My guest, Maya, is the young author of an essay I read on the PITT [Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans] Substack last week titled “Breaking Free: My Journey Through and Out Of Trans Ideology.” I was delighted when she agreed to be interviewed here, and I think the conversation has a lot to offer parents with questions about online indoctrination. You’ll find Maya to be uncommonly honest and self aware, especially for someone who is only eighteen.
In case you find the audio quality frustrating, I spent some time editing the transcript this week and have copied the resulting version here on my Substack home page, so there’s a way everyone can absorb the information contained in this episode.
Links:
Maya’s PITT essay, ‘Breaking Free: My Journey Through and Out Of Trans Ideology,’ published March 11, 2025
Maya’s first PITT essay, ‘The Cult of Gender Ideology: Psychological Manipulation and Social Control,’ published March 6, 2025
Credits:
Theme music by William A. Ferguson
UnMuted logo art by Anne Gibbons
[TRANSCRIPT BEGINS]:
(00:00:00):Maya: Growing up Gen Z, I knew about trans people and what it was for some time so I had friends even in elementary school that identified as trans, but I always knew about it. I saw YouTube videos about it, I had a friend so I always kind of knew what it was. I didn't really think of myself to be transgender until… well I didn’t consider it until I was around 12 because like in middle school late elementary school or middle school I had mental health issues and when I was probably in middle school, I realized I was gay, or came to the conclusion that I was gay.So I joined, I contacted a mental health line for gay teenagers called Trevor Project. It was like a crisis hotline. And they recommended this website to me called ‘Trevor Space’ for 13 to 25 year old LGBTQ people, kids, whatever. So I joined that.Actually, I was 12. I was technically too young, but I said I was a year older than I was to join the site. So I joined the site essentially talking about my story, who I was, and, you know, people were very nice to me initially.And so, yeah, I became kind of attached to the site, kind of chasing that validation from people. So a lot of people on the site obviously were transgender or non binary. And they were telling their stories about gender dysphoria or why they thought they were transgender, and I related to a lot of it, actually.And they proposed, like, oh, if you think you're transgender, there's all these questions and more things like that on the site and off the site, like articles and stuff or quizzes. So after a while of questioning, I came to initially first come to the conclusion that I was non-binary, but then later identifying as transgender.(00:01:50):Jenny: Do you remember how you found out about Trevor Spaces?Maya: The Trevor Project?Jenny: Yeah.(00:02:00):
Maya: Uh, I guess I had contacted, like, hotlines before, like, crisis hotlines, but I was just, that was one of the ones that was, like, recommended, specifying themselves as an LGBTQ hotline. Since I already knew I was gay at the time, I identified myself as LGBTQ, even before identifying as trans.
Jenny: Okay.Maya: That's how I found about that. Just quickly search, like, the LGBT hotline, whatever, it'll pop up. So the site, after coming out, the site, after I told the site,yeah, I might be trans, of course, the validation continues. They really like this. They're saying, this is your true self. They were very affirming, which feels good at the time, because at the time, I didn't like my body. I didn't like being a girl. So it was, made me happy and comfortable for people to say, to validate that transgender identity.And so they thought, they're saying, oh yeah, this is the norm. You should be affirmed. essentially, and you should come out in person, too. Because if people… And I would say that people in person, if they're not affirming, that's abusive. So…because I've experienced that first initial affirmation, it made me agree, like, yeah, this is how I should be treated.So when I came out to my mom and she didn't react positively to that, I thought of that as her abusing me, and saw that as only possibly coming from a place of hatred for trans people and due to that, hatred for me.(00:03:38):Jenny: Can I just ask, what was your relationship with your mom just prior to all this?Maya: It really wasn't that bad. I mean, we weren't the closest at the time, but we weren't, like, fighting or anything. It was just, I think, a normal preteen teenager relationship.Jenny: Did you trust her?Maya: For the most part I mean I wasn't telling her everything about my personal life but I wasn't I didn't distrust her.
Jenny: Yeah, it's a rare adolescent who tells her mother everything about her personal life but did you think of her as somebody who would be likely to be, you know, bigoted or prejudiced against a group of people like ‘trans’ people?
