HANNAFORD： The terrible cost of transitioning comes later
Episode Stats
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147.86134
Summary
In this episode, I interview two women who transitioned to present themselves as males, regretted it, and have transitioned back again. The experience has been difficult, painful, and a profound well of regret for both of them, and they are not back where they started. However, it is not now all as if it had never happened.
Transcript
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good evening western standard viewers and welcome to hanaford a weekly politics show
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my guests this week are faith growlow and kelly lynn
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Piri. And before I go any further, I should warn viewers that some of this may be hard to watch.
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Faith and Kelly Lynn are women who transitioned to present themselves as males, regretted it,
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and have transitioned back again. The experience has been difficult, painful,
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and a profound well of regret for both of them and they are not back where they started
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that is it is not now all as if it had never happened for the benefit of others however
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they join me today to tell their stories faith kelly lynn welcome to the show thank you
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can i start with you uh just tell us please what happened so i was gender questioning by about 15
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years old i had found a show called i am jazz and so science was telling me that this little boy
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could be a little girl and i believed that the doctors wouldn't do it if it wasn't okay
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so i was justified in my thinking that going against my religious family was okay that their
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concerns were just because they were old fuddy duddies and they didn't know what they were
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talking about so by 16 i was seeing doctors and i was given puberty blockers by 17 and 18 i had
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been approved for top surgery and i was given testosterone which is the cross-sex or wrong sex
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hormone for me and by 18 i had aged out of the clinic because it was specifically for youth so
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the doctors who diagnosed me and prescribed my medications did not follow up with me i was deemed
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a successful transition to them. However by 2020 because of COVID the testosterone I was getting
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they ran out of the vials so I had to get a more expensive medication that I couldn't afford. So I
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was changing medications without much supervision and then it was changing the dosage as well
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without much supervision. By 22 years old I realized I didn't need to rush and I really
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wasn't using it consistently so I stopped all medications and I around 23 24 found some
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information that basically solidified the idea to me that my doctors didn't really know what they
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were doing essentially allowed me to diagnose myself incorrectly and just affirmed that rather
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than actually questioning any of it and so I began to detransition April of this year actually
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and started to come back out as my natural self.
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Stopping all medications and no longer further pursuing any surgical or chemical changes.
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I believe you told me earlier that you had not had any kind of surgery.
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Okay. Kelly Lynn, can I ask you then, please, what's your story?
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I grew up, I'm an adult who lives with a history of childhood sexual exploitation.
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In that house, there was a lot of abuse, drugs, and alcohol.
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When my mother left her pedophile husband, he went to jail for sexually interfering with me.
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Then she got back together with my biological dad.
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my 20s my 30s were cycles of drugs alcohol sobriety relapse and just circling in that
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in my early 30s in 2002 I got cleaner sober and uh in that process I the degree of social anxiety
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um the discomfort I was living in women's support recovery and it felt like the emotions of the
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people around me were just happening to me. And I met some individuals who were transitioning
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themselves. And I was asking them about it. And they're like, oh, people who question,
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like, you're wondering if you really are a woman. And the only people who are trans
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question that. And then when I spoke with it, my drug and alcohol counselor about that,
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She was in what's called the affirmation model, so she affirmed that, of course, a man living in a sport recovery house would be incredibly uncomfortable.
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It wasn't about my, like I look back now and I realize that I wasn't able to regulate my emotions around so many other people, so I was constantly trying to control the other women.
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And so just affirming my discomfort with my sex as it being about the envy I had for men was this feeling of being a male.
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I think a lot of women do see advantages in being male.
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You have obviously both looked at it from a male point of view as well as a female view.
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how would you answer them if they said to you oh so i want to be a man because and then cited off
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all these advantages that they perceive i'll start again with you um i would first ask if
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they know all of the risks truly of what they might be doing to themselves which unfortunately
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you can't possibly because we haven't had proper clinical trials so nobody really knows long term
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And what happens to kids who are on these drugs and any information we have is not great.
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What motivates men to do the things they do, to make the sacrifices they make for their career, is very different than what motivates women.
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I learned that during my years as a long-haul trucker.
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I was in a specialized industry where 90% of my colleagues were men.
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and so you were a truck driver as a woman no when i looked like a man when i had six inch beard
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all of my co-workers thought i was a man um i really learned that men and women think very
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differently about stuff i'd worked there for about five years and one of my colleagues commented
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that you realize my legal name then was kenneth so he's like you realize ken that we are all very
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afraid of you and I'm like why I'm like so calm so easygoing he's like exactly no one has even
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seen you mildly upset so they were convinced that if they ever upset me I would just explode because
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I've never been in the hierarchy and figuring out where guys get mildly upset and aggressive
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towards each other and they figure out where they are in the QE and of my 45 co-workers nobody knew
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where I was in the QA. So it was a moment of going, men think about things very differently
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than women do. Even looking like a man, even being on testosterone, I didn't understand
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their world and their worldview. I don't want to make light of this in any way, but who knew?
