison on the sex offender list.
• 22:12
  They gave him the max sentence that they could.
• 22:17
  What was your relationship with your mom like during all that?
• 22:22
  It's interesting because I don't remember too much about that time.
• 22:28
  The only things that I remember, I was a pretty happy, go lucky kid.
• 22:33
  And our relationship was okay, but that was where I kind of saw the shift from her being
• 22:39
  a mom to her being a caregiver.
• 22:42
  She's also a nurse, has worked in nurse management, quality control and risk management and all
• 22:46
  that stuff and has worked previously as a pediatric nurse.
• 22:50
  And when I started really displaying symptoms of depression and anxiety or particularly panic
• 22:58
  attacks, which happened shortly after we left the home, that's when she kind of kicked
• 23:04
  into nurse mode and started to de-escalate manage the situation.
• 23:08
  And that's where the relationship started to change.
• 23:12
  To point where over the years I can look and she's been my mom at certain times, but
• 23:16
  other times I can absolutely see where she shifts into caregiver mode, caretaker mode.
• 23:22
  And I've kind of turned into not just her child, but her patient.
• 23:27
  And how did you feel about that?
• 23:31
  I didn't realize what was happening until recently, of course, kind of looking back on the dynamics
• 23:37
  and so on.
• 23:39
  I understand that was what we needed to do to survive and that she was just trying to keep
• 23:44
  me stable.
• 23:46
  And certainly there's been certain things that we've said to each other, certain things
• 23:49
  that she's done, certain things I've described to therapists that they have said is definitely
• 23:55
  classified as emotional abuse.
• 23:57
  She's definitely not completely innocent in my upbringing, but at the same time, when
• 24:02
  we talk about it today, she goes, I understand and I'm sorry, but I was just trying to keep
• 24:05
  you alive because I ever since I was age 9, I was expressing suicidal ideation.
• 24:10
  So she was just trying to keep me from really falling off the edge and that's all I could
• 24:19
  ask for when you're just trying to manage a child in and out of crisis as a single mom.
• 24:25
  Yeah.
• 24:26
  Did you find her cold though at the time when she was in nurse mode?
• 24:29
  Oh, absolutely.
• 24:32
  And I didn't understand this until I went through part of nursing school myself because
• 24:38
  you kind of just flip into a mode.
• 24:39
  You can't just panic.
• 24:40
  You start running through the algorithms that you have in your head, all right?
• 24:43
  I'm going to start assessing.
• 24:44
  I'm going to start evaluating the situation and what needs to be done.
• 24:50
  What needs to be managed?
• 24:51
  How do we de-escalate the situation?
• 24:53
  What do we need to do to move forward in terms of not being able to turn that off?
• 24:58
  Because I would jokingly say like, I'm your kid.
• 25:00
  I'm not your patient.
• 25:01
  Treat me like your kid.
• 25:02
  She's like, I'm a nurse, I can't turn it off.
• 25:06
  Then I experienced not being able to turn it off thing though a year on from it, I can
• 25:12
  turn assessment mode off, but that's because I'm not submerged in it.
• 25:18
  And you mentioned suicidal ideation.
• 25:20
  How young were you when you first started thinking those sorts of thoughts?
• 25:24
  I was nine.
• 25:25
  I recall first time I started thinking about or confronting death and thinking about death
• 25:32
  was when my grandma died.
• 25:34
  So she had breast cancer and she passed trying to think it was July of 2009, sorry.
• 25:42
  So I actually I was still eight.
• 25:44
  So she passed in July of 2009 and this was in the midst of moving from Massachusetts to
• 25:50
  Pennsylvania and switching schools and it was just like a really rough and tumultuous
• 25:57
  time and understanding that something had gone horribly wrong.
• 26:01
  I had no idea what sex was or what sexual abuse was.
• 26:04
  I just knew that something really bad had happened to me and that all of a sudden my dad was
• 26:07
  very dangerous and that we had to run away and that there was a threat to our safety.
• 26:12
  And I had feelings about this because I was starting to blame myself because I always
• 26:17
  thought that based on the conditioning that anything that had happened, I don't know.
• 26:26
  Somehow I started to blame myself for the abuse because of the way that my dad had reinforced.
• 26:32
  Basically anything going wrong in his life was my fault and he would pin it on me and
• 26:35
  my mom.
• 26:36
  And when I found that my grandma had died and I had seen this person that was once living
• 26:41
  and now she's dead, that was the first time that I confronted mortality and I, you know,
• 26:46
  thinking, well, everybody's going to end up like that one day, why can't I end up like
• 26:51
  that now?
• 26:52
  I don't like what I'm feeling, you know, it was the first time that I, it's weird because
• 26:59
  I didn't think, oh, I could just go kill myself, but it was the first time that I confronted
• 27:03
  death and thought, well, why can't that be me?
• 27:07
  You poor little thing.
• 27:08
  I just want to go like in time and give you a hug.
• 27:12
  Yeah, it's hard because like I can say all of this stuff and I, you know, I try and
• 27:18
  refrain from cracking jokes at my own expense.
• 27:20
  To me, this is just my life.
• 27:22
  This is just what I live with.
• 27:23
  It's a pretty baseline for me.
• 27:24
  And then I realize how screwed up some of it is, you know, you should not have to have
• 27:30
  gone through that.
• 27:30
  I mean, you, you lived an entire life of trauma before the age of eight and to like, to
• 27:35
  then be in such a situation that your crazy little brain thinks that the solution is
• 27:40
  that it has to extinguish itself because like it's to blame for a lot of shit that has
• 27:44
  been thrown at it.
• 27:45
  It's tragic.
• 27:46
  It's horrible.
• 27:47
  I'm sorry, but all of that happened.
• 27:49
  But as you say, what do you do except you do the work and you move on and you dust yourself
• 27:54
  down and you get off and I'm glad that you've done that.
• 27:57
  So anyway, you enter your teens.
• 27:59
  We hear about you're going through puberty.
• 28:01
  You start to have crushes on girls.
• 28:03
  That doesn't mesh with your faith.
• 28:07
  What happens next?
• 28:08
  How do you start thinking about your own identity?
• 28:10
  So for a little bit of reference, I also have a condition called PCOS polyacistic ovarian
• 28:18
  syndrome.
• 28:19
  So I am generally a larger female.
• 28:23
  I'm five eight.
• 28:24
  I have a larger frame and I always had trouble fitting in girls clothes.
• 28:29
  I also had some weight issues, but mostly it was I ran into issues with clothes and things
• 28:35
  like the shoulders like I would I would always rip shirts because they were all I was always
• 28:39
  too small and too narrow in the shoulders.
• 28:42
  I had to mostly shop in the men's section by the time I reached high school for shoes
• 28:48
  because I was a size 12 wide women's and you try going into a shoe store and buying
• 28:53
  a self size 12 wide women's off the shelf, it's just not going to happen and that just
• 29:00
  kind of fit with where I was more comfortable with.
