First Person: "I'm a Detransitioner Who Had a Baby...Here are the Massive Health Challenges I Faced"
I try not to, but I think a lot about the fact that if I held my baby or if I set my chest on fire, it would feel like the same exact thing. Nothing.
Overview
Prisha Mosley describes how gender ideology discovered on Tumblr led to medicalization at 16 for an eating disorder, resulting in testosterone, a double mastectomy, and chronic pain dismissed as growing pains. After quitting hormones and treating borderline personality disorder, she detransitioned mentally. Despite believing she was infertile, she became pregnant, enduring hyperemesis, a forced C-section due to atrophy and underdeveloped hips, and postpartum complications including trapped milk in scar tissue. She is now suing her doctors.
Full Video Summary
Prisha Mosley recounts discovering transgender ideology at age 15 on Tumblr through the anorexia community while she was being treated for an eating disorder. She came to believe that her psychological struggles, including her eating disorder, stemmed from being born in the wrong body. At 16, medicalization began in her nutritionist’s office, where a pediatric endocrinologist began seeing her in secret. After receiving a shot to stop her periods, she obtained a boilerplate letter of recommendation during a brief 15-minute appointment with a gender therapist—who also raised the prospect of top and bottom surgery—and began testosterone. Her parents were told it was a matter of having an alive son or a dead daughter. She underwent a double mastectomy. Initially she felt relief and hope, which she later recognized as a delusion and false hope fueled by activists. Chronic pain from testosterone was dismissed by her endocrinologist as normal growing pains from male puberty, but the suffering persisted until she quit cold turkey. She eventually found a dialectical behavioral therapist who treated her underlying borderline personality disorder, and through that therapy and the clarity brought by withdrawal, she mentally reconciled with her natal sex, detransitioning in October two years prior to the interview. Despite years of cross-sex hormones and surgery, Mosley unexpectedly became pregnant while taking birth control to heal her hormones, a possibility she had thought was impossible. She was shocked and initially suicidal, fearing the baby would be sick or harmed. The pregnancy was grueling and traumatic: she was hyperemetic, vomiting constantly day and night for nine months, and required a C-section because her son was large and her hips were underdeveloped due to testosterone and her eating disorder, compounded by pelvic atrophy. She also describes profound chest trauma: her breasts were surgically removed and her nipples reattached elsewhere, leaving her hard, flat, numb, scarred, and unable to breastfeed. After giving birth, she discovered that leftover breast tissue became engorged with milk trapped beneath scar tissue, forming painful, rock-like lumps that stretched and tore her scars. She stresses that doctors who once acted certain now admit they do not know how to treat these complications. Mosley is suing the doctors who medically transitioned her and recently achieved a legal victory allowing her case to proceed.