EP 154: "My Entire Childhood Was Medicalized" with Scarlet

hi Sasha how are you I'm well um this was one of the most powerful conversations I think we've had on this show that you are about to hear yeah it was it was harrowing and it was it was it's you know all credit to Scarlet you know um I think he's he's he's a really uh a beautiful personality yeah you know you know when he said you know my whole childhood was medicalized he he he was right you know it feels like doctors imposed a medicalized life on a young sensitive boy yeah so Scarlet is um going to share his story of childhood transition from the age of 12 his gender questions began to be kind of molded into a trans identity and a medicalization and you know he describes prior to that having kind of a difficult childhood having some autism traits or maybe a diagnosis and being made to feel as though his femininity was pathological from a very young age including his exuberance and some of his personality traits and so he he felt like there was something wrong you know um we don't want to put words in Scarlet's mouth but that's certainly something that you will probably pick up on in hearing this interview and um just off the top we wanted to kind of share a couple of things that we had noticed and then we'll just let Scarlet take it away first of all you know as as a child who was medicalized and transitioned of course Scarlet is Scarlet's legal name and when we spoke before the recording I asked Scarlet how do you want us to deal with names and pronouns and Scarlet said I want you to just what I said is I try to be as organic as I can and Scarlet said yeah generally I just tell people use whatever makes you feel comfortable and as you'll hear uh in Scarlet's story like especially by the end of it I started to really feel as though I'm just talking with this very lovely sensitive young man who has soft traits and a lovely personality and organically I see Scarlet as a hm so we're using he him pronouns during the conversation and I I'm very comfortable with that yeah and Scarlet did say he comfortable with use whatever and you know this this is you know going out in drans Awareness Day and the whole concept of detransition is complex and Scarlet doesn't as such identify as a d transitioner but he does say use whatever pronouns you want and he he falls in with the word androgyny you know this is where he kind of that's what resonates with him and honestly I think one thing about D's awareness day is to bring some awareness to the complicated nature of life after transition it's not just just like transition is a misnomer detransition is a misnomer you don't transition to to somebody else you don't transition to the upext equally you don't detransition from your transition they're both they're both kind of you know wrongly titled and could lead people to really feel I think a lot of people start the detransition process and then think that's not really what I wanted I'm not sure what I wanted Scarlet doesn't seem to have started a detransition process it's more along the lines of I'm now androgynous and awful lot of medicalizing happened to me when I was very young so inform consent wasn't in the picture you know Scarlet received estrogen at 13 so cross seex hormones I.E you know you know body development such as breasts and hips at such a young age and yet there's a kind of a realization of maybe this wasn't appropriate for me would I be right in saying that is think so yeah and you know Scarlet talks towards the end of our conversation um just about how he understands where he's at now and that he just really wants to let nature and his body do its thing basically and kind of has come off hormones another thing we just thought was really powerful was that Scarlet's story as an as is an embodiment of what happens in gender affirming care particularly in light of the recently released W paath files which demonstrate clearly that wath clinicians know that there are very dangerous medical complications that come from early intervention and these surgeries and hormones and deliberately withhold that information from patients and sometimes mislead patients and so Scarlet's story is such a a difficult but perfect example of this because as you'll hear along the way Scarlet's real needs were never really met or addressed and to this day Scarlet describes the weirdness with which doctors interact with him and don't really know how to see him as a whole person and treat him with both truth and honesty and also compassion like it's really complicated so in light of the W path files coming out we just think it's really instructive to listen to Scarlet tell his story and one other ASP there's so many parts of this I like I I agree with you this is one of the most important interviews I think we've done and one undertone to Scarlet's story was the you know inappropriate sexualization of a child that kind of is happening onine line and isn't really been lifted I think enough I don't think people really people talk about grooming and stuff but it's become a you you know it's become a word of abuse and I don't think people really understand actually what's going on the amount of times Scarlet said you know it was icky and you know I felt icky I he he learned to hate himself because of some sort of sexualized identity that was put upon him as well as living in a completely homophobic Community the combination seemed to be incredibly damaging to his psyche but I think then you know like kind of being asked to walk through a fetish shop W with his parent do you remember that when when he when he was this was a recommendation from one of the treatment providers so as you'll hear in addition to this kind of online kind of inappropriate Grooming by older men that Scarlet experienced in the comfort of their you know his own home one once he got into the treatment pathway of gender affirming care he was continually bombarded with questions and treatment recommendations that sexualized him there you go yeah so it's just such a just tragic and enraging to think that this kid was already like H his sexuality was being challenged and questioned and like perverted by other people like every step of the way and we really hope that moving forward Scarlet is able to develop like a healthier more self-compassionate relationship with his sexuality and Discover it for himself on his own terms and in a way that is full of love and care you know like I just throughout the whole interview I just wished I could reach out and hug Scarlet like it was really powerful and it was I just felt very tenderly to towards scarlet and so I don't know I think that's a enough of an intro we'll just let listeners um enjoy our conversation with Scarlet yeah hi I'm Stella omali a psychotherapist in Ireland and I'm Sasha aad an adolescent therapist in the United States and this is gender a wider lens a podcast dedicated to the Shi in Concepts around gender in our contemporary culture through in-depth interviews personal stories and psychological exploration we seek to open up the discourse around this hot button issue join us as we look at gender from a wider [Music] lens hi Stella and welcome to the show Scarlet hi how is everybody good I remember we we met you some time ago and both me and Sasha we were we were very moved by you you know you stayed in our minds it was a harrowing story you told us and it you you're you're very you you're you're very extraordinarily impressive in the face of such a devastating story so I'm really glad You' decided to share it on the podcast because I think it's an important story that people need to hear well thank you um yeah it's just something I mean it's something that's kind of bled into every aspect of my life and it's just just really important that I I just share what I've gone through because like as I've gone older gotten older over these past couple of years um just in retrospect a lot of the things I went through I don't feel like were right in regards to like the therapeutic procedures and um the medical procedures that I had gone through there wasn't really a lot of um honesty involved and um I just feel like it's really important to share that considering how common these uh procedures are becoming because um when I first started it wasn't very common at all um but now I'm kind of seeing it pop up yeah everywhere um so I think it's just important to share my story in in understanding what you have been through and all of these kind of medical harms that you face why don't we start pretty early in your life can you just tell us a little bit about what kind of kid you were as a child and then like how did you end up seeking help for gender issues in the first place um so when I was really little I was I was a pretty troubled child honestly um I've always struggled with like pretty intense anxiety um and in like depression issues um I had an early diagnosis for high functioning autism for asger syndrome um but unfortunately as a result of that because I was was pretty gender non-conforming already I I knew I liked boys from a very young age I've pretty much been playing kiss and tag with boys since like preschool um it was just like a pretty normal thing to me um but I came from a very small town uh we went to a fundamentalist Christian Church um not necessarily because my mom grew up Christian but was just like seeking some kind of spirituality and that's just what was there at the time um so I was surrounded by a lot of pretty ableist and homophobic ideas like a lot of my gender non-conformity was blamed on my autism and I was treated very very differently like I wasn't allowed in like normal classes in schools so I didn't get to do any classes with my friends like whenever kids would watch movies I was not allowed in the classroom um I was just kind of always set aside and kind of ridiculed for being different um and for like just how I was was um and I was very emotional most of my childhood so obviously all this would make me cry a lot um which then got like I I got punished a lot in school um which led to my mom homeschooling me on and off growing up um due to that and can can I ask