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May 2, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
54:49
20240502_the-cost-of-transition-and-detransitioners-fightin
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Puberty Without Understanding 00:14:58
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at least.
A reporter who has done a very deep dive and thorough one into the world of radical gender ideology to expose the truth of what's happening in our culture today.
She talked with several young girls who have detransitioned after trying to transition to boys.
And the girls are now calling attention through this reporter to the lack of safeguards, formal processes, and lack of medical protections when it comes to minors making life-altering decisions.
Later, we'll be joined by one of the detransitioners featured in the book, but we begin with Mary Margaret Olihan, a senior reporter for the Daily Signal and author of the new book, D-Trans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult, which is out later this month and available for pre-order right now.
Welcome to the show, Mary Margaret.
Great to see you, Megan.
So fun to be here.
So, thank you for writing this book.
What was the reason?
Like, what were you seeing that drew you to these people's stories?
Well, I think it was the stories themselves that made me want to write this in the first place.
I've been covering gender ideology for several years now, and you know, culture issues in general has always been my beat.
And a couple years ago, I started seeing more and more of these detransitioners popping up online.
And, you know, at the time, we weren't really calling them detransitioners.
And I remember my editors and I were like, oh my gosh, we've been wondering if this was going to happen.
So we were excited to see that people were speaking out about it because, you know, it wasn't really that common yet.
And so one day, as I was following a bunch of these different people online and trying to get a handle on their stories, I noticed they were going to have a Twitter spaces event.
And I tuned in, I was the only reporter on it.
It was just a whole bunch of people who regretted their hormonal transitions.
And I was, I was living in this really ratchet little apartment in Arlington at the time.
So I remember I was making dinner while I was listening.
And oh my gosh, Megan, I just will never forget what they were saying.
They're describing these horrific experiences that they've endured from hormones.
So, for example, the women taking testosterone and the men taking estrogen.
Their voices didn't match anymore.
They were describing how their emotions had been messed with.
The physical features, you know, hair loss, bone density change, muscle atrophy, sexual dysfunction, all these different side effects from the hormones that they had had no idea would be occurring and no one had told them about.
And so, as I listened to these stories, I thought, oh my gosh, I need to write about this.
But I was a little bit younger at the time.
I didn't totally know how to handle it because, you know, all these people are anonymous, first of all.
So I didn't really know how to get a grasp on their stories.
And as a couple years went by, and more and more detransitioners started speaking out, and I had the opportunity to write a book, I immediately thought, this is what I want to do.
I want to tell reported stories of detransitioners in their words, their experiences.
So someone who picks this up off the shelf will read it and think, I don't care what that reporter thinks, but these stories are horrific.
And I don't want anything like that to ever happen to a child again.
So that's my goal with this book.
And I hope that that's what will happen.
It's so infuriating because the way they push the puberty blockers today and the social transitioning as though it's a nothing without disclosing the very serious, severe path you're putting your kid on.
Social transitioning will lead in virtually all cases to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in virtually all cases.
So it is a very big deal if you socially transition your child, meaning start calling her a him or by a male name or let them start dressing as the opposite sex.
And that's what these schools are doing in private without the parents' knowledge, as we just discussed.
Miguel Cardona falsely saying, oh, it's up to our investigators whether they want to investigate.
Well, weirdly, they don't at all.
In fact, these policies are in place at school after school and they don't give a damn.
So the social transitioning happens.
But can you just spend a minute on the physical ramifications?
Because this, I've seen this happen with young girls who are just confused about something or they have autism or they have ADHD.
And before you know it, they're on testosterone and it has some very dark effects on the body.
And I do want to get graphic because it's important that people hear it because they won't tell you this on CBS.
No, they won't.
And for that reason, I'm going to share something that I learned about from one of the young female transitioners in my book.
She told me about bottom growth and it's horrible and it's, you know, definitely TMI to share this.
But when you take testosterone as a girl, it has an effect on your genitalia.
And what these pro-trans websites will tell you is that you're going to grow male genitalia.
You're going to grow a penis.
Well, obviously that's impossible.
That's never going to happen.
You're a woman.
You're not going to ever grow a penis.
But when you're taking testosterone, it is going to affect your genitalia.
And so things are going to enlarge in and they're going to become very uncomfortable.
It's not a good thing in any way.
It's uncomfortable.
It's painful.
One of the young women in my book described it to me.
She said she couldn't even wear underwear because it was so painful.
And if you look on these pro-trans websites, they'll give you graphics and try and show you the progression.
It's a bullface lie.
They'll show you graphics of pictures of your supposed male genitalia growing.
It doesn't, that's not how it happens.
It grows a little bit and it's painful and it doesn't go back.
But that's just one of the lies that these girls are being sold.
