The Michael Knowles Show - A Story Of Detransitioning

00:00:00.000 From the media, from the schools, from the politicians, all we ever hear these days

00:00:11.680 is how important it is to encourage people to transition their gender when they feel the

00:00:18.460 inkling that they ought to transition their gender. Doesn't matter what age they are,

00:00:23.880 doesn't matter what other issues are going on in their lives, doesn't matter if the children

00:00:27.580 are children or really little children. If a little boy says, I am really a little girl or a little

00:00:34.500 girl says, I am really a little boy, the new prevailing consensus is we must put them on

00:00:40.700 chemicals, possibly put them through surgery, stop puberty, try to reverse puberty. There is no

00:00:47.440 stopping that. As a result, some people who have had these kinds of procedures pushed upon them or

00:00:55.100 who have engaged in them, apparently willingly, have wanted to reverse them. And you're seeing

00:01:00.340 this trend spike up now, even as the laws in some places make it illegal to prevent kids from going

00:01:06.920 through these processes. One of the people who has transitioned and detransitioned is Helena Kirshner.

00:01:14.660 Helena Kirshner is a 23-year-old detransitioned woman. She began to transition shortly after her

00:01:23.980 18th birthday and has now transitioned back. Quite an odyssey. Helena, thank you so much for

00:01:30.760 coming on the show. Thank you very much for having me. So we don't have a ton of time. I wish we could

00:01:37.560 speak for four or five hours. I have about a thousand questions for you. So we'll start at the very

00:01:42.840 beginning. What was it right after your 18th birthday, or I imagine in the years before that,

00:01:50.420 that made you think that you were a boy? Or is it the case that you thought you were a boy or you

00:01:58.960 thought that you were a trans boy? You know, not quite a boy, but something different and certainly

00:02:05.420 not a woman. Yeah, absolutely. So for me, it wasn't just like one moment where I woke up and I said,

00:02:13.000 I'm a boy. Um, actually as a child, I wasn't very atypical in like a gender sense. Um, I, you know,

00:02:22.140 I, I liked girly clothes. I had no problem with it. I had no problem with girl toys. Um, so it was

00:02:29.140 never an issue for me, but what really kind of changed that for me was around the time I was 15

00:02:36.360 years old. I was going through a period in my life where I just didn't have a lot of friends. Um,

00:02:42.740 I was having body insecurities that were just really kind of tormenting me. Um, and this led me to

00:02:49.500 go online a lot. I kind of stopped having friends in the real world. I stopped really engaging in

00:02:56.280 school and I turned to internet communities that allowed me to discuss some of my interests and my

00:03:03.280 passions with other young girls. Um, and in these internet communities, um, for me, that was a

00:03:09.480 website called Tumblr. Um, it's very, the, the gender ideology is very prominent there. And as kind

00:03:17.220 of a prerequisite to being able to participate in those social communities, you have to really agree

00:03:22.620 with the gender ideology. And there's a lot of social incentives to do something like, um, change

00:03:29.780 your pronouns from a she, her to a, they, them. That's a very small step. That isn't an instant

00:03:35.740 commitment to like becoming a boy or transitioning. So that's how it started for me. I felt that kind

00:03:41.740 of social pressure. And so I did start to change my pronouns. Um, and it took two or three years

00:03:48.160 before I actually reached that place where I was like, I'm a boy. And it was this feedback loop of

00:03:54.760 getting that positive response from the other people online. Every time I would do something

00:03:59.380 that was moving towards changing my gender, um, that led me to over the course of those years,

00:04:05.500 kind of self indoctrinate, um, into thinking that I was a boy. It's so frightening because what you're

00:04:13.380 describing, you were 15 years old, you felt socially awkward, you had body issues. I think that describes

00:04:21.540 every single 15 year old, certainly every six, 15 year old girl. And so you've got this totally common

00:04:28.700 issue. And, and it wasn't even that you were, uh, indoctrinated into this ideology at the mall with

00:04:36.520 your friends or in the classroom, even it was the internet. It was this, you know, there was this

00:04:43.440 portal in, in your room or on your phone. And, and in order to be accepted in these communities and to

00:04:50.300 participate in these communities, you had to participate in this ideology.

