Life’s Not Perfect. Transitioning to a Boy Won’t Make It Better | Stella O'Malley

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Just because you want to be a boy, I want to be rich, I want to be gorgeous, I want to be lots of things. You sometimes you have to deal with the limitations of life, sometimes you have to deal with you won't always get what you want. And that's okay. You might be very lonely, we can help with that. You might be autistic, we can help with that. Lots of things we can help with. You don't have to try and change to be a boy. It won't necessarily make you happy. And the stats suggest that you're going to have higher levels of psychiatric admission, higher levels of mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, more likely for unemployment, more likely for prison. The long term outcomes of medical transition are not good. And so you'd be better off trying to resolve and accept your own body. Well, hello ladies and hello gentlemen and welcome to a special edition of Victor Davis-Hanson in his own words. I'm Jack Fowler, I'm recording on Friday the 20th and this episode will be up on Saturday the 21st. And Victor is still recovering from his medical issues and surgeries. And we try to get, not only we try, we do have some significant, tremendous pinch hitters to do these special episodes. And today I have Stella O'Malley, who's kind of a rock star in the whole world of transition, detransition, et cetera. I'm going to read her bio for you here in a minute folks, so you get through my babbling. And we're going to try to ask some fundamental questions about these issues. So Stella, I'm so appreciative that you've agreed to join us today. Stella is a psychotherapist bestselling author, public speaker, parent with extensive experience in counseling and psychotherapy. She's originally from Dublin, which now lives in rural England. England, oh sorry, don't shoot me, Ireland. My gosh, what did I say? Four centuries ago maybe. Ireland with her husband and her two children. Her latest book is when kids say they're trans, which she coauthored with fellow therapist Sasha Ayod and Lisa Marchiano. The book offers a resource for parents who want their children to flourish, but do not believe that hasty medicalization is the best way to ensure long-term health and well-being. She's a founder and the executive director of Genspect, and I was at a Genspect gathering in Washington last week. It's an international organization that advocates for a healthy approach to sex and gender. She's also the founder, director of the Gender Dysphoria Support Network, and she's a clinical advisor on the clinical advisory network on sex and gender, and also a founding member of Thoughtful Therapist. Before, Stella, I babble a little more, but you just mind quickly telling us what is Genspect. Genspect is an organization that promotes a non-medicalized approach to sex and gender, so that there is no, to show the world and to raise public awareness that there's no need to medicalize people's identities. We never did it in vast numbers before, and now that it's been done, people are transitioning. We're realizing that actually it's a very unhealthy intervention. It doesn't have good long-term outcomes and some awareness around that. Well, here's how we're going to proceed here today, Stella. I'm assuming a basic perspective of the average listener, the typical listener viewer of this podcast, intelligent people who are well aware that there is transitioning, who know now that there's an emerging detransitioning movement. I don't even want to call it a movement, but it's happening. Our listeners and viewers, they're concerned or interested or even curious about the who's, what's, why's, where's of this intense issue, and you are very steeped in it, in the intricacies, in the dynamics, and the components. They're political, they're biological, medical, cultural, scientific, etc. So we yearn, and I think that's fair to say, I do, and I think our listeners do, for an informed overview, and you're just the person to provide it. And we've gone through this transition rage. I don't think necessarily know that it's over, but we've been overwhelmed by this. And now we're seeing this detransition reaction or reality. So I've got several broad questions to ask you about all this, and I'm going to do that. I'm actually going to do that when I come back from these important messages. If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show, The Tony Kinnitcast, the same common sense perspectives you love weekdays at 7pm Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis, and good old American starcast. Tom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop, find The Tony Kinnitcast on YouTube, X, radio, TV, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, pinch hitting today Stella O'Malley. Stella, thanks again for being here. So we're going to largely focus our conversation or your wisdom sharing on detransitioning. But let's start at the beginning. There's been an eruption in transitioning young boys, young girls, and not only young, I know, I mean, there are many older adults who do this also, who claim they were born in the wrong body and bodies and with medical professionals giving these youths powerful drugs and then performing drastic surgeries to undo, I'll say what God has done, what the chromosomes say. So why? What happened? What took hold of our society, our medical profession, our parents, some of them, anyway, our education officials to create this trend, this rage, this crisis, you call it what you will, to passionately facilitate, encourage, and champion young men and women transitioning. They turned it into a civil right and a political priority. What happened? It's fascinating. It's probably the most common question I get asked, but I've studied it as a result quite extensively. You could say it was a perfect storm and a perfect storm of a few different factors. For example, there was a rise in medicalization and diagnosis of children in a way that was unheard of 30 years ago. Children were being medicalized if they had. What one could