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This is such an important decision that especially a young person would make,
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that you've told us that the doctors didn't give you very good advice.
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You've said that your parents were, you described them as old-fashioned
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I can imagine what their advice to you would have been.
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And then you mentioned a program that you had seen, a jazz or something.
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So Jazz Jennings is an individual who was transitioned when they were younger.
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Mom saw a little boy dressing in dresses, playing dress-up with his sisters,
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And ended up taking him to doctors who transitioned him at a very, very young age,
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started to do ray blockers, gave the cross-sex hormones, eventually had surgeries.
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all of it all of the surgeries a 17 year old little kid so it that made it seem very very
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normal and commonplace not only that doctors were doing this surgery but it was being televised like
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it was nothing you know and jazz seems extremely happy in these videos for the most part because
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that's how it's supposed to be portrayed where is he now um off yeah yeah there's been some
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emotional issues um even in the shows nearing the end of it it was seeming like this poor kid didn't
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know who they were and didn't feel like themselves and mom just kept saying oh no it's okay you're
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exactly who we say you are don't worry about it it's okay like it there was no attempt at dealing
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with the emotional distress it was just continue affirming whatever's been done
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and that's just you know you can only do that for so long so he's a physiologically mature
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20 early 20s right i think he's 19 20 yeah i believe he's younger than i am unable of experiencing
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arousal like neurologically incapable from the drugs and the surgery so cannot mate bond with
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another human being well that would seem to be first of all i think the scope and scale of this
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is that around about the five-year period from 2018 to 2023 according to the government of
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Canada, there were 600 young women under the age of 18 who had sexual reassignment surgery,
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What is the, how does it, what is available to, I think we do the surgery under the
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provincial health programs but if you want to go back do they help you do that no okay so you're
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uh what sort of expenses are you involved with to transition back to a woman you were well what's
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called breast restoration surgery i cannot access in british columbia without the approval of the
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Transcare BC. So my doctor will be, I'm in the stage of getting the paperwork together. My doctor
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will send an application into Transcare BC, the people in charge of transitioning, to request
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that I be allowed to have access to surgery to restore the appearance of having breasts
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because I had a complete bilateral mastectomy in 2008.
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What are the physiological effects when you transition?
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And then how does it change again when you transition back?
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Essentially, for me, I had already started puberty by the time I was 16, so they shouldn't have given me puberty blockers anyway.
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And so when they did, it completely interrupted the puberty I had already started going through.
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I was then given testosterone, which is a known carcinogen, and it forces you to go through a male-like puberty,
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which I got a deeper voice. My facial hair and body hair started growing in darker and thicker.
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I gained more muscle mass and it was distributed differently than it would be for a woman,
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which made me fit differently in clothes. But the problem is male clothes still didn't fit
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properly because I had the bone structure of a woman because I didn't get the puberty blockers
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before puberty. So that didn't really help anything. My balance actually went funny,
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because if you're on puberty blockers and testosterone, your breasts essentially deflate,
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and I was also using a chest binder, so it made them squish down. So my center of balance
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actually got shifted. Puberty blockers, because I did not finish out my puberty properly,
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it stunted my physical growth, my emotional and mental growth. It actually keeps you stuck in
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a teenage-like state mentally because you don't grow up to be able to make those long-term
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decisions because you're suppressing all of the hormones that are supposed to help you do that
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with me i actually was fortunate i ended up going off of the blockers a little early
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because i was on birth control which did something similar but the doctors still
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didn't really know what they were doing just kind of let me do what i wanted and experiment on myself
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um and so when i went off of the puberty blockers my my system kind of kick-started again a little
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bit uh so then i came out of menopause got to go through it backwards again um and then once i was
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off of testosterone uh i ended up trying to finish out puberty i'm still in the midst of doing that
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in my 20s and i'm realizing my joints haven't fused properly i may have incontinence issues
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because i've gone in and out of menopause now and so my pelvic floor may be weakened i may have
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liver problems potentially that's a common side effect now that's the testosterone yes
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uh and then there's also the option of the spinal cord doesn't fuse properly all the time
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and so there are people who get compression fractures because of that because they're
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not getting the proper hormones in there um i may also be infertile but we don't know that until i
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actually try to have kids i'm very optimistic that i'm fortunate enough not to be but you know we
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don't actually know until i try it but yeah and i'm one of the luckier ones like i i have come
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out essentially unscathed in a lot of instances compared to that so you know so the worst case
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for those who did not come out unscathed exactly in a few words what um so there were some people
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that i was transitioned at the same time as who have now since attempted to detransition or desist
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but the government would only cover the actual tissue removal if you didn't have the money to
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cover the reconstruction part then you're a girl now with no breasts or nipples um some of them
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also will have hysterectomies some of them will have a phallus made um there is someone in the
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States, Scott Nugent, what they go by, born a female, was transitioned as an adult, made these
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decisions as an adult, and through all of the surgeries, ended up with horrendous infections
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that almost killed them several times, are now still killing them. The forearm that the
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ballast was made out of is now not functional properly, and they get chronic infections in
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the arm, and the hand that's attached to that arm, they may have to lose that as well.
