The College Fix

BY: Simon Amaya Price

OPINION: Many of my friends were butchered by surgeons and chemically castrated by pill-pushing doctors

I told my parents I was really a girl inside at 14. But three years later, at 17, I stopped transitioning, returned to living as my birth sex again, and adjusted my appearance accordingly.

Now 20, I am one of the few who has dared to speak publicly about my experience.

Today, as a gender apostate, I’m no stranger to hate comments, death threats, doxxing attempts, loss of professional opportunities, and harassment on the streets of my own home city of Boston.

I won’t be silenced. I testify across the country in support of bills about the dangers of child gender transition, together with the LGB Courage Coalition.

We are a group of like-minded lesbians, gays, and bisexuals from across the U.S. and Canada fighting against what we see as a modern form of conversion therapy. Our progress is at times slow, our victories hard won. But we all feel an obligation to speak up and protect children like we were.

As an undergrad, I was unable to escape this ideology: in every class, at the beginning of every semester, my professors at Berklee College of Music were required by school policy to ask every student what their pronouns were.

I, being the rather bone-headed individual I am, would often respond with “I think that’s a stupid question.” In history classes, gender non-conformity was filtered through the lens of gender ideology—every woman we learned about who would dress up in men’s clothes, for any reason, was said to be “non-binary” or “transgender,” thus enforcing strict gender roles.

Outside of class, one could seldom find a bulletin board without some mention of transgender or LGBTQ+ topics. It was everywhere.

When I tried to offer a different perspective last fall, my “Born in the Right Body: Desister and Detransitioner Awareness” event was canceled by Berklee. A transgender event was held in the same room. Across the small campus, posters were put up with instructions to students on how to get cross-sex hormones and surgeries.

This was not the first time I was “canceled” in my undergraduate career. At 16, I started my first year of college at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. In freshman seminar, the topic of affirmative action came up, and when it was my turn to speak I shared my honest thoughts on the subject: I don’t think affirmative action works, and I think it’s racist. Despite the oppression points garnered from my transgender identification at the time, my professor asked me to apologize to the class for this statement. I refused. I was unsurprised at the end of the semester to see that he gave me an F. Not for my work, but for my thoughts.

Following this, the social atmosphere there became hostile to me. I had to move dorms after receiving repeated threats of physical violence from a classmate who lived down the hall. Unsurprisingly, she was trans-identified and on testosterone, i.e. steroids. I had quite a number of trans-identified classmates.

When I had applied to the college, they stated on their website that about 70 percent of their students were LGBTQ+. In fact, my first week there was the first time I saw mastectomy scars, on a 16-year-old girl who had her breasts removed at 15.

My thoughts on affirmative action in part stemmed from my father’s recommendation of the book “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter, the most distinguished black alumnus of the same college. This book provided the first substantial counterpoint to the racial narrative I had been fed from a young age by the school system, the media, and books like “The New Jim Crow,” by Michelle Alexander.

This led to the rapid development of my critical thinking skills after spending years coasting along ideological narratives backed by social dynamics which incentivized conformity. The race issue was the first of a series of dominoes to fall, which led me to return to a more sensible, moderate, classical liberal view of the world, but most importantly to stop identifying as trans.

Since desisting, I have had a recurring nightmare, although increasingly infrequent, of waking up on an operating table, unable to move, and looking down at my mutilated body. While I was spared the harm of medicalization, many of my friends, and my girlfriend, a detransitioner were not. Many of my friends were butchered by surgeons and chemically castrated by pill-pushing doctors.

My generation is starting to wake up to the harms of not just the multi-billion dollar trans-medical industry, but to the entirety of the woke ideological complex. By our best estimates, there are tens of thousands of detransitioners in this country, and although most of them opt to stay silent, every week I see someone new raise their voice.

Adults failed us. They lied to us for our whole lives. They told us we were guilty of crimes that neither we nor our ancestors committed. Boys were taught that we were oppressors, and girls taught that they were eternal victims of patriarchy. And if we felt uncomfortable with the gendered narratives imposed upon us, then they said we were born in the wrong bodies.
Five years from now, lawmakers are going to have to look hundreds of angry, young, permanently harmed constituents in the eye and explain why they did not take action to ban these barbaric procedures.

Democrats like New Hampshire state Rep. Jonah Wheeler, my new friend, are starting to speak up for common-sense policies around these issues. He knows that not only do most Americans not support this, but most Democrats don’t either.

My classmates’ attempt to silence me failed utterly. I speak more now, because they showed me how important my voice is. I have spoken to peers my age from across the country—red states and blue states alike. They tell me stories of the collective guilt, incessant moralization, and ideological totalitarianism which pervaded their school experiences.

While we have seen action from the federal government, it will never be sufficient to remedy the grievances outlined in this article.

It is time for teachers, school administrators, parents, and perhaps most importantly, state legislators, to say to the children of our nation: you were all born in the right bodies, and you bear no guilt for the sins of others.

MORE: MIT provides ‘event response ambassadors’ for those upset by detransitioner awareness event

IMAGE CAPTIONS AND CREDITS: Shown is Simon Amaya Price / courtesy photos

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