Another one is that, you know, the testosterone has an effect on your body, but it's not going to ultimately make you look like a man.
It's going to alter your appearance.
You're going to lose hair where you might want it.
You're going to grow hair where you might not want it.
It's going to be thicker.
Your bone density is going to change.
Your voice is going to change.
You're going to lose the ability to scream for a lot of girls, which is terrifying, especially because many of them are victims of sexual assaults.
One girl told me that she lost the ability to sing.
This was Prisha, one of the girls in the book.
Prisha had a really high operatic voice.
She liked to sing Phantom of the Opera.
Once she started taking testosterone, she just started realizing she was losing the ability.
It's like it almost reminds me, Megan, of the little mermaid, when the girl's voice gets stolen by Ursula, the bad witch.
That was what I thought of when Prisha was telling me this story.
And in the same dramatic, horrifying way, you know, she wants to sing and she can't anymore.
She wants to scream and she can't anymore.
And these are things that as they're taking the testosterone, they're still being told that this is a good thing, that they're on their way to transition.
They can surgically transition soon.
And so they're thinking, okay, well, this is kind of freaking me out, but I'm going to continue with this because I'm told that this is good for me.
But it's unsettling.
It's disturbing.
And another aspect of it that's not talked about a ton is the emotional changes that a lot of these girls experience on testosterone.
Helena describes at length how she would just go into these rages that she had never experienced before, just testosterone rage.
It got to the point where her dad would have her go outside and chop wood so that she could have some kind of some kind of outlet to get all this pent up rage out.
She had never experienced anything like this before.
Similarly, she said she had this intense sexual urges that she had never had before.
And what a bunch of these girls likened it to was going through puberty as a boy, but when you're not a boy and no one is going to be able to understand that, and you also aren't having a full male puberty because that's never going to happen because you're a girl.
So just all these really disturbing emotional and physical effects on these girls' bodies.
And, you know, for the boys that take estrogen, it's a whole other animal.
You know, the fat redistribution happens for both, right?
You know, you take testosterone, your body's going to redistribute your fat.
But for a boy taking estrogen, that's all that feels very weird physically to have your fat redistribute to your hips and more to your chest.
The hair loss is significant for the boys who are on estrogen, the voice changes.
One guy who was on estrogen told me that he felt like he had the ability to multitask.
I don't know if he himself said he's not sure if that was in his head or not, but it was something that he felt like he was having a little bit more access to, which I thought was interesting.
Yeah.
But all of these effects, you know, they come with the physical effects that are ultimately very draining.
And then some of these people told me that, for example, when you stab yourself with a needle to give yourself testosterone, they started developing a really severe aversion to doing that combined with all the effects that they knew were coming from it.
And then just the needle itself.
They were realizing that this act was just such an aversion to them that they had to stop.
The guy who was multitasking, like, did he also become a bad driver?
What's in that shot?
I know.
The things that you're outlining, I've heard many of these and it's dark.
I remember Abigail Schreier, when she had launched her book, we talked about irreversible damage and she was saying, forgive me, audience, but basically at best, what a girl could grow out of her clitoris is a baby carrot, something akin to that.
Now, nobody ever is ever going to want to have a sexual interlude with that other than a freak.
I mean, so you're freakifying yourself, not disclosed in the, it's just a harmless social transition slash pause where you're definitely going to go into cross-sex hormones and this could happen to you.
The other thing is the boys.
Okay, so let me stay on the girls for one more second.
So they stop their puberty where all this estrogen is about to flood their bodies.
That's what's supposed to happen.
And instead of that happening, they lose all that estrogen and there are serious repercussions for bone growth and strength for these girls.
There have been tests that IQs go down for girls and boys who take these puberty blockers and then into the hormones.
And then on the boys' side, when they take the puberty blockers, they freeze their penis development into a little boy's penis.
And so if they detransition, it's something that they're basically stuck with, like a micro penis in a lot of the cases.
And so these girls and boys don't know.
They have no idea that's what they're taking on.
Right.
And that's something that I found incredibly upsetting as I was writing these, this book, because, you know, Megan, this was emotional.
I spent so many hours on the phone talking to all of these people and some of them would cry with me as they were sharing some of these really vulnerable, intimate stories.
I would cry with them.
And I have a lot of siblings.
So just imagining these young people going through these things and being lied to in this way is just so infuriating.
But for example, Chloe Cole had never had sex or had any kind of sexual encounter when she made the decision to go on puberty blockers or begin her transition.
And that's mind-boggling that all of this is being shoved on someone who's never had any kind of sexual intimate moment before.
How is a little girl supposed to know any of that when she has never even held hands with a boy?
It just is a good point.
That's such a good point.
She hasn't even had her first kiss and they literally chopped off Chloe's breasts.