00:04:53.800 Absolutely. The ideology is so prevalent and something that I think a lot of, you know,

00:05:00.600 older generations don't quite understand is that in the perspective of that 15 year old girl who

00:05:07.400 has had a falling out with her friends, she feels lonely. She feels insecure. Those internet communities

00:05:14.080 that they then find that feel so accepting to them, they feel like the be all and end all. It's not just

00:05:20.560 something you're casually kind of browsing to get updates about your favorite show or celebrity.

00:05:26.220 It's like these internet communities are, you know, they're what, what makes you feel accepted

00:05:31.380 and they're where you want to fit in. So you're willing to do almost anything to kind of conform to

00:05:37.980 that social group. And it's not necessarily a conscious thing where you're saying, Oh, I'm going to

00:05:43.360 change my gender so that I'll fit in. But it's like, you, you, you have all of these kinds of

00:05:47.960 subconscious motivations that are saying, you know, um, and also things that are very overt.

00:05:53.100 I mean, there are people in these communities who will say, if you don't like your body,

00:05:57.980 that's a sign of gender dysphoria. If you don't fit in with other girls, that's a sign of gender

00:06:02.640 dysphoria. If you don't like the way your voice sounds in a recording, that's a sign of gender

00:06:07.740 dysphoria. I have to pause you there. If you don't like the way that's real, not one single person

00:06:13.060 on earth likes the way their voice sounds in a recording, that's, that's a universal experience.

00:06:18.380 Exactly. So you have these messages that as a teenager, you don't really realize how universal

00:06:23.460 it is, but you have these, these people in these posts and, and everything telling you that these

00:06:28.460 are all signs of gender dysphoria. And so you have that, these, these subconscious motivations,

00:06:33.200 and you also have that overt kind of brainwashing that happens that encourages,

00:06:38.960 encourages you to reinterpret everything in your life as a sign of gender dysphoria.

00:06:44.240 So the reinterpretation I think is really interesting. Did you grow up with a particularly

00:06:50.320 solid worldview? You know, were you raised Christian or were you raised with some particular political

00:06:56.200 view or, or, or not? Um, so I wasn't really raised Christian, although I did attend a Catholic

00:07:02.980 school. My parents kind of lean conservative and they were always suspicious of public schools. So

00:07:08.800 I did start out going to a Catholic school though. We weren't really practicing in any way. Um,

00:07:14.600 and as for any kind of political view, I think I vaguely just tried to copy what my parents were

00:07:21.320 talking about, but it obviously as a child, like you're not the one really having those views.

00:07:25.480 So then I really didn't have like any kind of stable value system. So then when I was able to go into

00:07:34.100 these online communities, unsupervised without the adults in my life, kind of checking in, like,

00:07:39.760 what is it you're doing on your computer for all those hours? Then I was just really vulnerable to

00:07:44.860 internalizing these messages and these political views that are in these online spaces. And one of

00:07:51.200 the things that's so alluring about them is, you know, I think every teenager goes through a period

00:07:57.180 where they want to kind of differentiate from their parents. They want to say, Oh, mom and dad are,

00:08:01.600 you know, old fashioned, they're outdated, blah, blah, blah. That's pretty natural. But this kind

00:08:06.500 of political worldview that you find in these online communities, it turns that feeling that you have

00:08:13.440 of, Oh, my parents suck into like a radical political thing. It makes it feel so validated,

00:08:18.600 so important. So that's also another reason why it just really appealed to me to adopt beliefs about

00:08:25.260 gender and race and sexuality that my family didn't have.

00:08:30.160 Right. So you're in this world for two years, three years. At a certain point, you say, I am a boy,

00:08:38.540 and I'm going to transition to be a boy. Can you, I'm not even sure that you would have been

00:08:43.560 conscious of this really, or aware of it. But what did that look like? I mean, no matter how gradual

00:08:50.000 the process is, to actually come out one day and say, I am a boy, what, what was going on in your

00:08:56.480 mind to, to make you think that you were a boy? Um, it's, it's a lot to unpack. I mean, it's,

00:09:06.460 it's something that's very heavily influenced by fantasy, by being constantly plugged into this kind

00:09:15.560 of alternate reality that doesn't have a lot of basis in the physical world. Um, so it's,

00:09:23.020 it's a lot of talking to other peers who are very creative. They're imagining these ideas,

00:09:28.120 they're imagining these, what their future is going to look like, and just not really having

00:09:32.480 any pushback against that from any of your peers. And so that just very easily, I feel spirals out of

00:09:38.680 control. And there's also this element of, you know, when you are using social media and you're

00:09:45.720 constantly scrolling it all day, you're just getting message after message, after picture,

00:09:50.820 after idea, kind of seeping into your mind. And when you don't have those good, you know,

00:09:57.300 stable relationships outside of the internet, it's really easy for that to all go in question.