describe as mild distress or moderate to mild distress and they were diagnosed and medicalized faster these days. So that was happening at the very same time as that, there was the gay rights movement arguably achieved what the gay rights movement needed to achieve. They got gay marriage in most places in the Western world. They got what they wanted, but they still wanted, as any NGO, non-governmental organization, they wanted to keep their funding. To keep their funding, they had to broaden their base. To broaden their base, they brought in the tea into the lesbian gay rights movement. Why? Because they wanted to keep going. These were big lucrative organizations. The AIDS crisis had come and gone, but they got a lot of funding from it and they got their marriage. They got what they needed to get. So they were kind of looking in a way for a cause and they found a cause. At the same time, so it was a perfect storm with quite a few different events, at the same time, there was also the rise in certain aspects of academia. Academia has really lost a lot of its what would I call it reliability in the last 20, 30 years. There's been a huge rise in academia, an awful lot more research has been carried out, but a lot of it isn't as high quality as it would have been. Subject or topics such as feminism, queer studies, gender studies, women's studies, they again were looking for ever more interesting angles on how to attract people into their base, broaden their base. Queer theory kind of slotted into this post-modern concept, which was rampant individualism of who are you to tell me who I am? It's all about me. I know me. Everything is subjective. So if I say I want to medically transition, grow in third arm, try and live forever, if I want to do it, who are you to tell me not? With that came this kind of extraordinary, this is the last factor in this perfect storm. Extraordinary rise in consumer healthcare, where a lot of medical interventions now are elective and they can be bought. So surrogacy would be another one. Assisted dying arguably. These are called healthcare, but they're not necessarily healthcare. They're arguably people buying medical interventions, cosmetic surgery obviously is one of them. So you put all of that together. And I've studied it. I've just finished my PhD in this. So I've really studied where it all came from. You realize, wow, mad as it is, it does end up with people wanting to medical transition. IE, I'll do what I want. I'd be who I want. If I want to be a boy, I can be a boy. Who are you to say I can't be? And I can buy it. Thank you very much. Just a quick side question on this. You mentioned the gay rights movement funding. There is a split in the gay rights movement itself over this, isn't there? I may be gay, but I am not advocating for this. Why is this part of our cause now? Yeah, because a lot of the gay rights movement, they just wanted to be left alone. Let's do whatever we want to do in bed, but not bring it into our work, not bring it into our life. That was the kind of thrust of the gay rights movement. But there was a new kind of thrust of and now we want more, i.e. we want the pride marches, we want total, not only acceptance, we want massive levels of support and celebration. So there is a split in the people who just want to be left alone, arguably the older generations who are like, I just want to fall in love and be. And then there's another kind of identity-based person who wants their identity to be recognized. And part of that academia is the rise and the emphasis of identity. Arguably, maybe in a post religious age, people don't have such strong identities. Maybe as well in the US, there was always a kind of, I'm Irish American, I'm German American, I'm white. So the lack of identity that people have now that a lot of people have lost religion as well, I think there was a space for people to identify as things. That makes a tremendous amount of sense. Hey, we're going to pay some bills here. 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Go to patriotmobile.com slash vdh or call 972. Patriot, use the promo code VDH for a free month of service, that's patriotmobile.com slash VDH or 972. Patriot and switch today and we thank the good people of Patriot Mobile for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Stella, question two, I thought I was going to only have five or six questions, I think I might have nine, but if you look at the young transitioning sector, if I can call it a sector, what are the leading traits you are seeing? More likely to be male seeking female or the reverse and I've read that there seems to be a significant overrepresentation of autistic kids, is that true? Are there any commonalities with family structure, income levels, rural versus urban or race? So what are the various factors that see seem more representative than there is a percentage of the population? Or is that a ridiculous long-winded question? No, it's right on target because there's an striking similarity among this cohort, striking similarity of certain traits. Probably the most common trait that one would notice is autistic traits and the elevated proportion of young people seeking transition who are also autistic. It's extraordinary, it depends on the clinic, it might be 70% one place, 48% in another, beyond 70% in another. And then there are other, they often have other diagnosis like ADHD is very, very high as well and anxiety, eating disorders. This is a highly vulnerable cohort. These are not kids who are happy and then suddenly decide to identify as trans. These were generally lonely, they were very often very lonely, they'd often had a trauma, they'd often had some sort of bully and that some sort of left their crowd. So they were lonely autistic often. A lot of them, what would I call it an elevated proportion of them are same sex attracted, but not all of them. So a lot of them are kind of little, let's say little tomboy lesbian who doesn't want to be a lesbian or, you know what I mean, and would rather just be a boy. And she believes in this extraordinary new culture that she could be a boy just