(The Lion) — Layla Jane, a 21-year-old detransitioner, is sharing how she still has night terrors from her operation eight years ago, exposing the horrors of child gender surgeries.
“I’m someone who underwent hormone blockers, the Lupron and testosterone at 12, and shortly after I turned 13, I had a double mastectomy,” she said at a rally outside the California State Capitol on Monday to protest against efforts to add funds to the state budget for the interventions.
“When I was 12, I didn’t like my changing body as puberty hit,” Jane said. “I had experienced a lot of trauma and I had undiagnosed autism.
“Strangers on the internet helped to convince me that I could be trans, and I firmly believed in it and I convinced my mom, who was told by doctors that I would die if she didn’t accept me as her son and approve sex-rejecting interventions.
“I was almost immediately put on testosterone. I was fast tracked through the medical system. You can hear its effects in my voice,” she said.
“I still have night terrors of when I was 13, when I was in the operating room. I dream of my surgeon being scrubbed in. I dream of the oxygen mask over my face and the IV being placed in my arm. I could still vividly feel it in my night terrors. I wake up sobbing very often.”
The surgery didn’t solve her gender dysphoria but left her “horrified” and feeling empty when the bandages came off.
“Why would a doctor, who is supposed to be a healer, amputate healthy body parts?” she asked. “I did not turn into a boy. I just became a girl with scars.
“Gender identity is a farce and it’s used to monetize traumatized kids, destroy their bodies, as well as doing the same to mentally unwell adults. I did it all, and I still look female and I always will be female.”
Jane criticized controversial doctor Joanna Olson-Kennedy, who spoke at the hearing and has defended the surgeries, saying breasts can be added back later if a patient wants them.
“That’s false,” Jane said. “There’s a lot more that goes into it. She’s talking about implants. Implants will not feed my future children. Getting implants will not help the nerve pain in my chest that I deal with every day. It’s a scam. It’s harming healthy children.”
Groups including Equality California and PFLAG are urging lawmakers to add $26 million for the sex-rejecting surgeries but groups including Do No Harm and the California Family Council, which organized the rally, opposed them.
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