00:10:02.100 So you can begin to form beliefs that don't stand up to scrutiny and would easily kind of fall apart

00:10:08.380 if you were to verbalize them to someone who is actually critical of those ideas, but engaging you

00:10:13.840 in a, in a compassionate way. Um, you're able to just carry those ideas with you and make decisions

00:10:19.880 based off of them. When in reality, the ideas themselves, like they don't make sense. They're

00:10:24.740 not founded in reality. So for me, it was, it was a lot of stuff just based on fantasy, based on

00:10:33.180 literally just pictures that I was seeing all the time of cute boys. And then these messages

00:10:38.860 that were saying, you know, your life is going to be so much better. If you transition, you are trans.

00:10:44.040 The reason you don't fit in with other girls is because you're trans. So it's really this stew,

00:10:49.140 this, this big complicated stew of unreality that young people fall into when they're just scrolling

00:10:57.080 all day on social media, um, and don't have pushback. Really? That technological point had

00:11:03.740 not totally occurred to me. That is such an insightful point when kids go outside and they

00:11:09.060 play superheroes and you're going to be Superman and you're going to be Batman and you play around,

00:11:13.900 but you never fly. You can't fly because when you're playing around outside, you are tethered to

00:11:19.580 the physical world. But when you're scrolling, when you're online, there is basically no connection

00:11:26.180 to the physical world. Now we're talking about the metaverse. You know, Facebook is creating this

00:11:30.780 true virtual reality that people are going to live in. There is no reason why a boy couldn't be a girl

00:11:36.740 and a girl couldn't be a boy. The physical doesn't really matter. That's a really, really insightful

00:11:41.320 point. So you, you go into Tumblr, you spend your whole day scrolling there. You're being inundated with

00:11:49.380 these messages and these images telling you your life's going to be better if you're a boy. You decide,

00:11:52.880 okay, I'm going to transition. You're 18 years old, 18 in a couple of days.

00:11:59.120 What is the reaction? Um, from people in my life, your family, any friends, you, you said you didn't

00:12:06.620 have really friends outside of the internet, but the reaction online. I had a very, yeah, I had a small

00:12:12.700 group of friends, but they were all also using this website Tumblr. So it was still like our friendship

00:12:18.200 was very mediated weirdly through the social media that we were using. Um, but yeah, my parents

00:12:24.460 definitely, um, I told my mom about my intention to transition and she understandably did not take

00:12:31.180 it well. Um, but our relationship was already a bit strained at that point. So, um, I just don't feel

00:12:38.140 like we were communicating very effectively and her response, which was really a lot of, um, anger

00:12:44.700 that actually made me a little bit more resistant. It made me more steadfast in my conviction that

00:12:52.140 being trans was the right thing. So, um, yes, I, about two weeks after my 18th birthday, I did make

00:13:00.900 an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic because at the time there wasn't as many clinics as there

00:13:06.880 are now. Um, so I had to actually travel to another state to go to a Planned Parenthood because they were

00:13:11.620 one of the only ones offering this informed consent model, which is really the easiest way to get

00:13:17.000 hormones. So you, you went into Planned Parenthood. You said, I am identifying as a boy. I think that

00:13:23.040 I'm a boy. Did they say, okay, well, you've got to go talk to some therapists for some period of

00:13:28.180 months or years, or did they say here, here are the pills lady go here are the pills, sir. Go have,

00:13:32.540 go have a good day. Pretty much here. It's not even pills. It's injections. Um, here are the

00:13:38.160 injections, sir. Um, so yeah, my appointment took about an hour. Um, the first maybe 20 minutes or

00:13:45.920 so was a short back and forth between my, the social worker that I met at the Planned Parenthood.