by taking some medication. So that's an issue as well. But more than anything, I think it's loneliness and by far the most common feature is they are online too much. A lot of them in COVID, a lot of them, there's huge rise during COVID, but a lot of them happen online. They're the new cohort and why did they come along? Do you remember that perfect storm I was talking about? I forgot to say for the young people, the last factor is social media, that suddenly they were told there's this edgy group, LGBTQ, do you not feel like yourself? Do you hate your body? Do you want to be somebody else? Why don't you join us? We're the cool edgy, very online group. And it's extraordinary. So many of these kids, you'd see them online and they're funny and they're sophisticated and they're witty and they're, you know, very impressive. Then you meet them and they could barely speak. They can't meet your eye. They've no social skills. And so they've got a very highly developed online persona and a very underdeveloped real life persona. And that's happening in tandem. And they prefer themselves online. They prefer their online personality. And their online personality is often a boy or a girl. But as well as that, up until the last 10 years, the cohort was mostly middle-aged males that wanted a medically transition. And that was for a kind of a paraphernalia, sexual reason, a sexual disorder. And then the other was very young little boys who wanted to be girls, little kind of sissy boys would be what they would have been called back in the day. And they often grew up to be gay. Then suddenly in the last 10 years, there's been an extraordinary change in the cohort. And now it's gone from by far way more boys to suddenly it's about 70% girls. It's been a complete swing. And why that is, lots of people have lots of different theories. My own theory is girls are looking for ever more interesting reasons to flee from their sexualization. Maybe since the 50s and 60s, teenage girls have been sexualized. You know, with the arrival of rock music. It's just a theory. But anyway, then anorexia arrived somewhere around then. Anorexia arrived with social contagion and it stayed. Then after anorexia came bulimia. And bulimia arrived, you know, where people are vomiting to. Then it arrived with social contagion with bulimia. Extraordinary numbers of social contagion. Once it came on the TV, teenage girls would go for it. And then that stayed as a coping mechanism, a kind of way to hate your body. After bulimia, we're going into the naughties now, the 90s and the naughties, self harm came and mutilation kind of, you know, mutilating your body, but also self harming your body. And that came, it was socially contagious. Nobody knew where is this coming from? Why are teenage girls self harming? We've never really seen it in anything except tiny numbers. And now it's arrived. And it's a common, like you and I weren't talking about self harm 25 years ago. Now it's, it's very common. And after self harm, there's a golden thread between all of these conditions. And now it's gender dysphoria. I want to be a boy. I want to take medication and some sort of fleeing of sexuality, some sort of response to I don't want to be a sexualized female in a world born online objectification, constant, constant emphasis on their looks. And so many of these girls, a quick way of saying it is, I don't think I'm pretty enough to be a girl. Oh my gosh, yes. It's horrific to see with my own children. I'm ugly, like, no, you're not. Stop it. Stop. Why is this in the air, in the water and everywhere? But hey, we're going to take a break in a second, but I have another question. And I know we're talking about typicals here. And that may be unfair, but I think we do need some general understandings here. So Mary becomes Charles. And then one day Charles, former Mary begins to doubt, maybe I made a mistake. And then Charles begins to detransition. Everyone's story is unique. But if you could give a common composite case, what is the arc of Mary to Charles back to Mary? And if you could limit this, because I want to talk later about families and how families play into all this. But in the mind of the Mary, Mary Charles Mary, what are they going through in this arc? So if I was to give a typical example, and my God, there's many of these stereotypical examples, Mary at around about 11 or 12, she might have some autistic traits, she might be diagnosed with autism. And as the socializing becomes more complex, she feels left behind. The girls are becoming kind of tweens, kind of teens, and they're sophisticated. And she's not quite up to that. She was happier in the more childlike world where we were just playing with games and toys. And there wasn't the complexity of who likes who and little crushes and all this. And she's out of our depth and doesn't quite like it. She's always been sensory. She just wants to wear certain clothes and doesn't really care about this new dressing up and makeup and all this. She doesn't like it. Sensorally, she doesn't like it. But anyway, she's not really a dressy up type because maybe she's same sex attracted, maybe she's lesbian, or maybe she just hasn't yet developed her sexuality, which is more common, I would say. So she hasn't, and they've all kind of moved on and the development crushes and she just feels freaked out. There's a fight or there's some sort of feeling of being left out. And she starts to go online. And when she goes online, she finds through the algorithms, because she's saying things like I don't like myself or nobody likes me, why doesn't anybody like me through those algorithms and those questions, she gets fed into a massive, massive lobby group of you could be trans. If you think you're trans, you're trans. Take this quiz and press this quiz to find out if you're trans. And the first question is, if you think that you are, and it just beams at you. So she gets into this online world, which is extraordinarily effervescent and bubbly and fun. And you've got little rainbow kind of bracelets and rainbow this and rainbow that stickers. It's very basic, because it's just you