Maya: I did for a while because she would say things about trans people she is pretty open that she's not — at the time, she was pretty open about it. So I kind of knew, but I still came out to her anyway, expecting her to be different if it's her child.Because again, at the time, people on the site would say that the only reason you would hate trans people is just out of hatred. There's no real reason for questioning them. Because this is the truth. They say it's medically proven. They say it's biological. So for them, there's no rational reason as to why someone would hate them other than just pure bigotry and hatred.Jenny: Yeah.(00:05:01):Maya: So after she didn't ‘affirm’ me, I was seeing some of the stories that they had on the site, and some of their parents, based on their stories, were actually abusive to them. So I was actually worried that she would, in turn, become abusive to me if I kept going, so I decided to kind of back out of it— to her.So I essentially told her, like, I'm not identifying that way anymore, but I actually was. And so I was kind of doing it like stealth. Like I would socially transition and do whatever I can to physically transition without it being too noticeable. But I didn't, I was trying to pretend like I wasn't identifying that way when I was.So at school, I told my friends and my teachers I was going by a different name. And to use he/him pronouns, I, um, would dress in male clothing. It was a mix, but largely male clothing. And I would, um, quote-unquote ‘bind’ with two sports bras — it wasn't really binding but it was what I had um so I kept ruminating about that and my dysphoria (quote-unquote ‘dysphoria’) worsened because you're thinking about it so much it's never gonna go away. It's essentially like insecurity: you gotta keep thinking about it and it's reinforcing the idea that your body is wrong because typically when you're insecure as a teenager you'll be like oh I'm fat, but everyone else will be like ‘no you're not’ so that you don't feel bad about that but when you're trans and you're like, ‘oh, I hate my breasts’ or whatever, they'll be like, ‘yeah, that's because your body's wrong. You should get rid of them because you're actually a boy.’So that is very affirming of the insecurity. And so I would be very uncomfortable looking at myself. For being a girl, anything female-related made me so uncomfortable.And then on the site, there were, I guess I'm trying to figure out how to word this properly…
On the site, they were a little bit controlling in a way. There were, like, standards of thoughts you had to live up to or act or say that were limited on what you could and could not say or think on the site because they didn't want to associate with people who they thought to be ‘bigoted,’ quote-unquote. And so, but the most random thing would make you bigoted, like, honestly.I'll give a few examples.Like, they would have, the trigger warnings where you had to, like, say beforehand, ‘oh, I'm going to talk about suicide,’ or whatever. And then there was a feature where you could hide the text that you were about to say.And so if you did that incorrectly or didn't do that at all and made a post about something that they'd give you a strict warning for, they would get really upset.And also the belief that you didn't need gender dysphoria to be trans, they believed for some reason. And if you said otherwise, you were labeled, I think the term is TruScum, or whatever the heck. And they didn't want to associate with you. If you didn't believe in it, so.And when you're a teenager, first of all, you're seeking that validation from peers especially at that age it's also just a human thing to seek validation from other people we don't want to be alone as social creatures and when you and first and second of all the sight of kind of love bombed me or affirmed me at first so I saw them as true friends and people in person as not because my mom didn't quote unquote ‘affirm’ or support me with this and I struggled with making friends in person. So to them, they were my only friends. So if I do not conform to them, I will have no friends, which no teenager or person at all wants.So I gotta keep my mouth shut and conform to their standards.(00:08:49):Jenny: Were these like video chat rooms or was it all just, it was like a forum.Maya: So it was just like text, make a topic. Kind of like Reddit, or any forum okay so nobody's in that way no one was videoing or seeing their face it was never like in person live. And it wasn't also like Instagram or something where people's faces public it was always like a profile a stage name or a profile picture has nothing to do with your face just an identity but not a person on the site.
Jenny: yeah so um were these like scheduled forums where you'd log on you know every night at seven or at some specified time or did you just sort of post a comment whenever and then get, you know, feedback whenever?
Maya: yeah it was post whenever get feedback whenever. It was live all the time. So I basically because of the affirmation thinking they're my only friends I was pretty much on the site all the time and I wasn't really making friends in person because I was concerned about any kind of like even questioning of my new trans identity. Because on the site, I can be whoever. I can put a picture. Put a name. You say your chosen name. They'll respect that because they know no other name. They will not look at you and say, oh, you're a girl. I'll assume that because it's an identity on the site. Nobody knows what you look like. And I was, because of that quote-unquote ‘dysphoria,’ I don't know if it was real dysphoria or if it was more induced from insecurity, but I didn't want to interact with people who didn't immediately affirm me.
So after some time I was quote-unquote ‘dating’ someone on the site, but we had broken up and we were on good terms. It wasn't like a messy breakup, but after not having them anymore, I kind of realized on the site, even though I thought this person was my friend, I didn't really have any true friends anymore, because she was the one who reacted to my posts or liked or talked about what I talked about.
