The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.000 Did you tell them about the abuse?

00:00:02.500 I did not.

00:00:03.320 Well, how much investigation into your history took place?

00:00:06.520 Very little, because the second we got into my history, it just came crumbling down.

00:00:10.600 In my referral, it says that I had held a male identity since childhood.

00:00:14.760 Besides just physical discomfort with my body and just feeling disconnected from girls,

00:00:19.380 it was really no sign of prior gender dysphoria.

00:00:21.840 Discomfort with your body and feeling disconnected with girls, that's called puberty.

00:00:25.820 Right.

00:00:26.000 I was already cleared for surgery, so I traveled to San Francisco to recommendation of Olsen, the specific doctor.

00:00:31.980 By the time I was there...

00:00:33.120 Why the specific doctor?

00:00:34.260 Because he doesn't have age limits.

00:00:36.560 No age limits.

00:00:37.380 Yeah.

00:00:38.000 What's interesting about my case, too, is even in my referral notes, which the surgeon saw, there's conflicting information.

00:00:44.980 So immediately, you can tell it's sort of rubber-stamped, and they didn't really look through it.

00:00:49.740 So now you wake up after surgery.

00:00:52.620 Yeah.

00:00:52.980 What's that like?

00:00:56.000 Hello, everybody.

00:01:10.240 My guest today is a young woman who has quite a terrible story to tell.

00:01:17.240 But before you can understand why I have her as a guest and why she's doing what she's doing,

00:01:24.880 there's some individuals that I need to familiarize you with in some detail to set the context properly,

00:01:32.120 and I'm going to read that.

00:01:34.020 First and foremost among those is Dr. Joanna Olsen-Kennedy.

00:01:38.940 Dr. Olsen-Kennedy serves as the medical director of the Center for Trans Youth Health and Development at Children's Hospital, Los Angeles.

00:01:50.660 That's currently the largest transgender youth clinic in the U.S.

00:01:54.580 Dr. Olsen-Kennedy has authored or co-authored numerous studies on transgender youth concerning such topics as chest reconstruction and its effects,

00:02:06.820 the development of so-called gender identity, the physiology of response to gender-affirming hormones,

00:02:13.980 and the consequence of pharmacologically induced puberty blockade.

00:02:20.340 In 2015, she led a $10 million NIH-funded research project to study the effects of so-called gender-affirming medical practice aimed at youth.

00:02:33.160 This study was a major enterprise and very financially significant by the standards of clinical investigation.

00:02:43.240 One deemed publicly the largest such project in America.

00:02:48.680 What were the study's results?

00:02:50.800 As far as we can determine, no evidence emerged whatsoever of improvements in mental health

00:02:57.460 in consequence of pharmacological blockade of puberty, which is, by the way, the purpose of such blockade.

00:03:06.260 Why or why not?

00:03:08.780 Well, Olsen-Kennedy hypothesized after the fact, which is not a scientifically appropriate thing to do fundamentally,

00:03:17.300 that this was because most of the children were already doing well when the study began.

00:03:21.980 Why the need, then, for puberty blockers, given their clear danger and the dangers of the surgical road ahead,

00:03:29.760 they so often establish?

00:03:31.780 In any case, the notoriously progressive New York Times reported that Olsen-Kennedy elected not to publish her study results

00:03:40.200 so that political opponents of gender-affirming care could not use the results as an argument against the use of puberty blockers.

00:03:49.920 It shouldn't be necessary, except in this insane time, to point out that the artificial suppression of undesirable findings

00:03:57.920 warps the entire scientific and medical enterprise, and that's the point,

00:04:03.360 as well as being utterly unconscionable, given the degree of public funding for the inquiry

00:04:09.760 and the motivated psychological and social consequences of abandoning it.

00:04:15.060 Olsen-Kennedy is not the only person named in the lawsuit mounted by today's guest,

00:04:23.760 nor his or her place of work, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the only institution identified and affected.

00:04:31.340 Dr. Scott Mosser, a surgeon in San Francisco, has served or exploited, depending on your viewpoint,

00:04:38.100 transgender, non-binary, and gender-expansive patients for more than 13 years.

00:04:44.620 He's board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons,

00:04:48.400 co-founder of the American Society of Gender Surgeons,

00:04:51.800 and founder of the Gender Institute at St. Francis Memorial Hospital.

00:04:56.380 That workplace, formalized its Gender Institute in 2016,

00:05:02.200 has received numerous grants to fund gender-affirming health care services,

00:05:07.140 and is also a target of the suit.

00:05:09.440 Now that we have these players and places named and established,

00:05:16.200 let us turn to my guest.

00:05:18.020 I was privileged today to speak with Ms. Clementine Breen,

00:05:23.240 currently a 20-year-old UCLA theater student and detransitioner.

00:05:28.620 I discovered Clementine's story through one Chris Elston,

00:05:33.120 a fellow Canadian known best by his online handle, Billboard Chris.

00:05:39.560 Clementine encountered Chris on one of his sidewalk appearances

00:05:42.640 at universities across the U.S. and Canada,

00:05:45.560 specifically this time at UCLA.

00:05:48.020 She told him her story, which went viral,

00:05:53.420 not least as a consequence of her age when the events recounted occurred.

00:05:59.520 It was in consequence of this encounter and some later research

00:06:03.660 that I invited her to my studio as a guest.

00:06:07.800 Puberty blockers at 12, hormonal transformation,

00:06:12.180 that's testosterone, at 13,

00:06:14.320 and a double mastectomy camouflaged terminologically as top surgery.

00:06:21.200 That evil phrase at 14.

00:06:24.700 It's a terrible story with, at the moment, a thankfully happy ending.

00:06:29.160 On with the show.

00:06:32.980 So thank you for coming to Scottsdale today, Clementine.

00:06:37.060 I know that this is likely to be a difficult conversation,

00:06:41.000 and so we'll try to not make it any more painful than absolutely necessary.

00:06:45.800 I think we should probably start just by

00:06:47.980 you telling people who you are and why you're here,

00:06:52.980 what you're up to, and why you're here, okay?

00:06:55.040 My name's Clementine.

00:06:56.440 I'm a 22-year-old college student.

00:06:58.460 I don't really consider myself a super political person.

00:07:01.940 I just,

00:07:03.580 seeing news about topics like this

00:07:05.420 and other detransitioners come out and tell their stories,

00:07:07.800 I just felt like I had to say something

00:07:09.700 considering the details of my particular story.

00:07:13.220 I felt like I couldn't just watch this unfold

00:07:15.920 and not participate in the conversation.

00:07:17.940 So I really just want to spread awareness

00:07:19.240 about the reality of child transition

00:07:21.460 and what actually happens to people

00:07:23.140 after they decide to detransition.

00:07:26.540 Okay, now you're involved in a notorious,

00:07:29.660 I would say, a notorious lawsuit.

00:07:31.800 Not that notorious means unnecessary or bad,

00:07:35.760 but it means well-publicized

00:07:38.580 and likely impactful one way or another.

00:07:42.540 And as far, I'm going to name the people who are involved

00:07:44.680 and you tell me if that's correct, right?

00:07:47.380 So one of the physicians involved was Dr. Johanna, Johanna?

00:07:52.980 Johanna.

00:07:53.800 Johanna, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

00:07:56.760 And she's at the Center for Trans Youth and Human Development

00:07:59.960 at the Children's Hospital in LA, correct?

00:08:02.920 Yes, correct.

00:08:03.060 Okay, and she's also president-elect of USPATH,

00:08:08.380 which is a advocacy group, I suppose,

00:08:11.500 or a hypothetically scientific consultation group

00:08:16.500 focused on transgender issues.

00:08:19.540 Another defendant is Dr. Scott Mosser

00:08:22.920 at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco.

00:08:26.380 Yes.

00:08:26.800 Does that cover the territory?

00:08:28.280 Also my therapist, Susan Landon, as well.

00:08:30.960 Susan Landon.

00:08:32.140 And she was a psychotherapist?

00:08:33.740 Yes.

00:08:34.620 I was referred to her by Dr. Olson.

00:08:36.800 Okay, you were referred by Dr. Olson.

00:08:38.960 And what's Susan Landon's professional designation?

00:08:42.460 I believe she's just a family and general therapist,

00:08:44.840 but she works specifically with trans youth.

00:08:47.280 Okay, okay.

00:08:48.160 So, well, let's go through these people one at a time.

00:08:52.000 I'm very interested.

00:08:53.060 I'm interested in the,

00:08:55.140 I'm really interested with you, I think,

00:08:57.220 in focusing on the personal and clinical elements

00:09:01.420 of your case.

00:09:03.220 And we can get to the legal and social

00:09:05.260 and political implications later.

00:09:06.900 You said already that you were not,

00:09:09.900 your focus, you don't regard yourself

00:09:11.720 as involved politically particularly.

00:09:14.080 Right.

00:09:14.200 Okay, that's fine.

00:09:15.240 And I don't really think

00:09:17.780 that this is fundamentally a political issue.

00:09:19.800 I don't think so at all.

00:09:20.840 You don't think so at all.

00:09:22.120 Okay, so let's start at the beginning.

00:09:24.720 So what procedures did you undergo

00:09:28.060 and how old were you?

00:09:29.340 Let's start with that.

00:09:30.400 When I was 12 years old,

00:09:31.520 I had a puberty blocker implant

00:09:33.200 placed in my left arm.

00:09:35.200 And when I was 13 years old,

00:09:36.420 I was put on testosterone,

00:09:37.900 which I continued until about earlier this year.

00:09:40.680 But the last couple years of being on testosterone,

00:09:43.040 I was kind of on and off.

00:09:44.420 And then when I was about 14 years old,

00:09:46.280 I had a double mastectomy.

00:09:48.620 All right, so let's go back before you were 12.

00:09:53.700 Obviously, there's a reason

00:09:54.920 that you were put on puberty blockers at 12.

00:09:57.960 Right.

00:09:59.400 How did you come to be put on them?

00:10:01.460 So I guess that means how did you come in contact

00:10:04.040 with Dr. Joanna Olson-Kennedy?

00:10:07.300 Yeah.

00:10:07.540 How did you come in contact with this therapist,

00:10:10.140 Susan Landon?

00:10:10.980 And why?

00:10:14.260 And so you can go back as early as you want,

00:10:17.700 detailing out your childhood and early adolescence.

00:10:21.100 Tell us what brought you to the physicians

00:10:24.060 and the counselor or the psychologist counselor first.

00:10:28.020 Yeah, so just to give enough context,

00:10:30.380 when I was about six years old,

00:10:31.820 I was sexually abused.

00:10:33.480 And that was something I had never even dealt with

00:10:35.760 or talked about until much, much later on.

00:10:38.580 So by the time that I was approaching puberty,

00:10:41.340 around 11 years old,

00:10:42.640 I think I started going through puberty,

00:10:44.560 I started just feeling terrible, terrible anxiety

00:10:47.300 about my body and about the idea of becoming a woman.

00:10:50.500 And I felt really, really isolated from my female peers

00:10:53.640 because I had really a different perspective on puberty

00:10:57.920 and what it meant to be a woman

00:10:59.140 because of what happened to me when I was really young.

00:11:00.840 Can you detail to the degree that you're willing to

00:11:06.300 or capable of what happened to you when you were six?

00:11:09.000 Yeah, so I was sexually abused by an older classmate.

00:11:12.860 He was about four years older than me

00:11:15.200 and it went on for about a year.

00:11:17.180 So it was pretty intense.

00:11:18.600 And I just, in my brain,

00:11:20.000 I just sort of processed it as something

00:11:22.320 I didn't need to think about.

00:11:23.420 So I never really dealt with that until later.

00:11:27.100 Okay, can you...

00:11:29.940 That's a typical response for a child,

00:11:32.880 but it isn't exactly so much as that you might say

00:11:36.260 that you don't need to think about it.

00:11:38.380 It's really that you can't.

00:11:40.060 Exactly.

00:11:40.860 Right?

00:11:41.360 I mean, part of what happens to kids if they're hurt,

00:11:45.120 and this is worse the younger they are, let's say,

00:11:47.820 is that they don't have any framework of reference

00:11:50.540 or any philosophical tools

00:11:53.220 to understand what happened

00:11:56.380 and certainly not why.

00:11:59.340 They don't understand the motivation of the perpetrator.

00:12:02.220 They don't understand their own vulnerability.

00:12:05.060 They don't understand the failures of the systems

00:12:07.540 that were designed to protect them.

00:12:09.100 They don't have anybody to talk to.

00:12:10.920 And so there's actually no way of processing that.

00:12:14.500 It's not only a matter of, like,

00:12:16.160 whatever avoidance there might have been on your part.

00:12:18.280 It's that it's just, it's not really possible.

00:12:20.820 Yeah.

00:12:21.300 What details of the abuse are you willing to share?

00:12:24.480 And now, there's a reason I'm asking you that.

00:12:26.360 It's because I want to know as much as you can.

00:12:31.340 Tell me.

00:12:32.480 I want to know how severe what happened to you was,

00:12:36.500 how long it lasted.

00:12:37.780 And the reason I want to know that

00:12:39.080 is because I want to understand

00:12:40.600 why it was that you became apprehensive when puberty hit.

00:12:44.240 Because you can tell as much of the story as necessary

00:12:46.860 to explain your anxiety as far as you're concerned.

00:12:50.600 Yeah.

00:12:50.880 So just to put it bluntly, I was raped multiple times.

00:12:54.040 So when I was coming to 11, 12,

00:12:57.780 and I started learning about sex ed

00:13:00.020 and figuring out what sex was,

00:13:01.700 I sort of started to unpack what had happened to me.

00:13:04.340 And that was fully sort of when I was able to understand

00:13:06.920 what actually happened.

00:13:09.380 Yeah.

00:13:09.720 Okay.

00:13:10.320 So, you know, there were early psychoanalytic theories

00:13:13.420 about anorexia, for example.

00:13:15.380 And one of the theories,

00:13:17.420 and I'm not vouching for the validity of this theory,

00:13:20.960 but it's an interesting approach,

00:13:22.360 and I think sometimes it's valid,

00:13:23.960 is that some of the impetus for anorexia

00:13:28.000 for some women, for some girls,

00:13:32.100 particularly those who were sexually abused,

00:13:34.360 was the attempt to forestall puberty.

00:13:36.680 Yeah.

00:13:37.400 And because of apprehension around the emergence

00:13:40.880 of sexual capability, let's say,

00:13:43.960 and also the possibility of sexual predation.

00:13:47.780 And you can imagine just generally

00:13:49.540 that it is perfectly reasonable

00:13:52.780 for young women to be apprehensive about puberty

00:13:56.100 because new dangers emerge.

00:14:00.000 Now, there's actually a biological response to that,

00:14:02.800 you know, so I don't know if your therapists

00:14:04.700 told you this or your physicians,

00:14:06.680 but it's necessary to know.

00:14:09.360 So, boys and girls under the age of puberty

00:14:13.040 don't differ much in their proclivity

00:14:14.960 for negative emotion, anxiety and depression.

00:14:18.420 Okay.

00:14:18.640 At puberty, that changes.

00:14:20.740 This is cross-culturally stable,

00:14:23.220 and it's mostly biological.

00:14:25.260 And we know that because the differences

00:14:28.040 are most pronounced in gender-equal societies.

00:14:32.700 Right.

00:14:33.300 Okay.

00:14:34.140 Women become more anxious and depressed

00:14:36.320 than men, more sensitive to negative emotion

00:14:38.460 at puberty, and that never goes away.

00:14:42.940 And so, then you might ask, why?

00:14:44.660 Well, sexual vulnerability makes the world

00:14:47.580 a dangerous place for women.

00:14:49.340 Then you might say, well,

00:14:50.680 women also have to take care of infants,

00:14:52.560 so being threat-sensitive is reasonable

00:14:55.500 because they're going to be more sensitive

00:14:57.800 to dangers to their baby,

00:14:59.000 but they also become sexually vulnerable.

00:15:01.500 Right.

00:15:01.680 And their boys and men become physically

00:15:04.440 much more powerful than women at that point, too.

00:15:07.680 So, it appears as though

00:15:09.400 what nature does to address that imbalance

00:15:13.320 is increase the negative emotion

00:15:15.760 that women feel.

00:15:17.780 That happens at puberty.

00:15:19.400 Okay.

00:15:19.580 But there's one more twist to that.

00:15:22.140 And I'd like to know

00:15:23.180 if any of this was explained to you

00:15:24.860 because it should have been.

00:15:26.720 The typical pattern

00:15:29.280 that negative emotion takes

00:15:31.020 in young women

00:15:32.280 is bodily concern.

00:15:35.800 And it's partly because women are evaluated

00:15:37.940 for better or worse

00:15:40.280 in consequence of their physical appearance.

00:15:44.020 And so, it's very commonly the case

00:15:46.740 that if a woman is anxious and depressed,

00:15:48.720 is experiencing high levels

00:15:49.860 of negative emotion,

00:15:50.860 that expresses itself

00:15:52.540 as hyper-concern about bodily appearance.

00:15:56.200 Right.

00:15:56.700 Now, when you were brought,

00:15:59.380 when you were little,

00:16:00.140 maybe you don't remember even,

00:16:01.500 but how much of that was explained to you?

00:16:03.920 None of that was explained to you.

00:16:05.040 Okay.

00:16:05.360 So, one of the things

00:16:06.400 I'd like to point out to everyone watching

00:16:07.980 is there's no excuse

00:16:09.980 for not explaining this.

00:16:11.160 If you're a physician

00:16:13.300 who's trained well enough

00:16:14.700 to dare to meddle

00:16:17.180 in someone's gender identity,

00:16:18.760 and if you're a counselor

00:16:20.000 who's counseling someone

00:16:21.640 who hypothetically has gender dysphoria,

00:16:24.480 especially someone female,

00:16:25.860 then these are elementary facts.

00:16:27.720 The first thing you do

00:16:28.660 when you deal with someone

00:16:30.020 who is anxious and depressed

00:16:32.300 when they're female

00:16:33.460 and they're entering puberty

00:16:34.680 is to explain this.

00:16:36.840 It's psychology,

00:16:38.560 I wouldn't call it 101.

00:16:40.360 It's developmental psychology 101.

00:16:42.940 And so, that's minimum necessary information.

00:16:45.360 Now, there's a reason

00:16:46.380 that that should be explained to you, you know?

00:16:48.500 So, it's very frequently the case

00:16:50.100 that people who are having

00:16:51.080 psychological trouble,

00:16:52.880 so excess anxiety and depression, let's say,

00:16:55.340 they feel like they're the only people

00:16:57.320 who are in that boat.

00:16:58.620 So, they feel isolated and alone

00:17:00.240 and sort of singled out.

00:17:01.980 And part of the reason you explain...

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00:18:15.780 Your spirit will thank you.

00:18:16.940 The prevalence of a given diagnosis

00:18:21.520 even to someone is to say,

00:18:23.160 you're not alone.

00:18:24.900 This isn't unique to you.

00:18:26.160 In fact, it's quite common.

00:18:28.120 These are the symptoms that are commonly associated with it.

00:18:32.680 These are the reasons for the symptoms.

00:18:34.420 And, well, in the case of the symptoms that you describe,

00:18:38.860 the typical pattern is that

00:18:41.620 even adolescents who are radically gender dysphoric

00:18:47.800 adapt by the time they're 18.

00:18:50.100 Yeah.

00:18:50.420 At least 80% of them.

00:18:52.180 This has been known for,

00:18:53.960 well, I'd say four decades, five decades.

00:18:56.060 It's been known a long time.

00:18:57.460 It's been replicated many times.

00:18:59.040 It's a very stable finding.

00:19:00.460 So the reliable clinicians and physicians

00:19:04.460 have concluded,

00:19:06.000 especially before all of this got politicized,

00:19:07.980 that if a child is severely gender dysphoric,

00:19:10.120 the best thing to do is nothing until they're 18.

00:19:13.920 Most of them are, what would you say,

00:19:17.420 reconciled to their fate by that point.

00:19:19.920 And that's also not that atypical

00:19:22.120 because puberty throws a monkey wrench

00:19:25.060 into everyone's works.

00:19:26.340 Yeah.

00:19:26.640 Now, you were at particular risk for that

00:19:29.740 and you said why.

00:19:31.660 Now, when you went and saw Olson Kennedy

00:19:34.520 and the counselor,

00:19:37.360 tell me her name again.

00:19:38.780 Susan Landon.

00:19:40.040 Susan Landon, right.

00:19:42.200 Did you tell them about the abuse?

00:19:44.700 I did not, but they didn't ask.

00:19:46.280 Okay, so they didn't know about that.

00:19:47.480 Right.

00:19:47.680 But they didn't ask.

00:19:49.160 So what kind of history did they take from you?

00:19:51.640 We had very brief discussions about my childhood

00:19:54.840 and I expressed that I'd always felt sort of uncomfortable with girls

00:19:58.020 and that I had mostly male friends.

