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Camille Kiefel, Detransitioner

More and more are coming out. They made a big mistake. Camille Kiefel has her say in a recent Newsweek article: I Thought I Was Nonbinary. Now I Help Detransitioners.

While growing up, I struggled with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). I was 6 years old when I got diagnosed. Many are finding that ADHD and autism are common with detransitioners.

As well as struggling with ADHD, in 6th grade, I found out that my best friend was raped by her brother. That’s when things started to change for me. I started to present more masculine after that by wearing “boys” clothes and identifying with male anime characters. I was trying to hide my body—my breasts in particular—by wearing baggy clothing.

My dad was also trying to protect me, and he was scared about me growing up. He’d tell me how men his age talked about girls my age sexually, so I became very nervous. My generalized anxiety disorder started around that period of my life.

I thought that removing my breasts or reducing the size of them would have helped me. After I talked to my doctor about it, he connected me with somebody through their medical system. Then, that person connected me with two mental health professionals, one of whom saw me for 50 minutes and the other for 40. These were both Zoom calls during COVID and I told them everything.

I’m speaking out about this because I’ll have to live with my body being mutilated for the rest of my life and I don’t want this to happen to others. I want doctors to know that they need to look for underlying health issues

Read the whole thing.

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Soren Aldaco, Detransitioner, Tells Her Story

Soren writes in the Dallas Morning News.

I thought I was a trans kid.

From as early as age 11, I played with the idea of living as the opposite sex. Chronic social media usage, early exposure to pornography, insistent bullying, rapid-onset puberty and a history of abuse and neglect (among other things) made girlhood painful and traumatic.

In an attempt to escape, I sought out friends online. Many of these friends adopted fanciful identities, ranging from nonhuman to anime characters to trans. Those identities felt like extensions of our love for art and roleplay. “Boy” was nothing more than a pin I wore.

Our society expects so much from girls and women. A friend shared this beautiful metaphor with me recently, that if a man and a woman went off into nature for a month, the man would come back more manly, and the woman would come back more manly, too. When I asked her why, she put it simply: “Man is considered the default state. Womanhood is about performance.” Every “first” I experienced as a “trans boy” represented rebellion against this performance.

[read the whole thing]

As a society we must do everything we can to show that “man” is not the “default state.” Pay special attention to her mention of pornography as a catalyst for taking the medicalized pathway to ‘freedom.’

Companion Post

Soren Aldaco: Another Detransitioner Sues

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