00:13:51.980 And actually, if you read my sub stack piece, I wrote a sub stack piece about basically my whole

00:13:57.060 journey. Um, I show these questions that the social worker asked me in there, there, uh, it's not deep

00:14:03.520 psychological work to say the least. Um, so I had this short, uh, interview intake process with the

00:14:11.280 social worker. And then she, you know, came back in and said, you're the perfect candidate for

00:14:16.200 testosterone. Let's get you started. And so I moved on to the nurse practitioner and the nurse

00:14:22.300 practitioner went over a very short list of risks with me, um, that were very understated. It said things

00:14:31.060 like you may have mood issues, which is like, that's not a way to properly convey the possibilities of,

00:14:38.180 of hormonal treatment. But anyway, so I looked over this short list and so, and then we started

00:14:45.460 talking about the dosage and typically when, you know, when you start a regimen of anything, they

00:14:52.980 start, you want to lower dosage. And then if it's decided that you need to go on a higher dosage,

00:14:58.000 then you will gradually move up. Um, and so that's what she suggested to me. And I being my very

00:15:04.620 confused teenage self, I told her that I think I'm going to need a higher dose because I think I have

00:15:11.320 more estrogen because I have wider hips. And the nurse practitioner just did not question this at

00:15:19.560 all. And she said, okay, so how much would you like? And I said, it's like when you go to a drug

00:15:27.220 dealer, you know, some of my, uh, more derelict friends, they'll go to their, their drug dealer.

00:15:31.520 You see this with really, uh, you know, kind of like this woman, I guess, questionable, dubious

00:15:37.600 psychiatrists where they'll say, okay, I'm going to give you X amount of Adderall. And then, you know,

00:15:42.900 a junkie will say, oh no, I'd like three times that actually. And they say, okay, no big deal.

00:15:46.660 So this, this woman just goes along with an 18 year old girl confused about her sex says,

00:15:52.700 yeah. Okay. How many milligrams do you want? And I say, you know, what's the highest we can go?

00:15:58.580 And she says a hundred milligrams is usually the highest we do. And if you look at kind of the,

00:16:04.680 the guidelines, various universities and health systems, they have guidelines and a hundred

00:16:08.840 milligrams is usually the maximum dosage. And so that's what I started on right out the gate as an

00:16:14.520 18 year old girl was a hundred milligrams of testosterone as an injection.

00:16:19.740 So you, you start taking the testosterone. What does it do? I mean, what does that feel like?

00:16:25.900 So at first the biggest changes were kind of what you would expect. Although being myself in my mind

00:16:34.640 at the time, I didn't make the connection. I just didn't understand what was happening to me. It was

00:16:38.480 very disorienting, but the first kind of symptoms was just more irritability. Um, I just felt kind of

00:16:45.740 antsy, like little things would bother me. Things people would say would just kind of set me off.

00:16:51.740 I noticed that my, my temper was a little bit more out of control. I would snap at people more easily.

00:16:58.620 I didn't really want to be around people all that much. Cause I just didn't feel like myself again.

00:17:02.780 And I felt so disoriented. So I started isolating a lot more. Um, and then obviously the other obvious

00:17:09.240 effect is like that higher sex drive, which for me as a young girl who I feel like before testosterone,

00:17:16.760 I had a fairly average, you know, female sex drive experience. Um, it just really went through the

00:17:22.340 roof and it was, I felt really out of control. I felt really overwhelmed. It was not a pleasant

00:17:28.820 experience. Um, so that's kind of where it started out, which I think is somewhat to be expected,

00:17:36.760 but my experience took maybe an unexpected turn possibly because I was on such a high dose. Although

00:17:44.560 there's no answers. I still have never really been able to get answers for some of these things,

00:17:49.440 um, where that anger would get so intense. I would have like such overwhelming rage attacks

00:17:56.380 that I actually would end up hurting myself instead of hurting others because I was just so out of

00:18:02.700 control. I couldn't control myself. I felt like a monster. And so that was definitely the, the biggest

00:18:10.320 consequence for me. And I kind of, I dealt with that maybe once or twice a week or a little bit less

00:18:16.440 at some times, um, for a few months. And it eventually got so bad where I had to be hospitalized.

