Multiple men and women who have detransitioned described how easy it was for them to get transgender surgeries and hormones in a new CBS segment—and how the surgeries or treatment negatively impacted them.
As lawmakers across the country introduce and pass bills focused on gender transitions, Lesley Stahl interviewed multiple medical experts and former or current transgender people who expressed fear that transgender surgeries and hormone treatments, often irreversible, are too easily attainable.
The CBS host said the program “interviewed more than 30 detransitioners, who say they also had experienced regret, including these four, who hadn’t met before now.”
“I can’t believe that I transitioned and detransitioned, including hormones and surgery, in the course of, like, less than one year,” one young woman said. “It’s completely crazy.”
“For years now, those opposed to gender ideology masquerading as medicine have predicted that this harmful movement would lead to countless people regretting the ‘transitions’ they had been pushed into,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told The Daily Caller News Foundation Monday morning. “Unfortunately, after long being ignored, this concern has become a reality—so much so that even the legacy media feels they can no longer disregard the voices of detransitioners.”
“This growing issue is precisely the reason why states like Arkansas and Tennessee are taking steps to ensure children are not forced down this path at a young age,” he added. “And as the plight of detransitioners becomes more visible, we hope many other states will follow.”
Grace Lidinsky-Smith
Grace Lidinsky-Smith told Stahl that she experienced gender dysphoria and was seriously depressed in her early 20s and began researching transgender communities. Lidinsky-Smith said she saw many transgender people “being so happy and excited about doing this wonderful, transformative process” to “become their true selves.”
“I was like, have I considered that this could be my situation, too?” she said. “I just had this sense that … if I could inhabit life as, like, a trans man, as a man, then I wouldn’t feel so self-conscious. I was thinking that it would make me feel very free.”
Lidinsky-Smith said she found a gender therapist online who had a few sessions with her. The therapist affirmed Lidinsky-Smith’s desire to transition, but Lidinsky-Smith said the therapist didn’t “really go into what my gender dysphoria might’ve been stemming from.”
Beginning the process was easy, according to the segment—Lidinsky-Smith signed an informed consent form and then got a prescription for testosterone.
“They asked me, ‘So, why do you wanna go on testosterone?’” Lidinsky-Smith recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, being a woman just isn’t working for me anymore.’ And they said, ‘OK.’”
“Just four months after she started testosterone, she says she was approved for a mastectomy, what’s called ‘top surgery,’ that she told us was traumatic,” Stahl said in a voiceover.
Lidinsky-Smith described having a “really disturbing sense that like a part of my body was missing, almost a ghost limb feeling about being like, there’s something that should be there.”
“And the feeling really surprised me but it was really hard to deny,” she added.
Lidinsky-Smith stopped using testosterone, went back to the clinic, and complained to the doctor that the process she had gone through didn’t follow World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines.
“I can’t believe that I transitioned and detransitioned, including hormones and surgery, in the course of, like, less than one year,” she said. “It’s completely crazy.”
Garrett
Another young man who detransitioned said he felt he “didn’t get enough pushback on transitioning,” went in for two appointments, and then received a letter approving him for “cross-sex hormones.”
“Two visits?” Stahl asked. “That’s it?”
“Uh-huh,” the young man, who the segment identified as Garrett from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said.
Garrett “went from taking hormones to getting his testicles removed” in just three months, the segment reported, not following what current guidelines call for “continuous use for a year.”
The young man also later got a breast augmentation, according to CBS.
“But, instead of feeling more himself, he says he felt worse,” Stahl explained.
“I had never really been suicidal before until I had my breast augmentation,” Garrett said. “And about a week afterwards I wanted to, like, actually kill myself. Like, I had a plan and I was gonna do it but I just kept thinking about, like, my family to stop myself. It kind of felt like, how am I ever going to feel normal again, like other guys now?”
Doctors Weigh In
One doctor who has helped hundreds of young people transition, Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, told CBS: “It greatly concerns me where the field has been going.”
“I feel like what is happening is unethical and irresponsible in some places,” Edwards-Leeper added.
“Everyone is very scared to speak up because we’re afraid of not being seen as being affirming or being supportive of these young people or doing something to hurt the trans community,” the doctor said. “But even some of the providers are trans themselves and share these concerns.”
Dr. Erica Anderson, of the University of California San Francisco, who is also transgender, suggested that stories about those who detransition demonstrate the need for more health care for the transgender community rather than a ban on transgender surgeries and procedures.
“I think we cannot turn a blind eye to the needs of those trans people who have gotten less than adequate care or even poor care,” Anderson said. “My heart goes out to them. And their stories are important. And we can’t deny them.”
“I think the kinds of things we advocate for don’t hurt trans people,” said Lidinsky-Smith. “Like, we want there to be more help from therapists with dysphoria. We want there to be longer-term tracking of health outcomes. Everyone benefits from that.”
Author Abigail Shrier was one of the first to sound the alarm on the ease with which some young people have transitioned. Shrier, the author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” which “examined spikes in transgenderism among teenaged girls who formerly displayed feminine traits and tendencies,” praised those who spoke out in the CBS interview.
“It takes enormous courage to speak out as a detransitioner – as @HormoneHangover did in this ’60 Minutes’ episode clip,” Shrier said, referring to Lidinsky-Smith. “She will no doubt face torrents of hate. But she just may save thousands of girls.”
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