A detransitioner in agony recounts how gender doctors manipulated him into castration, hormones
"When Marcus Fitz started ejaculating blood it finally occurred to him that just maybe the medical professionals he trusted had been misleading him...
He believes it's important that people learn about the deceptive practices at gender clinics that push cross-sex hormones and transgender surgeries, which he says have left him psychologically scarred, physically mutilated, and with a severely compromised endocrine system...
He talked to a clinician who, he would later find out, was not a licensed therapist and was serving in more of an intern role, a student volunteer."
I spoke to her maybe four times. She was fascinated with me," Fitz said, noting his earliest memories of exploring transition.
Much of what she said during those sessions was along the lines of "discovering your authentic self" as the opposite sex and other transgender jargon Fitz now considers to be nonsense.
She ultimately referred him to a local gender clinic so he could seek medical transition, which he did. After waiting an hour at this new clinic, he had a 15-minute appointment with a registered nurse who immediately affirmed him as the opposite sex. At the end of the appointment she prescribed him hormones.
"If you think you are trans, that means you are trans," Fitz said the nurse told him, adding that those were her exact words.
"Then I was given this piece of paper to sign which had many scary things on it and I was told not to worry about them, that they 'would do everything in our power to prevent them' and that this was basically a formality."
The paper was an informed consent document...
Further contributing to the idea that transgenderism was a glamorous pathway was the 2005 film "Transamerica" starring Felicity Huffman, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her leading role in the movie. The movie reportedly contains a line saying that after genital surgery "not even a gynecologist would be able to tell the difference,” which, Fitz says, is "stupidly untrue."
As Fitz became more serious about becoming trans he realized that there was only one way to go: cut off all ties with family, and change one's name, wardrobe and sex marker on all of his official legal documents."
There's no alternative. That's just what you do," he told CP, adding that transition is always billed as "medically necessary."
Within the institutions promoting the medicalization of gender, the people staffing the offices have an answer for almost every concern or objection.
When Fitz expressed concerns about the ill effects the hormones might have on his liver, he said he was told: "Well no, don't worry about that. That's why we do blood tests every six months."...
"This whole [transgender] thing became kind of intoxicating, socially and physically. It was kind of a thrill. I felt I was treated better. People were smiling at me on the street, holding doors open for me. I was getting all this positive attention," Fitz recalled."
And estrogen in males, it kind of dulls our senses, mellows us out … and it feels good."But it also made him a bit of a mess...
Every time Fitz went to the clinic for an appointment, the office staff would try to sell him on the idea of surgery, he said, marketing it to him as though it was the next logical and necessary step in his journey...
Being a "free" clinic, the office had a sliding scale program that was government-subsidized."
I would go in and they would ask: 'What is your income, what are you assets?'"...
"We could just do an orchiectomy,'" he recalled being told. The surgery involves removing the testicles from the scrotum. But they didn't say the word "testicles" when they explained the procedure, he asserted."
That word was never used. The gender clinic staff always avoided sex-specific biological terms, preferring genderist euphemisms instead. I was told we were 'removing the part that makes testosterone.' I thought they were removing a tiny part of the testes, not the whole of them," he said.
This was appealing to Fitz because he was informed it wouldn't change how he looked, felt, or functioned, and that it would cut down on his dependence on hormones...
The surgery was relatively inexpensive — only $1,000 — and would only take 20 minutes to perform. The doctors made it sound as though he would be getting a mole or a tooth removed, as though a tiny piece of his testicles was a bothersome, worthless piece of his anatomy that was harming him, and that the procedure to remove it was perfectly safe and normal.
He agreed to the surgery, though he asked if he should get a second opinion. He recalled being told that he did not need a second opinion and to just get a letter signed off by a urologist...
"Oh, by the way, your last blood test indicated that some of your levels are low and we need you to start taking prescription-level Vitamin D and calcium."
When Fitz asked if this was a temporary prescription he was told that it was not, that it would probably be for the rest of his life. When he pressed the staff further he was told that it was as a result of the surgery."
The surgery was supposed to make me healthier," he replied, "why would I now need to take prescription vitamins?"
The reason was that he was no longer producing the necessary hormones needed to maintain adequate bone density...
He also asked for the letter he was asked to get signed from a urologist so he could go forward with the surgery.