identify, but it's also quite cerebral. So it's very kind of basic in the colors. And if you want to be a girl, you can be a girl. If you want to be a boy, you can be a boy. But it gets into all this kind of clever trans misogyny and all these concepts that when you're 12 or 13, you're kind of interested in. It's a new world and it's an in group. And she's never been in an in group. And it's a secret world. And when you're that age, you like having secret worlds that you're not involving your parents in because you're starting to grow and become an adolescent. So you like the idea of a secret group, but you also because you're artistic, you like the fact that it's online, and you don't have to meet them online in real life. You don't have to actually interact with them. And so over time, you get more and more into this idea. And all of your distress, all of your loneliness gets channeled into, I was born in the wrong body. That's why I'm distressed. That's why I'm lonely. All of this distress, all of this awkwardness and loneliness is because I should have been Charlie. Why am I married? This is wrong. And everybody needs to understand my new identity is my true identity. And then I'll be happy. And so a lot of these kids, and I meet them because I'm a psychotherapist, they think everybody else is living these golden lives where everything is easy and they don't have dark problems. They might have little problems, not really. It's finished by lunchtime. And that we're all just cruising. I know. And also they've been taught, if you have a problem tell an adult with the implication that an adult will make you happy. And if you're not happy, something is wrong. Rather than life is difficult, and you're going to be often not happy, they think something is wrong. I'm unhappy. And obviously the answer is I'm born in the wrong body and I should be Charles. And nobody understands it because part of the victim mentality within this group is nobody understands us. We're an us. There are them out there. They'll never understand us. We are part of the very special clique of unknowable people. Nobody knows what it's like to be trans except the trans people. And so we're very, very special. And that's very bewitching for this teenager. She's like, yeah, this is me. And it's very exciting and bewitching. And then she gets caught up in this fixation. There's this belief that if I medicalize, my life is going to be better. I'm going to be probably like that YouTube cool boy that looks really nice. And so she's born into this concept almost like when you were a kid and you saw rock stars and you thought I'd like to be a rock star. Then you got told, yes, you can. And nobody else understands it. So they're gullible. These are naive gullible kids. And then they go and when they go to the doctors in this affirmative world, the gender affirmative care means if the child says they're trans, it's child led, not child centered child led. So if the child says they're trans, then they're trans and the best thing to do is medicalize them. And nobody else can say this is a problem because it's entirely subjective. It's entirely up to the individual. And so if a mother or father says, listen, she was very lonely and she needs to address her autism, which she has rejected and pretends not to exist. And she really does need to address other issues before she medicalizes and becomes a different person. They'd say you're transphobic and you know, we will call child protection services if you keep speaking like this. And your child could die by suicide. Because if you don't affirm your child, the rates of suicide are abhoriously high for parents who don't affirm them. It's not true. Is that true, by the way? It's not true. And I can give you the stats on that in a minute. No, I believe you. I believe you. Oh, it's, well, it's probably the biggest lie that the parents, we've worked with parents for extensively. We've over 5000 parents in our network. And the parents have been really, really treated very, very badly. It's where my heart lies in a lot of ways because the parents, there's nothing like the love you have for a child. And when your child has been almost captured, like this pipe, piper of rainbow, you know, trans and leaves your kid, your gullible naive kid into this world that is not a happy world, it doesn't lead to long-term outcomes. And the parents have felt silenced because of false stats around suicide. What it's based upon just as a quick synopsis is that they asked online communities, have you ever thought of suicide and they created a suicide stat around? Well, you know, these are very gullible kids. Have you ever thought of suicide doesn't translate to a serious statistic about suicide? And so have you ever thought of suicide became the suicidality of trans youth, which, which is not an appropriate question. And then it took until, you know, early 2020s from Professor Michael Biggs over in Britain. He actually tracked of the 15,000 children who entered the largest gender clinic in the world, which was based in London at the time of the 15,004 died by suicide. Two of them were reserved receiving care. Two of them were still on the waiting list. This is no higher than any distressed cohort. This is the same as an anxious cohort. The same as a depressed good. It's just these are distressed kids. Four out of 15,000, it's slightly elevated because they're distressed. It is not anything like you need to affirm your child or they'll die. It's not true. It's not accurate. It has created the foundation of why so many parents have gone with this. There's nothing more terrifying than we told you, your child will die from suicide. You don't do what we tell you to do. Yeah. Well, I'm going to, I've a really basic question to ask but first another, another little, I'm going to tell our folks about silent. I know silent is what a lot of people want me to be but deal with it people. 