Formerly transgendered men and women are speaking out about the horrors of the surgeries and hormone therapies they underwent in a new book by Daily Signal reporter Mary Margaret Olohan. Detrans: True Stories Of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult details how “detransitioners” such as Chloe Cole, Abel Garcia, and Prisha Mosley were deceived by a medical industry that emotionally blackmails vulnerable, emotionally unstable young people and their parents into taking on invasive and ultimately irreversible surgeries. 

Many of these individuals have sued the medical providers that cut up their body parts under the guise of simply “following the science.” Cole is suing Kaiser Permanente for giving her a double mastectomy, putting her on puberty blockers, and providing her hormone blockers, all before the age of 18. To this day, Cole deals with sexual dysfunction, massive scarring, and leaking fluid from her nipples. Mosley announced a lawsuit against her medical providers in July 2023, alleging that they pushed her into “gender-affirming medicalization” despite her struggle with suicidal ideation and depression. 

“I would like people to understand the mental toll that this is taking on young people who are already severely struggling with mental health issues,” Olohan told Chronicles in a phone interview. “I think that’s something that your average American doesn’t understand. These young people are severely struggling already, and they’re looking for relief. And instead of relief, they’re given more of a mental burden, which comes in the form of testosterone for the girls, obviously, and then estrogen for the guys.”

The doctors who perform life altering surgeries on minors are backed by the largest and most respected medical institutions in the country. These organizations are notorious for brushing aside concerns about a patient’s comorbidities—such as depression, eating disorders, or even suicidality—which, at the very least, should be addressed before embarking on surgical “treatments.” The world’s largest gender clinic in Tavistock, New Jersey has reported that 97.5 percent of its patients have autism.

The Daily Caller News Foundation recently reported that the president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Executive Committee argued that “people with diagnoses on the schizophrenia spectrum” can consent to cross-sex hormones and sex change surgeries. Doctors, parents, and the young patients themselves are told that there is little to no chance that these comorbidities are the cause of their feelings of gender dysphoria, rather than the symptoms. 

“It takes a very, very morally bankrupt individual to look a struggling teenager in the eye and say that they are fit to have a very invasive surgical procedure done based on some analysis of their feelings,” Olohan said. 

“Doctors are prioritizing ideology over science and facts, out of a desire maybe to promote themselves or maybe to preserve their reputation with the gender ideology folks. But I think, in large part, it is because this is what is being pushed in medical organizations.”

Detrans details the dark path on which these disturbed teens are placed, from their first meeting with a therapist, often at school, all the way to having their genitals or breasts surgically altered and their childhoods and futures stolen. Throughout the volume, Olohan weaves in the stories of these detransitioners who provide real-life examples of the hurt caused by the gender ideology cult that has overtaken the medical field. 

Mosley’s story, as told in DeTrans,demonstrates how therapists rubber-stamped by organizations like WPATH rush young girls into taking testosterone if they give the slightest indication of preference for presenting as the opposite sex. 

“That’s what the trans people told me to do: If you get a WPATH-certified, affirmation-only therapist, you’re good. You’re set,” Mosley is quoted in DeTrans. 

A therapist who was also a member of WPATH wrote a letter authorizing Mosley to begin receiving testosterone injections after a minutes-long session. Mosley was assessed based on “the requirements for cross-sex hormone therapy, under the guidelines of the ‘WPATH Standards of Care, 7 Edition,’” according to her lawsuit. 

An avalanche of lawsuits, legislation, and school board upheavals, across the country and the world indicate a turning against the harmful medical consensus regarding transgender-identified youth. States are passing laws banning or restricting child sex changes, often citing the testimony of detransitioners as their reason for doing so. School boards across the country are banning teachers from hiding children’s desires to change their sex from their parents, restricting one of the ways practitioners of gender ideology target gender confused children—in the school therapist’s office. With the stories of detransitioners getting more attention, the public can no longer claim ignorance regarding the harmful practice of child sex changes. 

“I truly believe that reading and understanding these real, lived stories of transitioners makes it impossible to advocate for such destructive practices, particularly for children,” Olohan said.