00:20:00.340 And I talked about my discomfort with the idea of growing and to be a grown woman.

00:20:05.500 That was sort of the very surface level conversations we had.

00:20:08.740 And I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria on our first meeting,

00:20:12.720 but I had only been...

00:20:13.460 Diagnosed by who?

00:20:14.100 With Olson Kennedy.

00:20:16.100 How long was the diagnostic meeting approximately?

00:20:19.540 It was around 30 minutes to an hour.

00:20:21.520 It was pretty short.

00:20:22.460 And she spoke with my parents as well.

00:20:24.580 But by the time I was diagnosed,

00:20:25.940 I had only been living as trans for about three months.

00:20:29.160 But the diagnostic criteria is actually six months.

00:20:32.740 So with Olson Kennedy,

00:20:35.360 how many times did you see her?

00:20:36.900 Like, how many times did you have a chance

00:20:40.660 to have a clinical discussion with her of some length?

00:20:44.280 We had multiple clinical discussions.

00:20:46.280 I don't actually know how many times I saw her,

00:20:48.780 but all the talk about gender was never beyond social setting.

00:20:54.240 It was never about how I was feeling.

00:20:55.900 It was more about how I wanted to be perceived.

00:20:59.280 Okay.

00:20:59.660 Now you said when you first went and saw her,

00:21:01.900 and then how long after you saw her,

00:21:06.040 like, what was the sequence of events that led you to Landon?

00:21:10.960 Right.

00:21:11.440 I believe it was pretty shortly after,

00:21:13.680 maybe a month or so,

00:21:14.480 I started seeing Landon because she had referred me to her.

00:21:17.260 And we had sort of similar discussions.

00:21:19.360 And she kept affirming the idea that I was somehow inherently male.

00:21:24.300 And that was the root of my discomfort.

00:21:26.800 Yeah.

00:21:27.080 Well, there's been a variety...

00:21:28.720 See, that's a tricky issue, eh?

00:21:30.280 Because in Canada, for example,

00:21:33.920 and I'm familiar with this because I'm Canadian,

00:21:37.220 although it's the same in many places in the United States,

00:21:42.280 the standard of care is gender affirmation,

00:21:46.780 the legal standard of care,

00:21:48.840 the professional standard of care,

00:21:50.500 which is appalling.

00:21:51.820 It's appalling.

00:21:52.600 And what that means is that I believe it's actually a felony in Canada

00:21:58.620 for a psychologist or a physician or anyone else,

00:22:02.360 for that matter,

00:22:02.940 anyone operating in a professional capacity,

00:22:04.960 to question, let's say, your feelings.

00:22:09.180 Now, the problem with that is...

00:22:12.120 Well, you know what the problem is.

00:22:13.940 But the problem is,

00:22:15.620 what if you're confused?

00:22:17.380 Right.

00:22:17.700 Now, virtually every adolescent is confused.

00:22:22.720 So then the question is,

00:22:24.020 if you come to me and I'm a physician or a therapist

00:22:27.060 and you said you'd been living as trans,

00:22:30.260 and so there's evidence already that you decided to...

00:22:34.340 that you decided you were in the wrong body, so to speak,

00:22:37.660 you were acting that out in some ways,

00:22:39.300 I have to step damn carefully

00:22:41.920 not to actually do something illegal

00:22:44.860 or sufficiently unprofessional, so to speak,

00:22:48.440 that my license could be at risk.

00:22:50.580 So we're increasingly in a situation

00:22:52.720 where the probability

00:22:53.900 that someone like you at 12

00:22:56.080 would be told the truth is zero.

00:22:58.620 And this is independent of the actual,

00:23:01.820 let's say, professional knowledge

00:23:03.800 of the physician or counselor.

00:23:06.840 So, for example,

00:23:07.640 we might ask why you weren't given

00:23:10.300 this elementary information that I described.

00:23:12.860 I think that should have just happened baseline

00:23:15.240 because that has nothing to do with your feelings.

00:23:17.760 But then it is the case

00:23:19.240 that the physicians and the therapist

00:23:21.980 would have to tread on very thin ice indeed

00:23:24.540 to ask you any questions of any sort.

00:23:28.080 So I'm not trying to excuse this.

00:23:30.860 I'm trying to outline for people who are listening

00:23:34.280 and you why such things might happen.

00:23:36.680 Yeah.

00:23:36.780 Now, with Olson Kennedy,

00:23:38.300 there's some evidence

00:23:39.340 that she's a fairly avid advocate

00:23:42.500 of the gender-affirming process.

00:23:46.060 And so that's a slightly different situation.

00:23:49.300 Okay, so tell me exactly

00:23:52.500 what you think the discussions consisted of

00:23:55.500 with Olson Kennedy

00:23:56.420 and then also with the therapist.

00:23:58.380 It was very, very surface level

00:24:00.940 and it was all about what I wanted in the future,

00:24:03.580 which for me at the time

00:24:05.560 was very difficult to figure out.

00:24:07.460 And obviously, I just...

00:24:09.300 Kind of my dream was I wanted

00:24:10.940 to just be totally dissociated from my body,

00:24:14.420 which is not really a healthy mindset at all.

00:24:17.140 But I didn't really...

00:24:18.100 I wasn't 100% certain if I was like truly male,

00:24:22.500 if that was the truth.

00:24:23.620 But they kept affirming that my discomfort with my body

00:24:27.700 was related to the fact

00:24:28.920 that I was supposed to be born male.

00:24:31.000 And that because I fit in better with males at school

00:24:34.560 or things like that,

00:24:35.740 that that was somehow also evidence.

00:24:37.620 Yeah, okay, first of all,

00:24:38.740 that's not evidence, right?

00:24:40.340 I mean, some boys,

00:24:42.600 it's a minority as it is with girls,

00:24:44.760 but a minority of boys

00:24:45.860 are more comfortable associating with girls.

00:24:47.860 And that also might be situation dependent.

00:24:50.240 And it's, I think, even more common

00:24:52.960 that girls are more comfortable associating with boys.

00:24:55.600 But that in itself is absolutely 100%,

00:24:58.620 no determinant marker of which gender you are.

00:25:01.780 No.

00:25:02.240 So, I mean, otherwise,

00:25:03.500 it would be impossible for boys and girls

00:25:06.700 to have cross-sex friendships

00:25:09.340 without their biological identity

00:25:13.460 being cast into question.

00:25:15.340 Okay, so you didn't talk much about the past.

00:25:18.000 Now, all right.

00:25:19.520 You said that you'd been living transgender

00:25:22.460 for a few months

00:25:23.460 before you went and saw Olsen Kennedy.

00:25:24.900 Yes.

00:25:25.360 Okay, so what did that mean?

00:25:26.780 What did that mean?

00:25:27.980 What were you doing?

00:25:28.820 I had spoken to my guidance counselor

00:25:30.760 about my feelings about my body.

00:25:33.500 And I had suggested

00:25:35.160 that I might be transgender to her,

00:25:37.000 but I had also said

00:25:37.880 that I might be lesbian or bisexual

00:25:40.080 or things like that.

00:25:41.440 We just had a lot of, like,

00:25:42.360 very open-ended conversations.

00:25:44.520 Okay.

00:25:44.880 But at a certain point,

00:25:46.180 she sort of latched on to the idea

00:25:47.720 that I might be transgender.

00:25:49.440 And after that meeting,

00:25:50.820 she called my parents and told them,

00:25:52.740 and they're the ones

00:25:53.380 who took me to Olsen Kennedy.

00:25:55.460 However, pretty shortly

00:25:56.620 after that conversation with my parents,

00:25:58.580 it was actually my guidance counselor

00:26:00.140 who told my entire school

00:26:02.420 that I was a boy

00:26:03.540 and that they were to only use

00:26:05.160 male pronouns for me

00:26:06.360 and that all the teachers

00:26:07.200 had to call me by a different name.

00:26:09.400 And at the time,

00:26:10.540 it kind of felt nice in a way

00:26:12.820 that I didn't have to really

00:26:13.960 do any of it myself,

00:26:15.140 but it also really removed

00:26:16.840 any accountability on my end

00:26:19.220 because I had really no actual control

00:26:21.780 over the decision,

00:26:22.640 and I didn't have to have

00:26:23.740 those conversations face-to-face

00:26:25.160 with my parents or my peers as well.

00:26:26.880 So it was taken out of your hands.

00:26:29.900 Essentially.

00:26:30.480 But you also implied

00:26:31.620 in the run-up to that statement

00:26:35.000 that part of your motivation

00:26:37.240 was to have it taken out of your hands

00:26:38.980 because it wasn't something

00:26:39.900 that you particularly wanted to deal with.

00:26:42.180 No, and I also,

00:26:43.580 when I was living as trans at that point,

00:26:46.200 before I had gone through

00:26:47.260 with any medicalization,

00:26:48.820 I had just cut my hair short

00:26:50.060 and was wearing baggy clothes,

00:26:51.440 which I was also doing

00:26:52.500 because my body was changing.

00:26:54.480 Right, right, right.

00:26:55.540 But people,

00:26:56.760 and what were people calling you

00:26:58.000 at that point?

00:26:58.380 People were calling me Kai at the time.

00:27:00.480 Kai.

00:27:01.100 And the school was informed

00:27:03.380 that you were now male?

00:27:05.200 Yes.

00:27:05.720 Okay.

00:27:06.420 And what you said,

00:27:08.900 you correct me if I get any of this wrong

00:27:10.580 because I want to get it right

00:27:11.740 while I'm talking to you.

00:27:13.520 You said that was a relief to you fundamentally.

00:27:16.440 At the moment, yeah.

00:27:17.220 Was it only a relief?

00:27:19.120 No, it was definitely mixed emotions

00:27:21.280 because also I was a bit overwhelmed

00:27:25.080 at the same time

00:27:26.360 because everything happened so fast.

00:27:28.120 I mean, it was just like three months

00:27:29.360 at that time.

00:27:30.160 So how did that change your status at school?

00:27:33.620 First of all, before that,

00:27:35.280 before that,

00:27:36.500 before you started talking

00:27:38.860 to the guidance counselor

00:27:39.920 and so forth,

00:27:41.060 how would you describe

00:27:42.500 your social status,

00:27:44.860 let's say,

00:27:45.860 and at school?

00:27:46.860 Yeah, at school I was,

00:27:48.800 I wouldn't call myself popular,

00:27:50.420 but I had friends

00:27:51.720 and people liked me.

00:27:52.800 I was fairly well liked.

00:27:54.400 I was definitely,

00:27:55.400 as I hit puberty,

00:27:56.380 I was getting more awkward

00:27:57.620 and definitely more reserved and shy.

00:28:00.980 Going through puberty

00:28:02.020 definitely triggered something in me

00:28:03.580 that was kind of noticeable

00:28:05.140 from other people around me.

00:28:07.060 Right.

00:28:07.520 And when I originally came out

00:28:09.100 as transgender,

00:28:09.940 I lost a ton of friends

00:28:11.580 sort of immediately.

00:28:12.940 But after a year or so,

00:28:15.380 I started getting way more popular

00:28:18.000 than I had ever been

00:28:19.140 while living as female.

00:28:21.300 And why?

00:28:22.140 I think it was because of

00:28:24.200 the sort of initial confidence boost

00:28:27.060 that I had,

00:28:27.700 but also I definitely felt

00:28:29.540 more comfortable

00:28:30.380 asserting myself

00:28:31.540 in ways that are

00:28:32.720 traditionally masculine

00:28:34.240 that I was sort of

00:28:35.100 reserved from before.

00:28:37.240 Definitely just because

00:28:38.100 I was insecure and shy,

00:28:39.540 I don't think that

00:28:41.140 my trans identity

00:28:42.640 benefited me in any way.

00:28:44.200 But I did notice

00:28:46.240 that people started

00:28:46.960 to respect me more.

00:28:48.780 Okay.

00:28:49.180 So let me take that apart

00:28:50.540 a little bit

00:28:51.000 because you could imagine,

00:28:52.900 when did you start

00:28:53.720 taking testosterone?

00:28:56.000 I started taking

00:28:56.620 testosterone at 13.

00:28:57.920 What was the effect of you?

00:28:59.600 What was the effect

00:29:00.820 on you of the drug?

00:29:02.480 Pretty quickly,

00:29:03.480 my voice started

00:29:04.260 to deepen a bit

00:29:05.540 and I started

00:29:06.840 to grow facial hair.

00:29:08.420 My stature changed.

00:29:10.780 I got a bit more confident

00:29:12.800 and I was very restless

00:29:14.260 and angry all the time.

00:29:15.820 As my dose increased,

00:29:17.200 I started having

00:29:17.920 very, very negative

00:29:19.240 side effects

00:29:19.900 that eventually sort of

00:29:21.100 diverged into

00:29:22.280 full-blown psychosis.

00:29:23.780 But at the time

00:29:24.840 that I was 13,

00:29:25.660 that wasn't happening yet.

00:29:27.280 Do you think

00:29:27.980 that the changes

00:29:28.880 that testosterone

00:29:30.380 induced

00:29:31.880 had anything to do

00:29:33.020 with your shift

00:29:33.740 in social status?

00:29:35.080 Absolutely.

00:29:35.740 Okay, how?

00:29:36.620 I think once I started

00:29:37.900 to physically conform

00:29:39.780 to the male identity,

00:29:41.000 it was easier

00:29:41.760 for people to see me

00:29:43.000 that way,

00:29:43.700 which also definitely

00:29:45.200 made me feel better

00:29:46.080 in a short-term sense,

00:29:47.360 but it didn't actually

00:29:48.300 resolve any of the

00:29:49.400 mental problems

00:29:49.980 I was experiencing.

00:29:51.180 Okay, when did you

00:29:52.100 or did you ever

00:29:53.380 start to discuss

00:29:54.440 what had happened

00:29:55.080 to you when you were six?

00:29:57.000 Yeah, I started

00:29:57.660 to discuss that

00:29:58.460 around 17

00:29:59.220 with a different therapist.

00:30:00.840 Oh, so it was

00:30:01.440 quite a while after this.

00:30:02.100 It was a while, yeah.

00:30:02.920 Why the lag

00:30:06.100 and then why did you

00:30:07.340 decide to delve into it?

00:30:09.160 Well, I had sort of assumed

00:30:10.620 that my transition

00:30:11.500 would fix all of those issues

00:30:13.480 because that's sort of

00:30:14.440 what I was told

00:30:15.160 is that my body issues

00:30:17.300 would resolve

00:30:17.940 and that once I started

00:30:19.460 fitting in better at school,

00:30:20.820 I'd feel less shy.

00:30:22.460 And that did sort of happen,

00:30:24.700 but I also got more reckless

00:30:26.180 and more depressed

00:30:26.940 and more anxious

00:30:27.860 and I could hardly sleep

00:30:29.180 and things like that

00:30:30.420 were just happening

00:30:31.200 and it got so bad

00:30:32.920 by the time I was 17,

00:30:34.520 I could hardly focus in school.

00:30:36.300 I was up all night,

00:30:37.740 every single night.

00:30:39.220 My insomnia

00:30:40.560 had become psychosis

00:30:41.800 and I was having...

00:30:43.240 What were those symptoms?

00:30:44.620 I was having

00:30:45.140 full-blown hallucinations.

00:30:46.960 Auditory or visual?

00:30:48.220 Visual and auditory,

00:30:49.800 mostly auditory.

00:30:50.800 It was like hearing voices

00:30:51.840 and whispers

00:30:52.480 and shouting

00:30:53.720 from the other room.

00:30:54.140 What sort of things

00:30:55.480 were the whispers saying?

00:30:57.520 It was a lot of...

00:30:58.800 This is all in my

00:31:00.060 therapist's notes,

00:31:01.240 but it was a lot of stuff

00:31:02.280 about hurting other people

00:31:03.640 and specifically men,

00:31:05.240 which was something

00:31:06.060 I had actually talked

00:31:06.960 to Landon about

00:31:08.000 and she attributed

00:31:09.740 to my trans identity.

00:31:12.320 Do you have

00:31:13.080 an alternative attribution?

00:31:15.060 I think that it was

00:31:16.140 because of the sexual abuse

00:31:17.480 that I experienced.

00:31:18.100 Well, that would be

00:31:18.220 the obvious...

00:31:18.820 Yeah.

00:31:19.840 Right.

00:31:21.320 Do you remember,

00:31:22.780 as I said

00:31:23.660 before we started

00:31:24.580 the interview,

00:31:25.120 you don't have to answer

00:31:25.920 any of these questions, right?

00:31:27.040 So, do you remember

00:31:28.760 what the voices

00:31:29.680 were telling you?

00:31:31.980 Certain things would be

00:31:33.260 if I had positive

00:31:34.260 relationships with people,

00:31:35.680 I would always be told

00:31:36.760 to hurt those people

00:31:38.280 or say certain things.

00:31:40.060 In class,

00:31:40.720 it would always be like,

00:31:41.300 you have to get out of here,

00:31:42.280 you have to run,

00:31:42.920 or things like that.

00:31:43.920 Lots of whisperings

00:31:45.060 that would overlap at times,

00:31:46.860 but it was always trying

00:31:48.040 to get me to do things

00:31:49.300 that were very impulsive.

00:31:50.820 And sometimes,

00:31:51.360 I would do those things

00:31:52.520 and I would act

00:31:53.240 very impulsively

00:31:54.720 or out of control

00:31:55.880 or really high-risk behaviors

00:31:57.420 I was doing.

00:31:58.440 Okay.

00:31:58.880 And that was all

00:32:00.080 happening around 17?

00:32:01.400 Yeah, around 16, 17.

00:32:03.100 And has that resolved

00:32:05.320 completely?

00:32:06.080 Completely.

00:32:06.500 Okay.

00:32:06.840 And how come?

00:32:08.300 Why did it resolve?

00:32:09.340 I went through DBT therapy

00:32:10.740 and that sort of quieted

00:32:12.600 most of my psychosis.

00:32:14.380 However,

00:32:14.660 I was still having

00:32:15.420 some of it until...

00:32:16.600 DBT being?

00:32:18.100 Dialectoral behavioral therapy.

00:32:19.520 Yeah, okay.

00:32:19.900 And after completing that,

00:32:21.560 I was still having

00:32:22.180 some of those symptoms,

00:32:23.040 but once I was fully detoxed

00:32:25.320 off the testosterone,

00:32:26.100 I stopped having hallucinations.

00:32:28.860 Right.

00:32:29.320 So,

00:32:29.880 there is some

00:32:30.620 benefit to the

00:32:32.320 psychological treatment.

00:32:33.840 If you had to guess,

00:32:35.280 or maybe you know,

00:32:36.980 was the primary benefit

00:32:38.420 with regard to

00:32:39.480 the psychosis symptoms

00:32:41.160 a consequence

00:32:42.180 of the psychological treatment

00:32:43.520 or the cessation

00:32:44.420 of testosterone?

00:32:45.740 I would say

00:32:46.560 it was definitely both,

00:32:47.640 but I would say

00:32:48.140 the cessation of the testosterone

00:32:49.600 stopped the psychosis.

00:32:50.900 Yes.

00:32:51.420 Okay.

00:32:51.900 So,

00:32:52.240 if I've got this right,

00:32:53.480 you didn't discuss

00:32:54.600 the sexual abuse

00:32:55.980 with Olson Kennedy

00:32:57.720 or Landon.

00:32:59.420 No.

00:32:59.840 And then that was

00:33:01.080 forestalled

00:33:01.860 until you were 17,

00:33:03.020 and the reason

00:33:03.740 you didn't discuss it

00:33:04.860 is because you thought

00:33:05.880 that you had

00:33:06.480 an alternative route.

00:33:07.520 Had you ever revealed

00:33:08.660 anything about

00:33:10.160 the sexual abuse

00:33:10.940 to your parents?

00:33:11.900 No.

00:33:12.720 So,

00:33:12.960 this was all happening

00:33:13.720 in secret.

00:33:14.560 Mm-hmm.

00:33:14.820 Did the teachers know?

00:33:18.400 So,

00:33:19.080 do you know

00:33:19.980 why you didn't,

00:33:21.520 why you weren't able to

00:33:22.820 or didn't

00:33:24.280 discuss

00:33:26.920 what had happened

00:33:28.740 with your parents?

00:33:29.780 I think the main reason

00:33:31.320 was because

00:33:31.900 I was assaulted

00:33:33.160 by somebody

00:33:33.740 who was also a child

00:33:34.800 at the time.