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This is the same type of signal blocking gear used to help protect our soldiers from GPS detection and electronic threats and now that same technology is available for everyday people. Folks, you and I were everyday people. So if you want to check it out go to silentslnt.com slash vdh. Again that's slnt.com slash vdh to say 15% plus free shipping on qualifying orders. Again that's silent.com slnt.com slash vdh. We thank the good people from Silent for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. One really basic question Stella O'Malley, if you could strive again for typical. And we're talking about now about detransitioning. What does that mean? What does detransitioning mean for a girl and what does it mean for a boy? And I know by the way that some there are some men my age who are detransitioning so that I don't want to call them a girl or a boy but male or female I should say. So imagine this girl Mary that we've kind of spoke about so she medically transitions generally you know 17, 18 she starts medicalizing maybe has a mastectomy starts masculizing her body takes a lot of testosterone and the hoped for the promise the happy days the kind of relief from anxiety the kind of the idea that she was going to be that slightly cool boy on the YouTube video doesn't materialize it's very very disappointing actually she often has an awful lot of UTIs like when you're taking testosterone on your female you're putting petrol into a diesel tank so your body kind of there's an awful lot of aches for example an awful lot of aching joints an awful lot of physical challenges the very same with estrogen for males their bodies are not made to accept these large amounts and their body starts kicking off so there's lots of little niggly problems that you're never out of the doctors for but at the same time well let's say for for testosterone the first couple of years are phenomenal it's kind of like cocaine it's you know testosterone I had no idea and any man will have gone through their adolescence like yeah testosterone is phenomenal but we females don't know the impact of that but females who take testosterone their libido goes through the roof their energy goes through the roof become cocky and confident that kind of teenage boy kind of you know quite assertive quite aggressive and very energetic and very full of themselves actually and that lasts for a few years which is very bewitching because I think I might look at me I'm child now look at me I'm well able I have a huge libido I'm very energetic I can take on the world I'm nothing like that wilting flower that was Mary but then over time that about three years into testosterone the body starts collapsing and the body starts the UTIs constant pain for example that uh libido turns into a Chinese torture because they have extreme pain on orgasm so they might have a high libido but they can't have an orgasm because it's so painful so it's like yeah it's it's really really mind-blowingly difficult now it depends on the person it's very like alcohol one person drinks a pint and they're drunk another person drinks five pints and they're not drunk you know what I mean it depends yeah faster than packs but generally about three years and generally by about five years they will need a hysterectomy that's the the rule of thumb and they'll need a hysterectomy because their insides are being ruined by the testosterone as well as that they often feel that the the life they thought the yellow brick road the golden lies that they thought they were on hasn't really happened they don't have loads of friends it stayed online everything stayed online which is let's face it a little bit empty after a few years and it might be exciting to start but so all it's very like the drug addicts kind of oh this is euphoric this is great for the first few years and then it slowly becomes lonely and bad and rotten and so often I found we've got over 600 detransitioners on in our networks in genspec we offer you know therapeutic zoom meetings for these people and a lot of them detransition because they feel that the medical complications led them to think what am I actually doing why am I putting testosterone in my body when I know it's giving me pain so let's say I'll give one example of one woman she was going she went to about three doctors and each doctor was given a different kind of medication for the joint pain and she was getting to a point like she was in her early 20s and she couldn't walk with the pain and a lot of them if you notice a lot of them are in wheelchairs a lot of them are using crutches and then finally she went to her fourth doctor and he said you could go off testosterone and she looked at the doctor like what and he said that's probably causing it the other doctors didn't say that she went off within about two weeks the joint pain had gone the joint pain that had crippled her was immediately as soon and then as soon as the joint pain went she thought why was I doing what was this all for what what you know I was taking something was poisoning my body and that leads them to detransition and when they you know so many of them say oh sorry sorry sorry about that just a bit of a little bit of a careful folder and so some of them say when they uh they come to the idea of maybe I'll detransition remember one woman saying she'd wake up in the middle of the night with this kind of horror of oh my god do I have to detransition and then she'd cry her eyes out but the next one she'd go about around her day as if it was normal she was a boy it was fine next night she'd go to sleep and again she'd wake up in the middle of the night of oh my god I had a mis-technical I can't detransition and she'd cry her eyes out so it was coming to get her every night it's like you know the subconscious yeah the the so many of them resist detransitioning for some time because they're like I chopped up my body I can't I can't become like I remember one one person who I know who was uh she she had puberty blockers so therefore before she started menstruation she her puberty was blocked so she never menstruated this is about 12 or 13 and she had a mastectomy even though she only had breast buds as she said I never wore a bra so I don't I never had you know I never had enough breast to wear a