They did.
And when she began taking test or taking testosterone and the hormones, she had no idea whether she wanted to have kids.
She was a little girl.
She hadn't really thought about it.
She hadn't really thought about whether she wanted to breastfeed.
She hadn't really thought about whether she wanted to have a family.
You know, these are, these are all things that we might think about, but as a little girl, it kind of, it's not, it's not on the mind all the time.
And something that I wanted to bring up in relation to that very topic is, because I found this really fascinating, Chloe and I kind of deep dived into her reasons for being interested in transgender ideology in the first place.
And something that I think a lot of us in the political world don't don't have a good grasp on, but I'm sure you do, Megan, as a woman, is the effect that Instagram has on girls and their perceptions of womanhood and femininity.
So Chloe was telling me she was like 13 when she got on Instagram for the first time.
And she's seeing all these depictions of womanhood, you know, these like very sexy, voluptuous, sensual women who have millions of men in their following.
And they get so much male affirmation for the basically soft porn photos that they post of themselves all day.
And so she's seeing these representations of womanhood and thinking, I don't think I can be that.
That's, that's very daunting.
I don't know how to do that.
I don't look like that.
And then at the same time, as a little girl on the internet, she's being exposed to pornography, which is something that many of the detransitioners I talked to said they were exposed to at a young age.
And so in the pornography, we know that women are degraded and humiliated and treating in a really horrible fashion.
So she's seeing on the one hand, the women treated horribly in these scenarios.
And on the other hand, these like really aggressively sexual depictions of women on social media.
And she's thinking, A, I don't want that, the depictions in pornography.
One girl told me that doesn't look fun, looks fun for the guys, not for the girls.
And B, I don't think I can ever achieve that.
I can't be that sexy.
I don't know how to do it.
And so when you have that combined with these ideologists saying, oh, you don't feel like you fit in.
You feel lonely.
You don't really like hanging out with girls.
Obviously, you're a boy.
You're trans.
That's just, it's too easy.
It's too simple.
They say, if you think you're trans, you're trans.
That's it.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And all the memes, they all say, if you think you're trans, you're trans.
And, you know, all the affirmations.
If you, if your parents aren't affirming you, they hate you.
If your friends aren't affirming you, they hate you.
Be with people who love you.
All of that on social media.
It's just, it's like catnip for a lonely person, all of whom doesn't fit in.
The Cost of Failed Care 00:07:41
All of whom, Mary Margaret, will abandon them as soon as they have second thoughts.
As soon as like Chloe was like, I don't know if I, it's a big middle finger, F off.
You are never really trans.
You're out of our club.
Our cult, as you accurately call it.
Yes.
No, and it really is the cult because, like you were saying, there's this love bombing and this insistent determination to bring everyone, as many people as possible into the fold.
And then when these people desist or the detransitioners dare to say, actually, I had a really horrible experience here and I'm suffering mentally and physically and I need help.
Those people are told that they are gaslighters, that they are betrayers, that they obviously never were part of the trans community, and they're just thrown out.
And the saddest part is they're thrown out and they're, they don't really have anywhere to go.
The doctors today are such cowards that they are not willing to put their reputations on the line and help people like Prisha and Chloe who have complications from their experimental transitions and they need help.
They need someone to put them back together.
This is what's so galling about the whole thing.
These are almost all of the activists representing the so-called trans community are men.
They're men posing as women.
They're aggressive and they're angry.
They're very angry about the fact that they are not women and they never will be women.
And what they really want to do is stifle and control women's voices and spaces for that matter.
And I was thinking about this as I was reading excerpts of your book.
When I was at NBC, we did a story with a roundtable discussion.
We had like the same panels every week.
So like pick 12 people and it was the same 12.
And that day we were talking about, remember when Scarlett Johansson got cast to play a trans person in some movie?
And there was so much blowback against her immediately because she's not trans that she decided not to do the role.
And by the way, the movie never got made.
They had one of the biggest stars in the world.
They could have, you know, brought all these eyeballs to whatever cause they were pushing.
And they didn't get any of them because they stood on principle that only trans people can play trans people.
But trans people can play straight people, no problem.
Anyway, we heard about it from, I think it was GLAD, which is no longer for gay rights.
It's all about the trans, who was all over us like white on rice on every single segment we did that touched on this.
And they were so angry that we did not have a trans person at the table, at our roundtable to represent trans views and trans rights.
And NBC shared in their, they were like tail between the legs.
Oh my God, we should have had the trans person there to discuss it.
It was like, it's just looking back is further evidence to me of how they've been playing this game smartly and aggressively for so long.
And we've been acquiescing at every turn to be nice, to not get criticized or called the mean names.
And that's why they're winning.