what age are you now and do you remember roughly what age you were diagnosed with autism I think I was like four or five I was very young um some of my first memories were actually um being in doctor's offices for autism um like counselor's offices I had some like counselor AIDs that would like represent me at school and stuff and try to like fight for my like treatment or whatever can I also ask because you said something that I think we could easily gloss over but I don't want to miss your gender nonconformity was being attributed to your autism by seems like the school the adults in your life the doctors yeah feels huge can you say a little more about that so during that time um you could still like have be have like a diagnosis for a feminite effect under like a disability they considered it like a mental confusion so like they said because when you're autistic you're so dualistic and black and white and you're thinking that you can get confused in um basic Al misunderstand like who you're supposed to be drawn to or like what you're supposed to wear and and in my case like who my friends were supposed to be because I had a lot of female friends I just kind of like I had a posy I just kind of like rolled in that group you know what I mean um and I I I don't know they just saw it as like a a weird like mental phenomenon like I was confused and I just wasn't smart enough to know that I was supposed to like football and women and stuff at four or five years old so yeah so you're really ostracized for your gender non-conformity in a lot of ways yeah even at home in my family cuz like growing up like because like some of my family members would have shows like Family Guy and stuff streaming and whenever there'd be like a gay episode they would like have to change it because it made them uncomfortable like a lot of that fragile masculinity was um very common when I where I grew up um even like among my siblings like I love my brother but there was a lot of like mocking around me being gay growing up because everyone kind of like guessed it but no one really like wanted to say it because I could have been autistic and just been confused but like I might grow up and be gay like it was uh kind of an unspoken thing looming in the background like an elephant in the room I guess yeah um so yeah so meanwhile you're dealing with all of this kind of rejection for parts of you that felt very natural and you also were of course lonely and crying a lot and dealing with anxiety and you described yourself as a troubled kid yeah um with like all of this I I guess you could call it rejection or just with all of this Prejudice that was around me it kind of led me to be very like inwardly driven growing up so I spent a lot of time like in my own mind kind of like daydreaming um I liked to draw a lot when I was a kid I would spend a lot of time in the woods or now I spend a lot of time in my garden like I have you guys balanced on an orchid right now because I didn't have anything to set my computer on um and I don't know just I I struggled a lot with feeling unwanted like I was just like like a burden to people um and I still struggle with that today like it's just something that I just start to feel like like it's ingrained I don't know um yeah I forgot where I was going with that you guys are GNA have to direct me somewhat because this is it's it's my whole life I get so convoluted um of course so if I get lost feel free to interrupt me and be like hey get back on track don't worry um where where you were were basically a pretty hostile environment which was not letting you watch the movies in in in class because they had you as this troubled kid there was certainly homophobia rampant as far as I can gather both at home and in school and you were diagnosed and it was kind of hanging over you maybe this is all a ISM and from there yeah yeah a lot of quirks about my personality or even if I would just so show like a genuine interest in anything growing up it would be blamed on like an autistic Obsession um which was pretty hard to deal with it was like my whole childhood was medicalized almost um because like I could never just be interested in something like gardening for example or a hobby at school or um anything like that cuz it was always some crazy Obsession or something I had to be medicated for um and it put a lot of stress on like the relationship between me and my mom because she was kind of the only one that was really like fighting for me so a lot of the time she was having to be like this wall between me and like the rest of the world that was kind of coming at me with all of this Prejudice basically um was Bal fighting for you tell us a little bit more like it must have been hard position for her to be in too so since I was so young I just remember her being on the phone a lot with doctors kind of like arguing about like like she would ask them like what what are you giving her like what are you trying to medicate her for can you give me a reason well what about the side effects to these things she would always she would always kind of do her research about stuff and avoided me going on quite a few things like Aderall or in um things that I would have never needed in the long run but doctors were pretty insistent on me having at that time um because they didn't really want to like when I would go to therapy for my anxiety or my depressive issues or my autism my therapists never really like like delve into it they just kind of blamed everything on me having a neurological or a neurodevelopmental issue um and they would just kind of treat me like I just kind of didn't didn't know myself or what was going on kind of just tell me what they thought and that was just what I was supposed to follow um so my mom would kind of step in between that a lot and kind of keep these people these people away for me it really made me clingy to her growing up honestly because I felt like I felt like she was kind of the only one that was like fighting for me out there cuz even my own family would like totally pretend like they didn't even know me when whenever doctor would have a new diagnosis for me they would just be like totally down with it um despite prior knowledge they just don't like I guess recall it so you you said something really interesting and I want to just Loop this into our understanding you said Mom would be on the phone saying what are you diagnosing her with and of course we're we're going to hear a lot about your story your social and medical transition but at one point I mean well I guess early in your life you were seen as recognized as treated as a boy and then something shifted where you started to kind of play with the concept of gender identity so can you tell us a little bit about how that transition for lack of a better term happened between like Scarlet as a little boy to Scarlet as a trans identified kid yeah um so growing up like I said I was always kind of pretty AFF feminite I like had female friends I was pretty typical of that group I like playing dress up I was pretty pretty typical like feminine boy um I had some masculine Hobbies like I liked horror movies CU my granny did and I liked to climb trees and stuff like that but I was pretty like set on like the neighborhood boys and like trying to feel pretty I guess um and I guess the older I got and the closer I got to puberty I'd started because like around that time Omega and like kick and all of those were like big online so obviously being homeschooled on and off most of my friends were online friends um and I was just discovering through that around that time that I was probably gay like discover confirming for myself that I was probably gay because I was talking to like some older guys online um and I guess over time I just started to feel pretty like I don't know just like kind of grossed out with the like just how I was developing and the idea of like developing into like a young boy I guess because these guys were like creeps so they were like kind of grooming me um I didn't know that word at the time but it just kind of gave me a heie jebi feeling um and just as I was maturing and starting puberty it just I I really got uncomfortable in my body like it was like I just I felt gross I felt like a trog adite I felt like I couldn't go out in public I was like constantly checking myself in the mirror and nothing I did was ever accurate so I would just like hide myself in my room and just not not leave for days I ended up quitting school um for quite a few years until up until High School this was around like sixth grade I ended up leaving school um because I just couldn't deal with people observing me it was just too much for me um could I could I ask a little bit about the grooming because I I often think it's kind of understated and swept swept onto the rug a little bit that it seems to me that there's quite a lot of boys especially boys I'm I'm not sure but um who do seem to be targeted by by very very abusive older men who seem to really wreck the heads of these these kids yeah um on some of those like chat sites like kick because it's like a non-traceable site I was exposed to a lot of really messed up individuals um and back then like because it was like communicating through a screen I didn't really associate like danger with it um but now in retrospect I'm like I I was Pro probably talking to some very dangerous people um because they just kind of present themselves like they can kind of tell by the way you make your profile or the way you state yourself in your like bio that you're different or whatever and I think me being a feminine and having kind of like you know very elaborately decorated profiles and stuff like that I just kind of Drew those individuals in you know what I mean yeah did they seek or or did they Propel this idea that you should transition no not necessarily in my case um when I did eventually start transitioning it it was I mean definitely like more people were trying to talk to me online after that um but it wasn't like them motivating me to transition I just kind of felt gross with like the idea of them perceiving me as like a young boy or