Despite a growing list of very public and catastrophic failures, experts are still widely trusted by the vast majority of people, even by people who claim to distrust the expert class.
If you ask a group of people what they think of scientists at large, there’s a good chance that the answer will be one of distrust or at least some sort of skepticism. But if you ask them what they think of their doctors, it is likely to be one of trust.
The same goes for education. Republicans especially are prone to distrust the public education system, but when asked about their own children’s school and teachers, there is a much higher level of trust and comfortability. No matter what motivates the feelings of distrust, familiarity tends to breed a blind trust in the same organizations and industries that people claim have lost their trust in.
Blind trust in experts who have not earned it is an overarching theme of Daily Signal reporter Mary Margaret Olohan’s new book, Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult. This timely work of journalism tells the stories of a group of deeply wounded young people whose lives were permanently altered when they and their families blindly trusted an expert class that sold them a transgender fantasyland.
The people that Olohan profiles suffered from a wide range of emotional and psychological difficulties, but all fit the same general profile: teenagers who, while navigating the difficulties of puberty and growing up, believed that they were born in the wrong body and needed to undergo a sex transition, only to realize later that the permanent life-altering procedures that they had undergone had done them more harm than good.
These stories of detransition are a disturbing and horrible journey through the lives of a group of young people who were suffering greatly. But as they looked for an antidote to these personal hells, a professional class of doctors and psychiatrists used emotional blackmail to sell a fantasyland that they had no intention of delivering. “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?” were the words of doctors to the parents of Luka, a detransitioner profiled in the book. A version of that could be copied and pasted for nearly every single story that Olohan recounts and is the core selling point of gender transition procedures: that these permanently life-altering drugs and surgeries are a ticket to a better life.
While many other books about the proliferation of transgender ideology among the general public and especially among young people have largely focused on the propaganda and challenges posed by this extraordinarily perverse ideology, the story of Detrans is told through people who have lived and suffered at the hands of this class of experts who are all too eager to mutilate the body of a healthy teenage girl. In fact, one of the most jarring aspects of the book is the recurring theme of medical professionals completely disregarding a patient’s list of mental ailments as they eagerly pushed these impressionable children toward hormone injections and mastectomy surgeries. Ailments that included trauma from sexual abuse, anorexia, loneliness, and depression.
The outright refusal to consider all factors when assessing the well-being of their patients betrays the medical profession’s eagerness to enslave a group of impressionable young women to the healthcare industry for the rest of their lives. This cultish behavior is what makes the ultimate liberation of these women itself an extraordinary achievement. Indeed, as much of a cheerleader and enabler the medical and psychological experts were to these young people in undergoing the transition process, they were equally an obstacle to detransitioning.
One detransitioner, Helena, shared that her pro-LGBT therapist told her, “You’re trying to talk yourself out of being trans because transphobia is making you hate yourself.” For a person who claimed to be affirming and welcoming to Helena, it is a statement that is shockingly devoid of compassion.
But as much as the doctors who abused the detransitioners lacked compassion, Detrans tells their stories with the utmost compassion and even offers a glimmer of hope to those who may be similarly trapped. As Olohan recounts these gut-wrenching stories, she also shares the hope and peace that the detransitioners have experienced since freeing themselves from the world of transgender ideology.
However, this liberation is only the first step in their lifelong journey as detransitioners. The life-changing procedures that were done to them at an age when they could not freely choose otherwise carry lifelong effects. While several of them have sued the doctors and therapists who pushed them to transition, justice seems a long way off.
Still, for today, Olohan has given these detransitioners a voice. It’s a voice that should serve as a warning to other impressionable young men and women who are at risk of falling prey to exploitative schemes of an expert class that promises a transgender fantasyland but are all too keen to turn these vulnerable people into lifelong slaves to the medical profession. This is the great journalistic achievement of Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.