bra so very young when she was blocked and she went down to medical eyes had testosterone um had a phalloplasty which you know means that you know kind of a simulcoma of a penis and then she said I I'm afraid she she said I'm afraid to detransition my body is not she's had a hysterectomy is no longer equipped to take estrogen I don't know if I can and she said I'm in constant pain she was in constant pain for three years at this stage and she said every doctor I've gone to doesn't know what they're talking about because they've never seen the like of me I'm new I'm a complete guinea pig they don't know and she goes I'm in constant pain and I'm afraid of getting worse if I try to reverse and so we're working with people like that and I don't give medical advice like you know because that is experiment upon experiment upon experiment what we do is we give support and we give it kind of a community of lots of people we call it mostly harmed by medical transition yeah I yeah and here's I sense that the community aspect is it's got to be vital uh yeah to this uh I can't I can't imagine doing doing this without some camaraderie uh yeah you're right and that's why we had the event in DC where we brought over 70 detransitioners together because exactly your intuition is bang on they need to meet each some of them have never met another detransitioner until last Thursday that they need to meet each other and realize I wasn't a fool I was 12 I was sold a very fraudulent story I was some of them beat them up and I'm like the doctors should have looked after you and your hour of need I I'm I'm I'm gonna take a little break here in a second but but at that conference I I'm very happy that folks are finding themselves and finding a way out but you talked about the like the the degradation of the body and I really thought I was amongst the walking wounded uh so many I mean they're relatively young and their their their bodies they were moving like they were like they were senior citizens um so um sad uplifting in some ways and sad and others well um so we're gonna uh take just a very quick break and then we're gonna look at at families and we'll do that right after these uh important messages since the founding of America 250 years ago many things have changed but some things never do the commitment of husband and wife the importance of passing along our values to our children the faithfulness of God some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first we've only just begun America the beautiful we are back with uh Victor Davis Hansen in his own words special guest appearance star pinch shitter Stella oh Matt pinch shitter by the way that's a baseball term Stella I know you don't play baseball over in in our line but you know that's okay yeah it's a uh it's a it's an honor to pinch it for Victor Davis Hansen so um uh we're recording on Friday the 20th this episode will be up on Saturday the 21st um uh Stella about families uh who are I I some of almost rooters in the process to transition there you know I love my kid and I want my want to marry to become I have a feeling most people including some folks we've talked about on this on the victor victor show or just the absolute heartbreak um and my child is no longer my child because of the the uh the psychological drugs that they're just like totally destroyed this whatever this person was but all that aside and not that it's a put aside but we're talking about detransitioning so how uh critical is the family typically uh to the detransitioning process you know the families have been really badly impacted I remember one mother saying I just look at the eyes of my daughter because everything else has changed her voice has changed her face has changed her body has changed but the only thing that's left is her is her eyes so I just focus on her eyes so in a way the families can feel very very hurt by the child's kind of rejection of their self you know what I mean like as as another another you know mother said to me I identify as the mother of a daughter I didn't give birth to a son and so that's my that's my identity I'm the mother of one daughter and she is a daughter and she's a girl so they often feel quite thrown by uh the kids when they shouldn't go to the kids but the a lot of them are young people who detransition because they're like oh more drama so you insisted on us um supporting you through the transition it was the most important thing ever now you're looking for support through the detrans and so they're a little bit embittered and I I can't see why you know what I mean however ultimately they tend to think thank god it's easier because I do find it's very much like remember I gave the analogy of the drug addict you know when the drug addict are the alcoholic they're unreachable they're just party and everything's great and they're kind of fake and they're kind of unreachable and then when they get sober they're more real they're more real people they're more kind of authentic that's the difference with the detransitioners we have these groups and some of them are detrans groups but some of them are open groups where trans identified people would meet uh detransitioners all in one group and I'd be the facilitator and you can see that the trans identified person might come on and say my transphobic parents you know they they're they're Nazis because they won't call me she her or him or whatever and the detransitioners are like well you know I've had a UTI for the last three years I'm in constant pain I don't care about my pronouns and you can see they it hits the trans identified people strongly they're like whoa you know what I mean this is now we're in the big class now you know what I mean it's it's not messing around about words or violence now and it I think it gives them a great insight your road ahead of you so I I'm very fervent that I want those identify as trans coming into our groups because they meet the real thing and they meet we but yeah the the families are important for detransition but it's a good sign of recovery that the families aren't central when they're transitioning the the the