00:33:35.880 They were much older,

00:33:36.920 but they were still

00:33:37.880 a child at the time,

00:33:38.820 so I think in my head

00:33:39.760 I sort of had the narrative

00:33:40.840 of like,

00:33:41.840 if an adult hurts you,

00:33:43.100 tell another adult,

00:33:44.020 but I wasn't really

00:33:44.840 considering that

00:33:45.620 a child's actions

00:33:47.740 could be that inappropriate

00:33:48.780 where I'd have to tell somebody,

00:33:50.180 but then by the time

00:33:51.220 I had sort of

00:33:51.940 realized what had happened,

00:33:53.820 I was so ashamed

00:33:55.820 and I felt like

00:33:56.680 there was no way

00:33:57.380 out of it

00:33:58.460 or no way

00:33:59.000 to tell anybody,

00:34:00.260 so I just figured

00:34:01.560 I could resolve it

00:34:02.400 in other ways

00:34:03.120 like transitioning,

00:34:04.280 but...

00:34:04.360 Right,

00:34:04.600 well,

00:34:04.820 I'm not,

00:34:05.520 look,

00:34:05.960 I'm also not suggesting

00:34:07.480 at all

00:34:08.180 that,

00:34:09.200 you know,

00:34:10.680 there was a more

00:34:11.400 appropriate route

00:34:12.540 to dealing with this.

00:34:13.700 It's very,

00:34:14.180 very complicated

00:34:14.820 and what you just said,

00:34:17.320 well,

00:34:17.580 there's moral quandaries

00:34:18.640 and you pointed them out.

00:34:20.420 When is it appropriate

00:34:21.540 to go to an authority?

00:34:22.700 You said you were

00:34:23.240 ambivalent about that

00:34:24.580 and then you had

00:34:25.160 other reasons for not.

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00:35:39.760 For not revealing it.

00:35:45.140 And it's a very complicated

00:35:46.360 thing to reveal.

00:35:47.480 Yeah.

00:35:48.280 Like, how do you talk about it?

00:35:49.940 It's very,

00:35:51.080 it still kind of eludes me

00:35:52.540 in how I talk about it.

00:35:53.980 Like, I just sort of

00:35:55.080 got desensitized

00:35:56.120 to talking about it

00:35:57.140 at a certain point,

00:35:58.060 which weirdly helped,

00:35:59.100 but the first time

00:36:00.780 I could barely even

00:36:01.960 get the words out.

00:36:03.360 Were you guilty about it?

00:36:04.740 I felt very guilty.

00:36:06.240 Why?

00:36:06.380 Especially after

00:36:07.820 all of the transition

00:36:10.060 and all of the things

00:36:11.920 that I had done

00:36:12.640 to just avoid

00:36:13.620 dealing with this.

00:36:14.860 There was a lot of shame

00:36:15.980 in finally coming out

00:36:17.120 and saying the reason.

00:36:18.360 Why were you guilty,

00:36:19.520 do you think?

00:36:20.360 I don't know.

00:36:23.000 Well, you know,

00:36:24.240 if you're confused,

00:36:25.360 if you're deeply confused

00:36:26.440 about something,

00:36:28.320 part of what confusion is

00:36:30.040 is the experience

00:36:30.960 of a very large number

00:36:32.320 of emotions.

00:36:33.200 Yeah.

00:36:33.660 Right?

00:36:33.880 Because part of the way

00:36:34.840 you resolve the confusion

00:36:36.100 is to experience

00:36:37.600 like a panoply

00:36:40.720 of emotions

00:36:41.280 to see which ones fit.

00:36:43.280 So that could be

00:36:43.900 shame, anger, guilt,

00:36:45.620 rage, pain, anxiety.

00:36:48.740 What else?

00:36:51.680 Curiosity,

00:36:53.320 excitement,

00:36:54.480 all of those.

00:36:56.200 That's all part of being,

00:36:57.840 you know,

00:36:58.240 deeply confused.

00:36:59.360 And,

00:37:00.340 well, you had reason

00:37:01.180 to be confused.

00:37:02.600 Okay, so you had to

00:37:03.360 keep this to yourself.

00:37:04.440 And it started to happen

00:37:05.720 to you when you were

00:37:06.260 very young.

00:37:07.660 And so,

00:37:08.860 now,

00:37:10.820 I asked you

00:37:11.640 if you had discussed

00:37:12.420 this with your physician

00:37:14.180 or your therapist.

00:37:15.540 And you said,

00:37:16.600 no,

00:37:16.900 not until you were 17.

00:37:18.260 And so then,

00:37:19.900 but you also mentioned

00:37:21.140 that

00:37:21.580 the conversations

00:37:23.740 that you had

00:37:24.820 with the therapist

00:37:26.020 and the physician

00:37:27.060 were fundamentally centered

00:37:29.040 on what you wanted

00:37:30.160 in the future.

00:37:31.080 Well,

00:37:31.220 how much investigation

00:37:32.060 into your history

00:37:33.260 took place?

00:37:35.120 Very little

00:37:35.720 because the second

00:37:36.580 we got into my history,

00:37:38.080 I mean,

00:37:38.440 it just came crumbling down.

00:37:39.700 Like,

00:37:39.880 even in my surgical

00:37:40.760 note

00:37:41.940 for my double mastectomy,

00:37:44.020 in my referral,

00:37:44.980 it says that I had held

00:37:46.260 a male identity

00:37:47.100 since childhood,

00:37:48.560 which is just not true.

00:37:49.660 I was a super girly child.

00:37:51.180 I did

00:37:51.600 choir and theater.

00:37:53.120 I would play dress up.

00:37:53.900 I collected dolls.

00:37:54.720 Like,

00:37:54.920 I just had no sign of this

00:37:56.760 until puberty.

00:37:58.500 Besides just

00:37:59.520 physical discomfort

00:38:00.540 with my body

00:38:01.300 and just feeling

00:38:02.040 disconnected from girls,

00:38:03.420 there was really no sign

00:38:04.620 of prior gender dysphoria.

00:38:06.540 Discomfort with your body

00:38:07.700 and feeling disconnected

00:38:08.740 with girls,

00:38:09.500 from girls,

00:38:10.120 that's called puberty.

00:38:11.180 Right,

00:38:11.460 exactly.

00:38:11.960 Right,

00:38:12.220 right.

00:38:12.540 Now,

00:38:13.160 it might have been,

00:38:14.180 as we already discussed,

00:38:15.320 it might have been

00:38:15.880 exaggerated in your case,

00:38:17.600 likely exaggerated

00:38:18.440 in your case,

00:38:19.160 at least the discomfort

00:38:20.100 and the confusion

00:38:20.960 and perhaps some

00:38:22.240 resistance to the process.

00:38:24.480 I mean,

00:38:24.720 that seems like

00:38:26.300 in some ways

00:38:27.040 self-evident

00:38:27.660 given what you just said,

00:38:29.040 but very little

00:38:30.520 of that,

00:38:31.160 very little of what

00:38:32.500 you just described

00:38:33.440 deviates from what's

00:38:34.680 strictly normative

00:38:35.740 and expected.

00:38:36.580 Right.

00:38:36.900 Okay,

00:38:37.200 and so you said

00:38:38.020 you also

00:38:39.680 didn't provide

00:38:41.240 a history

00:38:41.780 that indicated

00:38:43.040 that prolonged

00:38:44.640 dysphoria

00:38:46.180 that in principle

00:38:48.120 is associated

00:38:49.000 with being born

00:38:50.640 in the wrong body.

00:38:51.740 Right.

00:38:51.940 It's a very strange

00:38:52.800 conceptualization,

00:38:54.000 but one that

00:38:55.720 you can imagine

00:38:57.000 these sorts of things

00:38:57.920 being more

00:38:58.640 justifiable

00:38:59.860 in the case

00:39:01.160 of someone

00:39:01.640 who has

00:39:02.640 that kind

00:39:03.180 of lengthy history.

00:39:03.840 Right.

00:39:04.180 But it wasn't

00:39:05.000 the case with you.

00:39:05.960 No,

00:39:06.320 they almost,

00:39:06.920 it seemed like

00:39:07.380 they didn't really

00:39:07.860 want to talk

00:39:08.420 about my childhood

00:39:09.340 or as if my childhood

00:39:10.500 was totally irrelevant

00:39:11.540 to what was happening now

00:39:12.780 and it was just

00:39:13.800 something

00:39:14.140 that I hadn't seen

00:39:15.300 before

00:39:15.860 or my parents

00:39:17.400 hadn't seen before

00:39:18.280 because there really

00:39:19.140 were no signs

00:39:20.120 when I was a child.

00:39:21.680 Okay.

00:39:22.540 Now let's

00:39:23.300 talk about

00:39:24.140 your parents

00:39:24.680 a little bit.

00:39:25.360 Sure.

00:39:25.760 So now

00:39:26.280 you're

00:39:27.940 dressing as a boy

00:39:30.520 at school

00:39:31.100 or at least

00:39:31.940 dressing in,

00:39:32.780 were you dressing

00:39:33.360 as a boy?

00:39:34.100 How were you dressing?

00:39:35.020 I was just

00:39:35.440 wearing baggy clothes.

00:39:36.600 It wasn't really

00:39:37.220 dressing like a boy.

00:39:38.300 It was just

00:39:38.720 big shirts

00:39:39.480 and big pants.

00:39:40.840 Okay.

00:39:41.180 Okay.

00:39:41.500 Right.

00:39:41.820 Well,

00:39:42.040 that's also

00:39:42.660 not uncommon

00:39:43.640 early

00:39:45.280 pubescent

00:39:47.660 female behavior.

00:39:48.760 Right.

00:39:49.220 Right.

00:39:49.980 Right.

00:39:50.400 Okay.

00:39:51.400 And you talked

00:39:52.460 to a guidance

00:39:53.040 counselor in school

00:39:53.960 and the guidance

00:39:54.940 counselor,

00:39:55.840 you said,

00:39:57.520 focused in

00:40:00.340 on

00:40:00.840 gender dysphoria

00:40:03.200 and your

00:40:04.300 hypothetical identity

00:40:06.000 as a boy

00:40:06.760 as a resolution

00:40:08.360 to your

00:40:09.640 confusion.

00:40:10.840 Yes.

00:40:11.200 And then

00:40:11.980 it was

00:40:12.260 taken out

00:40:12.680 of your

00:40:12.940 hands

00:40:13.280 by,

00:40:14.200 in some

00:40:14.560 ways,

00:40:14.940 by the

00:40:15.340 turns of

00:40:15.760 events

00:40:16.140 that emerged

00:40:16.960 in consequence.

00:40:18.260 Yeah.

00:40:18.440 The announcement

00:40:18.920 of your

00:40:19.380 pronouns.

00:40:20.920 Now,

00:40:21.560 then you said

00:40:22.160 you lost

00:40:22.740 a variety

00:40:23.620 of friends.

00:40:24.360 Mm-hmm.

00:40:25.420 Why?

00:40:26.420 I think

00:40:27.160 a lot of

00:40:27.640 people were

00:40:28.260 sort of

00:40:28.640 uncomfortable

00:40:29.200 with what

00:40:30.320 was happening

00:40:30.860 and I also

00:40:31.780 had people

00:40:32.520 at the time

00:40:33.000 point out

00:40:33.560 how out

00:40:33.980 of character

00:40:34.440 this was

00:40:35.120 or how

00:40:35.500 like I

00:40:36.620 had never

00:40:37.240 behaved

00:40:37.900 typically

00:40:38.720 masculine

00:40:39.200 before

00:40:39.760 or I

00:40:40.300 hadn't

00:40:40.540 really

00:40:40.800 expressed

00:40:41.260 interest

00:40:41.720 in masculine

00:40:42.780 things and

00:40:43.560 things like

00:40:43.920 that.

00:40:44.200 People have

00:40:44.540 brought it

00:40:44.860 up to me

00:40:45.360 and were

00:40:45.640 very aware

00:40:46.300 of how

00:40:46.580 out of

00:40:46.880 character

00:40:47.180 it was.

00:40:47.580 Right.

00:40:48.100 So a lot

00:40:48.640 of the

00:40:48.860 people that

00:40:49.300 had been

00:40:49.660 associating

00:40:50.260 with you

00:40:50.580 didn't know

00:40:51.000 what the

00:40:51.300 hell was

00:40:51.600 going on

00:40:52.060 and they

00:40:52.460 didn't know

00:40:52.820 what to

00:40:53.120 do.

00:40:53.500 Yeah.

00:40:53.840 Yeah,

00:40:54.100 well,

00:40:54.220 that's enough

00:40:54.720 to cause

00:40:55.160 collapse of

00:40:55.740 friendship

00:40:56.000 right there

00:40:56.580 because,

00:40:58.440 well,

00:40:59.060 one of the

00:40:59.340 characteristics

00:40:59.820 of friendships

00:41:00.400 is that you

00:41:01.200 know the

00:41:01.760 person and

00:41:02.200 you know

00:41:02.420 what to

00:41:02.720 do.

00:41:03.280 Okay,

00:41:03.480 so then

00:41:03.880 you had

00:41:04.580 some period

00:41:05.120 of time

00:41:05.660 I presume

00:41:06.420 after that

00:41:07.040 where your

00:41:08.000 social status

00:41:08.720 was ambivalent

00:41:10.880 and then

00:41:11.840 it switched

00:41:13.180 in a more

00:41:13.660 positive

00:41:14.040 direction.

00:41:14.840 Yeah.

00:41:15.440 Yeah,

00:41:15.800 well,

00:41:15.980 see,

00:41:16.200 one of the

00:41:16.520 complicating

00:41:17.000 factors,

00:41:17.660 of course,

00:41:18.020 too,

00:41:18.220 is that

00:41:18.620 once you

00:41:19.900 start to

00:41:20.340 take

00:41:20.520 testosterone,

00:41:21.960 think about

00:41:22.480 testosterone,

00:41:23.300 is that it

00:41:23.640 can quell

00:41:24.140 anxiety and

00:41:24.840 depression as

00:41:25.500 a pharmacological

00:41:26.260 agent,

00:41:27.180 right?

00:41:27.440 So that

00:41:27.840 makes

00:41:28.260 differential

00:41:30.560 diagnosis of

00:41:31.740 its effects

00:41:32.240 very complex

00:41:33.060 because you

00:41:33.640 could say,

00:41:34.220 well,

00:41:34.640 the reason

00:41:36.180 that you're

00:41:36.580 not as

00:41:36.900 depressed and

00:41:37.420 anxious as

00:41:38.000 you were is

00:41:38.580 because you

00:41:39.680 finally found

00:41:40.400 your true

00:41:40.800 identity.

00:41:41.500 Right.

00:41:41.700 Or you could

00:41:42.120 just point out

00:41:42.760 that it's a

00:41:43.260 side effect of

00:41:44.040 testosterone.

00:41:44.820 Yeah.

00:41:45.280 Right,

00:41:45.680 and it's very

00:41:46.500 difficult to

00:41:47.160 separate those.

00:41:48.080 Yeah,

00:41:48.360 for example,

00:41:49.000 I was crying

00:41:49.760 all the time

00:41:50.520 before the

00:41:51.080 testosterone and

00:41:51.840 then after I

00:41:52.960 stopped crying

00:41:53.640 and I just

00:41:54.280 wouldn't have

00:41:54.700 these fits of

00:41:55.340 crying and in

00:41:56.340 my mind I

00:41:56.980 was like,

00:41:57.240 oh,

00:41:57.460 that means

00:41:57.820 it's working,

00:41:58.520 I'm getting

00:41:58.860 better.

00:41:59.220 Right,

00:41:59.420 right.

00:41:59.840 Yeah.

00:42:00.680 Right,

00:42:01.120 right.

00:42:02.000 Okay,

00:42:02.440 so the

00:42:02.920 sequence is

00:42:03.680 12 years

00:42:04.280 old,

00:42:05.420 11,

00:42:05.920 when do

00:42:06.220 you start

00:42:06.700 dressing in

00:42:09.560 this ambivalent

00:42:10.320 fashion and

00:42:11.000 your name

00:42:11.520 changes?

00:42:12.280 Is that

00:42:12.540 11?

00:42:13.020 Yeah,

00:42:13.360 or 12.

00:42:14.400 Okay,

00:42:15.020 but it's also

00:42:15.660 a 12 that

00:42:16.220 you're put on

00:42:16.640 puberty

00:42:16.920 blockers.

00:42:17.580 Yeah.

00:42:17.920 Okay,

00:42:18.200 so describe

00:42:19.260 the route to

00:42:20.380 puberty

00:42:20.820 blockers and

00:42:21.900 the duration

00:42:24.020 it took from

00:42:25.120 first contact

00:42:25.980 with the

00:42:26.920 physician to

00:42:27.860 diagnosis and

00:42:31.140 prescription.

00:42:32.140 It was about

00:42:32.980 three months

00:42:33.840 between coming

00:42:35.780 out as trans

00:42:36.680 and then being

00:42:38.280 seen by Dr.

00:42:39.320 Olson and

00:42:39.860 Dr.

00:42:40.300 Olson recommended

00:42:41.080 puberty blockers

00:42:41.980 immediately but it

00:42:43.280 took a few months

00:42:44.460 for her to

00:42:45.180 convince my

00:42:46.080 parents to

00:42:46.740 agree to it.

00:42:47.400 Okay,

00:42:47.900 what do you

00:42:49.040 mean by

00:42:49.380 immediately?

00:42:50.660 She immediately

00:42:51.540 asserted that I

00:42:52.620 was definitely

00:42:53.120 trans and that

00:42:53.880 puberty blockers

00:42:54.780 would be the

00:42:55.240 right path.

00:42:55.720 And immediately

00:42:56.220 is the first

00:42:57.220 session?

00:42:58.860 Yeah,

00:42:59.240 after the first

00:43:00.200 time we had

00:43:00.640 spoken for about

00:43:01.340 30 minutes.

00:43:01.640 And that's 30

00:43:01.880 to 60 minutes?

00:43:02.860 Yes.

00:43:04.320 Okay,

00:43:04.920 now it takes

00:43:05.740 some time to

00:43:06.340 convince your

00:43:06.860 parents.

00:43:08.420 Okay,

00:43:09.000 do you have

00:43:09.380 siblings?

00:43:10.140 I do,

00:43:10.600 I have a

00:43:10.920 brother.

00:43:11.480 Older or

00:43:11.920 younger?

00:43:12.240 Older.

00:43:13.280 Older,

00:43:13.920 okay.

00:43:16.160 I'm just

00:43:16.800 trying to

00:43:17.160 situate you

00:43:17.720 in the

00:43:17.940 family.

00:43:18.440 Okay,

00:43:18.780 so now your

00:43:19.240 parents,

00:43:20.180 why do your

00:43:20.820 parents take

00:43:21.400 you to

00:43:21.660 Olson Kennedy?

00:43:22.500 My parents

00:43:23.300 had definitely

00:43:23.800 noticed that

00:43:24.580 around puberty

00:43:25.380 I got very

00:43:26.180 reserved and

00:43:27.040 shy and was

00:43:27.700 acting sort of

00:43:28.540 different and

00:43:29.460 they definitely

00:43:30.420 noticed the

00:43:31.000 signs of

00:43:31.380 depression.

00:43:31.960 It wasn't

00:43:32.280 really severe but

00:43:33.300 they noticed

00:43:33.860 that it was

00:43:34.280 happening and

00:43:34.980 around that

00:43:35.980 first meeting

00:43:36.660 Olson asserted

00:43:37.920 that I would

00:43:38.340 be at very

00:43:38.860 high risk for

00:43:39.540 suicide.

00:43:40.520 Okay.

00:43:41.060 Yeah,

00:43:41.420 and that

00:43:42.300 immediately got

00:43:42.960 them terrified

00:43:43.800 for what

00:43:44.280 happened to

00:43:44.680 me.

00:43:45.980 Okay,

00:43:46.420 so would

00:43:46.800 you rather

00:43:47.180 have a live

00:43:47.940 trans kid

00:43:48.980 or a dead

00:43:49.780 kid?

00:43:50.220 Those words

00:43:50.720 exactly.

00:43:51.780 Yeah,

00:43:52.160 yeah,

00:43:52.600 okay,

00:43:53.080 so why

00:43:54.320 did they

00:43:54.620 take you

00:43:54.960 to Olson

00:43:55.440 Kennedy

00:43:55.900 though rather

00:43:56.520 than to

00:43:57.640 someone who

00:43:58.160 specialized,

00:43:58.900 let's say,

00:43:59.220 in depression

00:43:59.660 and anxiety?

00:44:00.420 Was that,

00:44:01.320 I'll just let

00:44:01.900 you answer

00:44:02.260 that first.

00:44:02.660 Sure,

00:44:03.000 yeah,

00:44:03.260 I mean,

00:44:03.640 my guidance

00:44:04.340 counselor had

00:44:05.080 been the one

00:44:06.340 to have this

00:44:06.900 phone call with

00:44:07.580 them so I

00:44:08.060 don't actually

00:44:08.520 know.

00:44:08.980 With the

00:44:09.060 parents?

00:44:10.000 I never

00:44:10.380 got to tell

00:44:11.120 my parents.

