Juno News - October 02, 2025Trans regret and the growing wave of detransitioner lawsuits
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
140.66737
Summary
A growing movement of clinicians, lawyers and former patients are beginning to push back. They re seeking accountability and justice for those harmed by a system that treated medical safeguarding as a political slogan. Today on the show, I m joined by Michelle Mackness, a former therapist turned advocate, and Lynn Chadwick, founder of Themis Resource Fund, fighting to give detransitioners a voice in the clinic and in the courts.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Certainly a lot has been said about gender transition, but most of the time I find it's
00:00:06.220
people arguing over whether or not it should be practiced. And I think we never really hear from
00:00:12.660
the people who went through it in the first place, those individuals who regretted it and later
00:00:17.340
detransitioned. Now detransitioners, most of them young women, are often ignored and dismissed by
00:00:24.460
the very people and institutions that set out to help them in the first place. It's not clear
00:00:28.780
whether or not there are any off ramps for these individuals, or if much thought has been given to
00:00:33.840
the topic by those who claim transitioning is life saving. But that's starting to change. A growing
00:00:40.660
movement of clinicians, of lawyers and of former patients are beginning to push back. They're
00:00:47.240
seeking accountability and justice for those harmed by a system that treated medical safeguarding for
00:00:54.720
political slogan. Today on the show, I'm joined by Michelle Mackness, a former therapist turned
00:00:59.820
advocate, and Lynn Chadwick, founder of Themis Resource Fund. Together, they're fighting to give
00:01:06.040
detransitioners a voice in the clinic and in the courts. I'm Melanie Bennett. This is Disrupted.
00:01:13.300
We are going to talk about detransition today. We don't talk enough about gender ideology these days,
00:01:29.960
but we certainly don't talk about detransitioners enough at all. And so I have with me Michelle
00:01:36.520
Magnus and Lynn Chadwick. Now, I'll start with you, Lynn, you are the founder of Themis Resource Fund,
00:01:44.520
and I am dying for you to explain to me what that is. Yeah, so Themis Resource Fund was founded to
00:01:51.600
assist detransitioners to obtain and fund litigation so that they can be heard in court and receive justice.
00:02:02.000
But that's in America. Is there Themis in Canada as well?
00:02:10.000
There is not. And we certainly hope that we will be able to assist people in Canada as well at some
00:02:17.340
point. I think this is relevant all over the world, however, because court cases that happen in America
00:02:25.840
will affect things that happen in other countries. And so we have to start somewhere and we have to do
00:02:35.840
And okay, we'll get we'll get to those court cases in a minute, but I want to move to Michelle. I didn't
00:02:43.840
even thank both of you for being here, but thank you. Thank you for being here. But maybe you could tell us a
00:02:49.520
little bit about therapy when it comes to gender affirming care and trans in Canada, because you're
00:02:56.000
a therapist and you you deal with some of this here in Canada, I might add. Hi, Melanie. Yeah, thanks.
00:03:02.640
Gender for me, gender care in Canada is exclusively basically gender affirming care. So that means
00:03:10.560
a declaration of a trans identity is accepted at face value and no further investigation is warranted.
00:03:17.840
There is direction to perhaps look into comorbidities, but no actual valid psychometric tools are
00:03:31.120
required. And there is no what is termed gatekeeping, but what we could also term as medical
00:03:39.120
safeguarding. There's no medical safeguarding in place. Do we know what the numbers are for
00:03:45.120
detransitioners in Canada? Is that something that's tracked? Because we've seen a really big
00:03:49.360
increase in especially young people transitioning at younger and younger ages. And obviously, these
00:03:55.760
kids are getting older now. And so we don't have any idea of what that might look like.
00:04:02.240
Yeah, I'd like to jump in on that one. So we don't have numbers. And but what we do know is that
00:04:10.720
many thousands of young people have quickly transitioned medically without a lot of therapy,
00:04:19.200
without a lot of even time in between their announcing that they're trans and going on hormones.