• 29:04
  I had a preference towards I guess what you would say male stereotypical activities.
• 29:09
  I was a tomboy, I was always a tomboy and especially when you're dealing with body
• 29:14
  image issues and you're slightly bigger than your female peers and you know you're kind
• 29:20
  of thinking about trying to lose weight and trying and it's not succeeding and you don't
• 29:26
  know how to really approach food correctly because neither my mom or I really had a healthy
• 29:33
  relationship with food.
• 29:35
  You start to try and look for ways to hide the issue so a lot of my clothes were on
• 29:39
  the bag your side I tended more towards androgyny just out of personal preference but also
• 29:45
  because it would hide my size a little bit and it's difficult because I didn't view
• 29:54
  myself like other girls because my body didn't necessarily look like theirs but I think
• 30:00
  it was also just making it a bigger problem that it actually was.
• 30:03
  Right. Yes, as teenagers do.
• 30:08
  Yeah, so that combined with like because of the church that I was in they love that I was
• 30:15
  modest because I was very modest I didn't you know like because of the androgyny and so
• 30:20
  and I always wore button down shirts.
• 30:21
  My thing was plaid button down shirts and jeans that was kind of my standard outfit.
• 30:26
  It was very modest and they liked that but they didn't like the fact that it wasn't so
• 30:34
  overtly feminine and at all the other girls in youth group they were pretty stereotypically
• 30:42
  feminine and we're also very vocal about having crushes on boys but oh don't worry we're
• 30:48
  absent in it and I was the only one that wasn't and that was kind of questioned and also hearing
• 30:53
  like the prevailing stuff in youth group like lessons specifically on homosexuality, homosexuality
• 30:59
  and teens and that it's a choice, it's a fat, it's a phase, it's just going to pass and all
• 31:05
  that stuff and then on the adult side hearing like the adult sermons on homosexuality that
• 31:11
  you know homosexuals are predators and that they're trying to I guess seduce straight people
• 31:20
  and they're just these horrible people and that's all a choice and that it's you know
• 31:24
  sin of the flesh and all these horrible things and internalizing that hearing will you know gay
• 31:30
  people are predators and knowing that my dad was a predator I started to feel like a predator
• 31:36
  for pain attracted to girls and trying so desperately hard to change that and it just I it wasn't
• 31:42
  changing so I'm grappling like that because he did you say that you weren't absent on the other
• 31:48
  girls were oh sorry no um we were all abstinent they all talked about having crushes on boys
• 31:55
  and I never did I see what you're saying yeah okay and so where did you first come up with the idea
• 32:01
  or encounter the idea that people could be born in the wrong sex in the body of the wrong sex oh
• 32:07
  boy um I remember this so vividly um it was April May of 2017 and for a little bit of reference
• 32:18
  I had a relationship um in the previous year I was a junior and high school I had a relationship
• 32:25
  with a girl and my mom found out and I was just an immensely dark place and I got really
• 32:30
  suicidal non-Americans a junior is your second last year yes um year 11 we would probably call
• 32:37
  yeah year 11 um and I was in a really dark place my mom found out she flipped um and I
• 32:45
  got really suicidal I was a risk to myself admitted myself inpatient um over Christmas break um
• 32:51
  2016 going into 2017 and this entire time I was really grappling with you know hating the
• 32:58
  fact that I was gay hating the fact I began to tell myself I wish I wasn't a woman because then
• 33:04
  I could like women if if I was a man and I liked women I would be straight and no one would bother me
• 33:10
  um and just having this intense self hatred around my sex um based on my sexuality and based on
• 33:17
  the homophobia that I had experienced and also um my mom just really not liking that I was gay um
• 33:22
  that was a really big issue um and of course when you type into google I'm a woman and I don't want
• 33:29
  to be a woman what do I do um eventually that's going to lead to transgender stuff and the first
• 33:35
  video I remember seeing that showed me that physical transition medical transition was an actual
• 33:41
  thing and that was possible was um a New York Times op ed on the military transgender couple Logan
• 33:48
  and Leila Ireland um I don't know if you've seen that or heard of them um no but um Logan Ireland
• 33:58
  was uh is or was I don't know if he's currently instilled as a transgender serviceman or member in
• 34:04
  the United States Air Force um he kind of presented more as like a butch lesbian or stereotypically
• 34:13
  masculine woman short hair liked women and then transition to male but when you see the guy it
• 34:20
  there's this joke in um gender critical circles that oh you can always tell when somebody's trans
• 34:26
  you can tell with that guy and I was absolutely blown away to find out that he was born a woman
• 34:32
  the guy's jacked he was probably the most jacked person on his unit because they showed him
• 34:37
  in comparison with the other guys huge biceps big muscles um you couldn't see his top surgery scars
• 34:43
  and like it was the first time that I had even seen that like you could start as a woman in in my
• 34:49
  mind end up looking like a man and a very muscular man and I thought no one would mess with me if I
• 34:54
  looked like that and that's just where it you know it just fell down the rabbit hole for me
• 35:01
  what did that look like um like what actually food um from there because uh the other half of that
• 35:11
  was um Layla Ireland who is a male to female transgender individual in in my opinion you also
• 35:17
  couldn't tell with her that she was um biologically male um but for me obviously the the female to
• 35:22
  male aspect was a little bit more intriguing and applicable so that um triggered me to look into
• 35:28
  female to male youtubers and I found um a lot of these channels of uh trans men who dedicate all
• 35:36
  of their videos to their transition and especially some of the younger ones there are um trans guys
• 35:42
  16 17 18 years old and that's where I saw video after video after video of people you know posting
• 35:50
  one year on testosterone post-op top surgery and talking about their transformations and how
• 35:56
  their life went from unlivable unbearable to now they're these happy outgoing confident people
• 36:03
  and they feel like they're finally who they're meant to be and that you know people respect them now
• 36:08
  and that they just fit into society better um and that they could you know wear men's clothes and
• 36:14
  do men's things and you know everything was all hunky dory it was fine and and I I started to think
• 36:21
  that maybe that was something that I wanted to so what did you do um from there I think from
• 36:34
  there then I started to kind of buy into the idea of um if you meet the sex stereotypes or the
• 36:42
  stereotypes of the opposite sex and you have this desire to not be your current sex and that
• 36:49
  must mean that you you should be the opposite sex and you should transition and that that's your
• 36:52
  identity that's immutable and that this needs to happen and around May June I um quote-unquote came
• 37:00
  out to my mom um as trans at first it was non-binary because I kind of just wanted to be gender
• 37:06
  neutral and raogenous but um that was not going to work she said well I'm that's not a real thing
• 37:12
  I'm not gonna take you seriously so I was like oh screw it all just go for broke um and I I said
• 37:17
  why I meant to be a dude and at first she was very adverse and was like this sounds weird the sounds
• 37:25
  like something you just found on the internet which it was um let that eventually she kind of took
• 37:30
