In medicine, there are times when speed is not only appropriate, but lifesaving. A patient in cardiac arrest cannot wait for medical help. A child who is the victim of a car accident cannot afford to argue about pulling her out of the car. Doctors are trained to act quickly in real emergencies, where delay costs blood and oxygen. At those moments, speed is a true expression of care.
What I have had to grapple with during the transition is the way my gender dysphoria was treated so unrelentingly that it became a manufactured emergency.
At the age of 11, I discovered the darkest corners of the internet. In these chat rooms, I was sexually groomed by adult strangers who used my love of art against me. I became friends with other little girls on art forums around the same time, many of whom had similar experiences. One of those girls began to identify as transgender. She told me she felt like “a boy trapped in a girl’s body.”
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We both loved cosplay, wearing costumes and makeup to make ourselves look like our favorite characters. Sometimes we brainstormed our own characters and came up with all kinds of names and faces. Trans identity was very similar to this ritual, except the characters were ourselves. It allows us to transform our difficult experiences – in my case the loss of innocence – into something beautiful.
When medical professionals got involved and confirmed our ideas about medicine, “neat” became “streamlined.” The culture began to change dramatically, and everywhere I went I was told that the discomfort I felt in my own skin was not the product of instability at home or adolescence or even trauma. It was proof that I was transgender, and I had to convince everyone around me or I would die.
I was a child. I had neither the resources nor the mental capacity to interrogate these claims. What upsets me now, at 23, is not how I have “bent” “gender” through costumes, like the rock star Prince. It’s how quickly adults with degrees validated bunk stories and led me to medicalize my biological sex as a teenager.
I was convinced that the hormones and surgeries doctors gave me were carefully considered, evidence-based, and even life-saving. Yet anyone who has followed the stories of detransitioners knows that the risks are significant: internal bleeding, chronic pain, tissue death, infertility, loss of sexual function, challenging pregnancy. These are not rare occurrences either. Most people who go down this path experience numerous side effects, which is not surprising considering we amputate healthy body parts and shock our endocrine systems with hormone surgery.
On February 11, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in part of my case against the health care providers who facilitated my medical transition. One of my lawyers expressed what had seemed self-evident to me for years: responsibility for doctors does not disappear because a patient ‘wanted it’.
My experience was no exception. My drain-free “top surgery” resulted in massive complications, forcing me to seek emergency room care, while my original surgeons dismissed me entirely. It was there, lying under the fluorescent lights, that the brightness began to break through the fog. The surgery that had been presented as the solution to my problems had become its own trauma.
The emergency I was warned about was never my original body. The emergency was what was done with it.
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For years, aesthetic changes in the name of “gender-affirming care” were seen as therapeutic treatments. Surgeons began removing body parts and ‘creating’ new ones without lengthy research into the underlying causes. What was this child’s home life like? Are they taking too many medications? What can we do to treat their depression that isn’t as invasive as surgery? These questions were too often bypassed in favor of easier confirmation.
We know that the tide is turning for the general public. Yet many activists struggle to admit that they are losing control. Media coverage often includes the familiar refrain that major medical institutions still recommend “gender-affirming care.” The implication is that dissent must therefore be marginal. But that consensus is crumbling. International assessments, evolving guidelines and legal oversight tell a more complicated story than the headlines suggest.
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Both the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association have issued statements expressing concern about gender reassignment surgery on minors, a recognition that should have come long before irreversible practices became normalized.
As mainstream medical institutions appear to be reconsidering their positions, top Democratic officials have reintroduced the so-called Transgender Bill of Rights. The timing is striking. We already have civil rights protections in this country, protections based on sex, race, color and creed.
Equal protection under the law does not require redefining medicine or forcing doctors to ignore glaring risks. When sweeping new federal guarantees are proposed amid rising medical malpractice cases, it starts to look less like necessity and more like virtue signaling.
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On February 11, the Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments in part of my case against the health care providers who facilitated my medical transition. One of my lawyers, John Ramer, expressed what had been self-evident to me for years: responsibility for physicians does not disappear because a patient “wanted it.” During the arguments, it was hard to miss that even the defense doesn’t believe its own words.
Like most people, I don’t enjoy litigation. My intention was not to become a plaintiff or get rich quick. But when an industry moves along at pace without an emergency and irreversible interventions are offered to adolescents experiencing temporary pain, someone has to make the call to let time take its course.
True emergency medicine saves lives because it responds to objective danger. The doctors who treated my mastectomy complications in the emergency room were prompt and conscientious. What has happened in gender care for children is different. A generation of young people were told that discomfort required surgical intervention; and their parents, teachers and medical professionals were told that any hesitation would be fatal.
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I was taught that compassion meant affirming whatever beliefs I had about my body. What I have learned now is that compassion sometimes means restraint. It means asking difficult questions. It means protecting children from decisions they cannot yet understand.
The law now has a chance to investigate which medicines have been rushed by. Speed can be merciful. But when speed takes precedence over caution, reflection and evidence, there is no longer any concern.