00:18:23.260 Well, and when, when you say you were hurting yourself, you're, you're not saying you went

00:18:26.840 into a fit of rage and fell off the bed. You're saying you're, you were actively taking a conscious

00:18:31.400 sort of decision to, to self harm. Yeah, it was, um, it's a very difficult experience to describe,

00:18:39.740 but, um, I guess before I was on testosterone, when I would have a really strong emotion,

00:18:45.260 it might move me to tears and I would just cry and sob. But while I was on testosterone,

00:18:51.560 I lost the ability to cry very easily. So I would get that intense emotion, but there would be no

00:18:58.860 outlet. And then for one reason or another, that would trigger anger. I would get so angry and

00:19:04.020 frustrated. And that anger was just so overwhelming. And I got the urge to really externalize it. I got

00:19:10.180 the urge to hit things or, or throw things. I just didn't want to do that. I felt so out of control

00:19:16.440 that I would just kind of take it out on myself to calm myself down and to be an outlet for that

00:19:21.660 rage. Cause I didn't know how else to handle it. I was completely overwhelmed. And so during this

00:19:26.160 period, I no need to answer if you feel I'm prying too much, but as you were transitioning your sex,

00:19:33.520 did you, did you feel you had a transition of your sexual desire? I mean, were you, you say you had

00:19:39.540 this very high sex drive? Were you, were you attracted to boys or girls? Um, I've always like,

00:19:46.500 you know, primarily been attracted to boys, but honestly, like one of the things that was so

00:19:52.440 overwhelming about like this, like increased sex drive was the fact that just like visual things

00:19:59.240 were more easily arousing. So I might see like a photo of a provocatively dressed woman and my brain

00:20:06.460 would almost like register that as like, Oh, that's a sexual thing. You're going to interpret

00:20:10.680 that as sexual, but I wasn't really seeking out relationships with women or anything, but yeah,

00:20:16.060 it was a, that was a really interesting experience. Um, ever since quitting testosterone, I've lost all

00:20:22.340 that. I just am attracted to men now, but yeah. So you're, so you're in this, this sounds really

00:20:28.180 like hell. You're already a confused teenager. You now are hyper sexualized, hyper filled with rage.

00:20:37.960 And this goes on for, this goes on for how long before you decide, Hey, maybe I'm not actually a

00:20:44.360 boy. Um, so that went on for a few months. And I talk about in my piece about how I actually needed

00:20:53.120 to be hospitalized twice due to this. Um, and sometime after, and just as a side note, not once

00:21:00.860 in either of my hospitalizations or any of my mental health treatment that I was receiving because of

00:21:06.360 these extreme symptoms was the testosterone ever mentioned. That was never brought up. Like I would

00:21:13.020 write down, you know, I'm a biological female F and I'm on a hundred milligrams a week of testosterone,

00:21:18.940 but none of these psychiatrists and none of these nurses and none of these doctors ever mentioned

00:21:24.680 that testosterone as possibly a reason for my experience. I was just diagnosed with a bunch of

00:21:30.760 different things and prescribed a bunch of different psych meds and just kind of sent on my way. Um, so it took

00:21:36.160 me kind of skipping testosterone doses because I was developing an anxiety of the needle. So I started

00:21:45.700 skipping my doses. And as I started taking the testosterone less, my crazy, insane symptoms

00:21:52.720 started going away. And so that was one of the things that kind of clued me in to like, huh? Okay.

00:21:59.100 Well, maybe I'm not just like a mentally ill, crazy person. Maybe it's the testosterone. So I started

00:22:06.060 kind of scaling back on that. And then around this time, I was doing a lot of reflecting on, you know,

00:22:13.980 this is not matching up to that fantasy I had as a teenager, as a teenager, I was kind of promised,

00:22:20.140 you know, like, this is going to save your life. This is going to make you feel authentic. This is

00:22:24.060 going to make you your true self. This is going to make you so happy. Um, you see all this stuff,

00:22:29.260 like, you know, it's trans joy, like all this kind of like really frilly, happy, positive language.

00:22:35.820 That's not what happened to me. So I really started to kind of comparing my reality versus

00:22:43.800 my expectations before I transitioned. And eventually that led me to just fully realize

00:22:51.560 that it was all a total mistake. And I, I, I realized very quickly that I was just really

00:22:59.200 confused. And this whole trans thing was not real for me. I just can't get over the medical

00:23:06.080 malpractice of you get a patient like you comes into the doctor. The doctor says, okay, well,

00:23:11.040 this young girl is taking an insane amount of testosterone, injecting it into her every single

00:23:17.340 day. Yeah. Maybe cut back on the Coca-Colas and you'll feel better. Oh, maybe we should ply her

00:23:21.860 with more drugs. That'll, that'll fix it. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with this

00:23:26.900 totally unnatural experimental medical procedure that we've only been doing for like five minutes.

