This year, Detrans Awareness Day means more than ever.
As two women who transitioned in our teenage years and later detransitioned, we are no strangers to pediatric gender ideology and the cultish tactics used to reel in thousands of impressionable youth. We know firsthand how the machinery of pediatric gender ideology works: the online communities that present transgender identity as belonging, the activist clinicians who affirm distress without probing its roots, and the loving families who are often threatened with suicide to make irreversible decisions posthaste.
Detrans Awareness Day (Thursday, March 12 this year) exists because thousands of people like us have lived this story – and because for too long, no one wanted to hear it. We were treated as inconvenient footnotes to a narrative that insisted pediatric gender medicine was settled science and lifesaving care. We were told that our stories were rare, exaggerated, or fake.
The tide turned with the case of Fox Varian. Varian, a detransitioned young woman, was recently awarded $2 million in damages for the irreversible procedures she was subjected to as a minor. For those of us who were once patients on the pediatric gender medicine conveyor belt – and who are now trying to hold our doctors accountable – this decision felt monumental. It was the first clear sign that the justice system may finally be willing to examine harm done to children like us in the name of care.
What made the jury’s decision especially significant is that it wasn’t simply a referendum on a political party’s platform, but on an entire medical system that committed malpractice for ideology’s sake.
Tasked with something far greater than choosing a side, jurors in Varian’s case were forced to ask: Did medical professionals exercise appropriate care, caution, and diligence before performing an elective, “gender-affirming” mastectomy on a minor?
The jurors found that these professionals did not. In fact, the psychologist and surgeon named in Varian’s case were held liable for ignoring basic standards of care and rushing through medical protocols to get Varian’s mastectomy fast-tracked.
Our own paths to transition were different, but the message we received as teenagers was strikingly similar. We were told that our emotional distress had a clear explanation and an even clearer solution. We were assured that accepting medical intervention – hormones and surgeries, both of which, of course, lined the pockets of the clinics we went to – was not only safe, but lifesaving.
Questioning the narrative of these medical professionals was framed as dangerous. It was heretical to push back against the lie that we would either live happily mimicking the opposite sex or end up dead.
In recent years, investigative journalism has exposed what we’ve lived for decades: programs built on weak evidence, short follow-up periods, horrifying side effects, and more. Benjamin Ryan, an independent reporter out of New York City, was the only such professional present for all three weeks of Varian’s battle in court.
This leads us to ask: Why are independent journalists and conservative news outlets the only ones sounding the alarm?
Indeed, while we were being poked, cut and pumped with hormones, legacy media stood aside, ignoring the thousands of children like us whose health and lives have been sacrificed at the altar of “gender-affirming care.”
Detrans Awareness Day exists to challenge that silence. It reminds us that children deserve the same protections in medicine that we recognize in every other part of life.
Minors know and are told all the time that some things have to wait for adulthood. They can’t vote until they’re 18, or even buy a beer until they’re 21. We accept there are certain boundaries and expectations that we, as a society, have a responsibility to uphold and protect – all because we know it’s for our children’s own good and enduring safety.
So, why did so few stop to think that pediatric gender medicine was any different?
As we grapple with uncertainty in our own lawsuits against the doctors and therapists who mismanaged our care, Varian’s case and the recent backpedaling of major medical institutions feels encouraging. It fills us with hope that, as more detransitioner cases are ruled on, the field of medicine will turn to face its shadow, and young people everywhere will feel supported to pause and think through their feelings critically.
More than anything, we are reminded that the truth still matters, and standards of care still exist. While trends in culture often come packaged as loving and compassionate, it’s important we remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Justice is on its way, and for many of us, we are hopeful it is near.
