Washington Post Reports on Detransitioner Opposition to Care Bans

If people who have detransitioned don’t want bans on gender-affirming care, what are we even doing?

by Evan Urquhart

A profile of former detransition activist Carey Callahan by reporter Casey Parks appeared in the Washington Post today, describing Callahan’s fight against an effort to ban gender-affirming care in Ohio. Yes, that’s right, Callahan is fighting against a ban on gender-affirming care, one of a group of detransitioned people who testified against Ohio’s ban (as covered by Assigned earlier this month), outnumbering the detransitioners who testified in favor of the measure.

Callahan is an Ohio native who began taking testosterone 2012 and living as a transgender man in 2012, then detransitioned two years later. After her detransition she became a prominent activist in the detransitioned women’s community. Her small, tight-knit group included Ky Schevers, who disavowed her previous activism against trans rights in 2021, even comparing the group she and Callahan were instrumental in creating to the ex-gay movement.

Callahan came more slowly to her current position opposing the excesses of anti-trans activism than Schevers. Unlike Schevers she does not currently see herself as trans in any sense, has not described the detransitioned women’s movement she helped lead as damaging or cult-like, and has not mentioned a continuing, lifelong struggle to manager her gender dysphoria without transitioning, as more than one detransitioner activist has. However, according to the Post, Callahan too now deeply regrets the role she played in the current anti-trans movement.

screenshot from the Washington Post

Callahan also reportedly played a role in finding people who had detransitioned to submit testimony against Ohio’s gender affirming care ban. The Post reports that 19 people did so, which was “nearly triple the number who’d testified in favor.” (This is particularly impressive in light of the millions of dollars conservative activist groups have spent lobbying for gender-affirming care bans. With all those resources, the efforts of one detransitioned woman wound up dwarfing the number of detransitioners the other side had found to publicly support the legislation.)

The debate over gender-affirming care has never been about detransitioners, really. Instead, it’s about the Christian right’s objection to the LGBTQ+ community, and their willingness to leverage healthcare for a vulnerable group of children in their vendetta. Callahan realizing this, however belatedly, is a welcome addition to the ranks of those in favor of cautious, responsible, evidence-based medicine.