"I went to hell and back," said Alexander, who underwent gender reassignment surgery nine years ago. The procedure was followed by a period of addiction. "For a long time, I was just trying to forget what happened," he said. Today, he says: "I am at peace that I am a man."
Ritchie realized instantly: "I knew in my heart straight away that I had regretted it." But he didn't dare tell his mother. When he confessed this to his gender therapist, he was told, "No, you don’t regret this. You've got OCD." The diagnosis would later change to unstable personality disorder, just like Alexander, and the medical staff never acknowledged that he had simply regretted the decision.
These are two of the five testimonies in "The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood," a film by The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (CBC), that tells five men's stories about their "detransition." That is: people who regretted undergoing gender surgery. The film explores the path that led them to believe that undergoing a gender transition would resolve their discontent with their identity. This process accelerated, according to their testimonies, due to a mix of content on social media, the news, pornography, mental problems and adults pushing to affirm they were trans. Brian, one of the detransitioners, experienced this when he spoke with a supposed expert on the subject:
The first time [we spoke], she told me I’m definitely transgender and only a transgender person would like that kind of porn and that kind of lifestyle and that I need to, like, start transitioning.
"Medical professionals really led me astray with this," he adds later and confesses irreparable damage to his health, such as not being able to have children. Brian, like Ritchie, Alexander, Njada and Torren, regrets his transition. This regret is "visceral," as U.K. House of Lords member Claire Fox wrote in her review of the film.
The detransitioners also tell of their path back, and in some cases they will never be medically complete. They are called "patients for life," plagued by threats and attempts to silence them. "I just I don't like the idea of being collateral damage for this movement," Brian says. They also demand changes: Brian himself calls for more medical tests before transitions. Alexander started a support group for detransitioners in Norway.
The story of these five also completes a CBC trilogy also made up of "Trans Mission: What's the Rush to Reassign Gender?" and "The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters."
