by Mary Elise Cosgray
Detransitioner Camille Kiefel says that she and other victims of transgender surgeries “have been dismissed” by doctors pushing so-called gender-affirming care.
“I struggled with childhood trauma,” Kiefel told The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan. “My best friend had been raped by her brother when I was in sixth grade.”
A detransitioner is someone who attempts to transition to the opposite gender, then realized that such an attempt is impossible, and “detransitioned.” Many of these individuals, such as Kiefel, say they were betrayed into irreversible hormonal and surgical procedures by doctors and therapists who ignore biological realities in favor of radical ideology.
“For me, it was being afraid of being vulnerable and wanting to protect myself,” she said, adding:
I just started to identify with the male characters in anime manga reading … trying to reject my female identity, dressing more masculine, trying to hide my breasts and my hips, so that men wouldn’t see.
Kiefel confirmed that her father’s stories of “how men his age talk sexually about girls my age … was what started me on that.”
“It was when I was 26 that I saw a ‘gender-affirming care’ therapist, and then started to believe I was nonbinary, and then I got surgery when I was 30,” she said.
“The crazy thing is that they transitioned me into a nonbinary sex, one that doesn’t exist in nature,” she said.
“This freeing idea, with being nonbinary for many people is, like … I can just be me, and I’m not sexualized,” Kiefel explained. It was an idea that she learned in women’s studies classes, adding:
The gender ideology really co-opted it. There was this idea that you can be a third sex.
“I didn’t know what I wanted,” she said. “I just really wanted my breasts gone.”
Explaining the approval process for getting a double mastectomy, Kiefel said, “The ideology says that you can be trans and have trauma. They’re not accounting for the people who are transitioning because of trauma … it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
She explained the affirmation she received for the transition, saying, “I actually told the gender therapist what had happened to my friend and yet … but they didn’t push back at all.”
“I dealt with all these physical health issues after the surgery,” Kiefel said, “and the doctors took me seriously at first, but then became dismissive when they thought it was psychosomatic fever.”
In the face of that dismissal by the doctors, Kiefel took matters into her own hands and began working with a naturopath.
“I started adding meat back into my diet and some other holistic treatments,” she said, “and all of a sudden, I was, like, ‘Wow!’ My mental health is getting better!”
“All I needed to do was address my physical health, but nobody was doing that because … you’re depressed. … [T]hey just pegged me as someone dealing with mental illness.”
When Olohan asked Kiefel about her contact with the surgeons after she realized the mistake, the detransitioner said, “I just don’t feel comfortable reaching out to those doctors” after having experienced a doctor who treated her like she was wasting his time.
“I think a lot of detransitioners have those feelings of, like, we’ve been dismissed. I know many detransitioners who have been told that this is part of their gender journey,” Kiefel said.
Many detransitioners are suing the medical establishment, accusing doctors and therapists of manipulating them into undergoing brutal sex-change experiments.
Olohan asked Kiefel, “What would you say to doctors and therapists who are considering being a part of these so-called gender-affirming surgeries and interventions?”
“Make sure that no one who is struggling with severe mental health issues should do any of these surgeries,” Kiefel said. “They need to get their mental health under control.”
“Particularly with women who have histories with sexual trauma,” she added, “there’s a lot of them who are transitioning … . It’s partially escapism and to protect themselves. “
Olohan stated, “It sounds like we need more medical professionals that want to help detransitioners.”
Kiefel agreed: “We do.”
Olohan documents numerous stories of detransitioners in her book “Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult,” due out May 28, an intimate look at the lived experiences of detransitioners, including the manipulative therapy sessions, botched surgeries, and attempts to construct phantom body parts.
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Mary Elise Cosgray is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
Photo “Camille Kiefel” by Daily Signal.
