In an illuminating YouTube video, Carey Callahan, a young liberal woman, describes her “de-transition” from identifying as a “transman” and exposes some inconvenient truths about the “trans” community on which the mainstream press never reports:
“I used to believe I was…a trans guy, and I stopped believing that….When I was trans…I felt that my trans identity should not be pathologized, that it was a healthy beautiful thing…that I was making these decisions from a clear state of mind….Looking back, I do not think I was in a clear state of mind, and I absolutely think that I was operating under some delusional ideas about what it would take to pass as a dude. The feelings that I had interpreted as gender dysphoria were actually long-term trauma symptoms that I had never addressed.
Every step of the process, every step I took in affirming that trans identity, life got worse….People in my little trans bubble were some of the most anxious people I’ve ever met…and coping with it in a real weird way. Lots of everyday drug use, eating disorders, compulsive working out…lots of over-the-top sex stuff, cutting, alcoholism….It was obvious that people…were not doing well.”
Another de-transitioner, this one a young man who had been pretending to be a woman, explains his epiphany regarding his “transition”:
“I felt like I was just doing something [i.e., “transitioning”] I didn’t need to do. I don’t feel that it 100% came from me. I don’t feel that organically, by myself, I would have done that. It was just something that the circumstances I was in, and the surroundings I was in, the influences I had…made me make these moves….At some point, I realized…I really didn’t want to do it. People told me that I would have less doubts and I would feel super confident and sure of myself as a female when I took the hormones, but honestly as soon as I got on them, I started questioning myself more and more.”
A de-transitioner who calls herself “Crash” shares her convictions regarding the tragic reasons many women adopt a male identity:
“Sometimes women take on a trans identity and transition due to trauma that we live through….I don’t think many people know this….I know a lot of other women who feel like their dysphoria or trans identity or transition…were a reaction to trauma. For those of us who transition, we didn’t go into our transitions…thinking that we’re reacting to trauma….We had dysphoria that we were trying to alleviate by changing our bodies….
Some women end up identifying as trans…because we lived through trauma that is in some way connected with us being women, with having a female body….A lot of us survive sexual violence. We were raped or survived some other kind of assault. A lot of us are child sexual abuse survivors. Some of us were attacked for being lesbians…My mom’s suicide played a huge role.”
Of the many tragic consequences of this science-denying sexuality dogma is the fact that “transitioning” is harming people. Society is marching blindfolded into a brave new dystopian world whose victims are increasingly children who will one day tell their stories of regret—stories like that of de-transitioner, Cari Stella, who “transitioned socially at 15,” started taking testosterone at 17, had a double mastectomy at 20, de-transitioned at 22, and recently said this:
“[De-transitioners] are not just statistics….We’re real people….I’m a real live 22-year-old woman with a scarred chest, a broken voice, and a five o’clock shadow.”
I sought out a prominent gender psychologist for evaluation, and he quickly assured me that I obviously suffered from gender dysphoria. A gender change, he told me, was the cure. Feeling that I had nothing to lose and thrilled that I could finally attain my lifelong dream, I underwent a surgical change at the age of forty-two. My new identity as Laura Jensen, female, was legally affirmed on my birth record, Social Security card, and driver’s license. I was now a woman in everyone’s eyes.
The gender conflict seemed to fade away, and I was generally happy for a while.
It’s hard for me to describe what happened next. The reprieve provided by surgery and life as a woman was only temporary. Hidden deep underneath the make-up and female clothing was the little boy carrying the hurts from traumatic childhood events, and he was making himself known. Being a female turned out to be only a cover-up, not healing.
I knew I wasn’t a real woman, no matter what my identification documents said. I had taken extreme steps to resolve my gender conflict, but changing genders hadn’t worked. It was obviously a masquerade. I felt I had been lied to. How in the world had I reached this point? How did I become a fake woman? I went to another gender psychologist, and she assured me that I would be fine; I just needed to give my new identity as Laura more time. I had a past, a battered and broken life that living as Laura did nothing to dismiss or resolve. Feeling lost and depressed, I drank heavily and considered suicide.
At the three-year mark of life as Laura, my excessive drinking brought me to a new low. At my lowest point, instead of committing suicide I sought help at an alcohol recovery meeting. My sponsor, a lifeline of support and accountability, mentored me in how to live life free from alcohol.
Sobriety was the first of several turning points in my transgender life.
As Laura, I entered a two-year university program to study the psychology of substance and alcohol abuse. I achieved higher grades than my classmates, many of whom had PhDs. Still, I struggled with my gender identity. It was all so puzzling. What was the point of changing genders if not to resolve the conflict? After eight years of living as a woman, I had no lasting peace. My gender confusion only seemed to worsen.
During an internship in a psychiatric hospital, I worked alongside a medical doctor on a lock-down unit. After some observation, he took me aside and told me I showed signs of having a dissociative disorder. Was he right? Had he found the key that would unlock a childhood lost? Rather than going to gender-change activist psychologists like the one who had approved me for surgery, I sought the opinions of several “regular” psychologists and psychiatrists who did not see all gender disorders as transgender. They agreed: I fit the criteria for dissociative disorder.
It was maddening. Now it was apparent that I had developed a dissociative disorder in childhood to escape the trauma of the repeated cross-dressing by my grandmother and the sexual abuse by my uncle. That should have been diagnosed and treated with psychotherapy. Instead, the gender specialist never considered my difficult childhood or even my alcoholism and saw only transgender identity. It was a quick jump to prescribe hormones and irreversible surgery. Years later, when I confronted that psychologist, he admitted that he should not have approved me for surgery.
Big Mean Sweaty Dyke 