  a step back and was like hold on let me do some research let me do some digging and she'd found that
• 37:36
  there was actually clinical research going on about trans and um specifically gender-forming care
• 37:42
  in youth and saw that the regret rate what the infamous D transition rate is less than 2% and saw
• 37:49
  that there are major children's hospitals um offering gender clinics um and that we're also doing
• 37:55
  research and she thought okay you know this this is what my child is saying my child is not stupid um
• 38:02
  you know the internet see internet but my child is not stupid and I don't think they'd be making
• 38:06
  this up um I'm not an expert nobody around here is an expert let's go to experts to try and figure
• 38:11
  this out when you just mentioned in passing the infamous D transition rate of 2% what do you mean by that
• 38:19
  so there is this um prevailing idea that is peddled um in the transgender community that um D
• 38:27
  transition is non-existent nobody detransitions or it is a statistically irrelevant amount of people
• 38:33
  that detransition some people say it's a less than 2% detransition rate or in some there's one study
• 38:40
  I think that said that they had a .3% detransition rate um and by detransition they mean returning to
• 38:48
  live as your birth sex and or um stopping medical interventions whatever that's hormone therapy or
• 38:57
  other medical interventions that somebody might undergo to physically transition um but then they
• 39:02
  also say well in that 2% the majority of those people that do detransition do so because of
• 39:07
  transphobia not being able to afford hormones it's not because they actually regretted it it's not
• 39:11
  because it was the wrong decision it's because the world is making it hard for them to live as quote
• 39:17
  unquote who they really are um and that statistic was something that my mom ran into that was
• 39:23
  something that eventually when we did go to a gender clinic she was told by the clinician that
• 39:28
  evaluated me that this is a you know very very low regret rate very low detransition rate um
• 39:35
  that this was it was used to defend this as a correct decision right in fact there was a big study
• 39:42
  that got some press I think about a year ago out of was it the Netherlands or Denmark which had
• 39:48
  looked at detransitioning and had and was being presented in there were a lot of articles in the US
• 39:54
  press which is where I found out about this saying that this proves that detransition rates are
• 39:59
  negligible you know somewhere in the 2% range or something and then Jesse Single who is like a
• 40:06
  dog at a bone with trying to dig into this stuff a journalist who has done probably more research
• 40:10
  into all these this data than anybody else actually contacted the person spoke to the researcher
• 40:15
  themselves to clarify this and the cohort of people whom the researcher had taken in this study
• 40:22
  were people who currently self identifiers transgender in other words of the cohort of people who
• 40:28
  currently self identifiers transgender a very small fraction of them detransitioned but the
• 40:35
  researcher was saying you would expect that to be the case because people who have successfully
• 40:39
  detransitioned no longer self identifiers transgender because they've transitioned and that was a point
• 40:46
  was either alighted or confused by all of the American press reports so that was yet another
• 40:53
  kind of line in the sand of people saying see almost nobody detransitions but you're sort of
• 40:58
  total logically excluding anybody who would have successfully detransitioned from the cohort
• 41:03
  of people who you're analyzing so anyway if you're just saying take those statistics with a grain
• 41:09
  of salt but your mum wasn't in a position to take them with a grain of salt because she was going
• 41:12
  to experts experts were saying this is probably this is almost certainly not going to happen so
• 41:17
  what happens next do you have a psychological evaluation yes so there's also this other myth that
• 41:27
  it is extremely difficult to get into gender clinics especially pediatric gender clinics that
• 41:33
  the whole process take months and months and years and that there's a super thorough evaluation
• 41:39
  obviously things could have changed between now and then but I'm willing to bet that things have
• 41:45
  probably gotten easier than when I went through it especially with the change from standards of
• 41:50
  care seven to standards of care eight in terms of law those safeguards especially in the
• 41:55
  pediatric analysis side that were lifted but for me we self referred through the internet my mom sent
• 42:01
  an email to children's hospital Philadelphia's gender and sexuality development program in July of
• 42:06
  2017 I had my first appointment in September was 90 minutes I had my second appointment in October
• 42:12
  also 90 minutes and after that appointment I was referred to a local clinic for testosterone and I
• 42:18
  started in December and then six months later I had to double mastectomy so looking back on it
• 42:26
  that's that's a pretty fast process one thing that non-Americans might find weird about the
• 42:31
  American healthcare system is that because care is not rationed through the public purse there's
• 42:37
  no gatekeeper between the consumer and the specialist so in countries with public health with
• 42:47
  socialized medicine to use the controversial term you would always need a general practitioner
• 42:52
  a family doctor to be the gatekeeper in order to even see a specialist and that doctor would be
• 42:58
  the person who funnels you either towards the gender clinic or towards further psychiatric follow-up
• 43:04
  in the United States because your private health insurance is paying for things you can just go
• 43:08
  directly to specialist and you don't need any gatekeeper do you have any idea about whether or not
• 43:13
  that changes the dynamic outside of the states have you spoken with anyone outside the states
• 43:18
  about what their experience was I have spoken to people outside the states but not specifically
• 43:24
  about how socialized healthcare systems impact their access to just healthcare in general or
• 43:31
  gender-affirming care I will say at least in my area there are certain specialties that you still
• 43:37
  need to get a referral through primary care or your GP in order to get into the office like you
• 43:43
  can't just call the office as a new patient and get it an appointment but that's not the case for
• 43:50
  a sexual health clinic correct correct I you can refer from the internet that's one of those
• 43:56
  I also think in behavioral health as well because recently even with the adult day hospital I was
• 44:02
  able to self refer interesting yeah okay so you show up you are a survivor of sexual abuse you have
• 44:11
  this mom who's in nurse mode treating your chronic illnesses you've had a death in the family you've
• 44:18
  moved states you've admitted yourself to an inpatient psychiatric clinic already and they take
• 44:27
  two 90-minute sessions to conclude that none of that is relevant to your current claim to be trans
• 44:35
  correct did they talk to you about that stuff
• 44:41
  um from what I can recall and I don't remember too much about the conversations but I do remember
• 44:51
  that Dr. Hawkins had stated at one point I forgot whether it was in the I think it was in the
• 44:56
  second session yeah it was in the second session because I remember I remember the locations I
• 45:00
  remember with the rooms looked like I remember a ton of what was said specifically but she said
• 45:07
  like the to the extent of which the impact of the abuse was investigated with me she said something
• 45:15
  along the lines of now I know that you have a painful childhood history we're not going to get
• 45:21
  into it and we'll only talk about stuff as far as you're comfortable but do you think that this