like a um what what was the word they like a like a twink almost at that age and it just made me feel icky they were sexualizing you yeah sexualized when you're just a child and I mean you're clearly like you're figuring out that you like guys and you like men but like they are taking things to a a direction that you're just like whoa this yeah and it was almost like because that I already had this like idea that being gay was like this like unspeakable thing right from the church and from just like the attitudes of the town that I came from um so this just kind of played into that like idea of like homosexuality is like not always but like a lot of the times probably kind of uh messed up power Dynamic thing because that was all I was like exposed to at that time um you know um this was like shortly after gay marriage was like being legalized but it was still like a controvers thing in the United States and it was you know a whole thing at that time um so it just kind of played into my idea of a a negative attitude towards homosexuality basically and towards myself because of that like I don't want to grow up and be that or I don't want to grow up and have to deal with people like that and then they'll only like you know be into you for a time and you age out of that and I felt so gross thinking like that might be my life um yeah yeah and this is just so important because we say internalize homophobia we throw that word like very flippantly but this is actually what it looks like it's very delicate it's very much like an interplay between like the creepy people who are talking to you and how they're talking to you and the kind of ideas you already have about what you know the gay lifestyle quote unquote means so this is all pretty subtle um and so I'm so glad that you're raising that and I'm I'm really sorry that you went through that as a kid like when you were just already struggling um I'm so sorry and yeah I'm just grateful that you're sharing this this part of your story so so after these kinds of interactions you start to really feel uncomfortable with the idea of growing up to become a young man or a you know a boy a twink or whatever those ideas were yeah absolutely I just felt I just felt icky with the idea of that and um and I had also had some like body image issues like prior to this but they were very minor as a kid like I would feel like my nose was too big CU like in my family we have like a very like not like a crooked nose but like a very like it's shaped almost like a beak and I just feel like I don't know that always bothered me even as a young child but it's like I hyperfocused on those things probably one of the only things in my life that I can say I truly had a hyperfocus like Obsession on I just like ruminated on all of the flaws in my appearance and it just more and more started like popping up in my awareness because I was starting to come upon puberty around like 11 12 11-ish 12 um and it just it just led me to isolate myself so much more because I just I felt so ungodly repulsive like I just felt like like I couldn't leave the house I didn't feel like I really had like a true future for me I felt like I was aging out um it was it was a lot um and around that time I like obviously I had heard of like jazz Jennings and like Gigi gorgeous and people like that cuz I would watch like all the makeup reviews and stuff like that um and the idea of being able to avoid that was very attractive to me um because I was like oh it'll like keep me from like growing a beard or getting like super tall or like my face like I I was really bothered by like my brow bone at the time because I feel like like if it grew out anymore I felt like I would look like a caveman um and that like really really bothered like it it sounds stupid now saying it but at time that was like catastrophic to me I felt like I would have no chance at like a livable life if that happened um sounds really dramatic now can I point out that um it is dramatic but it's also very common for teenagers I remember being like that and I think the intensity and Madness and massiveness of my thoughts about kind of very random things like that that you look back thinking what sort of fever was over me I think we forget it and I'm glad you brought it up because I do think it's actually quite common and it's huge for those kids at the time because they're young and everything is just swirling and it's it's almost an animalistic kind of existence where you're just like it's extraordinary isn't it yeah it it it was pretty animalistic like how much I ruminated on those things um because it was like that was like my whole world it was just trying to fix my flaws and trying to avoid my flaws it was like I was avoiding like it was literally it felt like I was dealing with like a severe illness but the illness was just like my own Natural Body development it was um pretty I don't even know like what word I could apply to it pretty like dividing because it felt like a real like battle between like mind and matter um it got that bad at a certain point um I just felt like I had no feasible way to live a life otherwise um which eventually led me into like seeking out treatments like I was the one that found out about U ofm Services um not my mom I was the one that started emailing and seeking that out at I believe I just turned 13 or I was turning 13 do you remember when you first thought maybe I should be a girl or do was it Jazz Jennings or what what where did it come from I can't really pinpoint a fixed point when I had like the realization of like oh my gosh I want to live as a girl it was just like I was trying to avoid my like development into a man I guess and this was just the way to do that with medicine or so I thought that's what I was reading so I just reached out because it peed my interest if that makes sense yeah yeah we want to take a moment to thank our sponsors Jens spect and therapy first gen spect is an international organization committed to fostering a healthy approach to sex and gender the team and members of gen spect strive to promote highquality evidence-based care for gender non-conforming individuals gspect is pleased to offer a non-medicalized approach to gender with their recently published gender framework and they continue to hold conferences around around the world visit gp.org to learn more therapy first is a nonprofit worldwide Professional Association of mental health providers who view Psychotherapy as the appropriate firstline treatment for gender dysphoria therapy first supports psychotherapist working with gender dysphoric Youth and Young adults and offers public education on mental health and Psychotherapy visit therapy.org to learn more now back to the show okay and so you start researching these services and tell us what happens at that point um so in my research I didn't really find anything in regards to like side effects and stuff um because like obviously on like the hospital websites at the time there were like links to like transgender forms and stuff so I would kind of like read through there to like read other people's experiences and excuse me and stuff like that um and I didn't really see anything talking about downsides at all well I read one story about a sex reassignment surgery that went bad but that was like pretty much it like it was just like a freak incident and you never really heard about it and at that time there weren't really many like what you could call like like I I guess like autog gyop filic people out there I didn't really run into many of those in the beginning it was mostly people that like like me were like little gay boys and it was just not a friendly environment and they just transitioned and tried to live their lives like that and they didn't really mention anything about downsides so I felt like it was pretty safe um you give us approximately what year was this yeah 2014 2015 okay so I was 12 going on 13 when I first started researching so you were born if I'm right maybe 2002 maybe two years later than Jazz Jennings or something yes I was born in 2002 the end of 2002 like one of last months yeah so you're reading online accounts from other gay males who are transitioning or think of transitioning or have started transitioning and what are people talking about I guess like clearly you're sitting here with us so whatever they said must have I guess confirmed for you that you wanted to pursue this so like what were some of the posit of things they were describing cuz you said they didn't talk about a lot of negative side effects except for like one story so the idea was is that like once you start like passing you could just like live a normal life without really having to like adjust like who you're attracted to cuz like pretend like being gay and like just not being with people was very common at that time um so it was like a way to like just live a normal life and like just disappear into societ marry a man not have to worry about you know people having any sort of discriminatory ideas about you in your neighborhood and things like that it was a way to kind of like fly under the radar basically um was the thought and that was kind of like what they discussed most of the time is like oh I met my husband and we're happy 20 years married life is great never hear about any of the you know people never look at us weird type of stuff like just living a normal life that was pretty much all I ever wanted was to be loved and live a normal life so then you at some point must have told Mom or what what happens next um yeah so at that point my mom was um traveling for work so I had called her um one day and cuz I decided I wanted to roll with this I felt like there was no other option um and I just called her her and I told her hey I think I'm transgender that was just the word that I knew to use um and I really need to take steps to get treatment for it at that point I was um more looking for like exploratory therapy to kind of like figure out because at that point gatekeeping was still a thing for these medications so you still had to go through a therapist so I was kind of hoping to just see like a therapist