The Cost of Transitioning - My Body Was Never the Problem
I wish someone like me had been public when I was 13… the affirmation is kind of the root of the problem… doctors and therapists and society… it’s not offering any alternatives… or really honestly showcasing the risks.
Overview
Cat Cattinson, a 33-year-old molecular biologist and singer, recounts how childhood trauma, social isolation, and online gender ideology led her to transition at 28. After a 20-minute phone call with Planned Parenthood, she received testosterone without labs or an exam; within four months she suffered rapid vocal damage that still disables her singing and speaking. Now working with Transition Justice, she warns that affirmation culture and rushed medicalization plant the seed that “your body is the problem” and urges adolescents to hear the risks clinicians never outlined.
Full Video Summary
Cat Cattinson, a 33-year-old molecular biologist and classically trained singer from a small California town, traces her transgender identification to early childhood trauma and social isolation. She suspects she may be autistic, recalls difficulty making friends, and says that abuse she suffered around age four left her feeling “being a girl” was unsafe. By five she already wished she had been born a boy, believing boys had “more freedom” and that her personality would fit better in a male body. These feelings stayed private until, at 13, she stumbled on an adult website of females living as men. The site framed transition as the only path to happiness, convincing her that medical interventions could literally change her sex. She began binding, cutting her hair, and developed an eating disorder to suppress puberty, but her parents—who had never heard of pediatric gender medicine—did not understand and no doctor offered blockers or hormones. At 17 Cat saw a Sacramento therapist who, after only three sessions, invited her parents in and announced that she was “a boy trapped in a girl’s body” and ready for testosterone. Shocked, her parents refused to return, and Cat remained closeted for another decade. Between 17 and 28 she occasionally experimented with male names or pronouns but did not medically transition. The decisive shift came at 28, after a traumatic breakup and while taking gender-studies courses in college. Surrounded by campus pride culture and convinced she could never be happy as a woman, she concluded transition was the only route to healing. In June 2020 she telephoned Planned Parenthood during COVID lockdowns; a 20-minute phone call with a trans-identified nurse practitioner resulted in a testosterone prescription without labs, physical exam, or in-person teaching. Cat injected herself weekly, rapidly escalating the dose. Within weeks Cat experienced pronounced side-effects: edema, rapid weight gain, nausea, irritability, and—most devastating for a lifelong singer—an abrupt two-octave drop that quickly became unstable. After one additional injection her upper vocal range collapsed to squeaks and air, speaking became painful, and she lost the ability to project. She canceled plans for a double mastectomy and stopped testosterone after only four months, but the vocal damage persists years later. Cat now works with the nonprofit Transition Justice, sharing her story so adolescents can hear the risks clinicians never outlined and so detransitioners know recovery is possible. She emphasizes that affirmation—whether from websites, schools, therapists, or clinics—planted the seed that her body was the problem, and she wishes a public detransitioner had existed when she was 13 to offer a different narrative.