00:44:11.700 You said

00:44:12.660 at school

00:44:13.260 that you

00:44:14.540 had

00:44:14.680 conversations

00:44:16.780 with the

00:44:17.400 guidance

00:44:17.660 counselor and

00:44:18.520 you'd already

00:44:18.920 been set on

00:44:19.800 this gender

00:44:20.520 transition path.

00:44:21.600 Right.

00:44:22.180 Okay,

00:44:22.420 so now your

00:44:22.880 parents know

00:44:23.380 you're depressed

00:44:23.920 and anxious and

00:44:25.060 that it's

00:44:25.380 manifesting itself

00:44:26.520 in this

00:44:27.040 transition path.

00:44:28.080 then Olson

00:44:28.840 Kennedy becomes

00:44:29.660 a logical

00:44:30.140 person to

00:44:30.820 go see.

00:44:31.580 Right.

00:44:32.060 Okay,

00:44:32.540 so she

00:44:32.940 tells your

00:44:33.460 parents on

00:44:35.140 the initial

00:44:35.640 encounter that

00:44:36.620 puberty

00:44:37.160 blockers,

00:44:37.880 that you're

00:44:38.160 definitely a

00:44:39.440 male and

00:44:40.480 that puberty

00:44:41.320 blockers are

00:44:42.080 the appropriate

00:44:42.860 course of

00:44:43.760 action.

00:44:44.220 Yes.

00:44:44.620 And that

00:44:45.260 that reduces

00:44:46.000 suicide risk.

00:44:46.780 She also

00:44:47.180 asserted that

00:44:47.820 that was

00:44:48.220 basically the

00:44:48.980 only treatment

00:44:49.680 available.

00:44:50.860 Okay,

00:44:51.620 there is no

00:44:52.320 evidence of

00:44:53.440 that suicide

00:44:54.020 risk.

00:44:54.540 That is a

00:44:55.280 lie and it's

00:44:56.220 a pathological

00:44:57.140 and manipulative

00:44:57.980 lie.

00:44:58.700 It's I

00:44:59.580 don't think

00:45:00.160 that I've

00:45:01.500 run across

00:45:03.680 any deeper

00:45:05.260 lie told by

00:45:07.000 psychological

00:45:08.420 counselors and

00:45:09.400 medical

00:45:09.720 professionals than

00:45:10.800 that gender

00:45:12.120 affirming care is

00:45:13.120 the only

00:45:13.500 alternative to

00:45:14.260 suicide, the

00:45:14.920 safest alternative

00:45:15.660 to suicide for

00:45:16.960 kids who have

00:45:17.420 gender dysphoria.

00:45:18.340 I don't think

00:45:18.940 there's a shred

00:45:19.680 of evidence

00:45:20.380 anywhere in the

00:45:21.400 clinical literature,

00:45:22.400 no matter how

00:45:23.140 you look at it,

00:45:24.080 to support that

00:45:25.080 conclusion.

00:45:26.660 Right.

00:45:27.480 So, okay, so

00:45:28.880 now your parents

00:45:29.580 are in a bind.

00:45:30.680 Yeah.

00:45:31.080 Okay, so what's

00:45:31.760 happening with

00:45:32.400 them?

00:45:33.060 You said it

00:45:33.460 takes a few

00:45:33.980 months.

00:45:34.680 Tell me what

00:45:35.220 happens.

00:45:35.840 My parents were

00:45:36.900 very reluctant

00:45:37.940 originally and

00:45:39.300 they were

00:45:39.620 constantly like,

00:45:40.760 are you, like,

00:45:41.600 I don't believe

00:45:42.320 this, you have

00:45:43.140 never expressed

00:45:43.940 this before.

00:45:45.600 And Olson would

00:45:46.360 have conversations

00:45:47.360 with me where,

00:45:48.340 or conversations

00:45:48.880 with them where

00:45:49.460 I wasn't there,

00:45:50.400 or conversations

00:45:51.200 with me separately

00:45:52.000 and then she'd

00:45:52.640 talk to my

00:45:53.140 parents.

00:45:54.000 I don't know

00:45:54.420 exactly what was

00:45:55.200 said, but I

00:45:55.700 know it was

00:45:56.020 just asserting

00:45:56.620 the same

00:45:57.100 rhetoric that I

00:45:57.920 was at very

00:45:58.440 high risk for

00:45:59.040 suicide, that my

00:45:59.820 depression was

00:46:00.420 going to get

00:46:00.760 worse if they

00:46:01.880 didn't act on

00:46:02.540 this now.

00:46:03.200 And it was also,

00:46:04.760 there was a lot

00:46:05.320 of social pressure

00:46:06.420 put on me because

00:46:07.580 Olson kept bringing

00:46:08.600 up, keeping up

00:46:10.060 with male peers and

00:46:11.260 keeping up with

00:46:12.060 people in my

00:46:12.640 class.

00:46:13.140 Time is of the

00:46:13.860 essence.

00:46:14.300 Right, as if there

00:46:15.160 was some need to

00:46:16.340 act as quick as

00:46:17.140 possible.

00:46:17.640 How many times do

00:46:20.060 you suppose you

00:46:20.820 and your family

00:46:21.500 were instructed

00:46:23.000 by Olson

00:46:24.100 Kennedy, let's

00:46:24.960 say, that

00:46:26.060 there was an

00:46:29.680 ever-present

00:46:30.200 risk of

00:46:30.760 suicide, that

00:46:31.680 that was real

00:46:33.440 and immediate,

00:46:34.600 and that this

00:46:35.240 was the

00:46:35.620 appropriate

00:46:35.980 treatment?

00:46:36.520 How many

00:46:36.780 times do you

00:46:37.300 suppose that

00:46:37.840 was discussed?

00:46:38.800 That was

00:46:38.920 something that

00:46:39.480 was probably

00:46:40.000 expressed to

00:46:40.780 my parents every

00:46:41.760 time my parents

00:46:42.700 spoke to her.

00:46:43.380 Got any

00:46:43.780 estimate of a

00:46:44.600 numeric?

00:46:45.100 Probably a

00:46:46.120 dozen.

00:46:47.860 Okay, and

00:46:48.860 you said as

00:46:49.480 well that that

00:46:50.540 was the only

00:46:51.920 treatment pathway.

00:46:53.420 That was the

00:46:54.380 only treatment

00:46:54.860 pathway, it was

00:46:55.540 what she would

00:46:56.020 assert.

00:46:57.180 So, you

00:46:57.740 could imagine

00:46:58.200 two models of

00:46:59.100 unhappiness,

00:47:00.180 right, that

00:47:00.740 would be relevant

00:47:01.320 in your case.

00:47:02.460 One model would

00:47:03.160 be your gender

00:47:05.960 dysphoric because

00:47:06.840 your identity is

00:47:08.140 reversed, inverted,

00:47:09.800 and the depression

00:47:10.780 and anxiety are a

00:47:11.760 consequence of that.

00:47:12.700 Yeah.

00:47:13.160 Okay, there's a

00:47:14.040 problem with that

00:47:14.680 assumption.

00:47:16.000 The problem is

00:47:17.160 that there's

00:47:18.180 almost no, let's

00:47:20.400 say, psychiatric

00:47:21.260 condition that

00:47:23.120 isn't primarily

00:47:24.640 depression and

00:47:25.420 anxiety, right?

00:47:26.560 Because, well,

00:47:27.980 people don't go to

00:47:29.040 consult with a

00:47:29.920 physician or a

00:47:30.740 psychiatrist or a

00:47:31.600 psychologist unless

00:47:32.680 they're miserable and

00:47:33.760 afraid and unhappy

00:47:34.760 because why would

00:47:35.880 they?

00:47:36.680 Narcissists, for

00:47:37.400 example, very rarely

00:47:38.460 go to see

00:47:39.060 psychologists because

00:47:40.220 they're not

00:47:40.560 particularly distressed

00:47:41.620 by their condition.

00:47:42.780 Same with

00:47:43.320 criminals, okay?

00:47:44.520 So, the

00:47:45.860 logical inference

00:47:47.960 pathway is that

00:47:49.040 the primary

00:47:49.800 disorder is

00:47:51.600 depression and

00:47:52.240 anxiety and

00:47:53.500 then there may

00:47:54.520 be secondary

00:47:55.240 manifestations but

00:47:56.660 you have to be

00:47:58.060 damn sure that

00:47:58.880 the secondary

00:47:59.460 manifestations are

00:48:00.620 real before you

00:48:01.920 make them, before

00:48:03.960 you make the

00:48:04.520 depression and

00:48:05.080 anxiety secondary

00:48:05.900 to that.

00:48:06.400 So, one

00:48:07.300 alternative treatment

00:48:08.780 in principle would

00:48:10.220 have been treatment

00:48:10.900 for depression and

00:48:11.840 anxiety directly and

00:48:14.560 then to see if the

00:48:15.440 gender dysphoria

00:48:16.200 resolves, let's say,

00:48:17.960 on its own.

00:48:18.600 I'm not saying that

00:48:19.520 would have been the

00:48:21.360 only alternative but

00:48:22.620 it is the appropriate

00:48:24.060 default alternative,

00:48:25.960 especially when the

00:48:26.900 alternatives are

00:48:28.060 puberty blockers,

00:48:30.060 which aren't trivial,

00:48:31.760 hormonal transformation,

00:48:32.840 which is a major

00:48:34.220 medical and

00:48:35.420 psychological

00:48:35.860 intervention, to

00:48:37.120 say nothing of

00:48:38.140 surgery, right?

00:48:39.400 Because the other

00:48:39.960 default position

00:48:42.400 that psychiatrists,

00:48:44.660 et cetera,

00:48:45.280 physicians, surgeons

00:48:46.180 should adopt is

00:48:47.260 don't do anything

00:48:49.740 harmful and

00:48:50.720 permanent.

00:48:51.620 Yeah.

00:48:52.080 Right, okay.

00:48:53.220 Okay, so now your

00:48:54.160 parents are told that

00:48:55.380 you're definitely a

00:48:57.360 boy, despite the

00:49:00.000 fact that you've

00:49:00.920 been feminine

00:49:02.640 your whole life

00:49:04.400 and that if they

00:49:06.520 don't do something,

00:49:08.320 all hell might

00:49:10.460 break loose.

00:49:11.220 Yeah.

00:49:11.360 And you're told

00:49:12.240 you better get at

00:49:13.800 it.

00:49:14.160 Yeah.

00:49:14.600 And that there's no

00:49:15.360 alternative treatment.

00:49:16.780 Yeah.

00:49:17.180 You're certain of

00:49:17.920 this, eh?

00:49:18.580 That this is how it

00:49:19.760 played out.

00:49:20.560 Yeah.

00:49:21.660 Okay.

00:49:23.040 Okay.

00:49:23.720 Now I'll leave it at

00:49:24.560 that.

00:49:25.080 Okay, so now your

00:49:26.020 parents, how do

00:49:28.780 they come to a

00:49:29.380 decision and what

00:49:30.140 happens in your

00:49:30.780 household, well,

00:49:31.460 that's occurring.

00:49:32.940 There, you

00:49:33.820 implied that there

00:49:35.480 was a fair bit of

00:49:36.120 back and forth

00:49:36.700 between you and

00:49:37.340 your parents.

00:49:38.120 Yeah.

00:49:38.560 I mean, we didn't

00:49:39.320 really fight too

00:49:40.340 much.

00:49:40.740 It was just, they

00:49:42.240 were very distressed

00:49:43.600 about it and they

00:49:44.920 didn't, they didn't

00:49:46.820 want to agree, but

00:49:47.920 they also felt kind

00:49:49.080 of backed into a

00:49:50.100 corner and they

00:49:50.780 sort of felt a bit.

00:49:51.980 The purpose of

00:49:52.720 that threat is to

00:49:54.220 back them into a

00:49:55.160 corner.

00:49:55.500 Exactly.

00:49:55.980 That is the

00:49:56.600 purpose of that

00:49:57.340 threat.

00:49:57.920 Right.

00:49:58.180 Because there's

00:49:58.640 no clinical

00:49:59.180 evidence for its

00:50:00.060 validity, right?

00:50:01.940 First of all, even

00:50:03.600 the medical

00:50:05.740 organizations that

00:50:07.040 What does the

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00:51:04.900 slash jbp.

00:51:05.920 Again, that's

00:51:06.460 netsuite.com slash jbp.

00:51:11.860 Purport to address the

00:51:13.960 long-term viability of

00:51:16.500 gender-affirming

00:51:17.980 treatment.

00:51:18.780 State that partly because

00:51:21.880 of prejudice against

00:51:23.000 gender dysphoric people.

00:51:24.120 There are no long-term

00:51:26.100 studies.

00:51:27.180 Well, you can't have it

00:51:28.780 both ways.

00:51:29.540 There's either no long-term

00:51:30.840 studies or you don't know

00:51:32.540 what the suicide risk is.

00:51:34.080 Plus, there's an

00:51:34.820 additional issue.

00:51:36.360 People who are depressed

00:51:37.500 and anxious are at higher

00:51:38.500 risk for suicide.

00:51:39.580 That doesn't mean that

00:51:40.520 they're at higher risk for

00:51:41.900 suicide because they're

00:51:42.800 gender dysphoric.

00:51:44.360 Those are very separate

00:51:45.480 issues.

00:51:46.140 Yeah.

00:51:46.620 Right.

00:51:47.040 So, okay.

00:51:48.480 So now your parents,

00:51:50.460 they've been delivered a

00:51:51.920 warning by a medic.

00:51:53.580 What's the therapist

00:51:54.820 doing at this time?

00:51:56.200 She's sort of just

00:51:57.500 reaffirming all my

00:51:58.540 beliefs and every problem

00:51:59.680 I had was attributed to

00:52:01.260 the fact that I was

00:52:02.440 somehow inherently born in

00:52:04.660 the wrong body and that I

00:52:05.860 was intrinsically male and I

00:52:07.680 should have been born in a

00:52:08.640 different body and that's

00:52:09.640 why I feel so anxious and

00:52:11.460 that's why I hate school and

00:52:12.540 that's why I can't focus and

00:52:13.800 all my problems were

00:52:15.880 attributed to my gender

00:52:16.920 dysphoria.

00:52:17.860 Mm-hmm.

00:52:18.520 Yeah.

00:52:19.400 Okay.

00:52:19.840 So that's convenient for

00:52:21.140 you in the short term.

00:52:22.640 Right.

00:52:22.920 In my mind, I'm thinking,

00:52:24.260 oh, great.

00:52:24.920 This is treatable.

00:52:25.820 I found the problem.

00:52:26.800 I found what's wrong with

00:52:27.740 me.

00:52:29.180 Did you, okay.

00:52:30.120 This is a hard question.

00:52:31.220 Sure.

00:52:31.500 Not that the other ones

00:52:32.420 haven't been.

00:52:34.500 When you were thinking your

00:52:35.880 private thoughts at this

00:52:37.180 point, when you were

00:52:37.880 listening to the therapists

00:52:38.880 and the physicians, what

00:52:40.580 did you believe?

00:52:41.940 What did you doubt?

00:52:43.660 I don't think I actually

00:52:45.340 doubted much.

00:52:46.660 I mean, I, in my mind,

00:52:48.660 truly believed that this

00:52:51.100 might be the answer.

00:52:53.200 Hoped or believed?

00:52:54.980 I think I hoped and I was

00:52:56.880 waiting to see if it would

00:52:58.540 resolve and it didn't

00:53:00.100 eventually.

00:53:00.820 But I was also kind of

00:53:02.080 naively trusting them and

00:53:04.760 assuming that this was

00:53:05.940 right, especially because

00:53:07.500 people around me.

00:53:08.600 Yeah, it's hard to tell how

00:53:09.260 much of that's naive.

00:53:10.200 Yeah.

00:53:10.580 You know, the thing about

00:53:11.540 being an adolescent is that

00:53:13.780 you know how people are,

00:53:16.320 they're always on the

00:53:17.680 cases of, on a teenager's

00:53:19.740 case to not be so

00:53:20.900 susceptible to peer

00:53:21.880 pressure.

00:53:22.940 It's actually, being

00:53:24.820 susceptible to peer

00:53:25.940 pressure is developmentally

00:53:28.200 appropriate for a

00:53:29.080 teenager.

00:53:29.960 So imagine when you're a

00:53:31.740 child, you're susceptible

00:53:32.860 to the influence of your

00:53:35.080 parents.

00:53:36.400 Okay.

00:53:36.700 Well, when you're a

00:53:37.340 teenager, you're not ready

00:53:38.260 to be on your own.

00:53:40.560 Who should you be

00:53:41.600 susceptible to?

00:53:42.500 Well, obviously, your

00:53:44.520 peers.

00:53:45.380 Why?

00:53:46.000 Well, they're going to be

00:53:46.640 your community.

00:53:47.820 So if you're a normal

00:53:49.000 teenager, what your peers

00:53:51.660 think matters.

00:53:53.180 Okay, so now you're

00:53:54.600 already in a milieu at

00:53:55.700 school where you've got

00:53:57.160 your pronouns, you've got

00:53:58.600 your male identity, plus

00:54:01.100 there are figures of

00:54:02.220 authority who are driving

00:54:04.200 that home.

00:54:05.840 I don't think that it's,

00:54:07.800 I don't think that the

00:54:08.960 fact that you were

00:54:09.760 susceptible to that is

00:54:11.120 indicative of what I

00:54:12.400 would describe as

00:54:13.100 naivety.

00:54:14.240 It's what you'd expect.

00:54:16.040 The other thing that's

00:54:16.860 useful to know is that

00:54:18.180 imagine that two things

00:54:19.960 determine how you

00:54:21.200 respond in a situation.

00:54:22.600 One might be your

00:54:23.340 personality, your

00:54:24.140 temperament, even your

00:54:25.300 knowledge.

00:54:26.000 The other might be the

00:54:27.460 demands, the social

00:54:29.700 demands of the

00:54:30.440 situation.

00:54:31.220 Yeah.

00:54:31.820 Okay, then you might

00:54:32.460 ask for the typical

00:54:33.340 person, which is the

00:54:35.160 greater influence?

00:54:35.980 And the answer is

00:54:36.980 clearly the social

00:54:38.340 influence.

00:54:39.140 Yeah.

00:54:39.300 That's what it means to

00:54:40.200 be social.

00:54:41.080 So here's an example.

00:54:42.960 People decide when

00:54:45.760 they're not hungry by

00:54:47.580 noticing when they've

00:54:48.600 eaten the same amount of

00:54:49.660 food on the same size

00:54:50.920 plates as everyone else

00:54:52.040 at the table.

00:54:52.860 So even something as

00:54:54.200 biological as hunger and

00:54:56.640 its satiety is actually

00:54:58.680 mediated by social

00:55:00.580 observation.

00:55:01.440 Well, why?

00:55:02.300 Well, you don't want to be

00:55:03.760 the person who habitually

00:55:05.000 eats all the food, right?

00:55:06.660 You're not going to make

00:55:07.260 yourself popular, especially

00:55:08.400 when food is scarce.

00:55:09.880 People are very sensitive

00:55:11.060 to social pressure,

00:55:12.940 pressure, norms.

00:55:14.880 That's appropriate.

00:55:16.220 Yeah.

00:55:16.460 Okay, so now your

00:55:17.620 situation is you're

00:55:19.400 confused.

00:55:20.380 Well, puberty does that,

00:55:21.640 but you had additional

00:55:22.460 reason.

00:55:23.100 And now you've been

00:55:24.260 delivered an identity.

00:55:27.220 And it's in your

00:55:28.800 interest in a variety of

00:55:30.620 ways to accept that

00:55:31.680 because it actually solves

00:55:32.920 a complex problem in

00:55:34.320 principle, which is what

00:55:35.740 the hell you're supposed

00:55:36.560 to do with your fear.

00:55:39.380 And then people are

00:55:41.320 promising that it's going

00:55:42.260 to work.

00:55:42.900 Then you also have the

00:55:43.960 situation where, at least

00:55:46.860 in potential, the

00:55:47.760 testosterone is making

00:55:48.800 you more confident.

00:55:49.820 Yeah.

00:55:50.080 Yeah, so I don't think

00:55:50.920 you should have

00:55:51.460 necessarily expected

00:55:52.580 yourself to sort that

00:55:53.680 out.

00:55:54.380 I am curious, though, and

00:55:55.900 it's worth thinking

00:55:56.800 through.

00:55:57.900 Like, you told me

00:56:00.140 already that you had a

00:56:00.960 conflict.

00:56:01.660 You knew there was

00:56:02.360 something in the past,

00:56:03.340 or did you?

00:56:03.840 How much did you know

00:56:04.740 that this thing in the

00:56:05.820 past hadn't been

00:56:06.820 addressed?

00:56:07.820 I knew that it had

00:56:09.280 happened, and I was

00:56:10.240 very aware of what

00:56:11.120 happened, but I didn't

00:56:12.720 think it was also

00:56:13.440 something that needed

00:56:14.340 to be addressed until

00:56:15.620 probably around 16.