that specialized in this so I can kind of figure out if this is going to be the right path for me was my thought um and she thought you know okay explor you know you've you've always been non-conforming so maybe exploratory therapy will be good for you you know and I started growing out my hair um and you know dressing more like how I wanted to dress I was already dressing pretty androus but I was just like kind of you know I had full Liberty to express myself at that point um and and obviously I felt great with that yeah um so that was just what we were rolling with but you weren't necessarily using the word exploratory yourselves were you or or or were you not at that time because we didn't really have the vocabulary for that you know I was I was young and my mom came from a very small town where there there isn't really a lot of gay people most of them would like move to the city and you know might come back to visit their families but it wasn't super common in our town um so to be fair to you guys it wasn't even a word like nobody was using the word exploratory therapy there was kind of the old model which is transsexuals will come to therapy they'll have gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria and then they'll do this long long long assessment figure out what's going on and then and that was kind of what I was hoping for was like in this assessment they'll basically be able to figure out like if this is going to be a right path for me or I can determine if it's not and I can just get treatment with whatever the heck else I was dealing with because I was definitely dealing with some kind of body image issues that's that was it was just very prominent and I just needed help for it and that's what I was looking for and so what happened you told your mother in that phone call you think you might be transgender how did she respond and when did the doctors and the intervention how did that come about well she cried because I was crying but it wasn't like I don't think it was like crying like a devastated crying I think it was crying like well I don't know what this means but also why are you crying kind of thing um and I don't know we just talked about it and you know I I told her I like boys not phone call too which was like probably the main reason why I was crying cuz I had all this built up stress about it I was like sweating profusely before this call I was like shaking on the phone call my voice was all shaky it was a whole thing um so she responded well um she was totally okay with me doing like a social transition she was like I don't care what you wear of course you can grow your hair out and you know if you want to wear makeup more like openly or regularly and not just be playing with my makeup anymore you know we can buy her own makeup that's not a big deal um she she was pretty liberal surprisingly liberal about it um she was just like you know you're my kid and I love you no matter what um and we set up an appointment with a gender therapist through the hospital um and it was just like doing my social transition to life was pretty normal up until I went to that therapy appointment um we would sometimes email with the therapist in between just like leading up to the appointment just kind of like confirming everything and all of that it was pretty professional at that point um and life was just normal um other than my like I still had all my body image issues but our day-to-day didn't really change that much until um I went in for that first appointment and um it was like a 30 40 minute assessment um for them to make a diagnosis and then the story gets like pretty typical in regards to this stuff where it's like you know would you have like a dead son or a living daughter type of stuff I kind of felt like the therapist was twisting my words too when I was in there because i' would be telling her about like you know being non-conforming and kind of like just wanting to grow my hair out and whatever and she would kind of she would almost want to like twist my words to make it sound like I was like a female Soul trapped in a male body kind of stuff like um like she tried to make it sound like like Suicidal Thoughts I'd had in the past were like my inner woman raging at not being allowed to be a male and I was like well that's really weird um at that point I think I had even told her that I think she was confusing that like gendered stuff with something else because I've never I've always been a gentle kid like even like in school when teachers would want me to defend myself I would cry and like run away I'm I'm just not like a violent person like that um and she they were like twisting everything I'd ever dealt with into like being this like inner female Essence that like wanted out and like wanted to express itself I was like well okay can I get my medicine that I thought I needed you know what I mean does that make sense yeah yeah yeah um I don't want to take us too far off the tangent because this timeline is really important but it's really interesting I I don't remember if I was talking to you or or maybe it was some other conversation but I think you said when you started to meet males with gender dysphoria who were autog gyil it started to make a lot of sense to you why the therapists like took this certain angle and I'm not I really hope I'm not like misremembering that because no that was definitely me there's a female Essence in you that's actually the autogynephilic experience that's not the gay man who transitions experience yes and and I think I even told her that I thought she was confused I I told her she was confused on something because she was like trying to ask me like how I feel when I wear girls clothes like does it make me get fuzzy feelings and stuff like that do I feel affirmed in them and I'm like what like cuz I've always just worn whatever I wanted to wear you know like I'm I'm wearing a blouse right now and like male sweatpants like cuz they're comfy it doesn't they're clothes yeah you know it just never that was never a thing for me um and I thought it was really weird it made me feel almost like those guys online were making me feel it was that same heie GB feeling with some of the questions that she was asking me in regards to like how I like the feelings and Sensations I get when I like am acting feminine I was like that's weird was really weird you could sense that there was a sexual undertone to what she was implying yeah and that's why you got the he you're 12 or 13 and you're like what that's really important here yeah it was really uncomfortable and and they just kind of like laughed it off and like brushed It On by and we just like kind of left that part of the conversation behind and we're talking more about like you know the homophobia and stuff like that and she was like well yeah you sound like you sound like you were just a girl being forced to live as a boy this whole time so like we can definitely like there's been so many trans women that have just grown up and gotten married and you know adopted families and live a happy normal life so we can totally help you do that and I was like you know awesome and that was in like 30 40 minutes um and I remember I was the first appointment and I came out and then she called my mom in there and after like 15 minutes I just hear my mom like sobbing I I didn't know what she had told her at that time I guess she had told her that I was like G to kill myself and this is the only option and like yeah this is somewhat experimental but at the same time they've also been doing this for decades and it's completely safe but like yeah you have a daughter that you've been suppressing her entire life so you better fix that basically um and and my poor mom was like just devastated she was devastated for a couple of days actually whatever this therapist had told her like definitely turned her off to like whatever I was doing in that moment of time like she eventually got over it and was like well you're just my kid and I love you again but for a while there she like was pretty quiet and just like kind of emotional um from whatever they had told her um um and I didn't quite like know what was said at that time it wasn't until years later that I had asked her because I was starting to hear about rogd stories and stuff like that and I was like know what did they tell you that day and she was like well you know that you were going to kill yourself and I was going to have a living son or a dead or a dead son or a living daughter and stuff like that and I was like oh my God like I have I've had Suicidal Tendencies in the past but not not like to the degree that they were like pushing it to like I felt rejected and I was like oh no nobody wants me but then like you know my mom was like oh but like I do and I was like oh okay you know it wasn't like you know this like huge thing like I wasn't going to just do it no matter what like they were making it sound like if that makes sense yeah and you you weren't you weren't saying oh let me let me let me transition I can't breath that can't live you were you were by the sounds of it you more like I I really don't want to be gay yeah well that was it at first eventually um after I was on estrogen and stuff like that my testosterone kicked up because that's what happens when you first start estrogen is your testosterone shoots through the roof because your body is like trying to get you back on track basically um could you discuss before you go there just how you got on to estren because that's so after that appointment with the gender therapist um she sent me up with an appointment at a pretty big hospital um and I met an endocrinologist there um actually the one that like oversees that whole like department or whatever like that whole field there um and we talked with him for like I don't even remember how long it's been it we just went in there for like an appointment to like meet him and stuff and he went over like the stages of like fetal development with me to be like you know we're all genderless originally and it's not until testosterone enters the womb and they were kind of painting it like I was interx