Over the past several years, an entire industry aimed at providing transgender accessories to children has sprung up to meet — and drive — the demand for gender-bending supplies. Children hooked on the idea of changing genders through peer contagion or Internet trans celebrities can order “breast-binders,” which flatten the chest, or “packers,” which girls use to “present” as having a penis, online without their parents’ knowledge. Internet influencers coach kids on how to lie to their parents or get doctors to prescribe them hormones; one new app could connect gender-confused kids to hormone treatment for less than $100 a month.
There’s big money in Big Trans. If children are started on the gender transition path early, they will essentially be medical patients for life—and paying customers for life. Children and teens are also being persuaded that transition is something they need and are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to attain it—as I noted in a report last year, children as young as thirteen years old have begun crowdfunding their sex changes using GoFundMe and other fundraising platforms. Puberty blockers and surgical body alterations are expensive, and private clinics have sprung up to supply the customers.
When young people realize that the surgeries and accessories and cross-sex hormones didn’t actually deliver the promised peace, however, they are left abruptly on their own. Their stories are inconvenient for the movement that insists “affirmation” is the only way to respond to gender dysphoria; for the industry making a killing on confusion; and for the media that has been serving as the trans movement’s propaganda arm. Despite the excruciating physical after-effects they experience, they often cannot get the medical help they need to begin repairing the damage.
In a sick sort of symmetry, desperate detransitioners are turning to crowdfunding to pay for their medical treatments. A recent report from the Daily Mail cited the example of 24-year-old Michigan student Prisha Mosley, who has thus far fundraised $7,820 from 100 donors to have her breasts reconstructed—she had a double mastectomy at age 18 and now has no sensation in her chest. As a result of taking testosterone at 17, she also has “manlike broad shoulders, narrow hips, a deep voice, and facial and body hair,” which she is hoping to get rid of.