But these are sick, sick representatives.
They don't speak for all trans people, but the representatives are the worst and aggressively toxic.
And it's all disturbed men.
It is.
And I do want to touch on the media aspect of it that you just mentioned, because as a reporter, this just makes me incensed.
And I'm sure it makes you so angry as well.
The way in which our establishment or liberal media just completely buys into the talking points on all of this.
I think the New York Times and the Washington Post just recently, only just recently, covered Chloe Cole and some of the other detransitioners.
And to me, that was huge.
It was a real sign that these stories are so powerful.
They are what is changing the tide on this gender ideology movement because you can't ignore these stories.
You can't listen to Chloe Cole's story and say, well, maybe you should have just tried harder, waited longer.
This is just part of your gender journey.
You can't listen to that, to what she's been through and feel that way.
Yeah, and that's what a lot of these people are told when they go back to their doctors.
This is just part of your gender journey.
So what about what about Mary Margaret, the complete capture of the medical professionals?
Because, you know, that to me is the most unforgivable part of all.
It's not, these are not the first kids to have issues, mental health challenges, to be misguided in what they think is the solution.
But this is the first time we've seen the complete surrender of the entire medical community, whether it's the endocrinologists or the pediatricians or the therapists and psychiatrists to whom parents turn wrongly for help on this issue, all captured.
It's it's evil, Megan.
It is, it is pure evil.
It's so hard to look at, you know, one person's story.
Like let's just say Chloe, you go down the line and you see this therapist failed her, that surgeon failed her, that surgeon failed her.
Like every single person who, by the way, she names in her lawsuit, which these lawsuits are amazing and they are such an impactful way of fighting this battle.
Absolutely.
But each of these people, you look, I looked into them from my book, right?
And I reach out to them for comment and you see their face online and you think, you did this.
Like you made the choice to look this little girl in the eye and say, yes, you should take this drug.
We have no idea what effect it will have on you, but we're going to pretend that you can consent to this, even though you have no idea what effect it will have on you.
And then you go home at night and let's say you have kids and you tuck them into bed and you sleep well.
Like how many children have you done this to?
One, one, one health official in particular, actually, this guy was with the California Department of Child and Family Services.
So not necessarily medicine, but he's in a position of authority.
The last chapter of my book is about a girl who ultimately committed suicide because of this gender journey that she was on.
It's incredibly tragic.
And I got this guy on the phone, the guy that signed off on her transition.
And I said to him, why did you sign off on this?
Especially considering this little girl threw herself in front of a train.
And he couldn't remember her story.
He literally could not remember it.
And I said to him, he was, you know, he's being really condescending with me.
And I said to him, does this happen a lot?
Like, why, why can't you remember this story?
Are there many instances of this?
And then he got awkward and wanted to get off the phone.
But just the many, many children that are in the wake of these health professionals and these, you know, school officials who just flippantly change these lives in this way.
I, for one, would not want that on my conscience.
And I don't know how they sleep at night, Megan.
I really don't.
I don't either.
And I think the lawsuits really might be the answer.
Because if there's one thing we know from American history, when the lawyers get involved with massive class actions, real change does happen.
If they win, if they win big verdicts, that's the almighty dollar does rule here in America for better or for worse.
And if you can hit them severely in the pocketbooks, they'll stop.
They're profit motivated.
That's why they're doing this in the first place.
Right.
Absolutely.
No, the monetary incentive here is, I mean, I think we all assume it's there, but it is so perverted.
Lawsuits Against Predators 00:04:40
If you think about it, when someone gets on testosterone, so let's say a girl gets on testosterone, she's not getting on it for like two years.
She's kind of getting on it for life.
I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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Back with me now, Mary Margaret Olihan, author of the new book, D-Trans, which is out May 28th.
Get your copy now.
Well worth your time.
And joining me now as well is D-Transitioner Luca Hein, who shares her story in the book.
Luca was just 16 years old when doctors performed a double mastectomy on her.
As a D-transitioner, she claims she should not have been allowed to consent to this surgery and these treatments as a minor.
Today, she's fighting back by telling her story and letting her experience serve as a warning.
Mary Margaret, welcome back.
Luca, welcome to you.
Hi.
Great to have you.
I just want to finish up the talk I was having before you got here on the money, because that's one of the pieces of this story, Mary Margaret.
We took a deep dive on this not too long ago, but there are real people making millions off of pushing this.
And it does in part explain the total surrender of the medical industrial complex.
Right.
Yeah, I think Matt Walsh did a really interesting investigation about a year ago, maybe six months ago, where he had someone go undercover and just try and order hormones from one of these online sites.
And that in and of itself was so interesting because it was so easy, way too simple.
The lack of informed consent, first of all, is just typical, but horrifying.
