Few of us will have experienced all the adverse circumstances and events that Elle Palmer endured as a teenager. When puberty set in at the age of 11, she was plunged into mental anguish. From then on, she was plagued by suicidal thoughts, self-harm, anorexia, obsessions and rituals, insomnia, school refusal, agoraphobia, dwindling friendships, hyper fixations, and internet addiction. She was diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety, all before she turned 14, and was prescribed a cocktail of mind-altering drugs by medical professionals. All this was followed by online sexualisation that evoked such shame and disgust in her that she turned against the very idea of being female, and particularly of having a female body.
While most of us will not have experienced the troubled adolescence or gender dysphoria that Ella did, we have all been through the tough time that the teenage years are (almost inevitably) for parents and children alike. Even the most confident and well-adjusted among us will have asked questions such as, ‘Am I normal?’ ‘Do people like me?’, ‘Am I any good at anything?’, ‘Is my body OK?’, ‘Why do I feel the way I do?’, ‘What rules should I follow?’, ‘What’s the point?’, ‘Who am I?’ and many more besides. These are quite simply normal experiences. They are part of growing up.
If we are lucky, most of us will have experienced ‘good-enough’ care. Not just from parents, but from the whole village that it takes to raise a child. And most of us will come through adolescence, maybe bruised and buffeted by the ordinary blows of life, but fundamentally able to flourish as adults.
First and foremost, our flourishing depends on our most basic physical and material needs being met. But we also need the meaning and purpose that come from close social relationships and the support of a community of others around us.
Something has gone terribly wrong with the community our young people now grow up in. Elle found the online trans community when she was 14. She believes that the transgender identity she adopted, which led to her taking testosterone at the age of 16 up until she detransitioned at 19, came from social contagion. She found herself among friends who came out as “trans or non-binary or whatever” and ended up in a circle of people who identified outside of their natal sex and who gave her “incredible support” and apparent love and acceptance.
Youth subcultures have existed ever since the Second World War. But never before has a youth subculture been supported, funded and facilitated, and the set of beliefs it espouses been proselytised, by the very adult establishment that subculture is ostensibly kicking against. Elle’s transient trans identity was confirmed by a web of institutions: “I told my friends, I told my parents, I told the LGBT Center, I told a gender therapist, I told Planned Parenthood, and I told a doctor.” None of the medical practitioners and caregivers Elle encountered asked her why she felt as she did. They only heard her say what she was feeling: that she was never going to change her mind. She wanted to be a boy.
We have all been adolescents. We don’t need sophisticated psychological theory to know that growing up is a process of rapid change. Feelings come and go. To some extent, right through to the end of our lives, but especially when we are young. Our identities emerge and evolve over long periods of time.
The million-dollar question is: how did a social, political, and medical community come about that affirms that every feeling that a minor experiences is an accurate reflection of reality? Especially when those feelings are the frankly nonsensical ones of being “born in the wrong body”. How, as Parents with Inconvenient Truths (PITT) put it in a brilliant but bitterly ironic “comforting letter”, did experienced professionals and decision-makers in positions of power tangle themselves up in an ideology that depathologizes the pathological whilst simultaneously advocating for dangerous medical interventions to lend spurious plausibility to fragile and highly improbable identities? It is a crisis of authority. This crisis affects not only parenting, but also educational and care institutions, and goes hand in hand with diminishing trust in political authority.
“I was never going to change my mind,” says Ellie, “but then I did.” We all change our minds. It’s what we do when we grow up. Elle detransitioned at age 19 and abandoned the identity she had told everyone she would live as for the rest of her life. Don’t transition minors, she says in this interview. They and young adults do not have the full capacity to make an informed decision to transition. At least not until their brains are fully developed. Transition is harmful in general, even for adults. “There are a lot of reasons to fight against it.”
When she detransitioned, the community that had promised her undying love and support abandoned and vilified her. Daily life continues to be fraught with struggles. But in a different and positive way. She is now 26, and a lot has changed. She is learning to accept herself and her body as they are. And, most importantly, she is building new, better relationships with family and finding friendship with other detransitioners in a new, supportive community.
The support detransitioners need is still hard to come by. Most medical professionals are bewildered by detransitioners, who shake the foundations of the current institutional stasis. “They don’t know what you are talking about or what you have gone through,” says Ellie.
Change is the one constant of life. Just as I was writing this piece, the news came in: Texas Children’s Hospital is establishing the first “detransition clinic” in the U.S. The times they are a-changing, again. And while they are, Elle’s advice is to educate yourself and read people’s stories. There are so many.
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"When she detransitioned, the community that had promised her undying love and support abandoned and vilified her."
This is not uncommon if I'm not mistaken, and an incredibly important contextual piece of this broad topic.
Elle, we are so grateful for your voice. Please keep speaking out -- we need you!