I would make a post or whatever. Nobody cared. Nobody really wanted to talk to me. I mean, I wasn't, like, special enough. I wasn't, like, doing anything wrong, but I wasn't, like, entertaining enough for them, I guess. So, um, so the site… being on it kind of felt more like a chore. So I left the site, and I joined some other websites where I would kind of be stealth, like, saying I was a boy, but saying I was actually just a boy, not saying I was trans. So everyone thinks I'm just a male boy. I'll say ‘cis,’ but I don't know how people feel about that word.(00:11:29):Jenny: Were these other sites specifically, like, LGBTQ kind of related? Or were they, like, game sites or other things?Maya: They were just, like, regular social media sites.Jenny: Okay.Maya: Like, never LGBTQ related.Jenny: Okay.Maya: Because I was trying to be a little bit more stealth, I guess.So... I made friends with them, but they didn't last. And so, because I was being inauthentic, like I wasn't, like I had to hide the fact that I was actually a girl or trans or whatever. You can have people be like, ‘oh dude, show me your face, I'll show you my face.’ I'm like, ‘I can't show you my face because I'm pretending to be a boy.’ Or I believe myself to be a boy, but I didn't want people to think I was transgender. Because I thought that was, I was kind of embarrassed by it actually, but I wanted to be a boy more than I wanted to be, I'll say ‘cisgender.’So I left a lot of those sites and I rejoined Trevor Space. But having been away from them, I wasn't keeping up with the new rules. And so when I come on there, I didn't act the way they want me to initially. They didn't want to talk to me.(00:12:38):Jenny: Can you give an example of the new rules?Maya: Okay, I said before the ‘you don’t need dysphoria to be trans’ thing, I think I should have said that was a new rule because that wasn't really a thing before. Also with the neogenders, not identifying as a boy or girl, even non-binary, but like as an object, like I'm flower gender or something crazy. Because before it was just like, oh,give your trigger warnings, use respect, they/them, whatever, but now it was like ridiculous things that even I at the time acknowledged that I think was not the same thing as trans to me. Because I had this just flower. I'm like this is really real to me. You're identifying as a flower. That's not real. But I couldn't say that. Or else I was not going to make friends on that site. But I said it anyway. And I didn't make any friends on that site. For the entire time I was there. So I left it again. And so at this point, I was pretty much alone. I didn't have any friends online or in person. And so I was kind of left to think for myself. I wasn't worried about keeping anybody. I had nothing to lose. So I didn’t feel afraid to think certain ways, and I started watching, I guess, right-wing content online just for a refreshing perspective, and I didn't even agree with a lot of it. But I watched it because it was something that I wasn't allowed to be said on the sides I had been on before. Just for a refresher, I would watch it just to see what they were saying and almost a bit within my head.(00:14:10):Jenny: Can you give me an example of right-wing content?Maya: I used to watch, like, The Daily Wire, Blair White too. Blair White’s like, a right-wing transgender person, so I didn't see what he was saying as hate. I just saw it as, oh, this is just a right-wing perspective. And I didn't agree with everything, but I watched it, to watch it.
Jenny: And so... So now you're starting to think for yourself, and I just have to say, I think your reaction to all of this kind of, like, the you were looking for something online. This is what I'm hearing. Tell me if this is actually what you were saying. But I'm hearing you say you were looking for something online in terms of community and support and friendship and maybe some information that could help you better understand yourself and the things that you were struggling with. And then when what you got back was like, didn't, didn't sit right with you… to me, you had a super healthy and very highly adaptive reaction to that, which is to actually back away from it and start thinking for yourself and exposing yourself to new ideas. And it gives me a lot of optimism, you know, that this could be somebody's reaction.Maya: Healthy reaction to not getting what I needed off social media. I do want to clarify that. I didn't initially react that way because this, remember this from the beginning of Trevor Space to me getting off it, this is over the course of years. So when I was younger, I really didn't react in a healthy way. I didn't get what I wanted, and so I performed more. I acted like them more. I did more of what they want so that I could get friends, I can get a social community, and I can get support.And this went on for years. I'm trying to think of how long I spent on Trevor Space. It was probably two years. I probably left for a couple months, came back for a couple months, but by that point, it had been three years, and I was like, okay, whatever, because I was older then.Jenny: Just real quick, how much time each day would you say you were spending on Trevor Space during that period of like 12 to 14?Maya: I think it was probably like several hours a day like yeah I'm trying to think I just remember I used to use it in a private browser because I didn't want it to be attached to my email address so that my mom could see my email and find out. So I used it in a private browser and that private browser used to be my most used app ever on my phone, more than YouTube — you spend hours on YouTube but I would spend hours on this — I spent hours on YouTube too but I would spend a lot of time like probably several hours a day. I'm trying to think of how long, because I'm not sure. I would check it constantly, like a social media app.Jenny: Yeah.Maya: I'm not sure exactly how many hours; it’s hard to determine.