Transitioner to Traitor: A Review of Detrans
By Emma Foley
As soon as a young girl declares she is transgender, she is usually welcomed into the LGBT community with open arms.
Once that transitioner decides to become a detransitioner— after regretting the invasive surgeries, hormone therapy, and other medical interventions that ‘affirmed’ her delusion— she will be called a hateful traitor by her old cheerleaders. She will be ostracized into silence.
The courageous detransitioners who’ve exposed this medical scandal to the world have given a voice to those in gender crisis.
The gender social contagion is rapidly infecting the minds of American youth, journalist Mary Margaret Olohan explains in her first book, Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult. Featuring raw, heart-wrenching stories of young women and men swept up in the gender cult, the work has been published not a moment too soon.
These “detransitioners”— a relatively new term, Olohan admits— include women and men who were at one point conditioned to believe that, in order to heal their gender confusion, they must reconfigure their body. After usually haphazardly-formed diagnoses of “gender dysphoria,” these vulnerable souls are sent down a rabbit hole of pseudoscience and medical activism.
Often, this looks like hack medicine, or the injection of hormones that assault the body’s natural development. Some victims will go on to be infertile. Many females have reported menopause-like symptoms in their teenager years. There is a reason why it’s called “chemical castration.” Later, a surgeon might amputate or modify perfectly functioning sexual organs.
The patient and her welfare are not the goal of these healthcare providers, who swore to “do no harm.” It is the payout and the social justice credit that these doctors want—at the detriment of their patients. Through many studies and statistics, Olohan drives home that rapid onset “gender dysphoria” is spreading among adolescent girls like wildfire.
Olohan’s book follows four female detransitioners: Prisha, Chloe, Helena, and Luka. These young girls fell prey to warped therapy, poisonous prescriptions, and, in most cases, irreversible procedures. The exposé invites readers to notice the patterns that arise in each girl’s story. Between social isolation and exposure to dark corners of the web, unfortunate life circumstances can challenge the already-precarious period of adolescence.
Olohan highlights the ethical non-standards for post-op women, the miserly vision of several gender clinics, and the cowardice of therapists and doctors so eager to indoctrinate rather than address the root of their patients’ pain. She fearlessly takes on the misinformation on sites such as FOLX and Planned Parenthood.
Meanwhile, Olohan maintains focus on the human persons affected by these atrocities. Abel Garcia’s sexual abuse and Yaeli Galdamez’s horrific suicide are visceral, ugly, but necessary.
When an individual wants out, to attempt to undo the harm caused to their body and mind, they instantly are labeled an oppressor. Hein, persuaded to undergo a double mastectomy at age 16, was smeared as “hateful” by a man who once allied himself to he— back when she was trans— when she publicly questioned puberty blockers for minors.
“Her lived experience,” Olohan writes, “only counted if she agreed with ‘them,’— the pro-trans voices that were drowning everyone else out.” Hein was soon a forgettable statistic to the medical world.
It was then that Hein realized she was in a cult. The other survivors in Detrans recount similar, eye-opening moments, often kept secret until the victim found the courage to speak out.
For many Americans, gender ideology is a far-fetched concept only claiming the daughters of Cher or husbands of Kris Jenner. But the radicalism is here, in millions of homes across North America and Europe. And it’s tearing families apart. Galdamez’ mother, Abby Martinez, was ordered by a California court to attend re-education sessions after her underage daughter was ripped away by the Department of Children and Family Services.
Most cutting is Olohan’s inclusion of familial anecdotes, especially that which is unspoken. There’s the mother who cleanses the wounds of a botched elective surgery on her once-healthy daughter. There’s the father who reluctantly agrees to the maiming of his little girl, his hands tied and her head at the end of the system’s gun.
The stories that Olohan tells in Detrans are not far away. Like many stories do, they began at home.
The disturbing interactions between provider and patient will upset the strongest stomach. The sinister collusion by school districts, psychiatrists, and the state to lead children down this dangerous path will make your skin crawl. The unfiltered images and raw depictions of human brokenness in Olohan’s book serve as a wake up call for all who doubt the scale of the problem.
Emma Foley is the Digital Managing Editor for the Howie Carr Radio Network. She grew up in Pennsylvania, but after graduating from Boston College, she decided to make Massachusetts her new home.