00:04:27.440
Sometimes it's as quick as 45 minutes in like a Planned Parenthood or a doctor. Sometimes it's on
00:04:36.720
phone or over Zoom. There are even apps you can get on your phone and you can get hormones and surgery
00:04:42.880
letters on an app. These people have never even seen you. And so since we're transitioning young
00:04:50.720
people by the thousands, we have every reason to believe that there will be thousands of people
00:05:00.960
getting back off of this ride at the end of it. And there are currently very few off ramps.
00:05:08.480
And I think you're talking about me, we're going to need help for these people.
00:05:14.400
I just want to add to that. I seem to remember a talk given at the Genspec Denver conference
00:05:20.800
that they predict the numbers to be somewhere based on data from the military. Apparently,
00:05:26.960
they expect the numbers to be around 30%. Currently, if you are in the gender wars, for instance,
00:05:36.640
gender affirming care proponents suggest that it's 1%. But again, we don't track it. Many
00:05:43.440
de-transitioners do not return to the clinics where they were transitioned. I think the number is somewhere
00:05:49.120
around 70% say they did not inform their former providers that they were de-transitioning.
00:05:56.320
And if you just want to take a look at what some of the agencies in Canada who promote transition are
00:06:02.160
doing for de-transitioners, it's pretty close to nothing. So if you go to a gal, Canada, for instance,
00:06:10.960
and look up the words desistance, de-transition or regret, you get zero for desistance, zero for
00:06:19.440
de-trans and five instances of regret. One is as a straw man argument around people say most people
00:06:27.920
regret transition. I don't know that that's that's not an argument I'm familiar with. I'm sure someone's
00:06:34.000
made it. And the other four have nothing to do when it's like from a letter from 1994 from a member of
00:06:40.400
parliament around sexual orientation. So that must have been when we were go up fighting for marriage
00:06:46.000
equality in Canada. None of them, though, have to do with transition regret in a meaningful way.
00:06:54.560
It's it's my understanding that position in Canada would be that supporting de-transition might
00:07:01.920
equate to conversion therapy. So I guess it wouldn't be surprising that organizations like
00:07:07.120
EGAL or possibly even the therapeutic industry might be cautious providing supportive services for
00:07:18.240
young people who de-transition. I would be horrifying to know if you have a young person coming to a
00:07:25.040
therapist saying I'd like to de-transition what what they might what they might do in that instance.
00:07:30.320
But maybe what we could do is move to the litigation. So law, you know, going to the courts and having
00:07:38.240
courts decide can be useful. So I'd be curious to know, Lynn, what kind of cases are you supporting?
00:07:46.560
Well, so far, Themis has financially backed five cases in the US. They're all different. They're all people who
00:07:54.400
regret their transition and were harmed by affirmative care, such as hormones and surgeries. And when I say
00:08:04.800
harmed, I mean deeply harmed. And another reason that people are suing, they're suing not only for medical
00:08:17.520
malpractice, but also for fraud. And also for discrimination. Because one thing that people
00:08:28.240
don't really stop and think about is that a lot of these young people are gay or lesbian. And they're
00:08:36.320
being led to believe that if they transition, they'll be straight. They may not be gay anymore.
00:08:41.920
And so that is a type of discrimination against homosexual people. So that is actionable in court as well.
00:09:00.960
where people are suing for for those those basically those three things fraud, medical malpractice and
00:09:09.280
discrimination. So when you speak of fraud, those cases, is that in reference to informed consent,
00:09:16.560
essentially being sold a faulty bill of goods? Right, because they're being told that if they
00:09:21.840
have these procedures, that all of their mental health issues will go away. And that's not true.
00:09:28.320
Also, we have found instances of fraud. For example, Prisha Mosley is one of the gay transitioners
00:09:36.960
that is currently suing. And at a recent Federal Trade Commission hearing, we were shown notes from her
00:09:48.160
therapist. And on the same day, her therapist wrote a note outlining all of Prisha's significant
00:09:55.280
mental health comorbidities, such as major depression, borderline personality disorder,
00:10:02.400
and there were several more. On the same day, the same therapist wrote a surgery approval letter
00:10:08.640
stating that Prisha had no significant comorbidities. So one of those things is a lie.