basically like um like that testosterone came into the womb after my brain developed feminine and then that's what made me males that's how can have a female brain a male body and it was this whole thing um and I was like you know okay that makes sense I guess you know whatever you're just a kid and this is a doctor I mean yeah it makes sense if your doctor's telling you that but I mean we we know that's not true that's not how it work well and that's what I read online at the time so I was like you know okay that's what that's what Google says so and you're you're about 13 14 I was I was 13 at the point I just turned 13 at this point oh my god um yeah so um that happened and after that appointment I was starting on spirolactone um for six weeks um and I remember the second day I was staying with my grandma and I fainted because it was causing like such severe like hot flashes um because he had me on a dose I was on like 250 milligrams or something crazy it was a lot I and I was pretty small at that point um I was like 5'5 5'6 and like 100 lb maybe and is this a puberty blocker you were on so Spyro lactone is kind of like a puberty blocker but not quite as strong it's an anti-androgen so it's like it's the most common testosterone inhibitor that they have um trans women on pardon me um and basically what it does is it's like a diuretic so it's supposed to like flush out your excess testosterone by like keeping it from binding to your um testosterone receptors and your cells yeah um so it kind of just flushes it keeps your body from absorbing it and then flushes the excess out and it immediately gave you a difficult impact immedi after a couple of days yeah I fainted because I was on way too high of a dose for my um my weight um because I've always been pretty underweight um not for any like reason I just like eat like a bird um and yeah it just it it made me faint it was way too much so they halfed my dose um and and I was much better after that and after those six weeks I was then put on estrogen I think it was like I think we started at 2 milligrams and my testosterone had shot through the roof cuz were trying to suppress it and that's just like what a young male body does when it like feels threatened um and that made me like I was developing a little bit quicker at that point so I was like starting to get like peach fuzz on my chest and stuff and I was like that was like apocalyptic and at that point I felt like you know oh my God I can't breathe I like have to transition because my body is changing so fast um I just felt like I literally felt like my body was like warping into it it felt unnatural you know what I mean it it was it was really bad um and so they jacked up my estrogen dosage um to it was four or six milligrams at that point um I eventually ended up on six milligrams and just kind of stayed that way until I eventually went off um and as like my testosterone went down and I stopped really developing you know as quickly like I don't know it felt like it felt like I had a moment to breathe for a second because I didn't have to worry about my body to continuously keep changing I was just kind of paused and like where I was at for a minute and and some of my features started to get softer like around my face and stuff like that and I was like you know okay like fine this this is much more manageable for me mentally at that point in time um and I was you know I had regular appointments with my endocrinologists um and I would ask him at these appointments like you know how is this going to impact me like long term how is this going to impact like my sexual development that was a huge concern of mine um and he told me that it's not really going to impact it like I'm going to develop like another woman basically and I was like but how um and he was like it's it's not it's not going to make you like dysfunctional or anything basically but I'll just function like a feminized male and I won't have to like I basically don't worry about it and he would kind of act like these questions were super inappropriate as well and make me really uncomfortable asking them um usually they would have my mom leave the room for these appointments as well um because we were going to be discussing topics like that um so they would just make us both feel really uncomfortable like we were subjecting them to like some awful interrogation um when you know I needed to know this stuff because these drugs do affect your sexual development even as an adult they affect your sexual function so like as a kid like going through puberty I needed to know how that would affect my physical development you know what I mean c can I ask because I I was just going to ask you if Mom would have been in the room for those meetings and so you shared that they usually split you guys up yeah so she was in the room a lot in the beginning um but eventually they kind of like split us up because they were worried about like if I had an accepting home because she would always have questions on the medication basically and they would act like her questions were inappropriate and then kind of like shimmed her out we're like well are you being abused is this an accepting home you know um I should also stare at sh stare I should also share that I was a um ward of the state at that point because my father's not present in my life um so the state basically had partial custody of me so it was kind of like you know if there is ever a problem we can always step in kind of thing and at the time I was like you know oh that's like really cool but like no thank you I'm good but thanks um it wasn't until like these past couple of years that I'm like oh that's a pretty messed up thing to say to a 13 14year old who's like you know struggling this bad you know um um there was something you said that just rings a bell that kind of often when people question the sexual functioning um they're they're shamed myself Sasha any of us were shamed as if we're the ones who are weird for wanting to know just fairly basic information about things rather than it should be a a non-shaming very informed kind of scenario for both you and your mother and she should have been as informed as you because you were only 13 but also you you know the shaming of you would have been incredibly powerful at your age it would have been very silencing well it was not only powerful because of my age but I also had all of this conditioning of like from my past childhood experience of like kind of being shamed it's not talking or been like oh you're just misunderstanding you know just you know look kind of like what the adults play a little bit was the mindset that kind of developed like it started out led by me but then eventually it kind of felt like like the Reigns were kind of not taken but like definitely being like pushed Along by you know the doctors and stuff I was also a part of um studies or so I thought I was informed I was going to be a part of like studies for the long-term side effects of this stuff and [Music] um I end like they just kind of stopped including me um when I had started like showing like more interest and like how this would impact me like basically when I started asking questions I stopped getting included in these studies and stuff like that um I want to just point something out because you've described yourself as kind of a shy kid who has a hard time speaking up for yourself and advocating for yourself but I have to say it's super impressive to think about you at 13 with all the crap you'd been through asking your doctor persistently these questions to the point where they kicked you out of a study like you are actually a very strong and impressive person well I will I I do appreciate that and thank you um I will give it to my doctor that he did have a very open personality at least so I did feel at first before there was any kind of shaming I did feel safe asking those questions at first because I felt like you know he he was just very friendly or so it seemed um so I didn't I was very Gob struck when it was kind of like an uncomfortable thing and they didn't really want to answer it and then I stopped getting the emails for the surveys and stuff and I was like this is very you know not right it kind of played into my feelings of rejection from the past twoo a little bit because I was like you know this just all feels this just felt shitty all around basically um because I wasn't getting my questions answered and um around this time they had um put me on a G&R inhibitor that's a Lupron blocker that they implant in your arm um I have the scars right here I don't know if you can see them um this is a puberty block yeah it's like a little device it's like that long and they put it in your arm and um it just like slow releases hor like not hormones or hormone blockers it was I don't remember if it was hyelin or Lupron I think hyelin is the blocker version or the implant version um and that's the one I had um and they put that in because I didn't want to be on the spiral long term because it's really bad for your kidneys in the long run because how much it makes you pee um and I I was starting to have issues in regards to like like incontinence basically I would just like drip drip drip drip drip and it was becoming like a problem for me I was like you know a certain point is like normal like a lot of people don't really talk about it but it's very common at a certain level but at a certain point it gets to where it's like affecting your life and you kind of like got to do something about it so I didn't want to stay on Spyro um and this was the alternative um and they told me that there's no real side effects to it it'll just you know suppress my um basically it'll affect my pituitary gland so like your pituitary gland releases hormones that tell whatever gonads you have whether they're ovaries or whatever to release its hormones and what the puberty blocker does is it just goes directly to the source in your brain and it just switches that off so your body isn't producing like follicle stimulating hormone to stimulate hair follicles it's not producing um whatever hormone it is that tells your body to produce it sex hormones it just switches that off um and it also impacts the development of your genitals themselves yeah it does um I was told that that was completely reversible um I was told that all the side effects of it would be completely reversible and that the only real side effect effect would be that I would just stop growing in certain respects um and I might get hot flashes at first but those should go away um they never quite did go away um I still even get hot flashes now because I feel like my hormones are all up and down still um but that's jumping ahead again um after I got the implant I started having hot flashes really really bad and I was homeschooled at this point the doctor discouraged me going to school cuz they were worried I would get bullied um so they were like really hard pressed on my mom to not let me go back into public school cuz it's just not an accepting environment um which looking back kind of defeated the purpose of me transitioning in the first place which was to just disappear into society um but when they put the Blocker in I was having like really severe hot flashes I was like waking up at night like just like complete cold sweats it was awful um I would get like pains like in my like private area like really severe pains it felt like someone was like stabbing me or that my stuff was just like seizing up like atrophying basically was what it was doing um at a certain point I was having like full body charlyy horses because I had like a lot of muscle atrophy that happened I couldn't like keep weight on at all it completely killed my appetite um and I ended up peeing blood at a certain point and they didn't really want to acknowledge that that was something to do with the blocker implant but if you Google hyella and you go on the website one of the major side effects of it is blood in the urine um and around that time I basically had my mom push really really hard to get it taken out um so after a couple years they wanted me to have it in until I was like 1820 um but I got it taken out at like I think it was I was 16 going on 17 when we got got it taken out oh my god um so you had the implant for how long total so I got it put in I was I think I had just turned 14 so 16 two two two and a half years somewhere in that bracket and they wanted you on it till you were up to 20 18 or 20 they said that they can try to stretch it but that implant specifically went until I was 18 and if we had to replace it we could so when you said earlier before we started our call that you had to stop for health reasons this is what we're talking about yeah is there more kind of medical side effects that caused you and your mom to push to stop the implant yeah well no the blood and the urine was kind of the icing on the cake cuz they never really wanted to acknowledge that that had anything to do with it but basically what my ologist thought it was was what something in my body wasn't doing its job at clearing toxins out of like my system like your urinary tract is supposed to do so I was getting these really bad infections in my urethra like and it was causing me to like pee blood and skin basically um and after I had the blocker taken out that stuff cleared up within a couple of months to a year and I know I know longer had issues with like urinary tract infections or blood or anything like that I don't even get Charlie Horses anymore I was having full body like muscle spasms for a while to make it really hard for me to go to school or play sports or ride a bike because I would just my muscles would just seize up and it was so incredibly painful um and they still don't want to acknowledge that it was the blocker but it was the only thing I was on that was different I didn't have these issues prior to that I had these issues on them and then they faded within a couple of months of being off of them you know what I mean so it can't it literally cannot be anything else unless it was just like some kind of freak accident that just coincidentally took place in the same bracket so you were getting blood in the urine you were getting pain in your genital area you were getting these what you call them Charlie Horse was kind of spasm muscle cramp that were very painful your body was really really rejecting it so this wasn't going well yeah literally felt like my body was breaking down I became really susceptible to getting sick I never really got sick much throughout my life but while I was on the blocker I I I missed so many things that I was supposed to do because a common cold just like took me off my feet I could I couldn't handle it and my depression while I was on it also SP spiraled way out of control I just felt absolutely drained all of the time it was it was really it was like a cloud just went over my whole world while I was on it and did you say you were given estrogen as well yeah I was taking estrogen in that time period so that I would have like a a puberty because they were like you know you need to go through one puberty um so I had opted for fale over I live in Ireland and in Europe no child is getting cross sex hormones you know like it's until they're 18 like or maybe maybe 17 or 16 but definitely not 13 or 14 yeah I've been on them since I was 13 the [Music] estrogen so when you came off the puberty blocker you remained on the estrogen yeah because at that time period I mean I I never really like explored what what my dysphoria was I definitely have an uncomfortability with my body and it's definitely a you know dysphoria means too be so it's definitely like a burden to bear um so when I went off the blocker it was just like you know the blocker made me sick and it still felt like it was a right decision for me you know what I mean because you know I am a pretty effeminate personality and I could not imagine you know what my life would have looked like if I ended up looking like my dad and my brother um you know no offense to them they're perfectly good-look guys but just not you know it's it's just something that I didn't think that like and and you can tell I still kind of struggle with the idea because I'm just coming to an age where I'm really able to like explore a lot of these emotions with like my adult faculties and kind of like strip them down yes um but at that period I couldn't really strip it down any further than I just have a dis or I just have a problem with my body you know when I say that I'm not implying that you should have gotten off I'm just trying to understand almost from like a because we're we're like discovering this medical experiment and I'm just trying to piece together as a you know you're a child you're 16 at that point the blocker was very obviously the culprit of why you were sick you come off the blocker but at this point your body is going to be producing test tone and you're getting estrogen right I just want to make sure medically I understand so what was that like I guess from a physiological perspective psychologically did your depression lift like H how did that go when you were off the blocker but on estrogen so technically they had assigned me like a lower level of Spyro to go back on to but I wasn't really taking it all the time because I was like obviously very put off by it so I I've been pretty much on like I I guess I would take like a spiral pill like maybe I would half it so I would take maybe like the halves of I was supposed to take one pill a day and I would take the halves like maybe like twice a week kind of stuff is that because you intuitively thought this is bad and I'm I'm resisting it or what was it well I've always been pretty sensitive to like you know what I don't know it just felt I I just had a bad taste in my mouth from my past experience Spyro is a blocker so was that like well blockers don't work well for me well after I had found out how Spyro like impacts your organs and stuff I was pretty like put off by it obviously um so I was trying to avoid taking that but I was taking estrogen um right so I'd have like hot flashes and you know my emotions sometimes go up and down but like not in like ridiculous like I'm not just crying for no reason you know what I mean yeah yeah but like I don't know it just I also get these like real bad pains in my chest like really bad pains like sometimes like when I was working in a kitchen I would have to take breaks because my breasts also feel like they seize up kind of like that and it just it's caused me so many issues but that got a lot more prominent when I went off of a blocker um and did the estrogen when you started taking it at 13 did you then grow breasts oh yeah I have like fully female typical like breasts what was that like I mean I know that the the way the doctors gender medicine doctors treat it as though you have this choice of what puberty you'd like to go to like and you even said I chose the female puberty and it's no no fault of your own at all that's how it's framed to you as a kid it was very like I don't know like commercialized Americanized like marketed kind of thing yeah yeah even though insurance covered you know most of my stuff not all of it but most of it um like I don't know as to what it was like to like grow female typical breasts I never really thought anything of it because that was just like I was just going through puberty for me you know I was already kind of a you know feminine kid so it wasn't really hard for to like make that adjustment it wasn't really until I was like oh sorry I almost dropped you wasn't until I like got out into the world and like was trying to like date and stuff that it like kind of you know became apparent to me like oh my body type is pretty unusual because when I first you know was going on this step part of the questions I would have for my doctor because he was also LGBT I won't like comment on you know what part but that was part of their identity as well um oh wait wait your doctor was was your doctor trans no okay no just a different sexual identity um and uh or romantic identity um and it so I would be like you know what's what's my dating life going to be like basically and it it almost was like implied that my dating pool would be wider if I transitioned um because then you know straight I would be in the dating pool of like straight men basically um because there's much less gay guys and there's more straight guys was like a mindset behind that um so when I got out into the world and I was like oh you know my body type is pretty unusual you know the only men that are really into me are generally like older men that have already like developed like you know like they're looking for something unusual you know what I mean it's never been like people my own age that like want to just like get to know me because you know I have a really unusual body type and you know I didn't really understand that until I got out into the world but until then like it was just normal to me I never really thought anything of having my breasts other than they hurt really bad sometimes um it just never I remember when I was younger like we're talking in the 90s and there was always a certain man who went over to Thailand and was into that you know what I mean it was quite well known there was a certain man but it's a quite a sexualized existence yeah and I didn't really understand that at the time because you know I was young so I was thinking like oh Prince Charming I wasn't thinking like you know this like guy that left his wife and now wants something different you know because that's the majority of like what is out there for people people like me and I don't want to say that's the case for everybody because like you know I've known transexuals that have you know fallen in love and have had perfectly fine relationships but it's definitely in the minority unfortunately um and I don't think that that's because of the culture or anything I just think that it's that way because you know transexuals or people with my body type are just not very common um so people that are you know drawn to that just aren't very common and I didn't really you know understand that until I was out there in the dating world and that's kind of like what made me start thinking about how unusual my situation really was if that makes sense yeah yeah and the estrogen you it gave you breasts did it give you hips did it give you a female body shap yeah I have pretty prominent hips a lot of people a lot of people comment on the way I walk because I guess I like walk like like people say I strut but I'm not like trying to I'm just like walking I guess my female typical hips have made it a little bit more like obvious but yeah so I have female typical hips like my bones are a little bit more placed outward um and I don't really know how I feel about that I don't really ever think about it honestly doesn't really ever come up for me um the breasts have become more of a problem especially like now that a couple years have gone by cuz I have a little lump in one of them and I've not been able to really get like I just found a doct that was willing to take a look at it um so I had to set up like another scan and everything for later this year um but for a long time I haven't really gotten anybody to look at it they were just kind of like dismiss like the pain in my breast and stuff it's like oh they're growing or if like I would have like a little bit of like stuff that would like come out of them they'd be like oh you're just like lactating and it's like but that doesn't really make any sense because a a I'm a male and B I'm not like I'm not like pregnant breastfeeding yeah um um and that always stood out as kind of unusual to me but that's what the doctors were telling me and not just the doctors that were prescribing me stuff like multiple doctors that my mom has taken me to over the years have just told us that no my boobs are just growing and I just lactate sometimes like that's a normal thing and it's very much like like it's very much caus me issues with like the clothes that I can wear and stuff like that because oh my God this isn't a minor issue this is like a a daily you have to accommodate daily to this medical challenge very much so um I've had to like be mindful about the things that I wear and and the settings that like you know cuz some settings I can be more comfortable in and you know but yeah it's affected my jobs like I said I lost a job over um some of these issues like with the pain I couldn't really like lift heavy things because if a lot of stress is put on that like little knot it hurts really really bad and um yeah it's just like a whole thing little knot in your breast yeah oh my God are are you still on estrogen right now no I've been off of it for maybe like six seven months I was taking it like not regularly for a while cuz I was kind of wanted to wean myself off of it and see if like I actually would masculinize as much as people had implied um and so far that has not been the case like I think think my brow grew a little bit and and I get like little like whiskers blonde whiskers here but I just like pluck those and it's like not been a problem so you never went through any male puberty um not really I mean I have an Adam's apple and I have a strong jawline a little bit and my nose kind of grew a little bit but that's pretty much it can you catch us up to to that point when you six or seven months ago when you stopped taking estrogen so like you described all the medical complications that you've had but ostensibly you were still going to doctors you're like asking about these things and you're not getting satisfactory answers at what point did you start to I mean also I'd love to hear like you kind of think about all of this now and how you think about yourself now but like so in order to do that I have to go back to when I was 17 I called my original doctor and you know was like you know you like basically asking him about some of this like you know you said this wouldn't happen um in regards to like my sexual dysfunction and stuff like that because that really bothered me as a teenager um and basically the conversation didn't go well and I never ended up speaking to him again after that there was no like communication he had sent me a reference to another doctor in a city that I cannot get to because I could not at the time and still cannot drive so it was just like a whole shebang um and my mom had to help me find another doctor um that actually turned out to be closer um and much more honest with me about the side effects of this stuff um but there's a little couple year period there where I wasn't really like directly seeing a doctor I was just kind of like my prescriptions were still there but there wasn't really any like regular visits um and then I found this other doctor who was just like straight up open with all of this like I would ask her a question about the sexual dysfunction she'd be like yep also this this this and this and it overwhelmed me the first couple of times like I would cry and they would have like give me a minute because I was just overwhelmed by the sheer honesty but also like kind of like taken aback by the pure like scientific like tone of it all yeah um and yeah just her honesty basically filled in you know the input that I wanted to know from since the beginning and I was like well you know maybe maybe it would be okay for me to try to like just give it up to mother nature for a while and just like instead of instead of constantly fighting like I felt like I've had to be doing maybe I just need to try surrendering for once and just like kind of lean into like and then this is going to sound so stupid because we live in an age of like technology and people like all people think that medicine improves everything but sometimes it's best to just like relax and let nature do its thing you know what I I mean cuz like our bodies are ecosystems like unto themselves so I'm just like I just made a decision to just kind of surrender it to like mother nature for a minute and just like see you know what happens at least until I can get this lump checked out because I didn't want to stay on estrogen while I had a bump in my breast um you know just in case not saying that it is anything but on the off chance that it is I don't want to be like potentially like feeding it those synthetic hormones does that make sense it does make sense but what's so enraging on your behalf is how since the age of 13 you you know there isn't a feeling of a doctor looking after you there isn't a feeling informed consent isn't even in the room here this is uh this is you raising issues and being told not to worry and basically you stop asking questions questions was really the attitude and your mother was shimmy out of the room it just feels like the most awful awful care that you were given yeah yeah um it it's definitely not what I thought I would be getting when I went on this route you know we didn't really have the words for exploratory therapy back then but I thought like oh I'm going to get in contact with you know this you know LGBT friendly play and they're going to put me in contact with you know Elders of like you know people like me and I was going to be able to like have a little bit of self-discovery and like learn to be more comfortable with myself before going on like such a major route I thought that I would like be led to more of an understanding because at that point you know I was young so I was kind of like looking to like people around me a little bit more to like understand my emotions and why I had so many problems with myself um now that I'm older and I have more like adult faculties it's much more easy for me to just like look within but um I didn't really have that capability at that time so I was just kind of looking for like therapy from these professionals um to kind of like I don't know just figure out like why I felt this way and why everything about myself felt so bad if that makes sense you know Scarlet when I listen to everything you've shared from the minute you had your first appointment with the gender therapist to the doctors and endocrinologists this is like fantasy care everybody was living in a fantasy they were selling you a fantasy oh this something sparked an idea so yeah you saying fantasy sparked a a memory um so when before so way back I'm sorry