A male detransitioner who spent his entire adult life trying to become a woman says doctors never properly explored why he was suffering, leaving him to pursue increasingly invasive medical interventions that he now believes could never have resolved the underlying problem.
Ari, known online as Apostate Ari, told RCR he began transitioning as a teenager after seeking therapy at an LGBT centre while struggling with childhood trauma, bullying and his sexuality.
“I thought this was the solution to my mental illness. It just wasn’t,” he said, explaining how the extensive medical and surgical procedures only offered temporary relief.
“I went all the way, I tore my face off, I reconstructed my genitals,” he said. “It was never going to be enough”.
His clinicians gave him a diagnosis and treatment pathway without sufficiently examining what was driving his distress or exploring the “why” behind his choice to transition.
Ari now argues that gender transition can reinforce stereotypes about how men and women should behave, particularly for young gay or gender-nonconforming people.
“Transition, especially under the system of affirmation, is a form of gay conversion therapy. It’s surgical gay conversion therapy,” he said. “I am not more like a woman, I’m just a type of man. I’m an elegant man, and that’s fine”.
After publicly rejecting transgender activism, Ari said he then faced blackmail, doxxing, threats and attacks, before unexpectedly finding sanctuary among Christians.
“I’ve never been attacked by a Christian,” he said. “They have an open heart, and they’re not judgmental”.
Ari said the experience transformed both his beliefs and his life direction.
“When I first got cancelled, I started doing a podcast asking these questions. The answers I received broke me. And then, when I was broken, I found God”, he said.
Listen or watch RCR’s interview with Apostate Ari.
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Solution to many mental illnesses is therapy.
And to many mental states, like gender dysphoria, there is -IMO- no solution in means of ‘treatment’, but there are many ways to accept the ‘illness’ and learn to dance around those potholes, avoid them. You’ll never get rid of them or dissolve them. But you can learn to live with them, without them making you a slave.
And clinicians are -again IMO- not equipped to provide the right therapy. Pharmacology and established psychiatry are ill-equipped to spawn the essential personal growth in individuals to overcome such psychological trauma, because these ‘treatments’ do not substitute what an individual needs to learn: How to live with dispositions and how to deal with the triggers.
And how to get humble. Why should society care? An individual’s trauma is not caused by society. It is usually caused by compromised parental environment, inter-generational trauma, school bullying, disfranchisement of human agency, etc..
And sometimes ‘patients’ need to be told: Just because nobody cares about your dysphoria, doesn’t mean you are not important. Because you do care (to resolve what blaming society can never resolve), makes you important.