As a detransitioner, I have publicly shared my story of gender confusion, medicalization, and return to biological reality in the hope that no more children experience what I went through. Now, a new report by Independent Women and the Center for Christian Virtue, released by the Department of Health and Human Services, documents the medical malpractice, disregard for evidence, and fraud that led to stories like mine. Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine” chronicles the data and stories behind the gender industrial complex—and the children it harmed.
I know exactly how pernicious this system is. At 13-years-old, I thought I was a girl trapped in a male body. My parents were the only ones who questioned what was happening to me, and when they turned to Kaiser Permanente for help, the medical professionals only cheered on my confusion and fast-tracked me for sex-rejecting procedures. Institutions like Kaiser Permanente and Planned Parenthood prescribed me cross-sex hormones when I was just 18. I stayed on hormones for two and a half years.
Mine is only one story among many. In the HHS report, detransitioner Sydney Aviles shared how hormone treatments have left her with sub-clinical hypothyroidism; detransitioner Clementine Breen recounted being put on puberty blockers at 13-years-old and undergoing a double mastectomy at just 14; and fellow Independent Women ambassador Soren Aldaco, also a detransitioner, recalled having three cups of blood drained from her chest after mastectomy complications as a teenager. Parents like Christy Davidson and Lily Burns* also shared how doctors and mental health professionals affirmed their children’s gender confusion, thereby making it worse.
What would be considered malpractice in any other healthcare setting unfortunately has become completely normalized when it comes to transgenderism. My medical providers were only too happy to push me toward the next step in “transitioning,” quoting me hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills along the way. To the medical system, I was just a dollar value and my confusion an opportunity to exploit for a lifetime of profit.
As the HHS report notes, pediatrics is the lowest-paid specialty in medicine, and most patients arrive with acute, treatable conditions, rather than chronic and returning cases. “Transgender medicine” flipped this on its head and created lifetime patients.
From cross-sex hormones and elective mastectomies to the aftermath of hormone imbalances and botched surgeries, children are turned into profit-generating medical experiments. Even after stopping cross-sex hormones, I still suffer from their long-term effects. Physical damage like gynecomastia as well as psychological, social, and spiritual damage are the remnants I have from the decade of my life that gender ideology consumed.
Beyond the medical system, the report reveals how the Biden Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and transgender-identifying Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine pushed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to publish its guidelines without a minimum age requirement for sex-rejecting procedures.
At the same time, another division of HHS published guidelines recommending these procedures for young adolescents. Governmental agencies like the Department of Justice and the Department of Education under President Joe Biden required healthcare professionals to provide these procedures at the threat of being accused of discriminating against people with gender dysphoria.
And yet these guidelines were grounded in ideology, not evidence-based medicine, with key data deliberately changed, manipulated, and even withheld from studies to support a pro-transgender narrative.
Pediatric gender clinics and children’s hospitals similarly used misleading and fraudulent medical codes to ensure that insurance companies kept covering sex-rejecting procedures, according to the report.
The HHS report proves that at every level, medical and governmental institutions failed children. And the human cost of this fraud is the lives ruined by gender ideology. Exploited for profit, sacrificed for ideology, I was fed lies, and I’ll live with the consequences for the rest of my life.
That’s why we must completely expose the gender industrial complex. Gender-confused youths deserve honesty and real mental health care. It’s why I shared my story in this report—and why I’ll never stop speaking up for detransitioners and fighting for truth.
For more, read the HHS report, “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine.”
* A pseudonym has been assigned to protect the identity of this individual.
