‘There’s a lot of money to be made’: Detransitioners blast doctors they blame for maimed bodies

By Brandon Showalter, Opinion writer and social commentator Wednesday, July 13, 2022

A rising number of “detransitioners” are raising their voices in support of safeguarding measures to protect children from the harms of taking puberty-blocking drugs, opposite-sex hormones or undergoing cosmetic surgeries to remove their breast tissue or genitalia. Many detransitioners say these practices left them with disfigured bodies and health complications. 

At a public hearing in Florida on Friday, 17-year-old Chloe Cole, a detransitioning teenager from California, recounted how she underwent the experimental gender medicalization and was incapable of comprehending what the drugs and surgeries would do to her body. 

"I really didn’t understand all of the ramifications of any of the medical decisions that I was making," Cole said, noting that she started taking hormone blockers at age 13, followed by testosterone, according to Fox News. 

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When Cole was only 15, she had a double mastectomy, what trans activists call “top surgery.” "I was unknowingly physically cutting off my true self from my body, irreversibly and painfully,” she said. 

Duringa roundtable event with Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, clips of which were shared on social media, Cole said she doesn't know whether she will be able to carry a child to term and believes she's at greater risk of suffering fatal health complications.

"I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child, and I might be at increased risk for certain cancers, mainly cervical cancer," Cole said. "And because I do not have my breasts, … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have."

Realizing that her ability to breastfeed had been taken from her, Cole determined that joining the ranks of the newly transitioned had left her with a mutilated body and that she had been far too young to fully grasp the irreversible damage of medicalized and surgical gender transition. 

Along with sharing her story with Florida's surgeon general, Cole urged the state's elected officials to implement a rule to block Medicaid funds (taxpayers' dollars) from being used to pay for experimental drugs and surgeries for gender-confused youth. 

In April, the Florida Department of Health released state guidelines for treating youth experiencing gender dysphoria, which recommended against experimental interventions like puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and performing body mutilating surgeries on teenagers younger than 18, such as castration. 

Last month, Cole was profiled in the New York Post alongside 23-year-old detransitioner Helena Kerschner, who previously testified in opposition to a pending bill in California, SB 107, that would allow minors from other states to obtain “gender-affirming” services despite their parents' objections. Sources close to the matter told The Christian Post that the bill contains provisions that would allow the state's courts to sever parents' rights. The next  Appropriations Committee hearing is scheduled for Aug. 3. 

The New York Post profiled another detransitioner on Monday, a 31-year-old man named Brian Wagoner, who lived as a woman for nearly a decade, presenting as “Brianna.” He began reintegrating with his natal sex in February and described emerging from his trans identity as akin to “leaving the 'Twilight Zone,' but the rest of society is still in it.”

Wagoner took specific aim at the doctors who guided him down this pathway and suggested that nefarious motives, specifically illicit financial gains, are a factor in this area of medicine.

“It was basically like medical professionals cheering on a girl with bulimia for puking up her lunch when her ribs are already poking out,” Wagoner told the New York Post, speaking of the estrogen he was given for several years. 

“There’s a lot of money to be made by doctors here. They see the dollar signs, and in the end, money talks.”

Wagoner also recounted how he thought becoming a woman seemed like a way of escaping a homosexual identity — something with which he now says he has come to terms — and that being trans granted him a sort of celebrity status on his college campus during his early 20s and people suddenly wanted to be his friend. 

Medically transitioning only worsened his problems, he said, and he wound up doing hard drugs like heroin and ended up going to rebab four separate times before finally becoming sober.

“Once I got off drugs and got a real job, I just had a clear head and started feeling a new gender dysphoria all over again,” he said. “I was looking at myself in the mirror and looking at my childhood photos as a little boy and started thinking, ‘What have I done?"

Among the things that caused him to start questioning his transition were podcasters Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson. He also believes that he would have never considered trying to be a woman had he not been exposed to transgender fetish pornography.

Wagoner blames his distress on those in the medical and counseling industries who further deceived him and set him on this course. 

“My therapist really was an activist who also happened to be a psychologist,” he said. 

Wagoner never underwent a cosmetic gender surgery, but the synthetic estrogen has taken a toll on his male body; he has experienced an inflamed pelvic area, has pain while urinating, and is being monitored for osteoporosis. 

“I probably should have been put in a psychiatric hospital, not given estrogen. I just needed someone to listen to me, but this woman had me go and change my body’s chemistry and my whole life.”