00:23:33.560 That is so insanely irresponsible that if you weren't saying it to my face right now,

00:23:38.780 I wouldn't believe it. I know. And it's, it's almost hard for me to believe,

00:23:42.180 but it's like, think about it. It's not just one doctor who did that either. It's multiple doctors,

00:23:48.580 multiple nurses, multiple therapists that I met throughout two hospitalizations and just

00:23:55.700 multiple mental health programs. And none of them ever brought up the testosterone or questioned

00:24:02.640 my trans status whatsoever. That's truly insane. Probably they feared they'd lose their license if

00:24:10.420 they ever made any mention of this. It's so politically incorrect. So, so you on your own with

00:24:15.920 no help from these useless doctors, you on your own realize, huh, when I inject the testosterone less

00:24:21.980 and less, I, the symptoms abate, how old are you at this point? So at that point I was about 19,

00:24:29.920 19 and a half. Okay. So do you then come to the conclusion? Okay. I've got to stop this. I've,

00:24:37.140 you know, the fantasy isn't matching up. I I've got to go back to being a girl so that this would have

00:24:42.320 been little, little, little before you turned 20. Uh, yeah, about six months before I turned 20,

00:24:48.540 I just had this like breakthrough moment of like, holy cow, this is insane. It's really weird. When

00:24:56.780 I think back to it, it's like one moment I was kind of under this spell in this delusion. And then the

00:25:02.600 next moment it was like this, the dormant, like rational me inside of me woke up and was like,

00:25:08.900 holy cow, this is totally insane. Why am I trying to be a boy? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. It seems so

00:25:17.020 simple, but if you're in the throes of it, you know, maybe it's not. So, so at that point,

00:25:21.820 do you just throw out the testosterone or do you go to a doctor and sort of change your

00:25:25.920 classification or what happens? No. Yeah. I mostly just stopped taking the testosterone. I threw it

00:25:33.000 all out. Um, I was really like disgusted by it. I just wanted it out of my sight. I wanted it out of my

00:25:38.100 living space. Um, and I went to this clinic that I had been going to, and I did tell them that I had

00:25:45.540 stopped the testosterone, but they didn't ask why. Um, and I felt too ashamed and embarrassed to,

00:25:52.060 to tell them because at that point, I really thought that I was the only person on earth

00:25:57.300 who had ever regretted transitioning. Um, that was never a concept in my mind. All I thought was trans

00:26:04.960 is awesome. Trans is amazing. Life is going to be awesome. And so I just, I felt so embarrassed.

00:26:10.440 So I didn't say anything to those clinicians because I knew that they're, I mean, this was a

00:26:14.920 clinic in Chicago with like black lives matter and trans rights are human rights splattered all over

00:26:22.600 their clinic. Um, where all the clinicians were transgender too. So, um, I was, I was very scared

00:26:29.320 to say anything about my regrets to them because I knew how people had treated the idea of regret in

00:26:35.160 the trans community, which is not in a nice way. Not in a nice, is it a denial that people really do

00:26:41.720 have regret or is it just outright hostility? Um, it can be both. So it's denial that regret ever

00:26:47.960 happens. You know, you see these like kind of statistics thrown around that are really, they're

00:26:52.840 not relevant to the situation at hand where it's like, Oh, only zero, zero, zero, like 0.0001% of

00:26:59.600 people regret transitioning. No. Um, so you see that kind of denial and then you also get that

00:27:07.440 hostility where it's like, Oh, well you're just stupid. You're just, you know, everyone else is

00:27:11.800 trans, but you're just an idiot. Um, where it's like, they really turn on you where it's like, when

00:27:16.760 you are that 15 year old, 16 year old, um, saying that, Oh, does this mean I'm trans? They're like,

00:27:22.700 yes, that means you're trans. You're so trans. You, you need to like, you need to question yourself

00:27:26.000 more. You need to change your pronouns. You need to get a binder. You need to do this. I'll buy you

00:27:29.460 a binder, all these people. And then as soon as you regret it, they're like, Oh, you're an idiot.

00:27:34.800 Could you forgive my, what is a binder?

