Detransitioner slams trans 'pseudoscience' that doctors said would solve her mental distress: 'It's quackery'
A young woman who regrets taking hormones and having surgery to "become a boy" as a troubled teenager called the gender treatments she received "pseudoscience" and medical "quackery" that left her with chronic health problems.
Prisha Mosley, 26, began transitioning to a male at 17 years old while struggling with mental illness, including anorexia, suicidal thoughts and trauma from being raped. Transgender activists online convinced her that she was unhappy because her "body was fighting to be a boy," which led her to share these thoughts with the medical professionals treating her eating disorder.
"I had been treated for delusional beliefs for quite a while," Mosley explained to Fox News Digital. "But when I expressed a different delusion, that was, 'I'm born in the wrong body,' instead of, 'I'm fat,' when I was dying of anorexia… I was medicalized for that."
Mosley said she was almost immediately put on medication to stop her menstrual cycle, before later being given testosterone. Within "days" she experienced changes to her genitals and other "disturbing" side effects.
"I was 17. I had never even been able to legally consent to sex as an adult. I knew nothing about my body except that I was scared of it. And then I was given the means to change it and told that this change would make me safe," Mosley said.
She claimed medical professionals misled her and her reluctant parents about the risks involved and pushed them into believing that changing her gender would solve her mental distress. But it didn't. Instead, she was left with lifelong health problems and chronic pain from the drastic effects of the testosterone and having a double mastectomy.
"There was nothing wrong with my body that had to be treated with medicine. I was experiencing mental distress and then based on the belief that this distress was somehow related to the essence of my gender and that essence or soul being trapped in the wrong body? It's quackery."
"I didn't have some magical gender essence that was trapped inside my girl body that I needed to be medicalized for. That's pseudoscience," she continued.
Mosley said her medical team even used her previous suicide attempts as proof that she should've transitioned genders sooner.
"As soon as a patient says that they're trans, no matter what was happening prior or what is going on, ethics goes out of the window. There's no longer a need for evidence-based care," she argued. "There's no standard of care. It's a one-size fits all, shoehorning you down a pipeline to blockers, hormones, surgery. As soon as a person says, 'I'm trans' or, ‘I have gender dysphoria,’ doctors start experimenting on them and lie to them and don't hold themselves to medical standards anymore," she said.
"All the doctor has to do is trick you into thinking that you're happy with whatever they decide to do to you. And if you are tricked enough that you don't kill yourself, which I was, I was hopeful that I was going to magically be transformed into a safe boy, I stayed alive for that. As long as you are in this tricked, deluded state, you're considered a success," she continued.
Mosley said she realized a few years later she had made a "terrible mistake." She stopped taking the drugs before eventually detransitioning to live as a female again.
Mosley recently gave birth to a baby boy and resides in Michigan. Although she suffers from chronic nerve pain, the mother of two says she tries to be strong and not show it in front of her children.
Mosley has shared her story as an ambassador for Independent Women's Forum and is taking legal action against the medical professionals she says pushed her into gender transition.
Despite facing backlash from transgender activists within her community, Mosley continues to warn others about the risks involved with these treatments.
"I regret trusting people who were making money off of my distress and my vulnerability," Mosley said in a message to other young people considering going down the same path.
"I hope you will be wiser than I was. There are people in your life who don't benefit from your distress and from your pain," she said.
More detransitioners are speaking out about the negative consequences they've faced from transgender treatments, which include puberty blockers, hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery, as states move to ban these treatments for minors.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month challenging a Tennessee law banning transgender medical treatments for children in December. A ruling in the high-profile case is expected by July 2025.
Over two dozen states have enacted similar bans restricting minors from accessing transgender medical treatment.