00:10:16.480
Yeah, well, what happens to these individuals when their comorbidities aren't being addressed?
00:10:21.120
Because some of those sound pretty severe that actually need some kind of guidance to pull it like
00:10:25.680
you're not just going to suddenly stop being borderline. If you have borderline personality
00:10:31.520
disorder, for example, you're not just going to suddenly stop if you take a different course of action.
00:10:36.880
Right. But these people believe that your only real problem is that you're trans. And once we
00:10:45.200
solve that, all these comorbidities will magically go away because they're all a result of minority
00:10:49.760
stress and discrimination that you've experienced because you're trans and no one is supporting you.
00:10:56.480
Would that be like saying that they don't get any help?
00:10:59.760
Yeah. So would that be like saying they're treating the they believe they would believe
00:11:04.240
that they're treating the source of the problem rather than the symptoms of the problem. And if you
00:11:07.840
treat the source of the problem, which is the the state of being a transgender individual,
00:11:13.440
then all of the other problems would just go, they would go.
00:11:16.240
Right. So it's so easy to hand somebody a prescription and a surgery letter and now
00:11:22.240
you've solved their problems, right? Now you don't have to do any actual therapy.
00:11:26.880
Yeah. Yeah. So, Michelle, in Canada, do we do we have cases of detransitioners going to court?
00:11:35.200
We do. I'm aware of two cases that are currently ongoing. One is the first one that I'm aware of,
00:11:44.880
and I believe it was the first one in Canada is Michelle's that King yes case in Ontario, which
00:11:52.160
she launched in 2023. She is a detransitioned woman with an extensive history of mental health conditions.
00:12:05.920
And she had minimal assessments done or clinical interviews. I'm not, you know, I'm not privy to all
00:12:13.760
the details. And then was put on hormones. A year later, she had a double mastectomy.
00:12:21.280
And then nine years later, she had a full hysterectomy. And surprisingly, her mental health
00:12:29.760
conditions did not improve with these risky and ultimately painful surgeries for her.
00:12:37.760
Since she's detransitioned and has gone through proper ethical, comprehensive assessments with a
00:12:43.760
psychologist trained to do clinical assessments and differential diagnoses. She's been diagnosed with
00:12:51.840
ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, traits of post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality
00:12:58.480
disorder and clinical depression. None of those were being addressed through surgeries and hormones.
00:13:04.320
And the second case in Canada. Also, Michelle has a fundraising site that we could maybe put into the show notes later.
00:13:15.840
The second case in Canada was launched in 2025 by Lois Cardinal. Lois is a trans woman living in Alberta.
00:13:26.080
She's, as she, how does she describe herself? A first nation sterile, post-op sterilized woman. I think I'm getting the order wrong.
00:13:36.880
But, um, she is not detransitioning. She's a regretter though. And, um, her lawsuit is around, um, again, just being rushed into
00:13:46.960
treatment. The clinical assessment process was rushed or ignored, um, in order to secure funding. There's some changes going on with
00:13:55.760
funding at the time, I guess this was quite a while ago. So there were more safeguards in place at the time,
00:14:01.520
but it looks like they were overlooked. So even the ones that did exist were not, um, heated. And she had vaginoplasty in, I think, 2009.
00:14:13.440
She's been in constant discomfort. Just to be clear for the audience, the vaginoplasty would be the reversal.
00:14:19.680
So the Audi becomes a ninny. Yes. Yeah. Um, incredibly high rates of complications and very risky surgery. Um,
00:14:32.320
Lois for a time was looking to do maid because her life had become so unbearable and she's, um, I believe she was declined.
00:14:42.320
So she's launched this lawsuit. And, you know, one of the things that I find really, um, telling about this entire movement is
00:14:51.840
one of the things that Lois, um, says was not taken into consideration in addition to her, also her longstanding mental health issues,
00:14:59.120
is the cultural peace. And despite the fact that Canada has now moved to spirit to the beginning of the alphabet soup situation, um,
00:15:08.320
um, they did not take into consideration the cultural context from which she came and how her surgery would
00:15:16.400
affect the way people in her community view her and how that would affect her capacity to pass down
00:15:23.760
traditions within, um, I believe she's Cree within her Cree community, her first mission.