00:27:37.400 Oh, it's a chest compression thing. So when I was on Tumblr, some, uh, and actually an older adult

00:27:43.820 person on Tumblr bought me a chest compressor when I was about 15 or 16.

00:27:50.700 Man. So, okay. So you, you go, you say, okay, I've, I'm not doing this anymore. I put,

00:27:58.680 I put the testosterone away. Have you, you seem, you seem great. You seem, uh, you know,

00:28:04.620 sort of back to normal. Uh, have you had long lasting effects from these years? I guess luckily it was

00:28:11.460 only a couple of years or so on this testosterone. It doesn't sound like you did any further procedures

00:28:18.000 that might've been harder to reverse. Are you dealing with long, long-term effects?

00:28:22.760 Um, I have been really fortunate in that I haven't had any long-term health effects, which is

00:28:28.720 not something that many people can say. Many people, even after maybe only two years on testosterone,

00:28:35.140 like they're still dealing with very permanent effects and sometimes it can be dangerous health

00:28:39.620 effects too. Um, but I have been really fortunate for me. The hardest part has been kind of

00:28:44.760 the psychological aspect of feeling like, like I was really indoctrinated and I was really led down

00:28:52.840 a bad path by, um, just people that, that I didn't know. And that didn't know me. And we're just

00:29:00.480 encouraging me to make these decisions. Um, and telling me that life would be so amazing. And

00:29:05.160 that's been really hard to kind of come back from. And also just other than the, the transitioning in

00:29:14.380 and of itself, I made a lot of decisions at that young age, chasing this fantasy that were really

00:29:21.420 not good for my life. Um, and so kind of, it's been just like digging myself out of this hole that I dug

00:29:27.440 for myself at a really young age, but now thankfully, you know, some years after I'm really like doing a lot

00:29:33.820 better and I'm just kind of focusing on telling my story so that people can understand better what's

00:29:39.980 going on because a lot of people just really aren't aware about so many of these things that

00:29:44.140 we're talking about today. What do you mean you sort of made decisions for your life that you're

00:29:50.340 digging out of now beyond the, obviously the physical, you're shooting yourself up with

00:29:54.260 testosterone. What, what other, if you don't mind sharing, what, what other sort of decisions?

00:29:58.380 Yeah. There's kind of this common dynamic in the trans community where it's like,

00:30:04.180 if your parents don't completely agree with your being trans and your transitioning, that they're

00:30:10.580 evil and they're horrible and you need to cut them out of your life. And so I actually did do that for a

00:30:17.060 period of time where I just completely stopped talking to my family. And, um, on the one hand,

00:30:22.900 I feel like I really hurt my brother in that way. I have a little brother and I think like he really

00:30:29.060 needed his sister during some of those periods. And I just wasn't there because I was chasing this pipe

00:30:35.520 dream. And then on the other hand, um, while I was kind of disengaged with my family, my grandma

00:30:41.620 developed Alzheimer's. And by the time I was able to reconnect with them, she was basically gone.

00:30:48.220 So that's been one of the most difficult things to cope with. Um, just, just in my,

00:30:54.120 in this like haze of chasing this false identity and this ideological thing. Um, I, I gave up one of

00:31:04.140 these really important relationships in my life. Um, so yeah, that's been really difficult.

00:31:09.220 So that's, that's, that is, that is hard. And it's, it is a reminder, everybody, not just people

00:31:15.720 who go down this kind of crazy rabbit hole, which you're describing as being quite cultish,

00:31:20.980 right? Cut off all your family, uh, you know, pursue this very sort of radical view of human

00:31:26.540 nature and fantasy. But, but everyone to some degree, you know, does deals with these things

00:31:32.820 where, ah, if I had not been so focused on this one thing, I could have, I should have done this

00:31:37.700 differently. I could, you know, this, this really sent me back a number of years. So now that this

00:31:42.660 is being debated, not just for 18 year olds, by the way, but for eight year olds, for five year olds,

00:31:48.480 there's a big fight over a law in Florida that says you can't talk about transgenderism in a

00:31:54.220 kindergarten classroom. And, and the white house is saying this is horrible and abusive. And of course,

00:31:59.040 we need to talk about transgenderism to toddlers. What is your advice for parents who,

00:32:04.980 who might be dealing with this with their own kids now or in the very near future?