• 45:27
  is impacting how you feel and of course I'd already had this conversation with my mom who was telling
• 45:36
  me like you have literally told me prior to finding transgender stuff on the internet if I was a boy
• 45:43
  the abuse wouldn't have happened and she was like I'm pretty sure your father this is kind of
• 45:49
  callous this is a little bit screwed up but she was like I'm pretty sure your father would have
• 45:52
  abused you anyways whether you were a boy or a girl that was just who he was um thanks mom that's
• 45:57
  really reassuring but um I had already voiced this you know kind of hatred for myself as female
• 46:06
  before even do what trans was and then finding trans and thinking you know I have all this body
• 46:11
  insecurity and all that stuff and she had voiced several times to myself and Dr. Hawkins that she
• 46:17
  suspected this was a response to the childhood abuse and then this was just a coping mechanism for me
• 46:23
  and literally the only to the extent it was investigated with me was do you think this is
• 46:30
  related to the abuse and I said no and that's that's as far as it went with me I mean it's ludicrous
• 46:36
  to ask a patient of course if you're a young person who thinks that they've found the holy grail
• 46:41
  that's going to provide a solution to all of their problems if we're simply saying are you doing
• 46:46
  this out foolishly because you think it's going to solve your problems is seems like malpractice
• 46:52
  it's like I mean it's like saying to someone do you think that this reaction is just psychosomatic
• 46:57
  and doesn't actually have anything to do with you know what's really going on I mean if the whole
• 47:01
  nature of something being psychosomatic or someone being mistaken about themselves is that they
• 47:05
  can't see that they were mistaken if they could see that they were mistaken then then they wouldn't
• 47:08
  be sitting in front of you um anyway so that's the extent of the interrogation as you recall it
• 47:16
  and then once you start once you start on testosterone two months and two sessions after first
• 47:25
  encountering the clinic what happens how do you start feeling um so I responded pretty quickly
• 47:33
  to testosterone and um on my original twitter account which I have since uh deactivated just
• 47:39
  because of how I had gained all the notoriety and the attention I have a new one though and I'm
• 47:44
  starting to make waves there um but on there I had talked about how I had started my voice began
• 47:51
  to drop within two weeks of starting testosterone on a very low dose and I had people responding
• 47:56
  me telling me that was not humanly possible but it happened I I responded fairly quickly
• 48:04
  within three months my my voice had dropped noticeably and within six months it was unrecognizable
• 48:10
  and I was also starting to work out in the gym and of course I was not super strong I mean I
• 48:16
  was never super strong but like I was starting to work out and I've seen the newbie gains and then
• 48:20
  you just slapped testosterone on top of that my numbers were going up and uh you know it's pretty
• 48:25
  happy and my body was changing in ways that I thought I wanted um and in in ways that I had
• 48:33
  thought that I needed and that was very exciting and it was what sort of way is what were you noticing
• 48:38
  the most um mainly the voice uh some body decomposition uh the voice was the main thing to drop
• 48:46
  though and strength yeah strength did you feel different I mean like not physically was there
• 48:52
  was there any emotional component other than the fact that you you liked the fact that this was a
• 48:57
  process that you were undertaking did you find yourself either easier to to anger or less creative
• 49:04
  or I don't know anything else you know um I didn't notice a psychological impact of hormones
• 49:11
  directly until I'd probably reached full dose um so I'm very fortunate and this I felt this way
• 49:19
  even when I was you know still deeply trans identifying I'm very fortunate that I went to a
• 49:24
  provider that didn't just put me on full dose testosterone right away um they at least had a
• 49:28
  little bit of common sense and thought okay we're gonna start at a really small dose and taper
• 49:34
  up in small increments and assess tolerance and see how this is gonna go instead of just
• 49:40
  because there's some people even like I there were some youtubers that I followed that they
• 49:45
  went in and they start on a hundred milligrams of testosterone weekly right away and it's I it
• 49:51
  really can screw people up I mean it can screw people up anyways but it can really mess with
• 49:55
  somebody if you just blast them with testosterone out of the blue okay so it takes six months you
• 50:03
  said to from between starting on testosterone and then going into surgery at when do you first
• 50:10
  meet the surgeon how does that process get underway um so I started testosterone in late December
• 50:18
  of 2017 and by March April um chop was back in contact with me and they were like how's testosterone
• 50:26
  going are we still feeling like top surgery is the next objective cool we'll get you in touch with
• 50:31
  the surgeon and so I got I think I had my appointment in April um and like that was just kind of an
• 50:40
  assessment uh consultation and we were able to schedule for mid June pretty easily
• 50:48
  what was the conversation about risks rewards reversibility um honestly I think I remember much
• 50:56
  about risks being invest um talked about mostly it was about methods um so in top surgery I'm not
• 51:05
  sure if you're I will try not to get too graphic here but there are different kinds of um top
• 51:10
  surgery or double mastectomies that are performed in female to male um transitional surgery so there
• 51:17
  is the most typical one which is double incision with nipple graphs um which more closely resembles
• 51:23
  what a double mastectomy would look like for a female cancer patient um and that's the one where
• 51:29
  you see like the two big scars and then like the nipples are basically taken off of the breasts and
• 51:34
  like grafted back on an amyel position but then there's another procedure um called perioreolar
• 51:40
  or there's also another one called keyhole where essentially if there's so if there's a small
• 51:45
  enough amount of breast tissue they can kind of just make little incisions near the nipples and go in
• 51:51
  and um remove the tissue out and sew it back up they don't have to make these two big incisions
• 51:56
  right exactly like liposuction yes um actually the procedure itself is very similar to um if men
• 52:04
  get surgery to remove gynecamastia what's going to comeastia um gynecamastia is in large
• 52:11
  breast growth in men okay which could be um due to hormonal fluctuations uh maybe
• 52:18
  a client-felter syndrome could also be because of weight issues um depending on the circles that
• 52:24
  you run in uh steroid abuse without massive uh without big scars and so you about you were
• 52:30
  basically given the option of these um well I was told what he was going to do he went with the
• 52:37
  perioreolar approach um because he felt he could get away with it um because I was kind of
• 52:42
  I was like a size b is like a big size a small size b and he he said you know I I don't think
• 52:48
  I need to make the big incisions I think I can just um go in with small incisions um underneath
• 52:55
  and you know kind of scoop things out you'll have drains for a week um should be fine low
• 53:00
  complication rate okay so you went with that um how to go um I mean I was a pretty easy process
• 53:11
  for me I didn't really have um any major complications I I um had to manage the drains so
• 53:19
  when you have this procedure done you get like um yeah I forget what they're called but uh JP
• 53:25
  drains um that are put inside the chest wall and they kind of poke out um the sides like right