00:15:33.040
correct me if I'm wrong, but Michelle, you're, you're a therapist and you are engaged in advocacy.
00:15:40.320
And I imagine some of that would be to, um, try to raise the issue issue that of how we're treating,
00:15:47.440
uh, gender and gender transition and gender care in Canada is perhaps not the right approach.
00:15:54.400
How are you finding advocating for that? I mean, are you able to make headway? Are you able to get a message across?
00:16:03.040
Well, I'd like to clarify that I'm a former therapist and former keyword. So
00:16:10.720
former therapist, and I was never able to diagnose, um, you know, that was not, that was outside. I was
00:16:16.240
not, I'm not a registered psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. Um, it was
00:16:22.720
it's hard to get the messaging across, um, because we're sort of, there's the whole Brandolini's
00:16:31.840
principle, which, uh, you may or may not be aware of. It's the sort of bullsh** asymmetry
00:16:37.520
principle, which is, it's a lot easier to spew lies and bullsh** than it is to refute it. And I
00:16:44.400
think in Canada, we're really, uh, we're really fighting that. Um, there's been almost exclusively,
00:16:51.680
as you know, um, mainstream media blackout until around 2020, 2021. Prior to that, there was like
00:17:01.040
zero coverage and the only accurate coverage of mainstream media is probably coming from national
00:17:06.160
posts. I haven't really seen anything out of the CBC, CTV or global that's been remotely objective or
00:17:11.520
accurate. Um, and as a therapist, well, I left my profession, so I no longer offer clinical services.
00:17:19.440
Um, I don't work with people who are struggling with psychiatric or psychological instability.
00:17:25.520
I work with what is called the worried. Well, so individuals who are functioning and maybe want to
00:17:32.720
engage in self-examination, that sort of thing. And that has given me a bit more freedom
00:17:38.400
to do advocacy work. So I'm hoping, I mean, the tide seems to be turning in my view slightly. I think
00:17:47.520
more people are talking about it in Canada and, um, I'm cautiously hopeful maybe. What do you think,
00:17:57.840
Melanie? Because it feels to me, it feels to me that around 2023, it was all over the place. And all of a
00:18:03.920
sudden the, the situation has sort of calmed down a little for other issues immediately. There was
00:18:08.080
October 7 and there's this whole pro Palestine thing that's been happening. So, uh, gender and
00:18:13.120
gender ideology has been less, less, uh, covered, but in America, I believe the situation is a little
00:18:18.080
bit different. There seems to be more, uh, coverage critical of some of the, um, issues within, uh, trans
00:18:25.040
and gender and all this stuff in the USA. And that does filter into Canada. Uh, some, I, I'd be curious to
00:18:31.040
know, Lynn, um, are you finding that your work in America, you're able to get a message across,
00:18:37.440
you're able to communicate with people, uh, some of the issues with, uh, with, with adopting a gender
00:18:43.600
affirming care methodology? Oh, yes, absolutely. So I've been really active in this arena since about
00:18:54.320
2019. And as recently as 2022, uh, the media blackout in the U S was so extreme that you could
00:19:05.600
not get even a letter to the editor printed in any sort of legacy media. You could not get anyone in
00:19:14.400
the legacy, legacy media to even look at the possibility that there might be more than one side
00:19:22.320
to this. And to this day, if we do get anything in the media, it's usually prefaced with, these are
00:19:31.040
very conservative people who have a problem with this, which, you know, calling people conservative
00:19:38.160
is just the easiest way to say they're stupid. Don't listen to them. When the fact is that a lot of us
00:19:44.880
are not conservative at all. I happen to be a lesbian. Um, I am advocating for parents constantly.
00:19:52.720
They're coming from every direction. This is a human issue. This is not a left, right issue.
00:19:58.640
This is a humanity issue because we are harming young people by the thousands. And the problem is that
00:20:08.480
some very harmful medical procedures are being touted as a civil rights issue.
