When I recently published an article on the way the legacy media has been covering people who detransition after getting caught up in the transgender craze (on the rare occasions when they are mentioned at all), I received a number of comments on social media. One reader told me how much they usually enjoy my work, but said that they were very “disappointed” with that piece. It appears that mainstream efforts to “cancel” the detrainsitioners are still alarmingly effective. But these cautionary tales need to be told, and we’ll keep telling them until the destructive nature of many current medical practices being applied to children are made clear for all.

Today, we have a slightly different tale to share. The House Health, Human Services, & Elderly Affairs Committee is currently hearing testimony as they consider HB619, legislation that would prohibit “gender transition for minors.” One of the people who testified was Erin Brewer. As a young girl, she was in a situation where she felt that she needed to “be a boy” and was taking steps along those lines. That was before testosterone treatments and puberty blockers were widely available for these uses, and that’s something she remains grateful for to this day. Her story is heartbreaking, but it at least has a happy ending. I will share part of it here today, but I encourage you to read the entire transcript, titled “I am a Former Trans Kid, though it can be difficult to take in. (Granite Grok)

As a child, I was insistent, persistent, and consistent that I was a boy. I have no doubt that if the option to take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones had been available, I would have done everything I could to obtain them, including threatening suicide, especially if I had others encouraging me to threaten suicide as children are today.

In the short term, I likely would have felt better…

Despite feeling better in the short term, in the long term taking testosterone would have been profoundly damaging, potentially even more damaging than the sexual assault. I can’t imagine the impact of being told by teachers, doctors, and other adults that I was born in the wrong body. That I was inherently flawed.

Erin was diagnosed with what would legitimately have been identified as gender dysphoria, but it wasn’t brought on by simple “confusion” over gender roles. She was brutally sexually assaulted by multiple adult men as a child. Her life was shattered. She no longer felt safe and she came to believe that it was her fault for being a girl. She didn’t want to be a girl in a world like that. And when people suggested she might actually be a boy, she was drawn to the idea.

It would have reinforced all the mistaken beliefs I had that caused me to develop gender dysphoria in the first place:

That being a girl was bad.
That it was my fault that those men hurt me. That my body was a mistake.
That it was too dangerous be a girl.

If I had been medically transitioned, I wouldn’t have gotten the help I needed to work through my self-hatred and shame.

As difficult and tragic as this all was, Erin was fortunate enough to have a school counselor who did not push her toward any sort of medical procedures or “gender transition healthcare.” She instead received counseling and support from her family. She came to understand that she didn’t need to be a boy to survive and that there was nothing wrong with the natural body she was born into.

But if she had undergone all of those treatments and procedures, there would have been no going back. She would have been permanently damaged. She is grateful to the people who helped her avoid that fate and now wants her story to help any of today’s children who may be falling into the same trap. And she highlights the current failures in the medical profession that will prevent far too many children from opening the doors that were opened for her.

Even though I was insistent, consistent, and persistent about being a boy, I wasn’t a boy. Yet gender doctors admit that the only diagnostic criteria used to determine if a child should get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries is if the child is insistent, consistent, and persistent with gender confusion. It only takes one story like mine to show they are wrong. To show that children develop gender dysphoric feelings not because of being born in the wrong body, but as a coping mechanism.

The belief that a child can somehow be born in the wrong body is a mystical view, not a medical view.

As I said, I encourage you to read the entire transcript. Yes, it’s a painful story full of tragedy. But it’s also a story full of hope and it comes from someone who lived through what was nearly the worst of it. So before you come back and tell me how “disappointed” you are in our choice to tell the stories of these children, try to understand what is really going on and the damage that the medical profession is leaving in its wake. These people’s stories need to be told. They must be told. And the supposed medical professionals engaging in this sort of “therapy” need to be held accountable. And that’s exactly what we’re working to make happen.