• 53:30
  below your armpits and you have to manage those for a week post-op while you wear either like a
• 53:34
  post surgical binder or like this sticky dressing that goes across your chest and um I was kind of
• 53:40
  squeamish at the time so but you have to measure um and empty the drains every day um and measure
• 53:46
  the fluid and keep track of it um and that that that that was an interesting task um I would say
• 53:52
  that was probably the most quote unquote traumatic part of it and getting the drains pulled because
• 53:57
  they said oh it's gonna be a painless process but um I didn't take any pain killers before
• 54:01
  having that done and then I got them pulled and that was an interesting time uh not painless
• 54:07
  you're like oh it's painless if you're on percussette and I'm like why didn't take any percussette
• 54:12
  do you have any percussette uh okay and what's your mom's attitude towards all this towards the pace
• 54:18
  of uh your diagnosis and then on to the drugs and then on to the mistake of me um she was under
• 54:25
  the influence I at first she was very hesitant um she made it clear and I I saw this looking
• 54:30
  back at the medical records which I obtained last year um that she was she wanted to be supportive of
• 54:36
  me but she wanted to be she was very cautious around permanent changes because they're permanent
• 54:42
  and she also had her theories her two theories that was that were that I was doing this because
• 54:47
  of sexual abuse and because of the fact that I was gay and that she and the church had a problem
• 54:51
  with that um but because of um multiple things that were said studies that were thrown around and
• 54:59
  then the final nail in the coffin of being told by the clinician that um children that don't
• 55:04
  transition have a 40% likelihood of um in those words in in the words of the clinic in that
• 55:11
  sorry clinician successfully committing suicide not attempting suicide successfully committing
• 55:16
  suicide um when my mom heard that she was like I have no choice like this is how I have to keep my
• 55:21
  child alive so everything that happened after that was okay this is going to help keep my child alive
• 55:28
  better alive some than a dead daughter as the the trans slogan goes so is there any
• 55:34
  basis to the 40% claim do you know where that comes from um I I'm not terribly well-versed in
• 55:43
  the literature regarding uh transition and pediatric transition I believe um from what I've heard
• 55:52
  I think it's like 40 to 41% attempted suicide or maybe it's suicidal ideation I don't know I know
• 56:00
  for a fact though it is not um successful suicide so I know that that was misquoted I think it
• 56:06
  also has something to do with again the cohort that you're talking about if you're talking about
• 56:10
  people who have persistently and insistently from a very young age been the wrong gender and they
• 56:16
  are comprehensively thwarted throughout their lives uh then that would be a different you'd get
• 56:21
  a different result than if you are including in your your kind of sample group anyone who had ever
• 56:28
  been requested or suggested proposed the idea of um of transitioning nonetheless let's
• 56:33
  park that for a moment so you have the double mistake to me and your voice is where you want it to
• 56:40
  be and you've got some of these other physiological changes like your muscle growth and so on
• 56:46
  and at what point do you start to question all this
• 56:52
  it's interesting because I've been trying to figure out um when the questioning began I think it
• 57:02
  really began full force in 2022 um or like late 2021 early 2022 and sorry how long is that after
• 57:10
  you got the mistake to me uh let's see I got it in June 2018 so let's say June 2022 so about four
• 57:20
  years afterwards you live a few years as a dude uh in a reasonably happy situation I mean
• 57:28
  what is your mental state of the period of time when you're relatively speaking it was I had my
• 57:35
  ups and downs um I was never a suicidal to the extent of needing to be hospitalized again I dealt
• 57:43
  with uh bouts of severe depression um I was admitted into an outpatient eating disorder program
• 57:51
  in late 2019 um and kind of dealt with that for a few years um but my mental health was generally
• 58:00
  better um and I I mean I was I was pretty happy in how I was presenting and at least I could put
• 58:06
  on a good show because you know I finally get to shop in the men's section which I was never allowed
• 58:10
  to do because I was a girl despite the fact that the clothes just fit better off the rack because I
• 58:15
  had broader shoulders um you know I got to wear what I wanted I got to actually cut my hair um like
• 58:21
  I wanted to but I wasn't allowed to because well that's for boys um you know I got to do the things
• 58:27
  that I wanted to do and I didn't have to lie about liking men I could openly like women and it
• 58:33
  would be okay um so that part of it was really cool um and my my mental health in spite of those
• 58:40
  ups and downs and those spikes was generally better um because I I thought I had finally found the fix
• 58:47
  that you know oh this entire time all of my problems you know besides the childhood abuse and the
• 58:53
  eating disorder and the depression and stuff all of all of my other problems are caused because I
• 58:57
  was meant to be a man I was meant to be male and now I'm you know living my true authentic self
• 59:02
  and my true authentic life and you know this this is it this is the fix I can actually be my my true
• 59:08
  self so fast forward to last year uh what starts changing I think part of it was um having to
• 59:21
  reckon with my declining health um so kind of before I was in nursing school I was a little bit
• 59:27
  of a meathead um I didn't have like super impressive numbers I was into power lifting and stuff
• 59:32
  but like at one point I could deadlift well over 400 pounds which is pretty good for a biological
• 59:37
  female um and from that point up until like when I had to drop out of nursing school I went from
• 59:44
  deadlifting over 400 to not being able to lift 40 pounds at work um you know working in a grocery
• 59:49
  store and I went from being able to run a 5k to not being able to even go into a grocery store for
• 59:55
  five minutes um went from being able to get straight A's and stay awake in class near photographic
• 1:00:02
  memory to almost flunking out of nursing school because I can barely stay awake in class not being
• 1:00:08
  able barely making it through clinical uh nearly making net errors um and just generally filling
• 1:00:15
  awful and confronting this thinking god is this my new reality and um when you're thinking about
• 1:00:22
  your body and the changes that you've made to your body and all that stuff it kind of starts to
• 1:00:28
  trigger some memories and I was thinking about a lot of things about my life and my life decisions um
• 1:00:34
  and I don't know how or why that triggered the idea of transition regret but that's when it started
• 1:00:38
  for me was really starting to confront like gosh has my life changed am I now you know for
• 1:00:45
  lack of better terms somewhat disabled because of this and did that lead to another rabbit hole
• 1:00:53
  of internet searches and yet more videos from the other side um ironically enough no not for a few
• 1:01:00
  months it led to some internet searches but that was more so me trying to figure out what the hell
• 1:01:05
  was going on with me because I had gone to all these specialists and um nobody could figure out
• 1:01:11
  what was going on or they just told me oh you're just stressed or oh you just need to work out more
• 1:01:16
  they wouldn't run tests or they would run blood tests and they were all coming back normal
• 1:01:20
  and they're just like oh sorry we can't help you um and so you know I investigated chronic illness
• 1:01:27