00:20:18.000
And it's not only children that are being harmed, but it's also, uh, adults, mostly young adults.
00:20:24.880
And it's my philosophy that everybody deserves evidence-based safe and effective medical care,
00:20:32.720
period. End of story. It should not be influenced by politics. It should not be, it is not a civil
00:20:40.080
rights issue to have your penis cut off. It's not a civil rights issue to tell young lesbians that they
00:20:48.000
should have their breasts removed so they can be men. It's not a civil rights issue. And there is no
00:20:53.760
LGBTQ community. There isn't. There's only young confused people being drastically harmed and
00:21:02.400
sterilized by sloppy, bad, poorly evidenced medical procedures. That's what there is.
00:21:09.520
And the day that they have to go to court and explain themselves and they can't just resort to,
00:21:15.520
oh, you horrible right-wing bigot, when they have to actually answer the question,
00:21:19.920
that's when you get the information. Yeah. And the sad, sad part is, is that it's mostly girls.
00:21:26.000
It's girls and it's boys. Um, and you know, it's mostly girls until your kid is the boy that got
00:21:35.360
caught in it. And I have absolute empathy for both. Um, I think it's easier for people to feel sorry
00:21:41.120
for girls than just for boys. And that's really sad. Um, and the parents of boys are saying,
00:21:47.440
what's going on with their kids. Will anybody listen? And that's a whole different topic.
00:21:52.480
Um, but yeah, I think it's about 75, 70, 75% girls. And most of them are between the ages of 13 and 17,
00:22:04.560
when they suddenly decide that they're men and they never were before. Some of them were just kind of
00:22:10.240
tomboys, but a lot of them are just like regular run of the mill girls. Yeah. So there might be
00:22:17.600
individuals listening today that maybe they got caught up in something that they're now unsure of,
00:22:22.640
or maybe there are parents who want to help their kids who don't know, uh, what to do. Uh, what can
00:22:29.520
people do, uh, to reach out with Themis or maybe possibly other organizations? I'll, I'll throw it to
00:22:36.080
Lynn first. How, how can people, uh, join or help or support?
00:22:42.800
Yeah, well, we're, we're, uh, friends of GenSpec. And so GenSpec has an enormous amount of resources,
00:22:51.680
both, um, in the general, uh, organization. And then they have, um, organizations affiliated with
00:22:59.280
them. And we are one of those organizations. So, um, the one organization that's affiliated
00:23:06.000
is called Beyond Trans. Beyond Trans has therapy and resources for families who are struggling.
00:23:14.800
We have, we fought, uh, I think about five weekly Zoom meetings for parents who are struggling with
00:23:21.040
their kids that are going through this. The parents are just going out of their heads. They don't know
00:23:24.800
what to do. Um, so the resources are there. And then, um, if anybody wants to help, uh, help us with
00:23:33.200
our work of funding lawsuits, we'd absolutely love it if you would come visit our website. We're at
00:23:39.360
ThemisResourceFund.org. Um, you can learn about and actually read the legal complaints on our website.
00:23:48.000
Um, people can go to our website and find an attorney that wants to take their pays. And if you would
00:23:55.520
like to help support our work, which we absolutely need, you can directly help to fund these lawsuits by
00:24:02.400
supporting us financially. That's great. I really hope that if anybody's listening,
00:24:08.080
please reach out. Genspec's great organization. So is Themis. And, uh, they will certainly be able
00:24:12.080
to put you in touch with other organizations if, if, if they're not the one for you, but I thank you
00:24:17.600
ladies for joining me today. Um, and I hope we touch back again soon. Yeah. Thank you so much,
00:24:25.120
Melanie. Thank you, Melanie. Sadly, not even medicine is immune to ideology,
00:24:31.360
but when it succumbs to it, it's often the vulnerable who suffer first.
00:24:35.840
My guests today advocate for evidence-based care because they believe in safeguarding young people
00:24:41.360
and the right to change your mind. I think that's something that most people can get behind.
00:24:46.560
Now, if you'd like share this episode, subscribe, leave a comment and keep the conversation going.