When I was 12, I tried to change my gender.
Everyone supported me.
Therapists told me I was doing the right thing.
Doctors prescribed puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones before cutting off my breasts – a double mastectomy.
My parents’ health insurance covered everything.
The medical establishment thought I needed to transition, based on the idea of “gender-affirming care.”
The message I received was loud and clear: transitioning was the best decision I ever made.
At 16, I realized I had made a mistake.
I wanted to go back, to detransition, to be the girl I always was.
But as soon as I said that, no one supported me anymore.
Therapists? They told me I was confused – that I was just on a “gender journey.”
The doctors? They didn’t want to come up with treatments and procedures to reverse what they had done.
They looked at me like I was crazy – like I was asking something completely outside the scope of medicine.
After a while, they didn’t want to talk to me anymore either.
My parents’ health insurance? That wouldn’t cover a cent of my detransition.
She was happy to pay to have my breasts cut off, but not for reconstructive surgery.
It wouldn’t even cover mental health care.
My parents and I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the care I need, with no end in sight.
Everywhere I turned, the medical establishment effectively told me that detransition wasn’t real or didn’t matter.
This is the dark side of gender-affirming treatments: they only affirm in one direction.
If you want to change gender, great. If you regret your decision, so be it.
I am now 19 years old. My chest is still tight where my breasts should be.
I have urinary problems due to all the chemicals that have been injected into my body.
When I look in the mirror, sometimes I don’t recognize my own face because the testosterone has changed it.
Every minute of my life is filled with physical pain and mental anguish.
The medical establishment acts like I don’t exist, but I do.
And I’m not the only one.
More and more young children are going down the same dark path as me, trying to change their gender at age 12 or even earlier.
Many do so under social pressure – what experts call “social contagion.”
But they are not transgender.
Nearly two-thirds of children who are unhappy with their biological sex eventually change their minds as adults and become happy with who they really are, according to a new study.
This is why a rapidly increasing number of people are doing what I do and detransitioning.
But they usually discover what I discovered: the same medical establishment that encouraged them is suddenly ignoring them.
They will struggle to get the mental health care they need.
They will have difficulty getting the treatments and surgeries they need.
And they and their families will struggle to find health insurance that covers their medical needs.
Instead, they will pay dearly for decades.
As I learned, gender transitions are not reversible, despite what I was told. I will need psychiatric and pharmaceutical help for the rest of my life.
The same will be true for countless people who have followed the same path as me.
We deserve to be seen, heard, helped.
I am calling on states to adopt a Detransitioners Bill of Rights that, at a minimum, requires health insurance to cover the cost of detransition.
I’ve testified before four state legislatures this year alone, and the Arizona Senate passed the Bill of Rights in March, and the House is doing the same any day now.
This is a fundamental issue of justice, fairness and equality.
If the medical establishment wants to break children’s minds and bodies, it should also help repair them.
All I want is the same level of support I received when I began my transition at age 12.
I didn’t know what was being done to me.
Now those who did it shouldn’t be allowed to ignore me.
Chloe Cole is the Patient Advocate at Do No Harm.
New York Post