And then during that process, they were able to get letters from these alleged therapists to go ahead and get surgery.
So the process has been streamlined in the extreme to help facilitate getting hormones and getting surgeries.
And especially for young people who don't really know what they are doing.
And you were saying these are things that they're going to need to stay on forever.
So you get a 16-year-old who's going to be on it.
That's maybe 70 years of guaranteed money.
Right.
And then complications, follow-up surgeries.
You know, a lot of these young people, and Luca can tell you, they feel like once they've had these double mastectomies, their wounds don't really heal for a long time, requires upkeep and continued follow-ups.
And then the medical complications of the hormones themselves require more medical help.
And like I was saying earlier, that also is a whole issue because not a lot of these doctors are willing to experiment per se on the people that have been mangled by these past other doctors.
So the whole thing is a convoluted, very manipulative, very manipulative mess.
We had Jennifer Billick on.
I'll get you the episode number for the audience, who's done incredible work on all of this.
She's really exposed exactly who, like Penny Pritzker, that's one of them of the famed Pritzker family.
She's related to the Illinois governor.
647, episode 647.
People who are making bank on this, and some are trans or have a trans relative or so on who are pushing it, pushing it, pushing it.
And they really want they're trans and they want your kid to be trans too.
Truly, they want your child to make them feel better about their life choices and mental illness in so many cases.
It's obscene what they're doing.
So Luca, you, let's talk about your story.
Profiting From Children's Pain 00:11:24
So you're, you're a young girl.
Tell us a little bit about your family and sort of the lead up to this drastic decision.
Yeah.
So I was, you know, pretty, pretty standard teenager.
Had a lot going on at home at the time.
My parents had broken up.
I was just switching into high school.
I was going through puberty and all of the uncomfortable experiences that go along with that.
But on top of that, I was dealing with depression, anxiety, and was a victim of being groomed and exploited online.
And that really led me to kind of spiral down the path of poor mental health.
And also- Can you expand on that word groomed?
Yeah, groomed as in adult predators talking to me online and getting to the point where, whether through like enticement or threats, getting me to send them things they want or talk with them in a certain way.
All the time.
Keep going.
Sorry.
But yeah, and that entire experience, including how when the adults in my life did find out that that grooming was going on, led me to heavily, heavily disassociate from my body and disassociate from womanhood as a concept and my very like the femaleness that is my body.
And I just so happened to be, you know, born at a time where the concept of, oh, you don't like your body or, oh, you don't like your period.
You don't like how your body is changing during puberty.
That's not normal teenage uncomfortableness.
That actually means that you're a boy born in their own body.
Can you, are you, are you saying what state you're in?
I'm from Nebraska.
Okay.
I mean, that's heartland.
You wouldn't think, you know, I mean, you just wouldn't think.
But yes, it's happening everywhere.
We covered a case, a disturbing case out of Montana where the child was essentially wrested away from the parents who were not affirming.
So you start to go down.
And what was it?
Was it Reddit?
What were the websites that you'd like to flag for people where the most danger lurked?
It was mainly sites like Instagram, YouTube.
And then at the time, there was a really big just messenger app called Kick, K-I-K.
I don't think it's used very much anymore.
But I found out in hindsight later when I got older that that app has a massive predator problem on it.
I think it got shut before the predator problem.
Yes.
So what happens if you're, it's going to be a male predator 99% of the time, what do they do?
They go on these websites.
And then how do they get access to you, Luca, or another girl just like you who's, you know, just quote questioning, right?
You're in this like, I don't know, maybe I'm trans.
Everyone around me says that you might be if you're on.
So you're doing your web searches.
The web's repopulating things and it's pushing you.
The social media companies are pushing you this stuff.
But how does the predator get access to you?
It's pretty simple.
Typically, when a kid is having these feelings in the first place, they are vulnerable.
They are distressed.
And oftentimes they don't feel like they have someone they can talk to, which puts it in a very dangerous position for a predator to come in and be like, oh, I will be that person you can talk to.
You, you don't want to talk to your parents about this.
Well, I can be like your parents.
I care about you.
I, I, like, I care about you.
I love you.
I want to see you succeed.
Stuff like that.
So this person is pretending to be a trans person who can walk you through the process or no?
There were, there were multiple people, but yes, there were those individuals.
Okay.
And then we've heard, we've heard quite a bit about this, about how we just spoke with somebody the other day about how some will encourage you to show your body or send naked pictures because you're getting out of that body.
That's not really your body anyway.
So, you know, what do you care if you send me naked pictures?
And young girls do it.
Young girls do it who have no trans issues because predators find access to them on the internet, you know, and then your whole life is changed.
You get exploited.
It's like a downward cycle.
So can I ask you, you were how old when this was happening to you?