  stuff um but I didn't really start looking at the trans stuff until probably September
• 1:01:35
  and that was when I was uh following some people on instagram that primarily buck angel um who
• 1:01:42
  was affiliated with gays against groomers and talking about um I think he shared something about
• 1:01:46
  Chloe Cole and uh standards of care eight and how that was just released and I remember reading it
• 1:01:52
  and thinking this this is completely crazy um standards of care have gone out the window um kind
• 1:01:58
  of pushing away my own questioning and then reading koi Cole's story and then reading other
• 1:02:02
  detransitioner's story and thinking it was like the worst thing in the world and also weirdly
• 1:02:08
  resonating with it but not willing to recognize it yet um and that's when I started to investigate
• 1:02:13
  detransition more more so from a place of trying to understand uh quote unquote different point of view
• 1:02:20
  but still thinking oh I'm trans I transitioned it was the right thing I didn't regret this but
• 1:02:25
  we need to understand people who did so it can keep it from happening again right and do you think
• 1:02:30
  in hindsight that maybe that was a way of I don't know extracting yourself from your own predicament
• 1:02:37
  making it theoretical making it intellectual so that you didn't have to confront what had happened
• 1:02:43
  to you oh absolutely um this realization coming to the realization that um you've made this big of a
• 1:02:52
  mistake and that people around you have kind of advocated for you to make this big of a mistake
• 1:02:57
  and that you've done this thing for several years and now you are taking a step back and realizing
• 1:03:02
  it was just the wrong decision it's a really painful calm down I don't wish this on anybody um so I
• 1:03:09
  I can't fault myself or anybody for starting out um kind of looking at this being like well I
• 1:03:16
  I'm intrigued I want to understand more I deep down resonate with this but I'm not willing to
• 1:03:20
  acknowledge it yet um let's delve into this issue but I'm still supportive of my camp I still think
• 1:03:25
  I made a right decision right right when did that shift so ironically enough when I posted the
• 1:03:32
  video that went viral in October I was um I was still somewhat trans identifying or at the very
• 1:03:38
  least I was I was kind of regretting the transition but I thought that there was really no way out that
• 1:03:43
  you know I had done it when I was 16 I was 21 I was I I thought that I looked too male to ever be
• 1:03:50
  taken seriously as a woman again um and that my preferences were I it sounds awfully misogynistic
• 1:03:56
  but that the fact that I liked wearing men's clothes and all that stuff meant that I should just
• 1:04:00
  stay male um or stay presenting as male and that that was just my fate this is what I've done to
• 1:04:05
  myself I've just got stuck it up a deal with it um and it was only after getting in contact with
• 1:04:12
  um detransitioners who were all checking in on me after just the onslaught of attention that
• 1:04:19
  that video got and the I got um in talking and realizing that you know they're they're kind of
• 1:04:26
  was a way out or that at the very least I I could try coming off of hormones I could you know
• 1:04:32
  go to therapy and work on myself that nothing was definite that I could explore these issues
• 1:04:36
  further um that I started to consider detransition what was the reaction to the video that you
• 1:04:44
  minute oh my gosh uh so I think it hit conservative twitter first um and somehow it pushed all the
• 1:04:53
  right buttons I remember I was talking with another interviewer and podcaster Benjamin Boyce
• 1:04:59
  about it because he said it um it was it was unintentional in my part but it was like perfectly
• 1:05:05
  crafted to elicit a very big response um you know both from the left and the right um so I had a
• 1:05:13
  lot of uh conservative twitter they were sharing it around and it was like you know oh my gosh
• 1:05:18
  this poor young woman look at what they did to her you know look at what testosterone did to her
• 1:05:22
  and so on um and some of them kind of fell into like the fear mongering camp of all they're doing
• 1:05:28
  this to our little girls and you know look you know we need to hold these monsters accountable um
• 1:05:33
  and you know some of the detransitioners kind of rallying behind and saying yes kid was sixteen
• 1:05:39
  when they went in for treatment and you know now they're kind of facing this and talking candidly
• 1:05:45
  about you know these perfectly safe and non regrettable procedures that you know they have
• 1:05:52
  permanent lasting effects um and that that was another thing two people say oh it's testosterone
• 1:05:57
  partially reversible it partially is but mostly effects aren't and that was part of what the video
• 1:06:01
  was speaking on is that the majority of these changes that have happened to me are not going to
• 1:06:06
  bounce back just because I stopped testosterone and I can confirm being four months off of testosterone
• 1:06:11
  that virtually nothing has changed um like somebody if I redistribution but everything else is the same
• 1:06:18
  and then um the left side of twitter or the trans right side of twitter just completely um cut into
• 1:06:26
  my appearance they called me ugly they called me bald they called me an idiot and stupid for um
• 1:06:32
  quote unquote um deciding to screw up my life um like oh it's your fault for making this decision
• 1:06:38
  did you not look up what testosterone does they thought that I didn't know what testosterone did
• 1:06:43
  because I was talking about um one of the symptoms of testosterone used for me was a pretty noticeable
• 1:06:49
  male pattern baldness um which I because of PCOS I did have an email pattern in her line prior to
• 1:06:55
  starting testosterone but it was not nearly this bad and I can guarantee you if I had been on
• 1:07:00
  testosterone for over four years my hairline would not be nearly as receded as it is now
• 1:07:07
  so people are accusing me of misinformation I got called a hitler genocidal Nazi told to kill
• 1:07:13
  myself multiple times got multiple death threats it was it was quite the right extraordinary did
• 1:07:21
  you have any conflictedness about becoming a poster child for the for the conservative side of
• 1:07:28
  things I mean I know that you went on tack a Carlson and you know your video was featured in
• 1:07:34
  videos by like Matt Walsh and people who dedicate their entire lives to essentially I mean they
• 1:07:42
  think that they're protecting children but there is also something of a mass panic or a mass
• 1:07:46
  hysteria around around this that is uh unhelpful to people who are happily trans and just want to
• 1:07:54
  get on with their lives will you have you been worried about sort of being played or becoming a
• 1:07:59
  porn in a in people's culture wars I have been concerned about that since I saw Matt Walsh repost the
• 1:08:06
  video um and everybody oh the other thing that was really crazy was that there was this conspiracy
• 1:08:13
  theory there are multiple conspiracy theories when conspiracy the main theory is that this was all
• 1:08:19
  staged um that I planned this video it was a scripted video um that I planned and that because
• 1:08:26
  of who I followed I followed um as I say alt right accounts intentionally um so that they could
• 1:08:33
  find the video and signal boost it and so I could cause mass hysteria and that um I some people
• 1:08:41
  even went as far to saying that I wasn't trans and not like in the sense of oh you transition but
• 1:08:46
  you were never actually trans no people were going around spreading rumors so I was in fact a
• 1:08:51
  biological man that is being paid by a company associated with gays against groomers to make this
• 1:08:58
  video um so it's that whole crazy conspiracy theory but I frankly was kind of horrified with how fast
• 1:09:08