children are the young people insist on their family support when they're detransitioning the detransitioners doing it for themselves they're just you know they're just doing it you know they're just realized as one said I want off the crazy train I don't care who's coming with me I'm off well we're gonna we're gonna get your take on the public square detransitioning but first one final message to our viewers and listeners if you want to drop extra pounds boost energy levels reduce swelling in your legs and feet then this message is for you pure health research is on a mission to make America healthy again and two of their best selling health supplements are leading the way first is liver health formula over 100 million Americans have a sluggish liver riddled with fatty deposits this can kill your metabolism pile on the pounds and make you feel tired liver health formula helps take care of all that it supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke extract and milk thistle and this is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy levels and the next is lymph system support if you struggle with fluid buildup or swelling in your legs ankles or feet well then this is for you the natural ingredients in lymph lymph system support help gently flush extra fluids and toxins out of the body and right now for a limited time you can get 35 percent off liver health formula and lymph system support along with 50 plus health supplements pure health research has to offer so head over to pure health research com and use the coupon code victor v i c t o r at checkout that's pure health research com with code victor to save 35 percent on your order today and we thank the good people from pure health research for sponsoring victor davis hanson in his own words two more questions for stella o'Malley thanks so much for being here stella for edger educating us and giving us a real good healthy perspective on what's happening this transition detransition um world we're living so that speaking of the world we're living the jk ralings of the world they come in for rage because they stand against transitioning or they stand for biology but i believe there are forces that probably can't stand stella o'Malley probably can't stand gen spec because of what you do in your mission so what are the organizations you don't have to name name specific names or what what are the causes uh the advocates of this or that that malign and castigate detransitioning or organizations such as yours whose mission is to help in this regard what's your experience been in the public forum because you're out there and i'm sure there there's incoming there but there how it's shooting at you what's that like yeah well it's it's harrowing to be honest it's it's pretty uh destabilizing so you know the only reason i think i'm still here and still speaking is because of the very fervent attempts to silence me i am a psychotherapist you know based in ireland mental health all the way that's all i'm interested in i just you know that's my i'm interested in psychology and better healthier lives and i did a film about this issue in uh 2018 in the uk actually and the concept of the film was why is there a 4 000 rise in female seeking medical transition like a 4 000 rise in anything at the sale of footballs would be extraordinary why why is that like 4 000 rises extraordinary and koneady of them have been like me because i was a little tomboy and i was very boyish and i'm happy to be a woman now so what what what is that about that was it that was the very benign question for that you know it was unbelievable the online attacks i got and the lies and the smears and the elongated smear campaigns and so as a result it got my backup i didn't like being silenced i didn't like being lied about and it's i've ended up now fully absorbed in this world because i've kind of uncovered inadvertently this extraordinary world where trans activists are real zealots that will go very very very far in ruining people's lives just to shut them up because they want to believe they really are a boy or they really are a girl and they think all of their problems all of their own happiness which is extensive is because of people like me it's because of transphobia it's not because they had mental health problems in the first place it's because of transphobia that's what they think i think it's because they have mental health problems well wow um this problem i haven't written this i'll bumble into it but i do have one more major question but you know in america today we see these some of these mass shootings are and this just a lot of detran there's a lot of violence in overlap with trans i mean deadly violence uh i don't know if you have anything you want to say about that i there is something i want to say uh there's a couple of things one is we have to spend you know tens of thousands of security for our conferences and we have conference that are just raising public awareness for things like that some people aren't happy in their transition and that's when they're most likely to die by suicide because remember i talked about the suicide stats pre medical transition well transition they're actually quite elevated 10 years in and i can see why 10 years in your none of the promises have happened you've got loads of physical issues i can see why some people turned to suicide rather than detransition i wish they wouldn't i wish they'd find groups like us but there is you can see the rage of the you know that feeling of i've been sold a pup i've been sold on the river here this is a disaster now we've many of us have felt that very few of us have felt it about a medical intervention but to the extent that they have the rage is real of utter disappointment in the entire scenario as well as that you put testosterone into a female body and you're going to get a lot of aggression and a lot of anger there's a lot of different aspects to it but as well you know the the the community the very community that welcomed these naive gullible awkward lonely people into the lgbtq world they are utterly silent in the face of detransition