13, 14 initially.
And did your parents have any idea about this?
They found out eventually, but at the time, everything in my home life was just so incredibly chaotic that it just kind of slipped through the cracks.
Thanks to the divorce.
To the divorce, to the having to deal with my other mental health issues at the time, having to, you know, deal with, oh, I'm going to a new school soon, just all everything in life.
And just the fact that I had become consumed by spending time on my phone did just kind of unfortunately slip through the cracks.
And that's where those predators were able to take hold.
And I'm not blaming your parents at all because, you know, this happened to a lot of parents, but I do think it's important to figure out exactly what went wrong.
And the social media, that's a problem, right?
I mean, explain how big that became in your life and your transition.
It became where I was spending the majority of my free time once I was like home from school in one way or another online.
Whether that be just watching YouTube all the time or, you know, going on these other social media apps like Instagram, it really became an all-consuming thing, especially when I was dealing with stuff like depression at the time.
And it was so much easier to just sit in bed and scroll on my phone rather than, you know, get up.
Yep.
This is, again, a Luca story is told in Mary Margaret Olihan's new book, D-Trans, True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.
It comes out later in May.
You can buy it now to support both of these women.
Dr. Laura, who follows me on the air at SiriusXM, who's got a lifetime of being a child and family therapist, always says, divorce can have real consequences.
It is not this frivolous thing that we, yeah, you get married, you get divorced.
You know, there are real consequences to children in a mom and a dad deciding to separate like this, especially at an already tender age of 12 or 13.
And she also, by the way, not for nothing, says the same thing about changing your child's school.
It's a very dramatic, drastic thing to do with a kid and should not be entered into lightly at all.
So you are having all this.
Plus, you said you had mental health issues.
These things made you prime for exploitation and to be misguided.
What you needed was a group of professionals who cared about you, who were not pushing an ideology.
And I can only imagine how angry you feel now that you didn't get that.
I look back at like my teenage self and I look at everything that was going on in my life because I essentially had the like perfect storm of comorbidities going on.
Everywhere from, you know, depression, sexual trauma, rough home life, the perfect like checklist of what should be major red flags for any professional that doesn't have this kind of agenda.
And somehow this was all pushed to the side.
And I think that is the most baffling part to me.
The fact that all of this going on and them knowing about it, not once did they decide to push back or at least just say, hey, wait, you're going through a lot right now.
Let's work on that.
So let's talk about how the medical complex got involved.
So you're at this point in our story on Instagram and these other websites all the time.
Your parents are not paying attention to this at the moment.
And what's the next step for you in saying out loud, I quote, think I'm a boy or, you know, how did you start taking it next level?
So at that point, I had already been seeing the posts on my social media about like, oh, if you, you know, disliking your period can be a sign that you're trans.
It might mean you're a boy born in the wrong body, essentially priming with that, that sort of messaging about disconnect from your body or feeling comfortable with your body.
But at the time, as my mental health was spiraling, I actually ended up doing multiple sessions in what is called a partial hospitalization program.
It is a step down from inpatient.
This was all during my freshman year of high school.
And it was during one of those sessions that I brought up, I wonder, I wonder if I'm actually a boy.
And it was like I said the magic words when I brought up the gender topic because suddenly there was an easy explanation for professionals as to why I was struggling in all these other areas.
There was an easy essentially band-aid to slap on top of all these other issues I was having that would have been much harder and a much longer process to work through.
And everything else seemingly got pushed to the wayside.
So what did they say on this?
These were like psychiatrists or what were what were the credentials of the people you were dealing with?
These were therapists, psychiatrists, nurses, essentially anyone you would see in an inpatient hospitalization program for mental health.
So it wasn't like a place for trans people.
It was just for mental health.
You mentioned the trans thing and all of them were like, yes.
Yes.
It was, I mentioned, hey, I like, I'm seeing this stuff that's saying like, oh, if I feel this way, that might mean I'm a boy.
What if I think I'm a boy?
And like I said, it was like I said the magic words.
And that was the only topic that was really focused on from then on out.
How long from that time to when you started taking, I imagine, puberty blockers and then testosterone?
So at that point, I, after my last stint in the partial hospitalization program, I was then recommended to go see a therapist who works with gender diverse young people.
And from there, once again, it was affirmation only.
Trusting Dangerous Advice 00:03:04
And after seeing her for a bit, the first like medical intervention, like physical medical intervention I ever had was the double mastectomy at 16.
Before anything else.
Before any hormones.
Before any hormones.
I was never on puberty blockers because I was a little bit too old at that point for them to stunt anything.
But the first medical intervention I had was the surgery.
What did your parents say?
They were scared.
They were scared and they trusted medical professionals who at that point had given them no reason to distrust them.