  a lot of these very conservative um like youtubers and media outlets were picking this up
• 1:09:14
  and what they were saying and especially I was I honestly I was pretty scared when my clip ended
• 1:09:20
  up on Tucker Carlson I didn't find out until a couple days after when I started getting messages
• 1:09:25
  on Twitter and they're like hey you're the person I saw on Tucker and I'm like you saw me wear
• 1:09:30
  excuse me oh I see I thought you'd been on Tucker he just played your clip no they yeah they played
• 1:09:36
  my clip and they also got the facts wrong they said this is what happens when you give puberty
• 1:09:40
  blockers to a 15 year old and I'm like you know if you're gonna air the clip could you at least
• 1:09:45
  check my feed before you like no wasn't 15 it was never on puberty blockers get your facts right
• 1:09:50
  oh I see you didn't take puberty blockers but you did take testosterone when you were 16
• 1:09:57
  um why I had I had just turned 17 like a month before starting testosterone right okay
• 1:10:04
  um and then on the other side as you said I mean I I old I saw when your clip initially passed
• 1:10:11
  my through my feed was a tremendous amount of hate from the from the cohort that's closer to me
• 1:10:18
  than conservatives which are progressives uh just I guess I guess feeling offended that you
• 1:10:27
  were pointing to something that they think doesn't happen or that they that their literature claims
• 1:10:32
  doesn't happen and abusing you and pillering you for I don't know exaggerating your plight or like
• 1:10:41
  oh boo hoo hoo like it's almost like your story is the price that we have to pay on the path
• 1:10:48
  to our glorious future of trans acceptance and so your story is not valid somehow or is is fabricated
• 1:10:55
  somehow um it's interesting because I think it was a friend of mine Michelle who is also a
• 1:11:04
  detransitioner from Canada um she put it this way that she said uh transition related healthcare
• 1:11:12
  has turned from healthcare into a service um that patient and you know you're no longer a patient
• 1:11:17
  you are a customer and you're buying a service and so if you're buying a service from somebody
• 1:11:23
  the only person that you can blame at the end of the day um if that service fails um is the the
• 1:11:28
  customer the way that she put it it was pretty interesting or um another friend of mine um who said
• 1:11:35
  transition um cannot fail it can only be failed um so I saw that attitude just play out um
• 1:11:44
  to your fault the sexual abuse was your fault your chronic illnesses were your fault
• 1:11:50
  moving from moving to Pennsylvania was your fault your mental health issues were your fault
• 1:11:56
  failing trans your transition was your fault yeah and it was it was really interesting it was
• 1:12:02
  especially jarring to see um youtubers um particularly one tie-turner and there are a couple
• 1:12:08
  others too that I had grown up watching female tomato youtubers people who make their entire living
• 1:12:15
  their entire all of their content is based on them being trans and trans acceptance and talking
• 1:12:20
  about transition and some of those people specifically tie-turner his videos were some of you know
• 1:12:25
  the videos that and made me think that transitioning would be the right move for me like the when
• 1:12:30
  you're on testosterone and watching all of the updates and you know watching him kind of grow into
• 1:12:35
  his own um and then to just see him like see my video and blatantly just call me out and you know
• 1:12:45
  say well it's not my fault that you made a wrong decision stay mad bald that was basically what he
• 1:12:50
  said well I remember he said stay mad bald and then proceeded to upset some of his followers who
• 1:12:56
  were like well I'm mtf and I struggle with hair loss how how does that impact me or other ftm
• 1:13:01
  um followers that were like well I kind of struggle with hair loss too and then he proceeded to
• 1:13:05
  backtrack and was like well bald is hot I never said bald was bad it's it's okay um but seeing
• 1:13:12
  you know these people that I had looked up to these people that I had followed just turn on me
• 1:13:17
  and it it was kind of jarring did that do a number on your mental health
• 1:13:23
  um yeah but the entire thing I would like to say that I I coped relatively well in the beginning
• 1:13:29
  and I had talked to people and they're like well you're doing a hell of a lot better than I would do
• 1:13:33
  and approaching this with a lot more grace and gravitas than I would but in all truth I was dissociating
• 1:13:39
  throughout the entire thing um in the first few weeks was fine but I I wasn't really letting myself
• 1:13:45
  feel the emotions um of both you know like the online harassment because it was it was multi-platform
• 1:13:52
  I was just on twitter but people were talking about me on twitter they were talking about me on youtube
• 1:13:56
  tiktok instagram they're talking about me everywhere um and I was receiving um I I was
• 1:14:03
  queued up that there was a couple people sending me death threats or not sending me death threats
• 1:14:07
  but they were threatening me um with death like on tiktok there was a woman that threatened to
• 1:14:13
  bash my head in with a hammer on um what's it called twitter that was a fun one and then she threatened
• 1:14:18
  buck angel um because he caught her out about it and then she changed the prompt to basically say
• 1:14:25
  she's gonna bash buck angel's head in with a hammer um I think she's been reported I hope she's
• 1:14:30
  having a better time um sorry that was a little tangent um that's okay it's unbelievable what comes
• 1:14:38
  out of the book on social yeah but I sorry I guess the point I was trying to make was I had compartmentalized
• 1:14:44
  all of that and so I think I just reached a certain point of fatigue and I felt the feelings
• 1:14:49
  and that was when I really confronted you know like okay I'm a transition regretter I did this
• 1:14:53
  but like really emotionally like actually feeling that and confronting the fact that I transition
• 1:15:01
  because of abuse and I transition because I wanted to trans the gay away and that was that was
• 1:15:06
  kind of when the walls came crumbling down for me and that was when I sought intensive outpatient
• 1:15:12
  because I was just like I'm I'm crumbling I'm falling apart because of this realization and
• 1:15:17
  because of everything that's happening right now that's interesting I haven't heard that
• 1:15:21
  term before I wanted to trans the gay away because we've heard the term I want to you know you
• 1:15:26
  can pray the gay away if you're religious just pray hard enough and you won't feel gay anymore but
• 1:15:31
  to trans the gay away is I guess another illusion that people can go for if they don't want to be gay
• 1:15:39
  they can opt for this alternative which in your case hasn't worked um so you stopped taking
• 1:15:46
  testosterone uh you're now getting the mental health support you need is there anything else you
• 1:15:52
  can or are looking at doing or are you in a state of like I'm gonna find a find a way to love myself
• 1:15:59
  as I as I am um so I've also gotten laser hair removal on my face uh part of that is also because
• 1:16:09
  of the EDS my skin is really stretchy and I've also just always had issues with the facial hair
• 1:16:14
  growth I haven't had too much but it's definitely noticeable um but I could never really get like a
• 1:16:20
  shade like I could never shade without some sort of irritation I can never shade without cutting
• 1:16:25
  my skin um I would always get in chrome hairs that would get inflamed also because of the testosterone
• 1:16:30
  use um once I hit full dose I had really severe cystic acne like my face was swollen there was
• 1:16:37
  postules I went to dermatologist I was on oral antibiotics topical antibiotics tretenelin
• 1:16:43
  they threw a bunch of stuff at it and it just wasn't making a dent um and it eventually