The letter said that Fitz was of sound mind and was in good physical health, exceeded the standards of care set forth in the current guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
For the first time, Fitz looked up the WPATH standards of care which stipulate that before hormonal treatments begin patients are supposed to have had a psychological evaluation. Fitz maintains he never had one. Prior to surgery he was supposed to, according to the guidelines, have two more evaluations. Fitz says he never had those either.
Upon closer review of his medical records, which he shared with CP, he realized that the doctor had taken notes of his thoughts but had never noted any of Fitz's concerns about what the drugs might do to his liver or bladder. Irked by this bias, he began researching his doctor's background and discovered that his doctor was actually a trans-identifying woman who presented as a man.
All these years he thought he had been discussing his distinctly male health issues with a man.
"I felt horribly betrayed"...
Fitz also discovered that the doctor was a clinical activist, and when she was not working at the gender clinic she was giving slideshow presentations at various meetings with other doctors for more "gate-opening." This doctor called herself a "gate-opener" as opposed to a gatekeeper...
Fitz said he attempted suicide once, opting to jump to his death from the balcony of his high-rise apartment, but it was foiled. His cat was looking like she was going to jump off with him and he didn't want her to die, so he stepped back from the edge...
He was shuffled around to various doctors, all of whom were either LGBT-identified themselves or sympathetic to transgenderism. None of them helped him, he said. One told him he needed to get some therapy to help him get over his "internalized transphobia."...
Fitz went home and started looking for local medical malpractice lawyers, calling dozens of different attorneys, most of whom did not return his phone calls. A few talked to him but refused to work with him and allegedly called him a "bigot" or "transphobe."...
Only one person said he would help him.
"I felt very stuck. If only one in 40 would help me then I must be desperate, I'll do anything my attorney says," Fitz told CP.
As he pursued legal recourse, he also finally found a physician who was willing to help him detransition, a doctor who advised him to get therapy, which he did. Fitz also opened a Twitter account and began tweeting under a pseudonym. He was frequently attacked by transactivists and their left-wing cheerleaders.
As it became clearer he was detransitioning and rejecting a trans identity, many of his local friends started distancing themselves because they either felt outwardly offended or uncomfortable around him and stopped talking with him. These supposed friends considered him a political liability...
As transgenderism was being mainstreamed, his peers would excitedly ask him if he was happy to see positive coverage of transgender-identifying persons."
And I would say: 'Well, actually, no. The whole thing is a fraud and it's starting to fall apart for me and I bet it will for everyone else too'"...
Such exchanges were awkward and he found himself not getting invitations to parties and gatherings of friends. Others whom he thought were friends stopped taking his phone calls.
Fitz found the cognitive dissonance staggering that Dolezal was widely mocked and rejected for saying she felt like she was black but Jenner was enthusiastically embraced for saying he felt he was a woman.
The only people who offered him any meaningful help and support at the time were Christians and radical feminists.
"But today, a few short years later, support is more diverse, as more of the general public has become aware of how little sense transgenderism actually makes. I've got support from men and women, gay and straight, left and right"...
Radical feminism, he soon learned, was quite different from third wave liberal feminism, which supports transgender ideology...
About a year into his detransition, he received a diagnosis of being medium functional on the autism spectrum, a common comorbidity to gender dysphoria that gender ideologues usually ignore...
He shopped around for various surgeons to remove the excess breast tissue, but some refused him because he was a detransitioner...
Fitz believes lawsuits are the best tool for social change and hopes to be part of a large-scale effort to sue the gender clinics that harmed him and his fellow travelers...
Fitz believes that the transgender movement shares significant overlap with the transhumanist movement, specifically the notion "that your body is just a machine you can take apart and put back together."
In addition to taking part in lawsuits, he wants to organize detransitioners and is interacting with groups and individuals that have gone public with their detransition stories...
His attorney had to work extra hard to get his sex markers changed back to the original on his legal documents. Detransitioning his identification papers has presented more hurdles than switching them to opposite sex markers."
I actually had to have a legal battle to restore my birth certificate""
Curiously, lots of liberals slamming South Dakota trans health bill claimed that the state shouldn't interfere in doctor-patient relationships, even though normally they'd be for regulation to protect patients