00:56:17.460 And you said you

00:56:18.320 figured that out because

00:56:19.240 these other things

00:56:20.000 didn't work?

00:56:21.040 Because I was still, I

00:56:22.380 had gone through the

00:56:23.060 surgery, I had been on

00:56:24.080 testosterone, I was

00:56:25.120 fitting in much better

00:56:26.600 as a teenage boy than

00:56:28.100 I had been as a

00:56:28.940 teenage girl, and

00:56:29.940 everything was worse.

00:56:31.860 I was so much worse

00:56:33.120 off, and I was so

00:56:33.980 much more suicidal.

00:56:36.880 Okay, and so that's,

00:56:38.140 okay, so how did you

00:56:39.060 come to the realization

00:56:39.880 that it might have had

00:56:40.840 something to do with

00:56:41.620 the abuse?

00:56:43.140 I didn't.

00:56:44.440 I think I sort of just

00:56:46.160 knew once I was looking

00:56:47.340 at my life and looking

00:56:48.360 at the way that I was

00:56:49.180 acting and I couldn't

00:56:50.440 function properly, to

00:56:52.700 put it bluntly, I

00:56:53.800 figured there was

00:56:55.420 something still going on

00:56:56.340 that I had.

00:56:56.620 Yeah, well, the thing

00:56:57.540 is, too, you know,

00:56:58.220 you're also getting

00:56:58.960 older during all this

00:57:00.440 period of time, and

00:57:01.220 that means that, you

00:57:02.600 know, as you age and

00:57:06.560 mature and gather more

00:57:08.060 wisdom and are less

00:57:09.820 naive, even, let's say,

00:57:11.640 you take a different

00:57:13.120 view of things that

00:57:13.980 happened to you in your

00:57:14.780 past.

00:57:15.300 Right.

00:57:15.880 Right, so you can

00:57:16.620 realize the significance,

00:57:17.720 like, you know, what the

00:57:19.400 hell is a six-year-old

00:57:20.300 going to do about

00:57:21.120 understanding sexual

00:57:22.380 abuse?

00:57:23.020 Yeah.

00:57:23.160 No, that's not going

00:57:25.220 to happen, so then at

00:57:26.220 what point do you start

00:57:27.260 even seeing that it was

00:57:28.280 abuse?

00:57:28.860 Yeah.

00:57:29.160 And then at what point

00:57:29.860 do you start, well,

00:57:31.000 delving into its effects?

00:57:32.520 Maybe you could make a

00:57:34.280 case that, you know, you

00:57:35.340 weren't ready or able to

00:57:36.520 do that until you were

00:57:37.560 17, especially given

00:57:39.280 that you had an

00:57:42.340 alternate hypothesis and

00:57:44.500 strategy at hand.

00:57:46.240 Okay, so things are

00:57:47.860 getting worse, and they

00:57:49.700 got better, yes?

00:57:51.180 Yes.

00:57:51.520 And then they got

00:57:52.180 worse?

00:57:52.700 Uh-huh.

00:57:53.160 Okay, now, 12 years

00:57:56.240 old, you're on puberty

00:57:57.140 blockers, and what were

00:58:00.240 the consequences of the

00:58:01.020 puberty blockers?

00:58:01.900 The puberty blockers

00:58:02.900 made me kind of

00:58:04.000 lightheaded all the

00:58:04.860 time, so it also sort

00:58:06.200 of put a little more

00:58:07.440 pressure on me to start

00:58:08.460 testosterone because I

00:58:10.300 was sort of feeling the

00:58:11.020 effects of having no

00:58:12.160 estrogen or testosterone

00:58:14.520 in my system, and I

00:58:16.520 was getting hot flashes

00:58:17.380 and just feeling kind of

00:58:18.320 lightheaded, but

00:58:19.300 otherwise it just

00:58:20.480 stopped any breast

00:58:21.520 development, which was

00:58:22.540 causing me distress at the

00:58:25.080 time, but it also sort of

00:58:26.480 deformed the breast

00:58:27.600 development that I did

00:58:28.560 have, so in a way it

00:58:30.260 sort of relieved my

00:58:31.400 discomfort with my

00:58:32.640 breast, but it also made

00:58:33.700 it a lot worse because

00:58:34.820 then the tissue was

00:58:35.680 somewhat deformed.

00:58:37.500 You know, one of the

00:58:38.420 questions looking at your

00:58:39.580 history is, like, when did

00:58:41.220 you pass threshold?

00:58:42.440 I know that it's relatively

00:58:44.940 common for people who

00:58:46.080 start taking puberty

00:58:47.020 blockers to proceed to the

00:58:48.460 surgical route.

00:58:50.040 Yeah.

00:58:50.720 And that begs the

00:58:53.040 question of, like, when do

00:58:54.300 you make the fatal

00:58:56.180 decision, so to speak, the

00:58:57.720 big decision?

00:58:59.040 And you might say, well,

00:58:59.880 that's just before surgery.

00:59:01.420 You might say it's just

00:59:02.200 before testosterone.

00:59:03.240 You might say it's just

00:59:04.100 before puberty blockers.

00:59:05.780 So as far as you're

00:59:06.840 concerned, if you had to

00:59:09.380 decide, when did you make

00:59:11.560 the determining decision?

00:59:13.300 At what point?

00:59:14.760 The decision to have

00:59:15.540 surgery?

00:59:16.340 Yeah, the decision to,

00:59:17.620 yeah, well, the decision

00:59:18.820 to see this all the way

00:59:19.980 through, let's say.

00:59:21.100 I think it was around

00:59:22.520 when I started testosterone

00:59:23.880 and I started, you know,

00:59:25.600 noticing my voice dropping

00:59:26.740 and noticing that people

00:59:27.900 were starting to just

00:59:29.620 respect me a little bit

00:59:30.640 more now that I looked

00:59:31.580 more physiologically male.

00:59:33.860 Once that happened and I

00:59:35.380 was sort of fitting in

00:59:37.280 socially as male, but then

00:59:38.580 I was looking at my

00:59:39.340 body and just seeing

00:59:40.220 the disconnect.

00:59:41.600 And then because of

00:59:42.340 the puberty blockers,

00:59:43.520 the deformities of my

00:59:45.560 breast tissue was causing

00:59:48.300 me so much discomfort.

00:59:49.680 So it was really that.

00:59:50.580 Right.

00:59:51.060 Sort of immediately after

00:59:52.200 I started testosterone at

00:59:53.300 13.

00:59:53.380 So you're trapped between

00:59:54.520 fish and fowl at that

00:59:55.840 point.

00:59:56.880 Okay, okay.

00:59:58.340 And so tell me what,

01:00:01.340 how you were evaluated

01:00:02.280 before the surgery.

01:00:03.700 You're 14.

01:00:05.040 There's two things I want

01:00:06.000 to know.

01:00:06.300 How you were evaluated

01:00:07.320 before the surgery.

01:00:08.380 And then what you think

01:00:10.940 of now about the fact

01:00:12.540 that you were giving

01:00:13.760 consent for that

01:00:14.680 surgery, well, or for

01:00:16.420 the puberty blockers,

01:00:17.620 puberty blockers at 12,

01:00:19.000 testosterone at 13,

01:00:20.760 and then a double

01:00:21.580 mastectomy at 14.

01:00:23.020 Right.

01:00:23.520 So no medical procedures

01:00:25.960 are supposed to be

01:00:26.980 administered without

01:00:27.860 informed consent.

01:00:30.320 And informed means you

01:00:31.540 got all the information.

01:00:32.760 And consent means you

01:00:34.120 understand what the hell

01:00:35.920 you're doing.

01:00:37.160 Okay, so evaluation

01:00:39.440 before the double

01:00:40.400 mastectomy, what kind of

01:00:41.620 evaluation did you get

01:00:42.800 from the surgeons?

01:00:43.880 Well, the two people who

01:00:44.900 wrote my referral letters

01:00:46.300 were Olson and Landon.

01:00:47.960 So I hardly had any extra

01:00:50.140 psychological evaluation

01:00:51.480 because they just wrote the

01:00:53.620 letters because they'd

01:00:54.220 already been seeing me and

01:00:55.220 they didn't really ask me

01:00:56.200 much additional questions.

01:00:58.240 And then when I went in for

01:00:59.840 surgery, I had already had

01:01:01.400 everything scheduled.

01:01:02.240 I was already cleared for

01:01:03.420 surgery.

01:01:03.960 So I traveled to San

01:01:05.540 Francisco just because it was

01:01:06.740 recommendation of Olson, the

01:01:08.240 specific doctor.

01:01:10.200 And by the time I was there...

01:01:11.520 Why the specific doctor?

01:01:12.660 Because he doesn't have age

01:01:14.620 limits or BMI requirements and...

01:01:17.160 No age limits.

01:01:17.960 Yeah.

01:01:19.440 And that's part of...

01:01:21.940 Olson Kennedy, in principle,

01:01:23.660 from what I understand,

01:01:25.180 opposes...

01:01:26.240 What does she call it?

01:01:27.680 It's not blockade exactly.

01:01:29.280 Gatekeeping.

01:01:30.160 Gatekeeping.

01:01:30.680 Yeah, that's the word they use.

01:01:32.060 Right.

01:01:32.560 And those who oppose

01:01:34.440 gatekeeping assume that more

01:01:36.200 harm is done the longer the

01:01:37.960 delay.

01:01:38.640 Yes.

01:01:39.720 Right.

01:01:40.220 Right.

01:01:40.760 Which I wish I had been

01:01:41.920 delayed because at 14, I was

01:01:43.880 really, really impulsive and

01:01:45.300 not thinking things through.

01:01:47.580 And...

01:01:47.740 You know what that's called?

01:01:48.960 Being 14.

01:01:49.820 Yeah, that's exactly what

01:01:51.060 that's called.

01:01:51.720 Yes.

01:01:52.480 Yeah.

01:01:52.980 So, I mean, by the time I had...

01:01:55.380 Was being evaluated for

01:01:56.540 surgery, it was already...

01:01:57.640 The next day, it was already

01:01:58.840 scheduled.

01:01:59.500 They were drawing markings on

01:02:00.560 me.

01:02:01.540 And they just sort of briefly

01:02:03.100 went over what the procedure

01:02:04.340 was.

01:02:04.780 It was just called top surgery,

01:02:07.200 not the mastectomy.

01:02:09.140 I didn't know even what brush

01:02:10.820 tissue looked like.

01:02:12.880 I think it's important to

01:02:14.840 realize how desensitizing they

01:02:16.900 make everything.

01:02:17.760 I don't think I realized the

01:02:19.800 actual damage I did to my body

01:02:21.620 until much, much later on.

01:02:24.000 I mean, calling it top surgery

01:02:25.240 doesn't even really acknowledge

01:02:26.520 that there are specific glands

01:02:27.980 there that are organs.

01:02:29.320 Yeah, it's as vague a term as

01:02:30.140 you could possibly invent.

01:02:31.580 As vague and harmless a term.

01:02:33.600 Yeah, right.

01:02:34.280 And that's purposeful and

01:02:35.980 motivated, like bottom surgery.

01:02:37.520 Right.

01:02:37.800 Which is, although it's difficult

01:02:41.000 for things to be worse, that's

01:02:42.700 worse.

01:02:43.400 Yeah.

01:02:43.780 So, okay, now you said, okay,

01:02:47.180 top surgery.

01:02:48.380 Now you're marked up and you're

01:02:49.820 ready to go.

01:02:50.880 You already have some ambivalence

01:02:52.560 about the way that you appear.

01:02:54.960 Yeah.

01:02:55.320 Yeah, yeah.

01:02:55.820 Okay.

01:02:56.500 And now the surgeons have decided

01:02:58.340 that you've already been cleared

01:02:59.580 by the people who need to clear you

01:03:01.820 for surgical appropriateness.

01:03:04.180 Okay, I guess one of the things

01:03:06.980 you're going to discover legally

01:03:08.400 is how much additional

01:03:10.280 responsibility surgeons have

01:03:12.520 to ensure that the people

01:03:14.280 that they're relying on

01:03:15.600 to clear people for top surgery

01:03:18.300 have done their jobs properly.

01:03:21.360 What's interesting about my case too

01:03:23.200 is even in my referral notes,

01:03:25.360 which the surgeon saw,

01:03:26.800 there's conflicting information.

01:03:28.440 One of them says I had held

01:03:30.140 a male identity since puberty

01:03:31.940 and the other one said

01:03:32.940 I'd had a strong male identity

01:03:34.360 since early childhood.

01:03:36.200 So immediately, like,

01:03:37.420 you can tell it's sort of rubber-stamped

01:03:39.640 and they didn't really look through it

01:03:41.700 because if they looked through it,

01:03:42.700 they'd see that glaring contradiction.

01:03:45.800 And you have those records?

01:03:47.380 Yes.

01:03:48.340 Okay.

01:03:49.180 So now you wake up after surgery.

01:03:54.860 Yeah.

01:03:55.400 What's that like?

01:03:56.880 I felt like I'd been hit by a car.

01:03:58.800 Like, I didn't even,

01:04:00.080 going into surgery,

01:04:00.920 I was not nervous.

01:04:01.740 I was totally calm.

01:04:04.160 I had zero feelings

01:04:05.300 about what was even going to happen.

01:04:07.740 And I wasn't even shaking.

01:04:09.960 What do you mean by that?

01:04:10.160 What do you mean zero feelings?

01:04:11.480 I was so numb at that point.

01:04:13.540 And I think I just didn't really,

01:04:15.500 I was so dissociated as well.

01:04:17.140 What do you mean dissociated?

01:04:18.720 I wasn't living in my body.

01:04:20.780 I wasn't thinking of myself

01:04:22.060 as part of my body.

01:04:23.440 I was totally disconnected

01:04:25.300 from my physical being

01:04:27.000 and I think my identity.

01:04:28.860 Do you know what derealization is?

01:04:30.480 Yes.

01:04:31.660 Yeah.

01:04:31.980 How come?

01:04:32.680 How come you know that?

01:04:33.240 I've heard about it

01:04:33.980 from a psychologist I've spoken to.

01:04:36.620 Okay.

01:04:37.140 So that's your state of mind

01:04:39.380 going into surgery?

01:04:40.380 Essentially.

01:04:40.980 Yeah.

01:04:41.680 And it was pretty glaringly obvious

01:04:43.140 in my opinion.

01:04:44.140 I was smiling and bubbly.

01:04:46.340 I had no nerves.

01:04:47.460 I had no questions,

01:04:48.700 nothing to ask.

01:04:49.740 And when I woke up,

01:04:51.080 obviously all of that was gone.

01:04:52.580 I was just in tremendous pain

01:04:54.120 and very out of it physically.

01:04:57.340 Okay.

01:04:57.640 What's been the consequence

01:04:58.760 of the surgery?

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01:06:17.240 Didn't have breasts

01:06:18.460 and I have a lot of

01:06:20.300 chest pain

01:06:21.300 related to hormonal cycles

01:06:22.880 from the tissue

01:06:23.660 that was left over,

01:06:25.280 which is pretty painful

01:06:27.040 to this day

01:06:27.820 and wasn't something

01:06:29.020 I even realized

01:06:29.900 until I fully stopped testosterone

01:06:31.500 because once I stopped testosterone

01:06:33.520 and my hormonal cycle

01:06:35.940 was able to somewhat regulate,

01:06:37.760 then I started having

01:06:38.740 really intense

01:06:39.880 chest pain

01:06:41.180 related to my hormonal cycles.

01:06:43.380 When you stopped testosterone,

01:06:45.300 did you re-undergo

01:06:47.840 female puberty?

01:06:49.080 What happened?

01:06:49.800 I wasn't sure

01:06:51.940 what would have happened

01:06:53.020 if I stopped

01:06:54.100 so I had talked about it

01:06:55.180 with doctors

01:06:55.620 and they were like,

01:06:56.120 we don't know.

01:06:57.000 But I sort of progressed

01:06:58.720 a little bit

01:06:59.360 through female puberty

01:07:00.300 but mostly no changes,

01:07:02.320 just sort of

01:07:03.180 slight redistribution

01:07:04.960 of fat

01:07:05.440 and things like that.

01:07:06.640 Do you know

01:07:07.180 what your reproductive status is?

01:07:09.100 I don't know.

01:07:11.100 Were you,

01:07:12.060 how was the issue

01:07:13.560 of your reproductive status

01:07:14.880 dealt with

01:07:15.440 by your physician,

01:07:17.020 your counselor

01:07:17.620 and your surgeon?

01:07:20.200 It was always brushed over

01:07:21.820 by people.

01:07:22.880 It was always something like,

01:07:24.440 oh, well,

01:07:24.840 how could you worry about that

01:07:26.400 when this child is suicidal?

01:07:28.340 It's what they would sort of,

01:07:29.700 how they would deal with it

01:07:30.360 with my parents

01:07:31.000 who would always bring up,

01:07:31.880 well, what about future fertility?

01:07:33.240 They'd be like,

01:07:33.740 well, that's not important

01:07:34.700 when we're dealing

01:07:35.240 with something so great.

01:07:36.580 So the crisis justifies.

01:07:38.400 Yeah.

01:07:39.000 Okay.

01:07:39.920 Okay.

01:07:40.580 And what about sexual function?

01:07:42.400 How was that dealt

01:07:44.140 with and discussed?

01:07:44.960 That was also something

01:07:46.120 that wasn't really brought up

01:07:47.340 as a concern

01:07:48.120 and then later on

01:07:49.500 I had to go on

01:07:50.220 topical estrogen as well

01:07:51.860 and that was also something

01:07:53.280 that wasn't really brought up

01:07:54.840 as a potential thing

01:07:56.040 that I would need to do

01:07:56.760 in the future.

01:07:57.740 Why did you have to go

01:07:58.900 on topical estrogen?

01:08:00.040 Because of vaginal atrophy.

01:08:02.540 How much did you understand

01:08:04.120 when you were 14,

01:08:05.180 do you think?

01:08:06.440 And let's try to give

01:08:07.560 the devil his due, right?

01:08:09.580 Yeah.

01:08:09.660 Because you'll have to do that

01:08:11.040 in court, for example.

01:08:12.540 Like, how much of that,

01:08:13.880 how much do you think

01:08:14.960 you understood

01:08:15.560 of what you were doing

01:08:16.960 in terms of its permanence

01:08:19.380 and significance?

01:08:20.720 At the time,

01:08:21.620 I truly believed

01:08:22.680 that I would become male

01:08:25.580 and that this would somehow

01:08:26.920 fix all my problems,

01:08:28.260 which is so not accurate

01:08:31.500 to what was actually happening.

01:08:32.980 So I say I understood

01:08:34.640 basically nothing

01:08:35.880 of what was actually going on

01:08:37.400 and what was actually

01:08:38.240 chemically happening

01:08:39.120 to my body.

01:08:39.780 I didn't really understand

01:08:41.780 hormonal cycles

01:08:42.720 and how much that plays

01:08:43.760 into emotions.

01:08:45.000 Did you have any...

01:08:47.100 How did you reconcile the...

01:08:49.320 I mean, you had your...

01:08:50.900 You had top surgery,

01:08:52.100 but you didn't have

01:08:52.840 bottom surgery.

01:08:53.700 So how did you reconcile

01:08:56.620 that obvious difference

01:08:58.820 between you and the man

01:09:00.180 you were supposed to become?

01:09:01.620 Yeah.

01:09:01.880 And how was that dealt with

01:09:03.040 by your physician,

01:09:04.580 your therapist,

01:09:05.120 and your surgeon?

01:09:06.280 It was something

01:09:06.860 that was always sort of like,

01:09:08.620 well, you can fix that.

01:09:09.780 Like, I was thinking

01:09:10.820 about bottom surgery

01:09:11.720 when I was a teenager.

01:09:13.660 It was brought up to me

01:09:14.920 by therapists

01:09:15.560 and I had been thinking

01:09:16.540 about it and researching it.

01:09:18.780 And, you know,

01:09:19.460 by the time I was 16, 17

01:09:20.860 and I was breaking down

01:09:22.420 in ways that were

01:09:23.200 unrelated to my gender,

01:09:24.840 I started getting help

01:09:25.960 and my gender dysphoria

01:09:27.360 was just gone after that.

01:09:28.920 I just felt no desire

01:09:31.320 to keep doing it

01:09:32.360 or no reason to continue

01:09:33.900 presenting as male

01:09:34.760 after I had sort of

01:09:35.980 gone through therapy

01:09:37.140 about the sexual abuse,

01:09:38.380 but prior to that.

01:09:39.440 So that helped.

01:09:40.200 Okay, so that's interesting.

01:09:42.120 So, oh, hmm.

01:09:43.640 Okay, so let's delve

01:09:45.120 into that a little bit.