They sounded sure.
They sounded like this was a well-settled scientific fact that this was the only path forward.
And of course, if you're a parent and you care about your child, you see that your child is suffering, especially when they bring up the risk of possible suicide if you don't move forward with something like this.
Of course, they're going to look at a professional who is offering to help and seem so sure in what they're doing and trust that person.
This is such a common story, Mary Margaret.
I'm sure you heard this with all of the folks you talk to, where they scare the parents into compliance.
Yes.
And it is frankly a threat, the line that they give to every parent, would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?
And it's framed as this compassionate, you know, kind of warning, but I view it as a death threat.
You know, they're saying, if you don't do this for your child, your child will die because of you.
And what a manipulative, horrible thing to say to any parent who, like Luca is saying, these parents all care about their kids.
You know, there definitely are cases where there are very, very bad parents who are purposefully doing this to their children out of a desire for attention or something worse.
But in many cases, these parents are victims of gender ideology as well.
And they want to do what's best for their daughter.
And they think these medical professionals know what they're talking about.
How should I know better than them?
And so they trust, just like Luca trusted, like her parents trusted.
And then when they get to the other side, I'm sure Luca can share, they're abandoned.
There's no one to trust anymore because they were betrayed.
And the people that they trusted don't want anything to do with them because for someone like Luca, going back to the medical professionals who did this to her, she is living evidence that they failed, that their efforts are experimental.
And so they don't want, they don't want to interact with her.
Oh, I'm sure, again, this story and others told in Mary Margaret Olihan's new book, D-Trans, True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult, which is available for pre-order right now.
So Luca, you have a double mastectomy.
I assume you're living sort of as a boy, right?
You're, you know, presenting now as male.
Okay.
And then whatever that means.
Yeah.
Four Years Of Testosterone 00:11:29
Did you start testosterone after that?
Yes.
So I had, I had the double mastectomy in July.
And then November of that same year, I was put on testosterone.
And how long were you on that for?
I took that for four years.
Wow.
From 16 to 20.
What did it do to you?
It made my voice deeper.
It changed my skin and hair texture.
It gave me really bad like acne.
It made like body hair texture change.
It essentially also just launched my teenage body into a chemically induced menopause.
Right.
Just chaos.
It just seems like you're taking a God-given natural born system and creating utter chaos in it.
What were those four years like before I get to the detransitioning piece?
Like, what describe your happiness, your interactions, your life for those four years?
I, you know, tried my best throughout those four years.
And to a certain extent, when you have everyone around you telling you this is the right thing, you should be so happy.
You, you should feel good about this.
Of course, there is a level of like placebo to that.
Of course, when everyone around you is affirming this and telling you you're right and that this is the good thing to do, of course, you're going to go along with that, especially after having just come off such a like an awful time in your life where you were at your lowest.
And of course, you have the effect that testosterone is, it's a steroid.
It's going to give you energy.
You're going to, you're going to feel good.
And it was that mixed with all the other mental health medications I was on at the time.
But looking back at it, I didn't realize just how disconnected I felt from everything in my life until I detransitioned, disconnected from my physical self, from just everything, everyone around me.
To the point where I, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
To the point where I was so disassociated from myself throughout those years that when it all came crashing back down, it felt like the emotional equivalent of being hit by a bus, essentially.
Were you, you know, people often confuse gender with sexuality.
They're two separate highways.
And just because you think you're trans doesn't mean your sexuality changes at all.
So you were a straight girl when this all started, as I understand it, yes.
I suppose more or less, yes, yeah.
Okay, okay.
And then you start transitioning or for four years, you're living, quote, as a boy.
And during that time, I mean, most 16 to 20-year-old young girls are starting to have some hormones kick in for sexual attraction, whoever you're attracted to, whether you're a lesbian or you're straight.
Was that happening?
And was it confusing given what you were doing over here in the gender lane?
It was confusing.
And like, there's, there's two separate aspects I suppose I could divide this into.
You have the aspect of, okay, my body is being pumped with high amounts of testosterone, and that's just wreaking havoc on everything and making everything very confusing and kind of warping any attraction I had.
And then you had the aspect of just navigating the world like that and also not knowing what to do because of the fact that the, you know, the sexual trauma I had was never addressed in favor of the gender thing.
So then you have essentially a, you know, 16 to 19 year old who doesn't really have a picture of what healthy relationships looks like, has these raging wrong hormones in her body that are throwing everything out of whack, who's on mental health medication that is also throwing everything there out of balance.
And just a very confusing time where there never was a serious relationship in any of that, because I don't think at the time that would have been possible given what was happening.
This is so cruel.
So what was it?
What did it for you, Luca, where you were like, wrong choice?
I don't want this.
I grew up a little.