• 1:16:48
  subsided with time but like with the history of acne and plus being on the testosterone and just
• 1:16:53
  you know all the facial hairs like the way that the hair was growing in it was just really irritating
• 1:16:58
  and hard to manage so I figured that was probably one of the the least invasive changes I could make
• 1:17:04
  and not having a five o'clock shadow would maybe help a little bit in people somewhat believing that
• 1:17:10
  I was a woman um so I did that and I mean that that's just kind of more of a personal thing in terms
• 1:17:16
  of it's just nice to not have to shave as much and my face doesn't hurt now because facial hair
• 1:17:22
  is growing in yeah because for me it was painful it was painful right but um otherwise I am not really
• 1:17:29
  doing much of anything I'm taking things slow um kind of just seeing where I'm gonna be
• 1:17:37
  I don't think I'm gonna seek any reconstructive surgery personally because I just I don't see a
• 1:17:42
  point I don't feel like that's something that I need to do psychologically um and what do you
• 1:17:48
  think of your sex as being or your gender as being the same um well it's interesting because I
• 1:17:54
  don't I don't feel like a woman but in talking to people they're like yeah well there's no like
• 1:18:00
  inherent feeling of being a woman you just are but if we're going based off of stereotypes of how
• 1:18:07
  people behave and how they dress I still fit the male stereotypes but I'm much more comfortable
• 1:18:15
  with saying that I am a woman and I am female um but I happen to look very masculine I'm a very
• 1:18:23
  masculineized woman I am much more okay well right now I'm still currently socially presenting
• 1:18:31
  as male um and all of my records say male everything's changed over birth certificate social
• 1:18:36
  security um in articles and stuff and there's certain people in like the gender critical circles
• 1:18:42
  that regardless of what pronouns you ask them to use they're just gonna use whatever um like I
• 1:18:47
  find with people using people who aren't quite inside the the bubble enough to know what gender
• 1:18:52
  critical is and so on I even find the terms a bit confusing you're saying that there are
• 1:18:56
  anti trans let's just call them without there are anti trans people who just refuse to believe
• 1:19:00
  that anyone can be trans and therefore will always use the sex that was assigned at birth as being
• 1:19:05
  the sex so even if you're a you know a fully masculine presenting trans man like Buck Angel is
• 1:19:12
  these people will just insist on calling you she that's what yeah so to them you're always she
• 1:19:18
  but I mean when are those people and those people aren't the majority of people so are you have
• 1:19:22
  you ever played with they them does that make any sense to you um I did originally when I was like
• 1:19:27
  considering the whole transition thing and certainly if I'm talking about myself in the third person
• 1:19:33
  I generally avoid using pronouns or I use like neutral language um so like I was I was writing
• 1:19:40
  something and I'm like hey does anybody remember that kid that went viral in October for posting a
• 1:19:44
  video about the effects of testosterone yeah that was me um but instead of saying like you know
• 1:19:49
  woman or anything like that trans guy I kind of just try and stay the middle lane yeah um I'm
• 1:19:56
  still navigating that personally I'm also interested in what so what do you what do you take away
• 1:20:00
  from all this in terms of your insight from your personal experience about the whole
• 1:20:05
  royaling culture war around this because it's interesting that earlier in this conversation you
• 1:20:09
  were saying that in your religious upbringing they taught you you know in your youth church would
• 1:20:15
  say that homosexuality is just a fad and it'll pass in in religious youth group um you now hear
• 1:20:23
  people saying that the transgender ideology is a fad it'll pass they use people like you and
• 1:20:29
  stories like you as as pawns to try to push that narrative and to try to undermine the the
• 1:20:36
  experiences of people who have had a persistent uh transgender experience since the you know as
• 1:20:41
  early as they can remember um clearly homosexuality is not a fad it doesn't pass it's it seems to be
• 1:20:49
  a reasonably fixed thing in most people's lives there's a bit of blurriness at the edges we're all
• 1:20:54
  a little bit gay we're probably all a little bit by but you know people people tend to find their
• 1:20:59
  line and then stay in it do you think that gender is that is is more like that or is it more
• 1:21:07
  fluid do you feel uncomfortable like thinking about gender about trans genderism as as potentially a
• 1:21:14
  fad that will pass how do you reconcile them it's hard because i'm still trying to figure that out
• 1:21:22
  there was a period of time where admittedly i was pretty radicalized i you know thought that all
• 1:21:29
  people that transitioned were and let me let me clarify what i'm about to say i do not hold
• 1:21:34
  these beliefs anymore this was just me trying to process and also being surrounded by a bunch of
• 1:21:38
  very right-wing people i thought all trans people were delusional that it was you know a fool's
• 1:21:44
  errand that transition was useless that it was just big form of trying to take your money
• 1:21:48
  and well i do agree that there is death there can be a financial incentive for
• 1:21:53
  specifically like plastic surgeons um you know trying to get people to get transgender surgeries i
• 1:22:00
  maintain the belief that i had previously that there definitely are some people with very persistent
• 1:22:06
  gender dysphoria that probably will benefit from medical transition and living as the opposite sex
• 1:22:13
  or you know living in a different way than their birth sex because psychologically that is going
• 1:22:18
  to be more beneficial than trying to live as their birth sex but i also would like to assert
• 1:22:23
  that um a lot of the newer generations such as myself um and even some of the young adults
• 1:22:30
  in the informed consent model that are just you know walking into plain parenthood and getting
• 1:22:33
  hormones and all that stuff that the lack of uh psychological evaluation or proper psychological
• 1:22:40
  evaluation is not ruling out any possible other issues um so i i think you can hate your birth
• 1:22:47
  sex for different reasons than being transgender and we're just assuming there's there's a cohort
• 1:22:52
  of people that are assuming that if you hate your birth sex that means your trans doesn't matter
• 1:22:56
  like you know that that's just it you are meant to be the opposite sex no questions asked can't
• 1:23:01
  question it your transfer there's your hormones um i don't think that's true i think we need to take a
• 1:23:06
  balanced and nuanced approach to it um i i don't think everybody that is seeking medical
• 1:23:12
  transition right now probably should be but i don't think that it should just be off the table either
• 1:23:17
  i think there are certainly people that still benefit from it but if you're in in my situation um
• 1:23:24
  or similar situations to me there's definitely some other issues that just weren't being looked at
• 1:23:30
  that you know and in some of these cases we need to slow down and look at the surrounding issues
• 1:23:36
  and not just assume that um you hate your birth sex because you're trans okay see good luck to you
• 1:23:43
  thank you for hitting the up it's amazing to hear your story and i i really wish you all the best
• 1:23:49
  you've been dealt so many bad hands in your youth that i'm i'm glad that it sounds like you've
• 1:23:54
  kind of found uh found your lane and found your thing so all all all our love from me and my my
• 1:24:01
  listeners and please keep me posted and let me know how you're going all right thank you very
• 1:24:06
  much for having me Josh