01:09:46.660 Because I guess

01:09:47.280 that's associated,

01:09:48.840 because one of the things

01:09:49.740 we haven't discussed

01:09:50.540 is why did you detransition, right?

01:09:53.020 And you've made

01:09:54.180 some reference to that now,

01:09:55.480 I think.

01:09:55.860 Okay, so now,

01:09:57.040 I guess we'll just keep

01:09:58.120 walking through it

01:09:58.800 chronologically.

01:10:01.920 You've undergone surgery,

01:10:03.380 but not bottom surgery,

01:10:05.840 let's say,

01:10:06.280 but that's in principle

01:10:07.420 offering itself

01:10:08.720 in the future.

01:10:09.860 Okay, so now what happens?

01:10:12.600 Was there any reconciliation

01:10:14.760 of your discomfort

01:10:15.900 about how your upper body appeared?

01:10:18.300 No.

01:10:18.700 After top surgery,

01:10:20.700 not really.

01:10:21.420 I mean,

01:10:21.880 the problem of

01:10:22.920 I have breasts

01:10:25.080 was gone,

01:10:25.900 but also at the end of that,

01:10:27.540 I was also thinking,

01:10:28.360 well, I didn't really

01:10:29.100 need to do that

01:10:30.900 because they were already

01:10:31.700 somewhat deformed anyways

01:10:32.900 and I still don't like

01:10:34.360 the way that I look

01:10:35.260 and I still feel uncomfortable.

01:10:37.060 So that didn't really resolve,

01:10:38.960 but at the time,

01:10:40.300 I was sort of

01:10:40.880 done transitioning.

01:10:42.420 So I was in this place

01:10:43.380 of like,

01:10:44.140 I don't really know

01:10:44.900 where to go next

01:10:45.720 and things are just

01:10:46.440 getting worse

01:10:47.080 and it just kept getting worse.

01:10:48.880 Okay.

01:10:50.020 And you're 15 now?

01:10:52.160 Yeah, I was 14, 15.

01:10:53.520 Okay, now,

01:10:54.680 when do you

01:10:55.540 find another therapist?

01:10:58.160 16, 17, I believe.

01:11:00.420 Okay, and you said

01:11:01.460 that that was effective.

01:11:03.840 Yes.

01:11:04.300 Okay, tell me that story.

01:11:05.780 Well, I had sort of

01:11:07.040 started opening up

01:11:08.460 and realizing

01:11:09.220 I needed to deal

01:11:10.000 with a lot of the

01:11:10.600 sexual trauma that I had.

01:11:11.780 Opening up to who?

01:11:13.060 I had talked

01:11:13.820 a little bit

01:11:14.920 to my parents about it

01:11:16.280 and sort of just

01:11:16.940 came to terms with it

01:11:18.180 in my own head.

01:11:18.700 Okay, so you revealed

01:11:19.580 some of it to them?

01:11:20.440 Yes.

01:11:20.720 How did they react?

01:11:21.560 Vaguely.

01:11:22.260 I revealed some of it

01:11:23.800 and they were very,

01:11:24.860 very concerned

01:11:25.480 and very distressed

01:11:26.480 and I think

01:11:27.080 they immediately

01:11:28.400 sort of questioned

01:11:29.440 why I was in gender therapy

01:11:31.580 and they immediately

01:11:32.240 wanted to put me

01:11:33.160 in treatment

01:11:33.600 for sexual assault only.

01:11:35.540 Oh, I see.

01:11:36.180 Okay, so once they

01:11:37.160 had the other details,

01:11:38.420 they could put

01:11:39.060 two and two together.

01:11:40.180 Right.

01:11:40.520 And so,

01:11:41.540 they encouraged you

01:11:42.520 to find another therapist?

01:11:43.640 They helped,

01:11:44.040 how did that play out?

01:11:44.860 They helped me

01:11:45.120 find another therapist.

01:11:45.720 They helped you,

01:11:46.360 okay,

01:11:47.060 so you found

01:11:47.680 another therapist.

01:11:48.720 Why didn't you,

01:11:50.540 why did you find

01:11:51.380 a different therapist?

01:11:52.840 Because the therapy

01:11:53.840 that I was doing

01:11:54.540 was so surface level

01:11:55.720 and wasn't actually

01:11:56.800 addressing any issues

01:11:58.000 in my mind.

01:11:58.680 It was just

01:11:59.040 creating more issues

01:12:00.300 and giving me...

01:12:01.220 Why did you come

01:12:01.820 to that conclusion?

01:12:03.040 Because they kept

01:12:03.780 affirming that I was

01:12:04.840 somehow intrinsically male

01:12:06.540 and that would

01:12:07.000 solve all my problems

01:12:07.940 and then once I

01:12:08.820 matched the outward

01:12:10.240 appearance of a male

01:12:11.160 and I didn't feel better,

01:12:12.120 they had no answers for me.

01:12:13.920 I see.

01:12:14.440 Okay, okay.

01:12:15.400 And then you open up to,

01:12:16.580 okay, so then you

01:12:17.640 start more deeply

01:12:19.800 considering the potential

01:12:20.960 effect of the sexual abuse.

01:12:22.960 Yes.

01:12:23.300 Then you talk

01:12:23.880 to your parents,

01:12:25.040 then they help you

01:12:25.720 find another therapist.

01:12:26.800 Right.

01:12:27.260 Okay.

01:12:28.780 How does that therapist

01:12:30.240 differ from the

01:12:31.180 previous therapist?

01:12:32.300 That therapist

01:12:32.960 barely spoke

01:12:34.200 about my gender.

01:12:35.220 We didn't even

01:12:35.760 discuss it maybe once.

01:12:37.400 We've talked about it

01:12:38.140 maybe once.

01:12:38.860 We went over it

01:12:39.700 and I said,

01:12:40.260 yeah, I've been

01:12:40.940 trans-identified

01:12:41.960 and then we just

01:12:43.160 sort of only

01:12:43.920 really dealt

01:12:44.700 with my childhood trauma,

01:12:46.300 my sexual assault.

01:12:47.440 How was your

01:12:48.000 new therapist trained?

01:12:49.260 What was their specialty?

01:12:51.180 DBT and CBT

01:12:52.300 were their therapies.

01:12:53.060 PhD psychologist?

01:12:54.300 Yes.

01:12:55.340 Do you know

01:12:55.620 where they were trained?

01:12:56.480 I'm not sure.

01:12:57.460 Okay, fine.

01:12:58.200 But PhD psychologist?

01:12:59.260 Yeah, PhD psychologist.

01:13:00.220 Okay, okay.

01:13:01.280 And it was

01:13:01.820 a more behavior therapy

01:13:03.180 oriented approach.

01:13:05.300 Okay, so

01:13:06.080 and what did they do

01:13:07.580 with you?

01:13:08.320 We went through

01:13:09.140 dialectal behavioral therapy

01:13:10.660 and then I also did

01:13:11.820 something called

01:13:12.520 imaginal exposure therapy

01:13:14.040 which sort of

01:13:14.700 helped me remember

01:13:15.560 a lot of the gaps

01:13:16.580 that I didn't

01:13:17.400 actually have filled in

01:13:19.020 and then once we did that

01:13:19.980 we just did a lot

01:13:21.140 of general talk therapy.

01:13:22.940 Okay, why do you think

01:13:23.880 that, what did you talk

01:13:25.380 about that you think

01:13:26.640 was helpful?

01:13:27.940 The number one thing

01:13:29.000 that I think was helpful

01:13:29.900 that we talked about

01:13:30.860 is how that experience

01:13:32.720 from childhood

01:13:33.320 made me think about

01:13:34.680 what it meant

01:13:35.440 to be female

01:13:36.120 and what external factors.

01:13:37.780 And what did you conclude?

01:13:38.880 I concluded that

01:13:40.060 I had been attributing

01:13:40.940 a lot of self-hatred

01:13:42.640 to femaleness.

01:13:44.640 Yeah.

01:13:44.820 I had been putting

01:13:45.420 a lot of my own experiences

01:13:46.960 onto femaleness as a whole

01:13:49.060 and I had been taking that

01:13:50.460 out of myself

01:13:50.940 for a very long time.

01:13:51.760 Right, so femaleness

01:13:53.420 as the cause

01:13:54.400 of your suffering.

01:13:55.300 Yes.

01:13:56.740 Okay, okay.

01:13:58.080 And this therapist

01:13:58.900 was effective.

01:14:00.540 Yeah, very.

01:14:01.420 Okay, and so what

01:14:02.140 were the consequences

01:14:03.420 for your symptoms

01:14:04.320 of depression and anxiety?

01:14:06.220 Just really resolved

01:14:07.340 pretty quickly.

01:14:08.200 I mean, I still was...

01:14:08.820 Any medication

01:14:09.320 associated with that?

01:14:10.520 I was on medication

01:14:11.600 when I was 15.

01:14:13.740 I started being put on

01:14:15.240 antipsychotics

01:14:16.540 and antidepressants.

01:14:18.000 That was when you were

01:14:18.840 still taking testosterone?

01:14:19.780 Yes.

01:14:20.460 Okay, so you went off

01:14:21.300 the testosterone?

01:14:21.880 Yeah.

01:14:22.500 You went off the psych meds?

01:14:24.000 Yes.

01:14:24.500 Before you went to therapy?

01:14:26.220 No, I went off

01:14:27.320 the psych meds

01:14:28.240 around the time

01:14:28.960 I was going to therapy

01:14:30.040 with a second therapist

01:14:31.080 and then I stopped

01:14:32.420 testosterone after that.

01:14:34.140 But your depression

01:14:34.960 and anxiety resolved

01:14:35.920 even though you stopped

01:14:37.080 taking testosterone?

01:14:38.220 Yes.

01:14:39.760 Why?

01:14:40.880 I think the main factor

01:14:43.000 was definitely

01:14:43.620 the testosterone because...

01:14:45.680 Okay, so that

01:14:46.380 quelled the psychosis symptoms.

01:14:47.700 That quelled the psychosis.

01:14:48.280 Why do you think

01:14:48.780 your depression

01:14:49.280 and anxiety went away?

01:14:50.460 I think it was

01:14:51.240 because I was actually

01:14:52.020 going through therapy

01:14:53.500 that was actually

01:14:54.560 talking about my issues

01:14:55.900 and not just...

01:14:57.000 Right, so you think

01:14:57.760 you got to the cause,

01:14:58.780 the actual cause.

01:15:00.540 How did you resolve it?

01:15:02.200 I mean, you had reason

01:15:03.300 to blame your

01:15:04.760 feel-me-elness,

01:15:05.600 so to speak,

01:15:06.240 because that did make you

01:15:07.560 vulnerable in that way.

01:15:09.060 So how did you

01:15:11.280 and your therapist,

01:15:12.920 what reconfiguration

01:15:14.920 of the way you looked

01:15:15.900 that things worked for you?

01:15:18.000 I started really focusing

01:15:20.080 on what I wanted

01:15:21.660 my life to look like

01:15:23.260 on my terms

01:15:23.960 and not just how

01:15:24.720 I could fit into

01:15:25.620 other things

01:15:26.400 and started trying

01:15:27.500 to focus on more

01:15:28.540 goal-oriented things

01:15:29.820 rather than letting

01:15:30.840 my mental problems

01:15:32.380 be the main focus

01:15:33.880 of my life.

01:15:34.060 How did you discover

01:15:34.940 what your goals were?

01:15:36.520 Yeah, we just sort of

01:15:37.600 talked about things I like

01:15:39.240 and things I'm really

01:15:40.020 passionate about

01:15:40.800 beyond gender,

01:15:42.000 beyond my mental health issues,

01:15:43.500 and what I really

01:15:44.980 loved doing,

01:15:45.680 and that gave me

01:15:46.220 sort of a focus.

01:15:46.520 What did you discover?

01:15:47.340 I mean, I love theater,

01:15:48.760 I love literature,

01:15:49.700 and that gave me

01:15:50.620 a lot of drive

01:15:51.220 to go to school as well.

01:15:52.880 How did you,

01:15:54.180 or did you,

01:15:55.060 and if so,

01:15:56.340 configure your view

01:15:57.420 of being female?

01:15:58.480 I mean,

01:15:59.160 that sort of came second

01:16:00.360 in a way

01:16:01.000 because we were going

01:16:02.080 through this whole

01:16:02.580 therapy process

01:16:03.360 and not really talking

01:16:04.620 about my gender at all,

01:16:06.700 and then sort of

01:16:07.500 after I was done

01:16:08.420 with therapy,

01:16:09.180 I'm in college,

01:16:09.860 I'm much better off,

01:16:10.920 and that's when I came

01:16:12.220 to the decision

01:16:12.900 I wanted to transition

01:16:13.900 because I had built

01:16:15.440 a life around me

01:16:16.200 that had nothing

01:16:16.740 to do with my gender

01:16:17.720 and I had reconciled

01:16:19.580 with my own problems,

01:16:21.700 and that's sort of

01:16:22.700 when I came to the conclusion

01:16:23.700 that there was no reason

01:16:24.720 to keep presenting as male.

01:16:27.480 That's a complicated realization.

01:16:29.480 I mean,

01:16:29.820 you had to,

01:16:31.760 okay,

01:16:32.300 that really requires

01:16:33.720 some unpacking

01:16:34.460 because that's actually

01:16:35.420 really hard,

01:16:36.240 you know.

01:16:36.840 If you wait 40 minutes

01:16:38.080 for a bus

01:16:38.660 that's supposed to be there

01:16:39.800 in five minutes,

01:16:41.180 it gets harder

01:16:42.680 and harder

01:16:43.000 to move away

01:16:43.540 from the bus stop

01:16:44.300 because you've already

01:16:44.900 invested 40 minutes,

01:16:46.240 right?

01:16:46.440 That's the sunk cost fallacy.

01:16:48.420 Yeah.

01:16:48.640 Well,

01:16:48.980 you had a social community

01:16:51.180 around you at school

01:16:52.200 that established

01:16:52.920 your identity.

01:16:54.080 Your parents

01:16:54.980 had gone through hell

01:16:56.380 to,

01:16:57.420 and you as well,

01:16:58.360 along the way

01:16:58.980 to establish

01:16:59.540 this new identity.

01:17:00.660 You took puberty blockers,

01:17:02.620 you took testosterone,

01:17:04.560 then you had surgery.

01:17:06.560 How in the world

01:17:08.000 did you reconcile yourself

01:17:10.660 to the realization

01:17:13.200 that that was not right?

01:17:16.760 Yeah.

01:17:17.200 Because,

01:17:17.600 like,

01:17:17.920 you'd put a lot in,

01:17:18.980 there was a lot at stake.

01:17:20.320 Yeah.

01:17:20.720 So,

01:17:21.180 that's,

01:17:21.780 so how did you do that?

01:17:23.260 It was really,

01:17:24.360 really difficult,

01:17:24.920 and once I sort of started

01:17:26.600 to think about it

01:17:28.100 and think about,

01:17:29.020 do I really want to do this,

01:17:30.320 and skipping injections

01:17:32.020 and missing testosterone doses,

01:17:34.260 and just everything around me

01:17:36.480 sort of came crashing down,

01:17:37.940 and I just started

01:17:38.960 feeling this tremendous grief

01:17:40.740 about what I had just done.

01:17:43.080 It was really dark.

01:17:44.320 No doubt.

01:17:45.120 Yeah.

01:17:45.500 No doubt.

01:17:46.120 But that,

01:17:46.580 even that could be an impediment

01:17:48.200 to,

01:17:49.180 like,

01:17:49.580 admission that the path

01:17:50.840 was wrong.

01:17:51.560 Yeah.

01:17:52.760 I mean,

01:17:53.020 there's a lot of things

01:17:53.780 you have to realize

01:17:54.640 that the path was wrong.

01:17:56.140 Your parents were deceived.

01:17:57.940 That would be part

01:17:58.900 of the realization.

01:18:01.220 You were hurt

01:18:02.740 and damaged

01:18:04.700 in consequence of it.

01:18:06.720 There's all these years

01:18:07.920 that you spent

01:18:08.760 in limbo,

01:18:09.720 at least,

01:18:10.320 that were misapplied.

01:18:12.500 You have to admit

01:18:13.280 that not only you were wrong,

01:18:15.520 so to speak,

01:18:16.140 but everyone around you

01:18:17.420 was wrong,

01:18:18.240 including the authorities,

01:18:20.220 the so-called authorities,

01:18:21.540 which means that now

01:18:22.640 your relationship

01:18:24.380 to authority

01:18:25.200 is also altered.

01:18:27.920 I still don't exactly understand

01:18:29.840 how you managed it.

01:18:30.760 The therapist helped?

01:18:31.540 Yeah,

01:18:32.280 therapist helped.

01:18:33.040 Okay,

01:18:33.280 now partly because you said

01:18:34.780 that you were focused

01:18:36.000 on some things

01:18:36.620 that you actually wanted to do.

01:18:37.940 Right,

01:18:38.440 yeah.

01:18:38.800 That weren't gender-related.

01:18:40.120 No.

01:18:40.560 You started to plot out

01:18:41.600 a pathway into the future?

01:18:42.760 Right,

01:18:43.000 I started to think about

01:18:44.120 things other than myself

01:18:46.320 and thinking about school

01:18:47.340 and what I wanted

01:18:48.020 for my future,

01:18:48.820 which led me

01:18:49.460 to the conversation

01:18:50.400 in my own head

01:18:51.140 of do I want kids one day?

01:18:52.760 Which also helped

01:18:53.720 with that realization.

01:18:54.980 Okay,

01:18:55.280 so what did you realize?

01:18:56.880 I wanted kids

01:18:58.340 and I could not picture myself

01:18:59.900 as someone's father.

01:19:00.800 And I really tried

01:19:02.060 to picture it.

01:19:02.520 Oh, okay,

01:19:02.540 that's interesting.

01:19:03.480 And she felt wrong.

01:19:03.940 Yeah, I talked to another

01:19:04.620 young woman who,

01:19:06.600 she didn't go as far

01:19:07.780 down the path

01:19:08.400 as you did,

01:19:09.160 but one of the things

01:19:10.760 that stopped her eventually,

01:19:12.200 she started living

01:19:13.380 as a boy at school

01:19:14.420 and she didn't let

01:19:15.860 her parents know,

01:19:16.860 but she was on the path.

01:19:18.500 Right.

01:19:19.220 And then they found out.

01:19:21.000 But one of her realizations

01:19:22.740 was she said

01:19:23.640 she fantasized

01:19:25.540 about being a father,

01:19:26.760 let's say,

01:19:27.220 about being an adult male

01:19:28.980 at some point

01:19:29.600 in the future

01:19:30.060 and thought,

01:19:31.040 no.

01:19:31.840 Yeah.

01:19:33.280 Yeah.

01:19:33.660 Right.

01:19:34.200 So had you not done that before?

01:19:36.240 No.

01:19:36.920 What,

01:19:37.180 was there no projection

01:19:38.040 into the future that far?

01:19:39.440 No.

01:19:39.940 Yeah,

01:19:40.160 well,

01:19:40.300 that's not atypical either,

01:19:41.580 you know,

01:19:41.860 like I've worked

01:19:43.460 with adolescents,

01:19:45.000 young adolescents,

01:19:45.660 trying to get them

01:19:46.540 to plan out their future

01:19:47.860 to some degree.

01:19:49.900 By the time

01:19:50.720 you're in your early 20s,

01:19:52.040 you might be able

01:19:52.540 to do that

01:19:53.060 for five years

01:19:53.920 into the future.

01:19:54.560 Yeah.

01:19:55.060 My sense

01:19:56.320 with 13 and 14-year-olds

01:19:58.020 was

01:19:58.320 a few months

01:20:00.020 into the future

01:20:00.720 is a long ways.

01:20:01.980 Right.

01:20:02.340 And even tomorrow

01:20:03.560 is quite a distance.

01:20:05.780 Right?

01:20:06.340 And that's part

01:20:07.180 of cortical maturation

01:20:08.260 too, right?

01:20:08.920 The more you mature

01:20:09.840 cortically,

01:20:10.480 the longer time span

01:20:11.480 you can take into account.

01:20:13.240 So you just hadn't

01:20:14.820 projected yourself

01:20:16.220 that far into the future?

01:20:17.660 No.

01:20:18.000 I just couldn't picture it

01:20:19.140 in my mind, really.

01:20:20.600 Right.

01:20:20.920 But then you started

01:20:21.580 to become able to do that.

01:20:22.600 Once I was older

01:20:23.440 and actually in college

01:20:25.320 and thinking about

01:20:26.340 my future in a way

01:20:27.180 that was more tangible,

01:20:28.540 it started to hit me.

01:20:30.380 Two things, I guess,

01:20:31.420 I'm curious about now

01:20:32.540 is why the lawsuit?

01:20:35.020 Three things.

01:20:35.740 Why the lawsuit?

01:20:37.680 Why the podcast?

01:20:39.380 And who else

01:20:40.620 have you talked to

01:20:41.360 broadly, publicly?

