I Wouldn't Wish Detransition on Anyone
LaRell’s body is scarred for life after medical transition he now calls a mistake—no one warned him detransition would hurt even more.
Επισκόπηση
Detransitioner LaRell sits down with Buck Angel to share the painful reality of reversing a medical transition he now regrets, warning others about the irreversible damage that can follow rushed gender-affirming care.
Πλήρης Περίληψη Βίντεο
LaRell Herbert, a 43-year-old man from Colorado, spent six years living as a woman, taking estrogen and spironolactone, and ultimately undergoing vaginoplasty before realizing he had been “in a delusion” and detransitioning. Raised in a devout Mormon household where his mother openly denigrated men and male genitalia, LaRell says he began at age four to feel “like a girl” and learned to hide any trace of femininity behind hyper-masculine behaviors—guns, lifted trucks, and a trucking company—because “it was literally not okay to be a boy.” Homeschooled and isolated, he did not encounter the concept of transgender identity until his late twenties, when a Google search led him to Susan’s Place. Even then, he believed transition was impossible until, in his thirties, he married an “amazing woman” who initially supported his cross-dressing at home. After watching the 2016 National Geographic documentary *Gender Revolution*, she asked directly whether he wanted to transition; he said yes, and within two or three visits a non-binary Kaiser-affiliated therapist handed him letters for hormones and, later, surgery. LaRell began estrogen in mid-2017, experienced breast growth and “euphoria,” and started presenting publicly as female that September. Two years on hormones made him eligible for vaginoplasty; a trans woman psychologist employed by Kaiser quickly approved him, and Denver Health—whose surgeons had been trained by Marcy Bowers—performed the operation. Post-surgical complications were immediate and severe: the vaginal opening was constructed too small, dilation caused “excruciating pain,” and the canal soon closed permanently, leaving him with “a part of my body I couldn’t use for sex anyway.” He reports that clinicians blamed his supposed failure to dilate adequately and denies any informed discussion of fertility loss, long-term hormone dependence, or irreversibility. After seven years on estrogen his muscle mass, bone density, and energy plummeted; adding a small amount of testosterone for health reasons unexpectedly restored his sex drive and “made me feel a little more like a man again.” In October 2023—six months before the interview—he recognized that his female identity had been “rooted in childhood trauma and inability to love myself,” stopped estrogen, resumed testosterone pellets, and began living again as a man, albeit without a penis or testicles and with a non-functional vagina. Throughout the conversation, LaRell emphasizes the absence of meaningful gatekeeping: therapists and surgeons “affirmed” rather than questioned, and he characterizes the system as a “conveyor belt” that rushes patients toward irreversible interventions. He grieves not only his own bodily loss but the impact on his wife—who stood by him through surgery and remains married to him—and on his stepdaughter, who had to switch from calling him “mama” to “llama.” Despite anger toward Kaiser, Denver Health, and the wider “gender-affirming” apparatus, he channels his experience into public education, writing a memoir titled *Transgender: It Is a Belief and It Can Change* and seeking speaking engagements to warn others. Buck Angel, himself a 32-year transitioned trans man, repeatedly expresses sorrow and outrage on LaRell’s behalf, arguing that deeper therapy would have uncovered the childhood wounds driving his desire to transition and that today’s affirmation-only model is “sloppy medicine” destined to create more detransitioners.