Detransitioners (Ex-Trans) Discuss The Realities of “Gender Affirming Care”
A double mastectomy nearly killed Soren before she realized the medical path was built on ideology, not truth. Transition’s harms are lifelong—flat chest, altered voice, no going back.
نظرة عامة
Soren Aldaco recounts how years on testosterone and a double mastectomy nearly killed her before she detransitioned. She traces her transition to childhood social struggles and online spaces that offered an all-explaining trans narrative. The decisive break came while consuming “detrans fetish” content, when a gender-critical post forced her to confront that “woman = female and that’s it.” Now she urges parents to build resilience in gender-nonconforming kids instead of rushing to medical solutions.
ملخص الفيديو الكامل
In this second installment of Maya Poet’s interview with Soren Aldaco, Soren recounts how she moved from living as a trans-identified female on testosterone—who had already undergone a double mastectomy that nearly killed her—to ultimately detransitioning. She describes the shift as “a little bit of everything”: medical trauma, intellectual discovery, family reconnection, and even an accidental epiphany that occurred while consuming “detrans fetish” content on Tumblr. The decisive moment came when she read a gender-critical post asserting that “woman = female and that’s it.” In the middle of a sexual role-play scenario she suddenly recognized that the “TERFs” she had dismissed were articulating a truth she had refused to confront elsewhere in her life. From that point, she could no longer ignore the dissonance between her body and the ideology she had adopted. Soren traces the deeper roots of her transition to a childhood marked by social difficulties and to the isolation of online spaces—particularly Tumblr cosplay and fandom communities—where broad, horoscope-like criteria for being “trans” offered an all-encompassing explanation for adolescent discomfort. COVID lockdowns intensified this dynamic: already an online high-school student, she began testosterone in 2020 and found that the pandemic’s disruption of normal socialization made the trans narrative even more attractive. When campuses reopened in 2021-2022, she noticed that everyone’s social skills had taken a hit, leveling the playing field and allowing her to re-socialize without the same sense of failure that had once driven her toward transition. College courses in sociology and anthropology then reframed her distress as a problem of socialization rather than identity, convincing her that discomfort with womanhood could be unlearned much like her earlier difficulty making eye contact. Both women discuss how detransition is often miscast as a simple reversal, when in reality it involves ideological desistance, bodily changes that cannot be undone, and complex emotional calculus around regret. Soren emphasizes that she will “always be materially trans”: her mastectomy and years of testosterone have permanently altered her body. She and Maya agree that the categories “desister,” “detransitioner,” and “regretter” are better viewed as overlapping points on a spectrum rather than discrete boxes, and they propose replacing the medical / non-medical binary with “high-tech” versus “low-tech” interventions—binding and social transition being low-tech steps that frequently lead to high-tech medical ones. Finally, Soren shares the lessons she has taken from the entire journey: listen to bodily intuition, accept that sex differences are real and not inherently oppressive, and recognize that language is both powerful and limited. She urges parents to prepare gender-nonconforming children for social friction without pathologizing their behavior or rushing to medical solutions, arguing that resilience and realistic expectations are more protective than ideological affirmation.