01:20:42.780 Why the podcast?

01:20:43.880 And also then

01:20:45.360 maybe finally

01:20:46.160 your attitude

01:20:47.680 towards being female now?

01:20:49.620 Yeah.

01:20:50.040 The lawsuit specifically

01:20:51.520 is because

01:20:52.760 Olsen Kennedy

01:20:53.620 and she said this

01:20:54.820 in countless interviews

01:20:56.040 and talked about this

01:20:57.340 very openly.

01:20:58.260 She doesn't believe

01:20:58.980 in gatekeeping

01:20:59.760 and she's very open

01:21:02.360 about how she doesn't

01:21:03.540 think it's possible

01:21:04.480 that mental health

01:21:06.320 comorbidities

01:21:07.060 could ever affect

01:21:07.760 someone's gender identity.

01:21:09.100 And I just want to say

01:21:10.620 that that is so wrong

01:21:12.300 and that's directly hurt

01:21:13.400 and ruined in my eyes

01:21:14.660 my life.

01:21:15.520 And I think that

01:21:16.780 that approach

01:21:17.660 to healthcare

01:21:18.240 is so dangerous.

01:21:19.600 and it's not just

01:21:21.100 dangerous

01:21:21.840 it's malpractice

01:21:23.120 at least in cases

01:21:23.960 like mine.

01:21:25.340 And I think the reason

01:21:26.300 for talking about it

01:21:27.500 so publicly

01:21:28.120 is I also just want

01:21:29.140 to spread awareness

01:21:29.720 that this does happen.

01:21:31.640 People like to act

01:21:32.340 like this never happens

01:21:33.380 or no children transition

01:21:34.660 but that's not true.

01:21:36.960 Yes, it's seriously

01:21:37.840 not true.

01:21:38.660 Yeah.

01:21:39.080 Right.

01:21:39.420 And while it's worse

01:21:40.180 than that

01:21:40.600 because as I pointed out

01:21:41.740 at the beginning

01:21:42.220 of this interview

01:21:42.980 it's illegal

01:21:45.400 and unprofessional.

01:21:46.720 if this was

01:21:49.420 a clinical interview

01:21:50.380 what I did

01:21:51.260 in this interview

01:21:52.060 would be illegal

01:21:52.900 and unprofessional.

01:21:55.260 Right.

01:21:55.800 It'd be enough

01:21:56.240 to get me barred

01:21:57.160 from my practice.

01:21:58.140 In fact,

01:21:58.540 my practice

01:21:59.120 is actually under threat

01:22:00.320 for questioning

01:22:01.640 exactly this kind of process.

01:22:03.840 Yeah.

01:22:04.020 Well, it stops.

01:22:05.720 I was in a fortunate position

01:22:07.400 to some degree

01:22:08.100 because I'm not dependent

01:22:09.320 on my professional status

01:22:11.000 for my financial support

01:22:12.980 or for that of my family.

01:22:14.300 but most people

01:22:16.880 don't have that

01:22:17.940 Right.

01:22:18.620 option.

01:22:19.820 Right.

01:22:20.420 So that means

01:22:20.980 I would have to lie to you.

01:22:23.240 Yeah.

01:22:23.760 Right.

01:22:24.440 And that's not good

01:22:25.580 to say the least.

01:22:27.600 Yeah.

01:22:27.820 Because the last thing

01:22:28.680 you need when you're 12

01:22:29.700 and confused

01:22:30.340 is some idiot professional

01:22:32.280 lying to you.

01:22:33.360 Yeah.

01:22:33.640 Especially when they're

01:22:34.420 trying to justify

01:22:35.200 their own ideological stance.

01:22:37.660 Right.

01:22:38.020 Okay.

01:22:38.420 So when did

01:22:40.420 when did you

01:22:41.840 publicly announce

01:22:43.620 the lawsuit

01:22:44.320 and what have you done

01:22:46.540 publicly

01:22:48.460 on the detransition front?

01:22:50.340 Who else?

01:22:50.720 Like,

01:22:51.140 have you spoken

01:22:52.000 and interacted

01:22:53.020 with other detransitioners?

01:22:54.520 I've spoken to some

01:22:55.260 detransitioners

01:22:56.100 mostly like online

01:22:57.080 or just phone calls

01:22:58.100 and that's been

01:22:58.640 really nice

01:22:59.440 to hear that

01:23:00.020 other people

01:23:01.000 have also gone through this

01:23:02.300 even though I'm sad

01:23:03.700 that they've also

01:23:04.220 gone through this.

01:23:04.900 It's nice that I'm not alone.

01:23:07.100 The lawsuit came out

01:23:08.360 I believe December 6th

01:23:10.000 but I had spoken

01:23:10.760 to Billboard Chris

01:23:12.300 a bit before that

01:23:13.840 pretty publicly.

01:23:14.900 He's quite the effective

01:23:15.600 troublemaker.

01:23:16.540 Yeah.

01:23:17.020 So that got a lot

01:23:17.880 of attention

01:23:18.400 and I just sort of

01:23:19.580 outlined my entire story

01:23:20.980 in that short

01:23:21.920 little street interview.

01:23:22.340 Yeah.

01:23:22.540 How did you meet him?

01:23:23.640 It was totally coincidental.

01:23:25.200 I was walking home

01:23:26.200 on UCLA campus

01:23:27.340 and I just saw him.

01:23:28.260 Oh, so you just

01:23:28.840 bumped into him.

01:23:29.580 Yeah.

01:23:30.040 Tell everybody

01:23:30.740 who Billboard Chris is first.

01:23:32.220 Billboard Chris

01:23:32.880 is awesome

01:23:33.740 and he just stands around

01:23:35.240 with a billboard

01:23:35.840 and has conversations

01:23:36.820 with people

01:23:37.360 about puberty blockers

01:23:38.840 and I just

01:23:40.580 totally ran into him

01:23:41.620 and we had

01:23:42.420 a nice conversation.

01:23:43.320 Now, he's a Canadian

01:23:44.480 and he travels

01:23:46.000 all over the world

01:23:46.660 doing this

01:23:47.340 standing on sidewalks

01:23:49.060 and often being harassed.

01:23:52.320 Yeah.

01:23:53.280 Yeah, he's quite

01:23:54.780 the strange character.

01:23:56.100 Yeah.

01:23:57.360 And he's obviously

01:23:58.560 very committed to this.

01:24:00.260 Right.

01:24:00.440 Okay, so you just

01:24:01.220 happened to bump into him.

01:24:02.340 Yeah.

01:24:03.060 Okay, so tell that story.

01:24:04.800 Well, I'd seen his stuff

01:24:05.880 online before

01:24:06.680 and I'd seen him

01:24:07.660 be harassed

01:24:08.380 and had coffee

01:24:08.980 thrown at him

01:24:09.660 and I just wanted

01:24:10.200 to tell him like

01:24:11.020 as somebody directly

01:24:13.080 impacted by puberty blockers

01:24:14.640 I really appreciated

01:24:15.800 what he was doing

01:24:16.500 and then he just

01:24:17.880 asked about my story

01:24:18.780 and we sort of

01:24:19.260 had a conversation

01:24:19.980 about it

01:24:20.600 and it got a lot

01:24:21.880 more attention

01:24:22.420 than I was expecting

01:24:23.520 because I had had

01:24:24.500 that conversation

01:24:25.260 weeks before the lawsuit

01:24:27.100 was supposed to come out

01:24:28.100 so I wasn't really

01:24:29.040 supposed to be

01:24:30.100 talking too much

01:24:30.820 so I tried to keep it vague

01:24:32.240 when talking to him

01:24:33.160 but it got a lot

01:24:34.540 of attention

01:24:34.980 and it was nice

01:24:35.640 to see that other people

01:24:36.740 were so sympathetic

01:24:37.880 to my story.

01:24:39.680 Why do you think

01:24:40.660 it got attention?

01:24:41.920 I mean, he gets

01:24:42.900 some attention.

01:24:43.720 He definitely gets

01:24:44.300 attention on his own.

01:24:45.400 But no,

01:24:46.920 it was pretty

01:24:47.440 I think that's actually

01:24:48.660 where I became aware

01:24:49.680 of you.

01:24:50.140 I think that's

01:24:50.800 I think it was

01:24:51.700 that event

01:24:52.300 that triggered

01:24:53.580 my reaching out

01:24:54.540 to you initially.

01:24:56.660 You know,

01:24:57.280 I found out afterwards

01:24:58.360 about the lawsuit

01:24:59.600 and that it was also

01:25:00.680 aimed at Olson Kennedy

01:25:01.860 who's someone

01:25:02.400 I'm interested in

01:25:03.340 for a variety of reasons

01:25:04.720 but I think it was

01:25:06.380 that Billboard Chris

01:25:07.420 interview.

01:25:08.540 So why do you think

01:25:09.500 what's your understanding

01:25:11.320 of why that

01:25:12.200 was so widely viewed

01:25:13.880 and attended to?

01:25:14.940 I said Olson Kennedy's name

01:25:16.760 and that was right

01:25:18.020 after that information

01:25:19.400 had come out

01:25:20.040 about her hiding the study

01:25:21.200 and it was also

01:25:23.320 I think just because

01:25:24.840 of my age

01:25:26.160 at the time

01:25:26.960 that these things happened

01:25:27.880 it was definitely

01:25:28.500 jarring to hear.

01:25:30.160 Yeah.

01:25:31.240 Right.

01:25:31.860 Yes.

01:25:32.680 Well,

01:25:32.900 you also

01:25:33.440 you're also quiet

01:25:36.120 and soft-spoken

01:25:37.140 and eminently reasonable

01:25:38.940 in your public presentation

01:25:40.320 and so that probably

01:25:41.860 didn't hurt.

01:25:43.660 Right.

01:25:43.960 So,

01:25:44.840 right.

01:25:46.600 Okay.

01:25:47.440 So,

01:25:48.220 the lawsuit.

01:25:51.500 Are you mounting that?

01:25:52.980 Are your parents

01:25:53.600 like how

01:25:54.460 how is that progressing

01:25:55.540 and how is it supported?

01:25:56.740 It's expensive.

01:25:57.680 How are you doing this?

01:25:58.540 I'm mounting that mostly

01:25:59.700 but I'm working

01:26:00.420 with some awesome law firms

01:26:01.860 and I'm working

01:26:02.360 with Campbell Miller Payne

01:26:03.720 and all they do

01:26:04.580 is detransition lawsuits.

01:26:06.700 They work with

01:26:07.360 Prisha Mosley as well

01:26:08.560 and other clients

01:26:09.460 who are also detransitioners

01:26:10.960 so that's

01:26:12.120 kind of all they do

01:26:12.940 so they were able

01:26:13.460 to help me out a lot

01:26:14.340 and it's mostly me

01:26:15.260 mounting it.

01:26:15.960 I mean,

01:26:16.180 my parents are supportive.

01:26:17.840 They just don't really

01:26:18.540 want to be public about it

01:26:20.240 which I totally understand.

01:26:22.120 Right, right.

01:26:22.820 And where are you

01:26:23.520 with the lawsuit?

01:26:24.860 We just started.

01:26:26.080 It was filed in December

01:26:27.080 so things are

01:26:28.060 Oh, okay.

01:26:28.540 So this is really new.

01:26:29.380 Pretty fresh, yeah.

01:26:30.260 And what are the

01:26:31.440 what are you asking for?

01:26:32.780 What are the

01:26:33.220 what are the claims

01:26:34.340 and what is the

01:26:35.260 describe the suit?

01:26:37.760 I mean,

01:26:38.140 vaguely malpractice

01:26:39.460 and just asking for damages

01:26:40.860 and I've gone through

01:26:42.300 breast reconstruction surgery

01:26:43.800 and had to pay

01:26:44.520 out of pocket for that

01:26:45.700 and all the medical costs

01:26:47.180 associated with future things

01:26:48.560 like fertility

01:26:49.160 or my other medical problems

01:26:50.660 related to hormonal things.

01:26:52.000 I would just

01:26:52.360 like some compensation

01:26:53.800 for those costs.

01:26:55.660 Right,

01:26:55.860 and then with regards

01:26:56.660 to the public impact of this

01:26:58.240 what are you hoping for?

01:26:59.800 I am hoping for change.

01:27:01.640 I don't want to demand anything.

01:27:03.080 I'm not a lawmaker

01:27:04.080 or a doctor

01:27:04.780 so I can't make

01:27:05.980 any broad assertions

01:27:07.120 but I definitely think

01:27:08.100 the standard of care

01:27:09.000 where it's at right now

01:27:10.180 is pretty abysmal.

01:27:11.660 What would you like to see

01:27:12.820 be the case?

01:27:13.900 I would like to see

01:27:14.800 people working on

01:27:15.780 helping people

01:27:16.740 rather than

01:27:17.500 pushing as many things

01:27:19.220 as quickly as possible

01:27:20.440 and getting people

01:27:21.180 to agree to as many things

01:27:22.540 quickly as possible

01:27:23.460 because that's definitely

01:27:24.740 what seems to be the trend

01:27:26.000 not actually

01:27:26.960 helping kids

01:27:28.340 and investigating

01:27:29.040 what's going on

01:27:29.820 with these kids.

01:27:30.840 It's more the fight

01:27:32.180 to prescribe them

01:27:33.480 as many things as possible.

01:27:33.960 Well the standard

01:27:34.740 of care

01:27:35.580 before all of this

01:27:36.640 became politicized

01:27:37.820 was

01:27:38.860 some of this

01:27:39.800 was established

01:27:40.400 in Alberta

01:27:41.020 at CAMH

01:27:41.900 and the man

01:27:42.360 who established it

01:27:43.280 he was just a clinician.

01:27:45.240 He had his career destroyed.

01:27:47.840 He

01:27:48.060 had been working

01:27:49.940 with kids

01:27:50.440 with gender dysphoria

01:27:51.440 for a very long

01:27:52.660 period of time

01:27:53.800 and his conclusion

01:27:55.060 was

01:27:55.600 the overarching condition

01:27:58.780 is depression

01:27:59.420 and anxiety.

01:28:00.300 Some of that's focused

01:28:01.080 on bodily concerns.

01:28:03.580 The basic standard

01:28:04.660 of care

01:28:05.120 should be

01:28:05.900 focused on

01:28:07.020 the depression

01:28:07.520 and anxiety

01:28:08.180 and you should

01:28:10.020 leave well enough

01:28:11.000 alone

01:28:11.360 at least

01:28:12.340 until the age of 18

01:28:13.340 where most people

01:28:14.220 it reconciles

01:28:16.940 just like

01:28:17.400 puberty reconciles

01:28:18.520 for most people.

01:28:19.920 Right?

01:28:20.120 And his career

01:28:20.620 was destroyed

01:28:21.280 for that

01:28:21.720 once it became politicized.

01:28:23.200 That's crazy.

01:28:23.900 Right?

01:28:24.180 And he was

01:28:25.180 he launched

01:28:27.280 a lawsuit

01:28:27.800 on the people

01:28:28.460 who just

01:28:28.820 against the people

01:28:30.320 who destroyed

01:28:31.620 his career

01:28:32.080 and was eventually

01:28:32.780 vindicated

01:28:33.320 but you know

01:28:34.120 it took like

01:28:34.780 I don't know

01:28:35.280 how many years

01:28:35.880 very long period

01:28:36.940 of time.

01:28:38.240 Right?

01:28:38.600 So

01:28:38.780 that was a

01:28:40.440 perfectly sane

01:28:41.880 and professionally

01:28:43.200 appropriate

01:28:43.720 standard

01:28:44.180 of care

01:28:44.600 and it's based

01:28:45.200 on the principle

01:28:45.860 of first

01:28:47.000 do no harm.

01:28:48.540 Right?

01:28:48.820 Which is a good

01:28:49.520 rule of thumb.

01:28:50.980 Right.

01:28:51.660 Okay, so

01:28:52.300 what are you doing

01:28:54.660 with your life

01:28:55.340 at the moment

01:28:55.920 apart from the lawsuit?

01:28:57.400 Right now

01:28:57.880 I'm just in college

01:28:58.760 and trying to get

01:28:59.980 Are you at UCLA?

01:29:00.900 Yes.

01:29:02.300 Hmm.

01:29:02.940 So what's that

01:29:04.120 been like now

01:29:04.820 that you have

01:29:05.360 a certain degree

01:29:06.080 of notoriety

01:29:07.060 and UCLA

01:29:08.020 is quite a politicized

01:29:09.440 campus?

01:29:10.480 It's been a little

01:29:11.240 difficult

01:29:11.660 I won't lie

01:29:12.440 I've definitely

01:29:13.180 been noticed

01:29:13.860 noticed a bit

01:29:14.140 more times

01:29:14.700 than I'd like

01:29:15.440 and

01:29:15.780 Noticed how?

01:29:17.100 People have

01:29:17.600 asked me

01:29:18.160 about things

01:29:19.120 and brought up

01:29:19.720 very sort of

01:29:20.780 a lot of the

01:29:21.420 information that

01:29:22.140 I'm talking about

01:29:23.020 publicly is very

01:29:23.980 very personal

01:29:24.660 and not something

01:29:25.300 I really just want

01:29:26.060 to like talk

01:29:27.080 about in everyday

01:29:27.700 conversation

01:29:28.420 so having people

01:29:29.320 like very

01:29:30.040 kind of hostily

01:29:31.740 confront me

01:29:32.580 and tell me

01:29:33.300 that I'm a bad

01:29:34.060 person for talking

01:29:35.060 about my experiences

01:29:36.140 or things like that.

01:29:36.920 How often

01:29:37.360 does that happen?

01:29:38.720 Thankfully

01:29:39.140 infrequently

01:29:39.880 but it's

01:29:40.600 happened

01:29:40.900 a couple

01:29:41.300 times.

01:29:42.040 Yeah well

01:29:42.280 it doesn't

01:29:42.560 have to

01:29:42.880 happen

01:29:43.160 that often

01:29:43.680 before it's

01:29:44.540 like you

01:29:45.180 don't have

01:29:45.520 to be

01:29:45.760 accosted

01:29:46.340 hostily

01:29:46.940 by strangers

01:29:47.700 very often

01:29:48.420 for it

01:29:49.060 actually

01:29:49.380 to be

01:29:49.720 a concern.

01:29:51.120 Right.

01:29:52.300 Is it possible

01:29:53.080 for you

01:29:53.460 to continue

01:29:53.960 at UCLA

01:29:54.600 under those

01:29:55.220 conditions?

01:29:55.920 I hope so.

01:29:56.640 I think so.

01:29:57.260 So far

01:29:57.640 most people

01:29:58.220 close to me

01:29:58.780 have been

01:29:59.240 awesome

01:29:59.780 and really

01:30:00.180 supportive

01:30:00.660 and most

01:30:01.320 people that

01:30:01.660 know me

01:30:02.000 are nice.

01:30:03.100 Right so

01:30:03.520 you have

01:30:03.840 a social

01:30:04.200 support network.

01:30:05.400 Yeah.

01:30:05.780 Okay so

01:30:06.680 maybe we'll

01:30:07.580 close this part

01:30:08.560 then with the

01:30:09.100 discussion.

01:30:11.000 You went

01:30:11.980 through

01:30:12.360 dialectical

01:30:13.760 behavior therapy

01:30:14.560 and with

01:30:15.700 some marked

01:30:16.680 degree of

01:30:17.200 success

01:30:17.640 under

01:30:17.980 relatively

01:30:18.700 trying

01:30:19.100 conditions

01:30:19.560 so that's

01:30:20.060 quite

01:30:20.340 surprising

01:30:21.320 and maybe

01:30:23.060 that's a

01:30:23.500 testament to

01:30:24.100 your

01:30:24.500 persistence

01:30:26.160 and honesty

01:30:26.880 and also

01:30:28.020 to the

01:30:28.540 skill of

01:30:28.980 your therapist.

01:30:29.980 That would

01:30:30.460 be my

01:30:30.860 guess.

01:30:32.460 And now

01:30:33.420 your

01:30:33.840 attitude

01:30:35.080 towards

01:30:35.680 your

01:30:36.100 sex

01:30:37.220 has

01:30:37.620 changed.

01:30:39.660 Okay.

01:30:41.440 You said

01:30:42.340 partly that

01:30:42.920 was because

01:30:43.460 you

01:30:43.760 what exactly

01:30:45.520 you understood

01:30:46.140 what happened

01:30:46.740 when you were

01:30:47.360 six?

01:30:48.040 How did you

01:30:48.900 reconcile yourself

01:30:49.920 to that?