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And these are decisions that an adult made, and now we're giving those complications to children.
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So were you suicidal because you wanted to be a different gender, or were there other issues?
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There were several other issues that were overlooked.
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and you were allowed against the wishes of your parents
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who would have been the most interested in your welfare.
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Fortunately not, but I was surrounded by a lot of people
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and our teachers had the signs of it's a safe space and all inclusion
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and there were actually several trans individuals
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But then there was also a local group of, there was one trans adult and a supportive adult.
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They had a youth group, basically, like a support group for gender questioning or trans youth.
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Is there anybody who could have headed you off from the course of action that you took?
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Is it that they don't know or that they don't care?
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Women on testosterone, especially with me, I have obesity.
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I have a highly elevated risk of type 2 diabetes,
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which I now have and I'll live with for the rest of my life.
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They didn't talk about how our secondary sex...
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Were these doctors in general practice or are these specialists in this field?
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Yeah, they should have informed me and discussed with me because I already had.
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I asked what are the health risks, and I was specifically going to an endocrinologist
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because I already had hypothyroidism, which is considered an autoimmune disease,
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and type 2 diabetes is also considered an autoimmune disease.
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So the proper course of action when a doctor is prescribing a new medication
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or a medication off-label, when they observe something out of the normal,
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is to inform the pharmaceutical company that owns the patent.
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This is what I'm seeing in my patient population.
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It appears that that is not happening as it's intended to happen in this field.
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And the WPATH files indicated the degree to which WPATH discourages the endocrinologist it trains from doing this
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because they were actually discussing instances of liver cancer in females taking testosterone.
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We are almost out of time, which is a dreadful shame, because this is a very, very deep subject.
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But I do want to ask you particularly, Faith, what you think of the legislation recently put before the Alberta legislature,
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legislature which would restrict children under the age of 18 from receiving the first of all
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surgery and I think under the age of 17 from receiving the kind of chemical interventions
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that you yourself received. Are we doing a good thing here or are we sentencing frustrated young
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people to kill themselves because they can't change sex when they want to. I believe the
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legislations would have helped because the doctors would have been forced to do a proper
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cognitive assessment. And if the doctors actually treat the suicidal ideation and the root cause of
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that, for one, a lot of these kids may not even be trans in the first place. And the ones who are
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will learn how to live well-rounded lives before they even have to get any chemicals.
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So by the time you were 18, you might not have wanted to do this?
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I simply just said to my doctors, hey, I saw this thing online.
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I think this might be what it is, but you're the expert, so let me know.
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You don't just let somebody walk in and say, I have cancer.
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But if you don't properly test them and just hand them out all the time, like the other thing as well, me getting these drugs when I wasn't supposed to have them, people who actually needed them now can't have them.
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What kind of a test would have been appropriate for you?
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Not presuming that me being sexualized when I was young was just happenstance.
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and they just bring it into the diagnostics as well,
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saying that just seems to be a theme that's okay, though.
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And if they can make a mistake once, they can make a mistake again,
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Youth need an opportunity to pause and to think.
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I had no idea how politicized the trans lobby has made research, and I am pleased to support
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the policies of Premier Daniel Smith and her government and her stance to end the bullying,
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especially in regards to the doctors and the researchers and the state of the research that
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there once again be open debate about what's going on in the medical field and for it no
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to no longer be politicized look this is i think you two are incredibly brave to
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take your stories public and to stand out in the open and tell them knowing that there could very
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well be people who are militantly opposed to what you are now message that you are now trying to
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put out what is the name of your organization d trans alliance canada and you have many members
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no i i've got a mailing list i've had a small group of people reaching out to me
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the hardest part of getting something started is
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we are told that it would be better death before detransition so it's this
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idea that we are shameful for existing I've been told telling my story is a
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threat to trans healthcare so there's a real effort to silence our voices there
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was a trans advocate at the rally the first weekend in November who is saying
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that detransitioners voices shouldn't even be heard on this issue well that's a pretty pretty
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common uh reaction from the left when they hear something that they that they can't answer um
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one last question that i know some of our viewers are going to want to know are things with mom and
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dad my father actually passed away in about 2021 but i was able to to be very close with him
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beforehand and uh my mom and i are getting significantly closer and she's uh very happy
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that i've come back no doubt yes okay kelly lynn grace thank you very much for joining us today
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and being as open and frank about your personal stories as they are this is one of the issues of
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our day it won't last forever because these kinds of things don't something else and heaven only
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knows what it'll be but for today you are voices for a reason and I don't suppose the
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premier of the province minds at all that you're saying if this set of rules have been
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in place in Ontario you wouldn't be in this position today.