they just say it doesn't exist tiny numbers it doesn't exist tiny numbers they corrupt research they release corrupt research they release kind of fraudulent kind of numbers that kind of suggests that detransition is tiny nobody really knows how many people have detransitioned we do know that 76 percent don't return to the clinic to tell them they've detransitioned arguably a lot of them that in my groups have said it's i don't want to return to the scene of the attack i was a fool i was telling everybody i was a boy why i don't want to go anywhere near them yeah oh gosh then as well as that like when i first started following detrans reddit in 2019 there was less than a thousand uh members on detrans reddit now there's over 58 000 members oh my gosh yeah and i do urge anybody who's interested go on to detrans reddit just google detrans reddit go on for five minutes and your jaw will hit the ground you'll think there's an online war of of disaster like you say it's the walking wounded it very like people have come home from a war that they're just they're they're wounded and they're distressed and they're um wait i can't excuse me yeah one once can you hear me now yeah i can yeah okay sorry um press the wrong button one final question by the way gen spec'd yeah en sp e c t dot org that's this that's where to uh folks i recommend our viewers and listeners if they're interested go there uh still a final question uh it's uh this is not just another issue like tariffs or taxes transitioning detrans listening is so fundamental i think to our understanding of society and civilization you're in the thick of it what are one or two things you'd like to see happen to make this fight i'll i'll say more balanced uh it could be something like uh barring men from participating in women's sports or pressuring medical journals to stop their woke fixations or maybe it's the possibility of of widespread uh malpractice litigation maybe it's none of these but well what what might be the things you hope for as you carry on this important mission thank you um yeah gen spec'd have released a book recently called the gender framework and in that book we offer this is how this is how we can resolve this for example we address the you know the issue between biological sex and identity and that if one person's identifies versus biological sex and professor holly lofford smith examines that in you know a conflict of needs and how do we uh resolve it and in it she gives a very good i think argument of why we have to prioritize a biological sex because that's the body the identity is in your mind and therefore that that cannot take precedence over the body for example we run with our bodies and therefore races and all competitions to do with sports is with your body and therefore it's a body-based decision not an identity-based decision another thing that we address in the book is the idea of transition in school it's and we show that it's not appropriate to uh that's a whole other chapter it's not appropriate to you know tell secrets on children not to tell children that this is a trans girl she was born a boy he's transitioned now he's called a trans girl yes everybody says but he'll be bullied people get bullied for having red hair people get bullied for being tall or small people get bullied for a lot of things and it's up to the schools to stop that but you don't tell people lies and arguably a person's sex is public information when i look at you i presume you're a man you presume i'm a woman and we go with that and if we're hiding that public information we've never done it before and it's causing weirdness where you can't for example a little girl was best friends with this she she's new to the town with another little girl and she didn't find out until about a year in that actually that little girl was a little boy and she was having sleepovers with them she didn't know how would she know you know and it was devastating it was very distressing for her she had no idea that the parents are trans the kid and she was living with somebody who was effectively lying certainly deceiving and so we explain in detail while it's not appropriate for schools to uphold secrets transparency and honesty is the north star here and we have to have the ground beneath us has to be solid and lastly our biggest and strongest push is you don't need to medicalize just because you want to be a boy there's lots of ways i want to be rich i want to be gorgeous i want to be lots of things you sometimes you have to deal with the limitations of life sometimes you have to deal with you won't always get what you want and that's okay you might be very lonely we can help with that you might be autistic we can help with that lots of things we can help with you don't have to try and change to be a boy it won't necessarily make you happy and the stats suggest that you're going to have higher levels of psychiatric admission higher levels of mental health issues such as anxiety depression more likely for unemployment more likely for prison the long-term outcomes of medical transition are not good and so you'd be better off trying to resolve and accept your own body stella i i gotta tell you i admire what you do so much uh this is i think this issue is so extremely important um and also i married a former tomboy so i i but you gotta think i've seen this my wife like if you had been born today to a different family maybe you know the someone would have short circuited your path to uh in a womanhood so uh anyway uh genspect.org that's the organization that you're doing true the Lord's work and i really firmly believe that is truly the Lord's work you're doing so stella oh mallie thanks so much for being here folks check out the website check out stella's books and thanks for sharing all the information and we will be back soon with another episode of victor davis hanson in his own words god bless everyone bye bye thank you thank you for tuning in to the daily signal please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this you can also check out my own website at 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