And I think that that is the most simple way to put it is I grew up.
I grew up and I was able to think about the world and my future in ways that just were not possible at 16 years old because I was a 16 year old.
You know, we don't, we don't necessarily consider teenagers the ones with the best long-term decision making in the things they do.
But it was a combination of that is like the overarching theme is just I grew up.
And then you got into the other aspects of, okay, I'm able to think about, do I want children?
What do I want my serious relationships to look like?
You have the health complications at that point I was experiencing from testosterone.
And then you have another overarching theme of, I don't want to be chained to a medical industry.
I want my freedom.
I want to be able to go places.
I want to be able to not be reliant on this medication that is now at this point hurting me.
What's the story normally?
Like in your experience, Mary Margaret, is there a trigger for most detransitioners so they know they're done?
Like, how does the light bulb come on?
I found it was kind of different in a lot of cases.
Like Helena Kirschner was in a relationship with another girl who identified as a transgender man.
And that person made Helena a slideshow of their relationship.
And Helena saw how she had gone from being this kind of happy teenager to just being this really sad, hurting person.
And she saw visible photos of this.
And it made her just kind of crack and realize, oh my gosh, look what I've done here.
Here's where I am.
She started sobbing.
And that was her realization moment.
But I think for some of the other people like that I've been talking to, kind of like Luca shared, it was more of a moment of I'm not feeling better.
And then, oh, is there something wrong here?
Why am I not feeling better?
I was told that I would find happiness on the other side of this.
And that's, that's something I brought up a lot actually.
And Luca, maybe you can chime in on this is the idea that happiness is on the other side of the hell that is this surgical and medical transition.
You know, you're this that doctors are telling young people, you will be happy if you go through all of this, not just that you will be a man.
And that's not something that we tell people in any, any, any medical field, you know, that you will be happy if you get this breast augmentation or something like that.
That's just not how medical professionals speak.
And yet that is what is being sold to these young people, often young people who are looking for identity.
They're looking for happiness.
I mean, that's a human thing, right?
Like we're all searching for happiness at the end of the day.
And so to harness that desire, that very human desire is evil.
And that is what these medical professionals have been doing.
Luca, can you just say, so you get to this point and ultimately you do a very smart thing, which is hire our pal Harmeet Dylan, who's a brilliant lawyer and one of the few who's truly unafraid to go after true villains.
And so who are you suing?
I am suing the main gender clinic doctor, the therapist that wrote all my letters and was the first to like really affirm me, the one I mentioned earlier.
And then also the surgeon who performed the double mastectomy.
And are your parents relieved now that you've transitioned back?
I think in some ways that was, you know, a very hard conversation to have.
Telling, I, for instance, telling my mom that felt like the emotional equivalent of slapping her in the face, because I knew me telling her that would hurt her.
And that's not something, you know, anyone wants to do that.
Because she wanted you to be a boy or because she participated in all of this?
Because she had her reservations and was not listened to by me.
They were any reservations she had were squashed out by the therapists and the doctors.
And having someone who had that protective instinct and tried to say something.
And then coming back years later and going, you were right.
I should have listened to you.
And knowing that that, in her heart, that must hurt, knowing that everything happened and she was correct.
It was one of the lowest moments, I think, that that conversation on the phone to the point where it started out with she picked up the phone and I just, I broke down.
I was sobbing to the point where she was like, are you okay?
Are you hurt?
Did someone attack you?
Because she thought it was that bad that something else was going on.
And the answer was yes.
The answer is yes, someone did attack me.
Someone with a scalpel in a surgeon's gown pretending to be a surgeon who took the Hippocratic oath.
Before I let you go, because we got to wrap it up, but before I let you go, what is your advice, Luca, to other kids out there who are being tempted by this same messaging and their parents who are being sold the lie about the suicide threats?
To the young people, it would be, you are going to do so much growing and so much, you know, finding yourself and finding what you're interested in, especially in your teenage years.
Don't let those years become consumed by a medical industry that does not care about you.
And then to the parents, I suppose I would just say in a world that wants you to always say yes to your child, know that always saying yes is not an act of love.
And sometimes just putting your foot down and saying no or wait and setting that boundary is the most loving thing you can do for your child.
Boundaries Are Love 00:00:54
You give me the chills.
Thank you.
Thank you for telling your story.
God bless you.
I hope you do great on this new path.
And I'm really awed by your courage in telling the story.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mary Margaret, thanks to you too.
Wow.
I can see why you were in tears a lot on these interviews and when writing this book.
Please support the effort and read more because there are so many heartbreaking stories in here, but also important, important telling ones and a guide really for parents and kids too on how it happens and what to look out for.
Again, the book is D-Trans, True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult by Mary Margaret Olihan.
All the best to you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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