30. Surviving Gender Malpractice: Brian’s Detransition Story

Ten years ago, at the tender age of 21, Brian needed professional help. He’d been severely bullied as a child, and the messages his father modeled about masculinity didn’t help Brian understand himself or accept his homosexuality. As a tormented young adult, Brian turned to drugs and pornography in futile efforts to escape his depression. A good therapist would have recognized that Brian had a lot to unpack, and made it a priority to help him get off of the drugs that were clearly wreaking havoc on his health and mental clarity. Unfortunately, Brian didn’t have a good therapist; he had… a “gender therapist.”Brian’s therapist didn’t challenge his drug use, unpack his internalized homophobia, or address his childhood trauma. Instead, she led him deeper into the delusion that he was really a woman trapped in a man’s body, an idea he had gotten from pornography during a very dark time in life. She made dangerous and destructive false promises that taking cross-sex hormones would magically resolve his drug addiction and suicidal ideation. She told him that his body’s own natal hormones were “poison.” Brian even felt that his therapist instilled a sense of urgency, indicating that if he didn’t transition as quickly as possible, he would feel worse, and that taking these life-altering medical steps was the only way to remedy his despair. Social and medical transition were never right for Brian. He was simply a gay man with depression, trauma, and addiction issues, who was overwhelmed by his problems, and didn’t know what narrative to ascribe to them other than what people on the internet led him to believe during a particularly dark time. He knows this now, and has a good therapist, thank heavens. But a year after making the decision to detransition, his body is still in the process of ridding itself of pregnancy-high levels of female hormones. Today’s episode addresses the painful topic of gender malpractice. Brian is one of numerous people I have interviewed on this show who has been horrendously mistreated by the mental and medical health professionals that were responsible for his care. If you’re familiar with my work then you know I am passionate about this issue. What you may not know is that I am actively working on developing other resources for detransitioners like Brian. I’d like to direct you to a few resources on my blog.I am currently in the early stages of writing one of the first self-help books for survivors of gender malpractice. It’s tentatively titled, The Detransition Survival Guide. And the way I’m writing this book is one letter at a time, through corresponding in writing with people like Brian. I invite survivors of gender malpractice to vent to me, in writing. Their raw, honest messages then serve as prompts for me to respond to in the most helpful way I can muster, and their feedback on how my responses impacted them will further help me in refining the messages that will end up in the book. Each of these letter exchanges are posted on my blog as I write them. I’ve had a few survivors of gender malpractice take me up on this, and more are on the way. I’m trying to write at least one letter per week on average. You can find these letter exchanges, as well as more information about the book project, on my blog, at sometherapist.com/read. There’s another important resource for detransitioners on my blog as well. I recently posted an article on this, How to File a Complaint About the Fraudulent ‘Gender-Affirming’ Therapy That Harmed You. If you have been harmed by so-called “gender affirming therapy,” and have thought about filing a complaint with yo