00:32:12.020 So, um, for parents who aren't dealing with it quite yet, um, I think one really important thing

00:32:20.920 is to, you know, recognize that social media is very dangerous and these devices that kids are using

00:32:29.720 are very dangerous because they don't have, you know, adult level, rational cognitive faculties.

00:32:35.500 And even many adults are not really able to moderate and think critically when interacting with

00:32:41.600 some of these platforms. So one thing I kind of ask parents to think about is when your child wants

00:32:48.660 to go for a sleepover, you ask them, who is this friend? How did you meet? Who is their mom? Where do

00:32:55.140 they live? What is her phone number? Uh, you maybe even want to meet the parents and go to coffee with

00:33:00.560 them and get to know them. But when your child's been sitting on their phone for six hours straight,

00:33:05.920 you have no idea where they are and who they're talking to. Um, and kind of going with that,

00:33:13.300 I think a lot of parents, you know, reflexively think that the solution is to just ban all social

00:33:19.440 media. Um, and while I think that's really well intended, these kids are more, um, intuitively

00:33:26.440 able to get around that. They're better at using social media than you are. They will get around

00:33:32.380 it. So just like, um, to protect your kids from someone in the real world, you wouldn't ban them

00:33:37.900 from ever talking to anybody, period. You would talk to them about who their friends are and get to know

00:33:44.240 what they're doing and what they're thinking about and who they're friends with. Um, you should

00:33:49.100 approach social media in a similar way, get to know, like, especially if they're still young,

00:33:55.240 um, just get to know what they're doing, what they're interested in, learn about what, how they're

00:34:00.020 spending their time because when they are on these devices, like that's still time spent. That's still

00:34:06.640 information learned. That's still conversations had with people who you don't know who they are. So

00:34:12.420 I really encourage parents to focus on that communication and really, um, understanding

00:34:18.880 what their kids are doing on their devices. Um, as for parents who may be going through a child who

00:34:25.620 already is identifying as trans and, you know, you know, in your gut that it's just not the right

00:34:30.840 thing. Um, I would recommend checking out an organization that I'm a part of. It's called

00:34:36.620 Genspect. That's G-E-N-S-P-E-C-T. It's basically a, um, organization that advocates for parents and

00:34:45.420 has all sorts of groups where parents can talk and be advised on how best to navigate your

00:34:52.360 relationship with this, um, this kind of crisis that is fomenting. So yeah, highly recommend

00:34:59.200 Genspect and getting involved in parent communities and learning about the better ways to manage this

00:35:06.040 because, um, it's always better to be informed. That, that analogy you just made of the sleep

00:35:12.100 over. I haven't heard that before. That's such an apt analogy because obviously you wouldn't,

00:35:17.120 you wouldn't send your kid to a sleep over where you have no idea who the kid's sleeping with. You

00:35:22.020 have no idea where the kid is going. And yet when you send your kid up to his room and he's got his

00:35:27.140 smartphone or a laptop or a tablet or something at 10 o'clock at night and he's scrolling on Tumblr or

00:35:32.700 whatever social media device talking to God knows who, you are sending your kid to a sleep over.

00:35:38.940 There, there is really no difference. It's just one, one is taking place in virtual reality,

00:35:43.600 which can indoctrinate them into ideologies that are virtual reality.

00:35:49.460 Like imagine if your 12 year old child asked if they could go to an, a meetup with people from

00:35:57.080 China. Like it's like, would you just let them board that plane and go without asking anything

00:36:02.820 about it? Or would you like really try to understand what was going on? Yeah. Wow. Uh,

00:36:08.920 an amazing story, Helena. Thank you so much for coming on. Uh, where, where else can people find you?

00:36:14.360 Um, I am on Twitter, um, and Substack both are under the same name. Um, it's pronounced LaCroix,

00:36:22.260 like the drink. Um, but the last three letters instead of an X are a C S Z. Um, that's a little

00:36:28.940 bit difficult. Maybe you can put it in the show notes or something, but, um, yeah, you can find me

00:36:33.160 on Twitter and on Substack. Wonderful. I really encourage people to head over there. I loved that,

00:36:37.520 that essay you put up on Substack. Uh, I'll have to take a look at your other writing as well.

00:36:41.900 Really wonderful stuff. Helena Kirshner, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you very much.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 25, 2022

A Story Of Detransitioning ｜ Helena Kerschner

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