What the Hormones Didn't Solve
Testosterone gave me a beard and a bald patch, but it never touched the self-hatred that drove me to transition. Now I’m left sterilized, scarred, and begging clinics to ask ‘why’ before they hand out the next shot.
Overview
Sinead, a Scottish woman in her late 20s, recounts living as a trans man for 4.5 years, undergoing testosterone treatment and a double mastectomy before detransitioning. She attributes her distress to untreated mental health issues, describes the lack of thorough evaluation at Glasgow’s Sandyford clinic, and warns that Scotland’s proposed Gender Recognition Reform Bill could push teenagers toward irreversible medical harm with little oversight.
Full Video Summary
Sinead, a Scottish woman in her late 20s, shares with host Benjamin Boyce that she lived as a trans man for about four-and-a-half years, undergoing testosterone treatment and a double mastectomy, before stopping hormones and publicly identifying as female again. She emphasizes that she never felt part of “trans culture”: although she read Tumblr blogs and watched transition videos in 2012, the “cult-like” dynamics she observed online kept her from joining any group. Even while presenting as male, she insisted she was “biologically female,” a stance that earned her the label “truscum” from activists who believe trans people literally change sex. Sinead traces her transition to adolescent body-image distress, academic pressure, and a series of mental health crises that began at 21. After a suicide attempt in 2012, she was repeatedly seen by GPs and psychiatrists, yet each encounter was brief, and no clinician explored whether her desire to be male was secondary to trauma, eating-disordered thinking, or alcohol misuse. When she sought help from Glasgow’s Sandyford gender clinic in 2014, she was told she could self-refer; a 13-month wait was followed by only two assessment appointments and a blood pressure check. Staff knew she had been discharged from a psychiatric ward weeks earlier, but they accepted her assertion that “all my problems are gender dysphoria” and prescribed testosterone on the third visit. She says no one warned her about vaginal or uterine atrophy, and the clinic’s computer later reclassified her as male, so cervical screening letters stopped arriving. The physical changes—deep voice, facial hair, fat redistribution—were “boxes to tick,” and she felt fleeting pride, yet depression, insomnia, and heavy drinking continued. After top surgery in 2017, the novelty wore off within months, and she confronted the possibility that transition had not solved her underlying issues. She stopped testosterone for four months in 2018, but fear of social embarrassment (beard shadow, bald patch, mastectomy scars) drove her back onto it while she spent a further year “being my own therapist,” journaling, running, and staying sober. By October 2019, she was certain she would not restart hormones and began quietly detransitioning; three months later, she had told her family, employer, and Twitter followers. Online, Sinead found roughly 50 other detransitioners in a private chat; together, they swap practical advice (voice training, hair removal, accepting mastectomy scars) and emotional support when activists accuse them of faking regret or “weaponizing” trans lives. She stresses that most detransitioners do not want to ban transition for adults—they simply want thorough mental health screening, long-term follow-up studies, and honest discussion of rising referral rates (her clinic saw a 700% increase in adolescent girls since 2013). She fears Scotland’s proposed Gender Recognition Reform Bill—lowering the legal sex-change age to 16 and removing any medical gatekeeping—will funnel still-fragile teenagers toward irreversible treatment and future lawsuits. Sinead now presents alternately in jeans and a T-shirt or in a wig and makeup, whichever feels safest that day. She calls herself “a humanist, not a TERF,” supports single-sex sports and prisons, yet refuses to sign on to any ideology that frames womanhood as universal oppression. Her goal is modest: keep speaking so that clinics, parents, and lawmakers hear that transition did not cure her self-hatred and that detransitioners—far from being heretics—are evidence that more caution, conversation, and compassion are needed before the next teenager is told that hormones are the only path to peace.