Mr. Skinner and Mr. Wiener

This spring, the Judiciary Committee of the State Senate of California, CA—my home state—convened as usual to discuss a number of bills, including one surrounding one of the state’s favorite topics: transgenderism. Session after session, California accumulates more and more “protections” and statutes intended to protect transgender ideology and the institutions promoting it, rather than protecting people like me: a detransitioner who was groomed at the age of 13 into believing I was born in the wrong body.

One such bill presented was SB 934, which would protect “gender affirming” therapists from being held to account for the medical consequences of transition, and prevent real therapists from trying to help gender confused kids accept biological reality. SB 934 was brought forth by state Sen. and soon-to-be congressman Scott Wiener, who no doubt knew that his bill here was a shoo-in. Given his influence, Wiener’s bills still manage to get some vocal opponents, but his general approach to dealing with their testimony, no matter how heart-wrenching, personal, or amiable, is either to ignore it or to dismiss it with his favorite insults—usually some combination of accusations of Nazism or bigotry.

Wiener, however, seemed visibly baffled and unable to resort to his usual tactics when a young man, wearing a slim-fit tank top and skinny jeans, came to the stand and began to tell his story, which later went viral. Joni Skinner, 23 years old and obviously gay, comes from a town in Michigan with fewer than 3,000 people and only one stoplight, and bravely spoke to a powerful audience he knew would ignore him. He spoke about how he grew up in a distressed home, with a father who skipped out on many of his responsibilities and a mother who struggled to pick up the pieces and raise her children properly. On top of all this, Skinner’s childhood interests in musicals and princesses—what most would now stereotype as “gay” characteristics—were not well received by his peers.

Skinner says he wasn’t born in the wrong body, but his doctors told him otherwise

As he grew up, he came into contact with gender ideology via the Internet, then his tutor, who had begun the process of “transitioning” from female to male. This one-on-one relationship proved to have a lasting effect on him, and very shortly after that, Skinner himself was on a road towards irrevocable damage to his body: urinary incontinence, unwanted breast growth, and complete sexual dysfunction caused by having his testosterone suppressed so young.

Unlike doctors, lawyers, and religious figures, a detransitioner like Skinner can’t be written off by activists or the legislators beholden to them. After all, Skinner is someone who believed in transition enough to go through with it medically, so he can’t be written off as someone who hates trans people or doesn’t understand them. Worse, he was abused by the system people like Scott Wiener go to great lengths to protect and make excuses for.

Indeed, most liberal lawmakers—most of whom aren’t medical professionals, most of whom aren’t facing the lifelong consequences of medical transition themselves—confidently back legislation to allow teenagers and even prepubescent children to completely change their lives.

It doesn’t matter to them how much manipulation it takes kids to get to the point of permanently altering their bodies, and it doesn’t occur to them to protect kids from being put on this path. Jonni and I had both experienced the relentless affirmation and doting that children get from doctors, teachers, and therapists when they start to become gender confused. The decision to medically transition isn’t made in a vacuum, especially when it comes to kids who are too young to drive a car or buy a beer.

I was fortunate enough to have two parents who fought with every fiber of their being against my transition—but not everyone is. Without their steadfast love and support in the face of my defiance, I would have medically transitioned further than I did. Although I spent some time on hormone blockers and estrogen, I did not get the irreversible surgeries that were continuously marketed to me as the golden ticket to finally feeling like “me.” My parents’ firm “no” wound up being my saving grace.

Unfortunately, the state of California is incapable of that same firmness and didn’t heed Skinner’s warning, or mine, or those of the growing number of detransitioners. Instead, it set aside $26 million to castrate and mutilate its own children just last month. These millions of dollars are a “safeguard” in case federal funding is not available to guarantee these surgeries and hormones.

Of course, there is no safeguard for children who will become the victims of more medical abuse from a transgender medical complex that claims to save them. But detransitioners like Jonni and I will not shut up. We will continue sounding the alarm against this madness, because even one more child thrown on the conveyor belt to lifelong harm is one child too many.

Luke Healy is an Independent Women ambassador and detransitioner.

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