Last Updated on January 23, 2020
More and more transgender teens are detransitioning, reverting back to identifying as their biological sex and regretting what the “treatment” did to their bodies
Blaire White, a transgender YouTuber, spoke to Elle Palmer, who transitioned to boy at 15 and is detransitioning back into a woman at 20.
Elle told Blaire that the biggest factor in identifying as transgender was that she had a lot of mental health problems as a teen, and when she found out what transgenderism was, it seemed to be the solution to her problems:
My puberty was medicalised, because when I was having a lot of mental health problems when I started puberty… [doctors] tried to medicate me and just put me on a lot of pills instead of digging deep into why I was feeling that way. From a young age, I’ve just felt like “oh something is wrong with me, mentally,” so I was trying to figure out what it was. When I found out that being trans was a thing when I was 14 I was like “this has to be the thing that’s wrong with me.”
READ MORE: UK: Woman Who Transitioned into Man Now Transitioning Back to Woman
Elle went on hormone treatment for 3 years from the age of 16, which affected her body in a number of ways, with her biggest regret being that she now has a deep, masculine voice:
Since I started as a teenager, I was able to get a very malleable, deep voice… Having to deal with the fact that I once had a perfectly normal teenage girl voice and I just let testosterone destroy it is really hard. I have some facial hair, but I only have to shave every 3 or 4 days… 3 years is a long time in the grand scheme of things for a teenager to go through hormone treatment… I feel positive most days, because I get to see the effects of the oestrogen coming back into my system. It’s change my face a lot already… Whenever I go out I look totally feminine, but the second I talk I get a weird look.
READ MORE: STUDY: Trans Women at Greater Risk of Breast Cancer than General Male Population
Elle is just one of many transgender teens who are telling their stories of their detransition, but warned that internet forums such as Reddit claim it is somehow “transphobic” for them to tell their stories:
I remember being in the community and so sure about my identity and one point. I would look at Reddit, and I would see someone post “I’m a detransitioner,” and it would almost feel like a personal attack on me. You went through what I went through and you’re so happy but I’m not… It’s got a connotation that it’s transphobic to speak about detransition… How many young and impressionable people are getting on the internet and are getting into support groups and communities that are totally one-sided?
She warned against teenagers and children being allowed to become transgender, and cited herself as an example:
I think one person who comes out and says “I transitioned as a child and now I regret it” I think that’s enough to suggest that no [child] should be able to. How do we know who is going to grow up and regret it? We don’t. This is a decision that has to be made by an adult who can think about the future. Even as a 16-year-old, I didn’t think about how it would affect me 3, 5 years from then. It was only what mattered to me at that moment.
READ MORE: It’s Now “Transphobia” to Refuse to Date Trans People, Say Twitter Experts
You can watch Blaire’s interview with Elle below:
