The Guidelines Are Changing. My Body Never Will

As a minor, I felt uncomfortable in my own body, and when I consulted doctors, they assured me that transitioning was the right answer. My therapist even told my mom that if she didn’t proceed with affirming me, I would most likely become suicidal and severely depressed. So when I was barely a teenager, I underwent gender-transition treatments, including a double mastectomy, that would ultimately leave me with no breasts and a slew of symptoms that would haunt me even after my decision to detransition.

This week, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons announced that gender surgeries on minors should not be common practice, and the American Medical Association released a half-baked statement recommending against surgical interference while continuing to support other forms of so-called “gender-affirming care.” While this inches toward what I and other detransitioners want for future generations, this major announcement has provoked some complicated feelings in me.

These institutions that are now redirecting guidelines against gender-affirming care were the same ones that rushed into this practice without hesitation, without long-term evidence, and certainly without careful thought as to how their actions could affect children down the road.

Minors cannot legally consent to many things, and it’s for their own good. Most doctors can concur that brains aren’t fully developed until age 25 or 26. What kind of effects do hormones and treatments have on actively growing and changing brains? If we don’t entrust 15-year-olds to make sound choices involving tattoos or liquor, why are we allowing them to chop off perfectly healthy body parts in the name of “mental health”?

While there have been several wins on the pediatric gender “care” front in the past year of this administration, many different organizations and medical societies are doubling down on their decision to continue gender-affirming care. Last year, President Trump signed an executive order directing hospitals to either stop the procedures or risk losing funding for Medicare and Medicaid. The American Association of Pediatrics, though, still continues to condemn this, and went so far as to say that HHS’s study, released last spring, was “deeply concerning.”

Now, years later, as major medical organizations quietly revise their positions, I am expected to feel relief. And in most ways, I do. I am grateful that future children may be spared from what I went through. But gratitude does not erase the loss. Even as more organizations follow in the footsteps of the ASPS and the AMA and come to the light, I will never be able to get back to what could have been.

I cannot sing like I used to. I loved choir and theater. They were special to me, but now, because no one told me that my vocal chords would expand due to testosterone, I cannot perform as well as I previously could. I will not be able to breastfeed any future children. I still don’t know if I’m fertile or able to conceive. There are countless examples I could give, but what I want to emphasize is that while the standards are moving in the right direction, they can’t turn back time. I’ll never be able to get back the body that I once had.

What’s most painful to sit with is not just what was taken from me, but how confidently it was taken. No one framed this as experimental. No one said, “We don’t really know what the long-term outcomes are.” No one paused to ask whether a teenager struggling with identity, trauma, or anxiety might need time instead of irreversible intervention. Instead, urgency replaced caution.

The doctors who were supposed to protect me and “do no harm” told my parents that hesitation itself was harmful. That waiting would be fatal. That affirmation meant action — immediate, physical, permanent action. That is not medicine; it is coercion disguised as care.

This is what makes these announcements so difficult to absorb. Institutions that once insisted these treatments were not only safe but also lifesaving are now acknowledging that caution is needed — without acknowledging the patients who paid the price for their misplaced confidence. There has been no apology to the children like me who were placed on a conveyor belt toward irreversible outcomes without adequate evidence or truly informed consent.

Consent is not merely a signature on a form. It requires understanding risks, alternatives, uncertainties, and long-term consequences. A minor cannot meaningfully consent to the permanent loss of healthy body parts, sexual function, fertility, or the ability to breastfeed — especially when those risks are minimized, dismissed, or never mentioned at all. We recognize this in every other area of life. We do not let children gamble with their future because we know their brains are still developing. Yet when it came to my body, caution was deemed cruel.

I write this out of responsibility — responsibility to the girls and boys who are currently being told that discomfort with their bodies means something is wrong with them. Responsibility to parents who are being pressured to act quickly out of fear. Responsibility to a profession that must decide whether it values truth over trend.

If medical institutions now admit uncertainty, then honesty demands more than quiet revisions. It demands accountability. It demands a recentering of ethics. And above all, it demands that children be protected from irreversible decisions made in moments of vulnerability. I cannot get my body back. But perhaps we can prevent others from losing theirs.