to jump around like this it's just like a lot and I know it's okay I'm like having memories as we're like talking about it um but um so after my first appointment with the gender therapist they wanted my mom to get me like synthetic like breasts and stuff to like see if it was like the right path for me I remember them sending me to a specific place called Janet's closet which is like you know a business that exists for reasons I don't want to condemn them um but it's like a transvesti store it's like a fetish shop um for transvestites um and I remember my mom being because we didn't know what it was um but they wanted to like this was like their way to make sure that like it was like the right path for me um and I remember the owner stopping us at the door and my mom having to show them her her her them transvesti the owner of the store um she had to show them uh certificate from the hospital that like I was assigned to be there so this person had to like walk us like past like trying to evade all of the fetish gear and it was some pretty horrific stuff that I saw and I just remember my mom being like absolutely devastated through all of this like I don't know I didn't really like understand at the time how up it was but like years down the line I'm like you know that's a pretty like messed up memory and I never even really wore the synthetic thing so that was like useless cuz it wasn't like I wasn't autog gyop filic so I didn't like want to wear fake breasts and stuff like that that just felt weird to me um but that was like what the doctor said I needed cuz he they needed to know if like I liked looking at myself like that you know what I mean it was just weird stuff Jesus um did they talk much like as you know the the puberty blockers would have stopped your you know your your sexual development your genital growth did they talk much about um you know genital surgery or you know vagina plasty or anything so the thought process was was that we were just going to head in that route um my mom was not down for that like she was okay with like you know me socially transitioning and then they kind of like stepped in and like not threatened her but like kind of implied it with you know me being a word at the state and everything with the hormones and all that but she was not okay with me getting surgery and I remember a couple of Surgeons writing to us and stuff like from the hospital trying to link us up and they were like like they were getting letters from psychiatrists that like I'd never like really had a consultation with and they were just like totally down like they wanted me to get an orchiectomy at one point which is where they like removed your testicles and stuff um because I yeah um it was a lot um and it wasn't ever something that like I was really like going for like I wasn't a big fan of what I have because I you know was sexualized young and stuff like that so obviously that creates some issues um and I've had unfortunate incidences like you know since growing up and stuff um so but I never wanted to get like like surgery for it you know what I mean that just never really felt right I never felt like the science was quite there um nor did it feel like something that I felt like would fix whatever I was dealing with um but it was definitely like implied and definitely pushed a couple of times um my mom and I had to be pretty vehemently um opposed to it more than once um and I have a couple of friends got the surgery um that we were the same age and it didn't end up going well like there was that same neglect um so yeah oh my God from the same Hospital you have other friends who did get the surgery started at the same hospital um they ended up you know all of my friends none of them have gotten surgery in the United States they've all been in other countries like you know over an Asia some of them have been in Canada one of them flew down to Mexico type of stuff wow I I imagine that we're going to have to start bringing this conversation to a close though I think I could talk to you for a long long long time um I want to ask what what has it been like in the last several months as you described letting nature take its course how have you felt has it been worse better the same are there things that are surprising you things that are just what can you share with us about that I know it's very personal so just whatever you're comfortable with I mean all of the above it's been really hard on my professional life um just because like the public doesn't really know how to react with me um people don't know what to call me with my pronouns and it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable and and I work in sales so if people are uncomfortable with me and they don't really want to say it that makes it really hard to sometimes do my job um and I try not to let it get to me I practice open presence a lot so I try to just let it go with my breath um but it does make things really hard a lot um it makes it hard to relate to people sometimes just CU my life has been so radically you know not in the norm that like there's just a lot of very basic normal life experiences that I don't really like relate to because I was you know isolated and going through a transition you know um and my autism probably plays into that somewhat too I already have somewhat of a hard time relating to people um in that regard um but in my personal life um it's been I don't know I feel like I'm it it's felt like a deepening of my awareness and my own skin um not really for positive or negative I'm just learning to like not really label my emotions as they come up it's just like it is and that is it kind of thing and I try to practice that quite a bit and it's helped me a lot and like understanding like the deeper layers of like my dysphoria just a little bit I'm still exploring it I'm doing a lot of Shadow work in regards to that um but it's allowed me to kind of see the base of it being you know shame and the guilt associated with things I went through as a child and a lot of the homophobia I faced um I'm trying not to label it as like for positive or for negative it's just you know when those feelings arise it's just like okay there it is and you know it passes and it arises and it passes um so I'm I'm learning to develop like a flow in my personal life I'm just trying to figure out how to bleed that into work cuz Society is so focused on stuff right now so it makes it a little difficult yeah could I ask you before we move into the um exclusive content what is your position when did you change pronouns and when did you change name and what is your position now around pronouns and name so I changed my name well I changed my pronouns like almost immediately I always kind of felt uncomfortable with my social role is like a male so that was a pretty like easy thing and like 13 or something yeah and like you know on RuPaul's Drag Race you know drag queens are called shei and stuff you know even out of drag so that was pretty like normal for me um and that's kind of how I view it like if people call people call me sir at work all the time and I'm never like oh my God how dare you it's like you know it just there it is and that's it you know it happens and it's gone and there's not really any else to that um but most people that know me personally call me she um and I started going by Scarlet when I was like 14 um and I mean it's fine I don't really I don't really have any feelings about it I just kind of like adapted to it and that's just like what most people call me and it doesn't really arouse like any like conflict or emotion um I don't feel now where I am as adverse to my birth name um I just think it's an unattractive name and it's just not but it's not like any like it doesn't evoke any like catastrophic dysphoric emotions or anything because it's just a name um yeah that's kind of where I stand on that now before we wrap up this portion of the conversation you had we had been connected before and you had reached out to me and Stella to say I'd like to share my story is there anything that you haven't been able to say yet that feels important for you oh not that I can think of well one thing um because I did do a live stream with another Creator in the past and I kind of got my timeline mixed up a little bit just because it's so much to remember all at once and you were a kid I I had just turned 18 but this person I think was being very compassionate it was done out of the goodness of their heart but it just wasn't the therapeutic setting that I needed to really kind of like go through it chronologically so I got very convoluted um and and some people were calling into question like my history basically um so I just kind of wanted to put that out there like when you've dealt with a lot of trauma like this and you have to go through your whole life it can be very hard to like pay attention to everyone else's reactions and try to like focus on other people while trying to remember all of that um but that aside I I feel like I've gotten everything out and um gone all over everything so thank you for the opportunity I appreciate it thank you we'd like to to move into the extra section and maybe ask about what what you needed what what you think you might have needed uh when you were younger and now like what were what were the things that actually could have helped you yeah so maybe for here we'll kind of say goodbye and then we'll take that question into the next section is that okay yeah right well thank you for joining us yeah of course thank you for having me thanks for joining us this week on gender a wider lens if you enjoy the show please wrate and review us on Apple podcasts or Spotify and be sure to visit us on substack by going to wider lens pod.com there you can join our listener Community Access bonus content and resources plus learn about additional ways to support the show our discussions are for educational purposes and are not intended as a substitute for mental health services

Channel: Gender: A Wider Lens

Views: 17,391

Keywords:

Id: s96WlMza2f0

Length: 94min 35sec (5675 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024