84. Children Can't Consent │ Charlie's Story

For Charlie, it all started at age five, jealous of boys, because they got to take their shirts off and stand to pee. By age seven, she had a therapist who told her and her parents that this was symptomatic of something called gender dysphoria. Ecstatic that she would get to ‘be a boy,’ Charlie was ushered down the medical path, with her vital records and name altered at age nine, and later put on puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones. Her family asked her if she was sure she wanted all of this. Her response? “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.” All twelve years of life experience couldn’t have prepared her for the changes testosterone would bring. At age fifteen, she had started to wonder if the path she was on would prevent her from ever getting married or having a family. It wasn’t until encountering a Reddit thread about complications of testosterone such as bone and heart disease and dementia that it occurred to her that her doctors had never told her that these "life-saving treatments" would have long term negative effects on her health.

The process of coming out a second time, this time as a lesbian woman ready to detransition, was even harder than the first time. After telling herself the story for so long that she’d take her own life if she ever got her period, she developed an eating disorder, to keep delaying womanhood even without testosterone. Now nineteen, Charlie has found peace in her body and within her circle of family and friends, but she wants to challenge people to consider what would have happened if her childhood therapist had recognized her anxiety and depression instead of entertaining the ludicrous concept of being stuck in the wrong body.

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