“I messed up, and I would have been better off if someone had helped me through this another way,” Luka Hein, a former transgender person, said about regretting getting a mastectomy at 16. “At that point, I was like, OK, I’m in a cult, and I need to leave.”
Hein is one of the many de-transitioners — people who were transgender and later returned to identifying as their biological sex — who describe their suffering in the book Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult, which is set to be released next month. The author, journalist Mary Margaret Olohan, details how doctors encouraged teenagers to get hormone inhibitors, cross-gender hormones, and “top surgeries” only to dismiss their subsequent regrets and desires to de-transition.
Many major medical associations, including American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and American Psychiatric Association, endorse “age-appropriate, gender-affirming care for transgender and non-binary people,” according to Human Rights Campaign.
Olohan said she noticed several concerning trends in the stories of the de-transitioners she features in her book: mental health issues, obsessive social media use often focused on transgender chatrooms, and swift approval of life-altering transgender procedures.
“None of the individuals in my book had any comprehension of what they were getting into when they started taking hormones or underwent surgeries,” Olohan told The Dallas Express. “The girls who got double mastectomies hadn’t considered whether they wanted to breastfeed or even have babies.”
“I was particularly struck by how depictions of womanhood affected the detrans girls in my book — how they rejected the idea of being a woman not merely because of activists and activist content online, but also because of the unattainable portrayals of femininity they saw on Instagram and the hyper-sexualized, degraded forms of women they saw in pornography,” she continued.
Chloe Cole, one of the de-transitioners featured in the book, was sexually assaulted in eighth grade when a classmate grabbed her breasts. She said this violation led her to despise her femininity and want to remove her breasts. This curiosity, she told Olohan, was exacerbated by pornography and Instagram algorithms feeding her transgender content.
Cole got on hormone inhibitors when she was 13 and got a mastectomy at 15. She began to de-transition one year later after expressing regret.
Prisha Mosley, another de-transitioner featured in the book, was raped when she was 14, which resulted in a pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage due to her eating disorder. She told Olohan that sexual violence led her to reject her female body. This was further enabled through transgender messaging boards on social media. A doctor prescribed her testosterone, and she got a mastectomy when she turned 18.
Mosley soon began to express regret. Her boyfriend’s child began to call her “mom,” which she said inspired her to fully de-transition.
Abel Garcia, a biological male interviewed for the book, was told by a college counselor during his freshman year that his confusion about his sexuality was because he was transgender. He then decided to get on cross-gender hormones, which his father did not approve of.
His father ended up taking him to a brothel in Mexico in an attempt to convince him to embrace his masculinity. This trauma led him to intensify his desire to get sex-altering surgery, which he later regretted as he struggled with alcoholism. He eventually got sober and de-transitioned.
Olohan’s book details the stories of de-transitioners who struggled with similar trauma and mental health issues as they sought help from doctors who were more than willing to aid their initial transition. However, these doctors later refused to accept the notion of de-transitioning.
“When detransitioners like Abel Garcia venture back to their doctors and tell them that they regret their transition, the doctors say this is merely part of their ‘gender journey,’” Olohan told The Dallas Express. “These detrans individuals are gaslit and told that they need to undergo more ‘gender-affirming care’ in order to be happy. The medical professionals who spoke with the detrans individuals in my book were unwilling to accept or acknowledge that these transition attempts had failed, and they didn’t want to see the living, suffering result of their own botched attempts at gender transition.”
The purported bias on the part of doctors detailed by Olohan suggested a lack of care for individuals looking to de-transition. She said the medical establishment needs to work toward a proper de-transition path to ensure the safety of those with gender dysphoria.
“A detrans medical process doesn’t really exist right now — the gender groups and doctors are so busy insisting that very few people regret their transition procedures that they haven’t given any attention to the detransitioners begging for help and assistance,” Olohan told The Dallas Express. “We need brave doctors to step forward and offer their time and services to the detransitioners duped by our medical system. They deserve real care.”
Earlier this month, England’s National Health Service issued a four-year review of its use of transgender procedures on children with direct criticism of overly ambitious gender clinics, as reported by The Dallas Express. Dr. Hilary Cass concluded the evidence for hormone inhibitors and cross-sex hormones for minors is “remarkably weak.” She said the practices should not be used for the “majority of young people” with gender dysphoria.
Several of the de-transitioners Olohan features in her book filed lawsuits against doctors, therapists, activists, and medical institutions for violating their patient rights.
“The lawsuits send a loud and clear warning to medical professionals: you can no longer act in the shadows, raking in profit as you harm our children in the name of ‘care,’” Olohan told The Dallas Express. “The reckoning is coming.”
Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult is available on May 28 and can be preordered here.
