I Was Thirteen When They Put Me on Estrogen
At 13, I was misdiagnosed, put on estrogen, and left with chronic pain, stunted growth and breasts. Doctors falsified records and threatened my mom. No child should be medicalised like I was.
Επισκόπηση
Johnny Skinner was 13 when doctors in Michigan misdiagnosed him and put him on estrogen, beginning eight years of medical transition that left him with chronic pain, stunted growth, and irreversible breast and hip development. Now 22, he describes how clinicians ignored his autism, religious trauma, and sexual abuse, falsified records, and threatened his mother to force the process, leaving him with no legal recourse but to speak out.
Πλήρης Περίληψη Βίντεο
Johnny Skinner, now 22, recounts how he spent the whole of his adolescence—eight years—living as a trans-identified girl after clinicians put him on estrogen at age 13. Raised in a one-stop-light town in rural Michigan, Johnny was a classically feminine, autistic little boy who loved Disney princesses and was bullied for his mannerisms. A zealous fundamentalist Christian upbringing convinced him that his emerging attraction to males was sinful, and by puberty he was praying compulsively, avoiding mirrors, and convinced his body itself was the problem. When he discovered trans YouTubers like Jazz Jennings and Gigi Gorgeous, they seemed to offer a path to acceptance that his church and family never did. At 13, Johnny’s mother took him to what they thought was routine counseling at the University of Michigan; instead, a gender therapist and an endocrinologist immediately framed medical transition as the only alternative to suicide. The therapist warned Johnny’s mother that if she did not affirm a female identity, the state—Johnny was a ward of the state because of paternal abuse—could remove him from the home. Without ever exploring his autism, religious scrupulosity, or childhood sexual experiences, the clinicians diagnosed him first with a fabricated “endocrine disorder related to puberty” so insurance would cover cross-sex hormones, then a year later with gender dysphoria. At 5'7" he was also diagnosed with “tall stature” and given extra estrogen to fuse his growth plates, leaving him an inch shorter than predicted. Throughout, the doctors kept Johnny’s mother out of the room for long private conversations, emailed him articles about intersex conditions, and discouraged school attendance “until the transition was complete.” The physical toll was severe. Within months of starting estrogen Johnny developed hot flashes, muscle spasms, urinary incontinence, and blood in his urine; an outside urologist later found an unexplained ulcer on his bladder wall. Puberty blockers (implanted histrelin) caused daily “Charlie-horse” spasms so violent he collapsed in hallways and had to be homeschooled again. Sexual development was stunted and painful: erections felt “like broken glass,” and he leaked milk from developed breast tissue. At 16 he was put on progesterone on the false claim it would prevent cancer. The clinicians also sent 13-year-old Johnny and his mother to a sex shop—connected, he notes, to the same pediatric building—to purchase silicone breast forms and fetish wear, an experience he describes as traumatic and never repeated. Throughout, medical records were sanitized; clinicians wrote that Johnny was “happy,” wanted more curves, and even voiced desire to amputate his genitals—none of which he says is true. By late 2023, disillusioned and physically depleted, Johnny read the leaked WPATH files and realized “everything I had been led to believe was a lie.” He stopped all hormones between December 2023 and January 2024, enduring months of menopause-like withdrawal: drenching sweats, swollen lymph nodes, extreme fatigue, and emotional lability. A year and a half later his testosterone is slowly returning, facial hair is appearing, and erections are no longer painful, though he retains breast tissue, wide hips, and a smaller frame that complicate dating and invite fetishization. Because Michigan’s statute of limitations for malpractice is two years with a six-month discovery period, Johnny has no legal recourse; instead, he is speaking publicly—first at the Genspect “Live Not By Lies” conference in Albuquerque—to warn others and to lay down what he calls “the weight of Atlas,” hoping the truth will carry itself so no more children endure what he did.