01:30:50.680 I started to

01:30:51.320 contextualize it

01:30:52.360 and truly

01:30:52.780 understand it

01:30:53.560 as abuse

01:30:54.420 and something

01:30:55.100 that I

01:30:55.480 shouldn't

01:30:55.760 just

01:30:56.080 avoid

01:30:57.140 which is

01:30:57.700 how I

01:30:57.960 had seen

01:30:58.280 it for

01:30:58.520 a very

01:30:58.800 long time

01:30:59.440 and once

01:30:59.860 I started

01:31:00.280 to reconcile

01:31:01.240 with that

01:31:01.940 I was actually

01:31:02.980 able to

01:31:03.540 confront

01:31:04.060 the reality

01:31:05.000 of what it

01:31:05.720 does.

01:31:06.140 Right.

01:31:06.580 Well

01:31:07.060 this

01:31:07.620 other

01:31:08.360 kid

01:31:08.600 was

01:31:08.780 10?

01:31:09.420 Yeah.

01:31:10.460 Right.

01:31:10.880 So

01:31:11.100 it wasn't

01:31:11.760 like he

01:31:12.100 was

01:31:12.300 particularly

01:31:12.920 well

01:31:13.420 supervised.

01:31:14.400 No.

01:31:14.660 10 is

01:31:15.060 also

01:31:15.360 not

01:31:15.700 very

01:31:16.020 old.

01:31:16.400 Exactly.

01:31:17.120 Right.

01:31:17.400 So

01:31:17.500 there's

01:31:17.740 a story

01:31:18.200 there

01:31:18.540 too.

01:31:18.980 Yeah.

01:31:19.340 So

01:31:19.620 you know

01:31:20.280 from the

01:31:20.700 perspective

01:31:21.120 of a

01:31:21.580 six-year-old

01:31:22.080 a ten-year-old

01:31:22.760 might as well

01:31:23.460 be an adult.

01:31:24.240 Yeah.

01:31:24.620 But from

01:31:24.940 the perspective

01:31:25.540 of a

01:31:26.100 seventeen-year-old

01:31:27.100 a six-year-old

01:31:28.120 and a ten-year-old

01:31:28.900 are both

01:31:29.300 kids.

01:31:29.820 Yeah.

01:31:30.460 So

01:31:30.820 okay

01:31:31.660 so you could

01:31:32.220 contextualize

01:31:33.040 it more

01:31:33.320 effectively.

01:31:36.580 From you

01:31:37.040 or all of it?

01:31:38.420 Most of it

01:31:39.100 and I was also

01:31:39.800 able to sort

01:31:40.520 of understand

01:31:41.180 obviously I can

01:31:42.640 never understand

01:31:43.360 why exactly

01:31:44.440 but you also

01:31:45.380 mentioned like

01:31:45.880 with another

01:31:46.380 kid there's

01:31:46.920 also something

01:31:47.500 happening on

01:31:48.140 that end

01:31:48.760 and I was

01:31:49.740 able to

01:31:50.080 fully sort

01:31:50.560 of understand

01:31:51.080 that it

01:31:51.400 wasn't

01:31:51.640 something I

01:31:52.120 did and

01:31:52.660 there's

01:31:53.000 nothing wrong

01:31:53.300 with me.

01:31:53.320 Yeah well

01:31:53.540 who knows

01:31:53.940 what the

01:31:54.240 history of

01:31:54.620 that kid

01:31:54.980 was.

01:31:55.440 It's probably

01:31:55.840 something awful

01:31:56.460 as well.

01:31:57.160 Well

01:31:57.460 that would

01:31:59.240 be at least

01:31:59.940 something you

01:32:00.560 would investigate

01:32:01.280 if you're

01:32:01.840 trying to

01:32:02.240 figure it out

01:32:02.760 because something

01:32:03.380 happened

01:32:03.920 and then you'd

01:32:05.060 also wonder

01:32:05.860 well

01:32:06.540 how was

01:32:09.560 it

01:32:09.740 situationally

01:32:10.620 that this

01:32:11.380 could occur

01:32:11.880 repeatedly

01:32:12.620 in secrecy

01:32:13.980 because that's

01:32:15.140 part of the

01:32:15.820 situational

01:32:16.660 determinants.

01:32:17.540 Okay but you

01:32:18.020 worked through

01:32:18.520 that and

01:32:20.280 then what

01:32:21.140 that alleviated

01:32:22.240 some of your

01:32:22.840 concern about

01:32:23.480 being female

01:32:24.160 as well?

01:32:25.000 Yeah I mean

01:32:25.860 to me

01:32:26.840 once I

01:32:27.840 started

01:32:28.380 sort of

01:32:29.800 thinking about

01:32:30.380 what had

01:32:30.680 happened to

01:32:31.180 me and I

01:32:31.640 started thinking

01:32:32.300 about why I

01:32:33.140 was doing

01:32:33.500 the things

01:32:33.940 that I

01:32:34.200 was doing

01:32:34.700 why was

01:32:35.240 I really

01:32:35.640 trying to

01:32:36.200 hide my

01:32:36.640 chest

01:32:37.000 why was

01:32:37.780 I trying

01:32:38.160 to conceal

01:32:38.860 my sex

01:32:39.580 and it was

01:32:40.140 really just

01:32:40.620 because I

01:32:41.040 was suffering

01:32:41.540 from really

01:32:42.640 really concealed

01:32:43.720 PTSD that I

01:32:44.700 had just

01:32:45.060 thought wasn't

01:32:46.060 happening but I

01:32:46.940 was just in

01:32:47.960 constant fear

01:32:48.800 essentially.

01:32:50.480 Right right

01:32:51.140 and so okay

01:32:52.200 so why do

01:32:53.960 you think

01:32:54.380 that fear

01:32:55.360 and PTSD

01:32:56.140 reconciled

01:32:57.780 resolved?

01:32:58.480 Yeah I mean

01:32:59.000 I think once

01:32:59.620 I was able

01:33:00.080 to notice

01:33:00.620 it I was

01:33:01.320 able to

01:33:01.740 think about

01:33:02.380 other ways

01:33:03.320 to sort of

01:33:03.880 calm that

01:33:04.600 instead of

01:33:05.220 just letting

01:33:06.240 it rule my

01:33:06.800 life and

01:33:07.340 that's what I

01:33:07.740 was doing

01:33:08.280 by living as

01:33:09.260 a different

01:33:09.400 sex.

01:33:09.420 Right so once

01:33:10.000 you identified

01:33:10.700 it and

01:33:12.540 walked through

01:33:13.880 it and

01:33:14.600 reconfigured

01:33:15.440 it so that

01:33:16.620 took out

01:33:17.120 the shame

01:33:18.460 and the guilt

01:33:18.860 but also some

01:33:19.560 of the fear

01:33:19.900 of being female.

01:33:20.760 Yeah.

01:33:21.460 Okay now you

01:33:22.160 said at the

01:33:22.740 same time you

01:33:23.340 were also

01:33:23.660 starting to

01:33:24.160 think about

01:33:24.640 say having

01:33:25.220 kids.

01:33:25.740 Yeah.

01:33:26.060 So you

01:33:26.380 were starting

01:33:26.800 to contemplate

01:33:28.760 in the future

01:33:29.540 well the

01:33:31.260 preeminent

01:33:31.760 advantage of

01:33:32.460 being female

01:33:33.060 which obviously

01:33:34.080 is to have

01:33:34.920 kids and

01:33:35.980 that and

01:33:36.760 that what

01:33:37.200 that became

01:33:37.840 attractive.

01:33:38.580 Yeah.

01:33:38.940 I started

01:33:39.500 thinking about

01:33:40.000 wanting to

01:33:40.380 have kids

01:33:40.960 and how much

01:33:41.680 satisfaction that

01:33:42.980 would bring me

01:33:43.520 and it made

01:33:44.480 me really sad

01:33:45.320 that I might

01:33:45.760 have taken that

01:33:46.340 opportunity away

01:33:47.080 from myself at

01:33:47.840 such a young

01:33:48.240 age.

01:33:49.160 Right so now

01:33:49.940 you could see

01:33:50.580 I see so

01:33:51.480 once you

01:33:52.060 shed the

01:33:53.000 guilt and

01:33:54.840 the fear

01:33:55.240 and the

01:33:55.540 shame you

01:33:57.180 could see

01:33:57.660 opportunity.

01:33:58.600 Yeah.

01:33:59.280 Right.

01:34:00.400 Right.

01:34:01.240 Well that's a

01:34:01.820 good definition

01:34:02.440 of reconciliation.

01:34:03.240 so as far as

01:34:05.120 you're concerned

01:34:05.700 now how would

01:34:07.100 you characterize

01:34:07.700 your identity

01:34:08.440 now?

01:34:09.360 I'm female

01:34:10.400 and I'm happy

01:34:11.100 to be female.

01:34:11.900 I don't really

01:34:12.340 try and think

01:34:13.160 about my

01:34:14.320 identity because

01:34:15.140 I think spending

01:34:15.960 so long

01:34:16.820 attributing

01:34:17.400 everything in

01:34:18.040 my life to

01:34:18.780 something wrong

01:34:19.980 with my identity

01:34:20.860 or my physical

01:34:21.600 being was what

01:34:22.960 was driving a lot

01:34:23.760 of my unhealthy

01:34:24.320 behaviors.

01:34:24.820 Okay.

01:34:25.880 All right.

01:34:26.660 Well I think

01:34:27.180 is there anything

01:34:28.460 else that you

01:34:29.200 want to bring up

01:34:29.960 that we haven't

01:34:30.660 covered?

01:34:31.560 Is there anything

01:34:31.960 you want to tell

01:34:32.580 the audience

01:34:33.180 let's say before

01:34:34.000 we bring this

01:34:34.600 to a close?

01:34:36.100 Not specifically

01:34:37.240 nothing beyond

01:34:38.500 the fact that I

01:34:39.200 don't really have

01:34:39.840 a political agenda.

01:34:41.220 I'm not doing

01:34:42.100 this for I've

01:34:43.200 already been accused

01:34:43.920 of doing this

01:34:44.420 for attention

01:34:44.860 and that's the

01:34:45.640 last of my wants.

01:34:46.900 I just want to

01:34:47.600 spread awareness

01:34:48.120 about this and I

01:34:49.200 can't sit by and

01:34:51.300 let people say that

01:34:51.980 this doesn't happen

01:34:52.800 when this is

01:34:53.340 something that is

01:34:53.980 truly like

01:34:55.940 ruptured my life.

01:34:57.260 Okay so if you

01:34:57.960 are going to and

01:34:59.040 you are in fact

01:34:59.940 doing this if

01:35:00.780 what words do

01:35:03.140 you have to say

01:35:04.160 to someone who's

01:35:05.200 11, who's

01:35:06.320 female, who's

01:35:07.600 confused?

01:35:08.740 Yeah.

01:35:09.360 So you can

01:35:10.520 address people

01:35:11.280 like that right

01:35:12.400 now.

01:35:13.600 You've been

01:35:14.320 through the

01:35:15.520 mill let's say.

01:35:17.000 So what do

01:35:17.480 you say to

01:35:17.940 someone who's

01:35:18.740 to you when

01:35:20.040 you're 11?

01:35:21.160 Yeah.

01:35:21.520 What do you

01:35:21.800 say?

01:35:22.260 I would say

01:35:22.680 that there is

01:35:23.160 nothing physically

01:35:24.660 wrong with you

01:35:25.600 and anything that

01:35:26.940 you think is

01:35:27.560 physically wrong

01:35:28.380 with you is

01:35:28.940 because something

01:35:30.300 external is

01:35:31.200 making you feel

01:35:31.860 like there's

01:35:32.180 something wrong

01:35:32.700 with you, that

01:35:33.200 there's nothing

01:35:33.760 you need to

01:35:34.360 fix about your

01:35:35.840 body.

01:35:36.700 You're fine.

01:35:38.360 You're perfect

01:35:38.820 just the way you

01:35:39.400 are.

01:35:40.040 Anything that's

01:35:40.540 making you feel

01:35:41.060 differently is

01:35:41.700 totally external.

01:35:43.300 Mm-hmm.

01:35:44.000 Mm-hmm.

01:35:44.540 And so it should be

01:35:45.220 dealt with in that

01:35:45.920 manner.

01:35:46.420 Right.

01:35:47.100 Right.

01:35:47.520 So don't look to

01:35:48.800 your body first.

01:35:49.840 Right.

01:35:50.320 Exactly.

01:35:50.760 Exactly.

01:35:51.980 Yeah.

01:35:52.560 Well that's very

01:35:53.300 much akin to the

01:35:54.120 principle of minimal

01:35:56.200 necessary intervention.

01:35:58.040 Right.

01:35:58.640 Don't use surgery

01:35:59.740 where discussion

01:36:00.680 would suffice.

01:36:01.720 Exactly.

01:36:02.180 For example.

01:36:03.640 Right.

01:36:03.980 Or more than

01:36:04.520 suffice in your

01:36:05.360 situation, it

01:36:06.780 not only suffice

01:36:07.600 but was curative.

01:36:08.780 Yeah.

01:36:09.680 Right.

01:36:10.640 And so that

01:36:11.300 should have been

01:36:11.740 attempted first,

01:36:13.520 obviously.

01:36:14.300 Yeah, exactly.

01:36:15.320 Right.

01:36:15.660 So your depression

01:36:16.640 and anxiety should

01:36:17.660 have been dealt

01:36:18.980 with.

01:36:19.260 You know, I

01:36:19.580 talked to Chloe

01:36:20.280 Cole.

01:36:20.880 Yeah.

01:36:21.120 And I

01:36:21.800 structured the

01:36:22.360 conversation similarly,

01:36:24.060 at least in so

01:36:25.280 far as,

01:36:26.200 delving into

01:36:28.400 the particulars

01:36:30.520 of your

01:36:32.360 diagnosis.

01:36:34.220 Right.

01:36:34.980 There's no

01:36:35.520 excuse for not

01:36:36.520 telling you that

01:36:37.420 that dysphoric

01:36:39.320 state is common.

01:36:41.160 Right.

01:36:41.820 That it's

01:36:42.240 part of what

01:36:45.860 young women

01:36:46.660 experience when

01:36:47.680 they go through

01:36:48.220 puberty.

01:36:49.000 That exacerbation

01:36:50.420 of depression

01:36:51.000 and anxiety

01:36:51.680 that can be

01:36:52.260 severe.

01:36:53.180 That desire

01:36:53.660 to hide

01:36:54.340 that and

01:36:56.020 that elevated

01:36:56.780 sense of

01:36:57.380 concern about

01:36:58.180 bodily

01:36:58.700 appearance.

01:36:59.540 Yeah.

01:36:59.620 Obviously, you're

01:37:00.620 going to be

01:37:01.140 concerned about

01:37:01.780 bodily appearance

01:37:02.540 when all sorts

01:37:03.860 of strange

01:37:04.480 things are

01:37:04.980 happening.

01:37:05.660 They indicate a

01:37:07.000 new status and

01:37:08.080 vulnerability that

01:37:08.960 you have no

01:37:09.700 real idea how

01:37:10.640 to deal with

01:37:11.400 and you're

01:37:13.140 mutable.

01:37:14.280 However,

01:37:15.140 so it's

01:37:16.780 inexcusable that

01:37:17.940 you weren't

01:37:18.600 told that.

01:37:20.940 now, I

01:37:22.560 would say

01:37:23.120 with regards

01:37:24.160 to the

01:37:24.820 abuse, that's

01:37:26.700 more complex,

01:37:27.580 right?

01:37:27.840 Because you

01:37:28.740 didn't tell

01:37:29.300 them and

01:37:30.640 then that

01:37:31.040 begs the

01:37:31.460 question of

01:37:32.020 whether, you

01:37:33.360 know, that

01:37:33.780 was just

01:37:34.540 abject refusal

01:37:35.700 on your

01:37:36.200 part or

01:37:36.680 whether

01:37:37.040 some

01:37:39.660 additional

01:37:41.780 time and

01:37:42.360 a bit more

01:37:43.000 curiosity, a

01:37:46.020 little less

01:37:46.440 jumping to

01:37:47.060 conclusions.

01:37:48.420 Well, let's

01:37:49.340 end with that.

01:37:51.380 How much

01:37:52.120 questioning do

01:37:52.900 you think it

01:37:53.420 would have

01:37:53.680 taken when

01:37:54.240 you were

01:37:54.680 12 to

01:37:57.380 find out

01:37:58.820 from you that

01:37:59.660 something had

01:38:00.200 happened to

01:38:00.660 you when you

01:38:01.080 were little?

01:38:01.660 Right.

01:38:02.100 I mean, I'm

01:38:02.660 not a

01:38:02.920 psychologist, so

01:38:03.600 I obviously

01:38:04.000 can't put

01:38:04.480 myself in

01:38:05.040 their shoes,

01:38:05.560 but in my

01:38:06.160 opinion, I

01:38:06.780 don't think it

01:38:07.700 would have

01:38:07.940 taken much

01:38:08.720 because I

01:38:09.960 had had a

01:38:10.540 lot of

01:38:10.940 strange ideas

01:38:12.000 about what

01:38:12.480 it meant to

01:38:12.980 be female or

01:38:13.880 what it meant

01:38:14.620 to be male or

01:38:15.400 sexuality or

01:38:16.240 things like

01:38:16.720 that.

01:38:17.060 And it

01:38:18.000 had even

01:38:18.600 been pointed

01:38:19.120 out by my

01:38:19.780 peers that

01:38:20.380 my knowledge

01:38:21.180 of sexuality

01:38:21.860 was a bit

01:38:22.360 inappropriate.

01:38:23.340 And I think

01:38:23.940 if they had

01:38:24.400 just poked a

01:38:25.820 little bit about

01:38:26.560 some of the

01:38:26.960 experiences that

01:38:27.820 I had had

01:38:28.420 or my

01:38:28.740 opinions or

01:38:29.800 just even

01:38:30.200 asked if I

01:38:31.160 had had any

01:38:31.980 inappropriate

01:38:33.060 experiences with

01:38:34.380 other kids,

01:38:36.000 I think I

01:38:36.560 would have been

01:38:36.980 able to say

01:38:38.800 something.

01:38:40.200 Okay.

01:38:40.640 Well, I think

01:38:41.240 we'll leave it

01:38:41.720 at that.

01:38:42.120 I think what

01:38:42.680 we'll do for

01:38:43.300 everybody watching

01:38:44.080 and listening,

01:38:44.620 I think what

01:38:45.040 we'll do on

01:38:45.520 the Daily

01:38:45.840 Wire side is

01:38:46.540 delve a little

01:38:48.280 bit more into

01:38:48.920 issues of

01:38:49.680 identity, right?

01:38:52.220 Because one of

01:38:52.920 the subtexts in

01:38:54.560 this conversation

01:38:55.460 was, and this

01:38:56.980 is a consequence

01:38:57.680 of the reign of

01:38:58.880 a particular

01:38:59.300 sort of

01:38:59.880 ideology, is

01:39:01.260 that identity

01:39:02.560 is best

01:39:03.120 conceptualized,

01:39:04.100 let's say,

01:39:04.580 in gendered or

01:39:05.880 even sexual

01:39:07.080 terms.

01:39:08.260 And that's

01:39:10.920 by no means

01:39:11.620 obvious.

01:39:12.200 and there's

01:39:13.720 a fair bit

01:39:14.780 of reason

01:39:15.240 also to

01:39:15.920 assume that

01:39:16.500 that in

01:39:17.120 itself is

01:39:17.940 harmful.

01:39:19.600 So, one

01:39:22.060 of the things

01:39:22.560 that personality

01:39:24.380 and clinical

01:39:24.960 psychologists know,

01:39:26.040 for example,

01:39:26.620 is that narrow

01:39:28.440 self-concern and

01:39:29.700 misery are

01:39:30.500 identical

01:39:31.640 statistically and

01:39:34.560 conceptually.

01:39:35.980 Any ideology

01:39:37.240 that enhances

01:39:38.080 narrow self-consciousness

01:39:40.020 necessarily

01:39:41.200 produces negative

01:39:42.280 emotion.

01:39:43.860 So, we

01:39:44.800 should talk, we'll

01:39:45.440 talk about identity

01:39:46.260 on the Daily

01:39:46.800 Wire side, and

01:39:47.880 that gives us an

01:39:48.600 additional half an

01:39:49.420 hour for this

01:39:49.980 conversation, for

01:39:51.340 those of you that

01:39:52.080 are inclined to

01:39:52.740 join us there.

01:39:54.660 Clementine, thank

01:39:55.320 you very much for

01:39:56.180 coming to talk

01:39:57.280 about this, and

01:39:59.300 you do it in a

01:40:00.840 remarkably calm and

01:40:02.860 composed manner,

01:40:03.720 given the, what

01:40:06.360 would you say,

01:40:07.100 severity of the

01:40:08.460 situation, right?

01:40:09.680 Yeah, so.

01:40:11.080 Thank you.

01:40:11.700 Yeah.

01:40:12.520 Thanks, everybody.

01:40:13.360 Thank you.

531. Irreversible Damage at Fourteen ｜ Detransitioner Clementine Breen

Summary

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