In DeTrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult, conservative journalist Mary Margaret Olohan aims to expose the devastating impact of “gender-affirming care” on young bodies and minds. She says, “U.S. gender activists have an insanely tight chokehold on American politics, media, corporations, medical institutions and more.”
Olohan claims that “So-called ‘gender-affirming care’ is experimental and dangerous and the transgender-promoting ‘experts’ know it. They knew that testosterone was causing tumors in some female patients. They knew that girls were losing their ability to have kids from these drugs. They knew that some patients were unable to actually give informed consent due to their serious mental-health problems. And yet they publicly continue to praise and laud ‘gender-affirming care’ and claim it is pivotal for youth who identify as transgender. These are incredibly harmful lies to vulnerable minds, and the detransitioners in my book believe they were betrayed and deeply harmed by these lies.”
The author contrasts the U.S. to the European countries that “are taking steps to protect children from these irreversible procedures” while “our own medical institutions and medical professionals seem to be turning both a blind eye and ear to what is going on in the world around them as they continue to push these procedures on struggling youth.” She cites, for example, the closing of the Tavistock clinic in the UK and the government’s attempt to introduce legislation to end life-altering surgeries for children.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the “Doctors Protecting Children” is one of the few organizations that have taken a critical stance over current protocols for the treatment of children and adolescents who experience discomfort with their biological sex. The signatories of this declaration are calling for a halt to the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, urging instead for comprehensive evaluations and therapies that focus on underlying psychological conditions.
Olohan points to two crucial sources of the anxiety that pushes young people to turn to gender reassignment: social media pressure to measure up to unattainable standards, and undiagnosed autism.
“Young women like Chloe, who are accessing social media at a young age, are looking for who they are supposed to be when they compare themselves to images of women online. As they are exposed to picture after picture of perfectly sculpted, seductive but demure women on Instagram, they begin to feel that they cannot match up to these ideas of womanhood.”
Olohan’s purported evidence of the damage done by gender-affirming care comes from teens who have gone through “detransitioning”. She claims to have observed a pattern among many that she spoke with while doing research for the book: the young people were diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum– but not until after the life-altering hormones and surgery had started. “They said that if they would’ve been diagnosed,” Olohan told the National Catholic Register, “they probably wouldn’t have transitioned, as many of the questions they had about themselves might have made sense …”
