Mick Hartley

A detransitioner's tale, in the Sunday Times: After seven lost years I know I'm a woman – and trans ideology is a cult:

After a double mastectomy and seven years of injecting herself with testosterone, Bethany realised a year ago that she no longer wanted to live as a man.

Petite and pretty, Bethany once had a beard and a moustache and still has traces of facial hair. She is now in a relationship with another woman, having realised she was not transgender but gay.

“I do regret the loss of time,” she says. “I am 26 and I think: ‘What have I done?’ For the past seven years, I felt like I was climbing a mountain to reach what I was told would be a future utopia — only to get to the top and find it was a cliff.

“My voice will not change. I will have to have electrolysis to remove the remaining facial hair. I have not looked into any possible long-term damage to my body and fertility. I am telling my story to try to safeguard other teenagers.”

There has been a sharp rise in the past decade in young people wanting to change gender. From 2011-12 to 2021-22, the number of under-18s in England referred to the Tavistock clinic in north London for gender treatment soared from 210 to 3,585, according to its own figures.

Bethany is one of a number of “detransitioners” — young people often in their early twenties who have changed their minds about wanting to live as the opposite sex. They regret the hormones they have taken and surgery they have had, treatment that often started in their late teens.

“I feel more care could have been taken to explore my feelings and motivations before a referral for drug and surgical treatment that has irreversible physical consequences,” Bethany said….

David Bell, a senior psychiatrist and former staff governor at the Tavistock, who first warned that the national gender identity clinic might be failing vulnerable children, said: “Adolescents are still developing emotionally, psychologically and physically. Their brains do not stop developing until they are 24. So there should be extreme caution before taking any irreversible life-changing decisions whose implications they are poorly equipped to fully understand.”

Bethany agrees. “I wish someone had advised me to properly explore my feelings when I was 19. I was offered no psychological therapy . . . it is only now, at the age of 26, that I feel I am a mature adult, and it is no coincidence that it is now I am realising that transitioning is no solution.”…

For now, Bethany is remaining anonymous because of concern about a backlash from the trans community. “I have attended women’s-rights events and seen activists with banners and chanting slogans like ‘Death before detransition’ and ‘Arm trans people’ and ‘Terfs should die’,” she said.

“It is alarming but people need to understand this is worse than Scientology, it is like a cult,” she said. “It’s in schools, in universities, on social media. How have we allowed this to happen? It has to stop.”

There must be be plenty of young women like this. Let's hope more get the courage to speak out.