(00:17:21):Jenny: But, were you able to, like, get your schoolwork done? And was the rest of your life, you know…Maya: I was able to get my school work done. But. It was during COVID at the time, so there wasn't really much schoolwork. They could say online school was equal. It's really not. You could cheat on everything. So it was kind of easy to get the schoolwork done at the time. But I didn't really have a social life, not only because of COVID, because even when I came back in person, I was still identifying as trans and didn't want to interact with anybody who didn't affirm that. So my social life was very limited. And I struggled socially for a while, too.Jenny: So did the whole thing begin during COVID when you were at home?Maya: I think I joined the site before COVID, but I didn't start identifying as trans. I happened to identify as trans like starting like near the beginning of COVID. To me, that's more of a coincidence because I'd joined this site before.(00:18:15):Jenny: So you were heading in that direction, you think, anyway?Maya: Yeah. I don't know if it was like COVID causing it. I don't think so.I just think it's happening in a coincidence.Mm-hmm.Because I was questioning it before COVID too. I'm just like, you know am I, am I non-binary or whatever, but then I, COVID happened and I happened to identify as trans. So to me, that's just a coincidence.So I came off that site and I started, yeah, this is after, um, after I started watching more right-wing content and thinking for myself. And I don't want to say that I didn't... I mean, you could accuse me of just following the right-wing opinion. I didn't agree with everything they were saying either, and I still don't. I mean, it depends on the person. I agree with a lot of people sometimes, but I also don't. So I'm not just saying what the right-wing was saying, because I... I disagree with them a lot.Jenny: I believe you. And by the way, same!Maya: So I started to kind of let go of those ‘taught’ opinions, like, oh, I didn't think, I thought for a while that we need gender dysphoria to be trans. I was immediately after we got off the site, I'm like, okay, this is ridiculous. I'm not doing this.I stopped thinking that the neopronouns, I even let go of people being non-binary. I'm like, ‘okay, I have dysphoria, so I am trans. You do not because you don't want to be a boy or a girl. So to me, you're not.’
And then I started thinking, even though I was a kid, I started thinking kids shouldn't transition just because some people do desist. And I knew of that at the time. And I thought that for a while. I thought of myself more like a right-leaning, trans person like Blair White. I know there's a few other names.
And then there was this one incident where I was watching a YouTube video and the guy in the video said, ‘girl’, referring to something else, not referring to the audience. Obviously not referring to me, but referring to something else said, ‘girl’. And I got I'll say dysphoric from just hearing him say the word girl. Talking about something overly. I'm like, why the heck am I uncomfortable of him referring to someone else as a girl? Is that even related to me? Or have I been taught to fear the word ‘girl’? Or fear feminine things, or something? I'm like, I don't know how long it took me from that point until actually desisting. Probably a couple months. But I've come to the conclusion that this is... ridiculous, this is taught behavior, not, I'm still uncomfortable with myself and my body, and even with being feminine, but I'm like, okay, this whole transgender thing is, to me: no, I don't think it's the truth.And so, I stopped identifying that way, and I didn't initially come out as not trans anymore, just because I thought it was awkward to say, because I was insisting, like, ‘oh yeah, I'm trans’, and I, and I had, like, it really hurt me at the time when people, you quote unquote ‘misgendered’ me but now it's like oh yeah I'm not doing it anymore that makes me seem just like not genuine, like a liar or an attention seeker, and maybe I was but it did really feel uncomfortable to me so it was just a change of mind and not just me being, ‘oh yeah, I'm moving on to the next day and I lied about being uncomfortable for attention.’ I didn't lie, but I don't…
Jenny: You were drawn in, yeah. It just seems very totalizing, you know, and it's like a lot of people tell this, you know have this same kind of description of, like you — you know, do you know the song Hotel California? It's an old song but there's this line: ‘You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. ‘ And I think of that when I think of trans. Kind of like that; it’s a one-way sort of vacuum. And once you're in, you just keep getting sucked in. But if you somehow manage to get out, it's almost like there's nowhere for you to go.Maya: Yeah. Some people who resist or do transition and they are sometimes accepted if they do not tell you anything bad about trans ideology afterward. They're just like, ‘hey, I didn't happen to be trans.’ Sometimes they get away with not really any backlash but if you say anything you're seen as almost like a traitor to the LGBTQ community, like honestly people say like, ‘oh you're gay so how could you dare say anything about trans?’ I could just say the same thing about gay people. I could say it's it's a lie, I could say they're manipulative, I could say whatever about gay people so how dare you say anything about trans people when you're also LGBTQ?They said that people who have desisted or detransitioned were never really trans.Which is kind of dumb because they say the only thing you need to beat is the only qualification.(00:23:19):How do I say that's the only criterion? Yeah, criteria. If being trans is saying you are, but then when you detransition or desist, people are like, ‘oh yeah,well you were never trans.’ So which is it? Because it can't be both.Jenny: Right. Yeah, true. Did kids in this group talk about their fears or excitement or, like, feelings about doing medical transitions?Maya: They did. It was mostly kids, so I don't think, I mean, very few of them were medically transitioning at the time because they were kids and, you know, so a lot of them didn't have affirming parents, but they would talk about wanting surgery or testosterone, estrogen, whatever. They would idealize it. They would, and there were a few, I'm pretty sure on the site who said they had it or were getting home onto it, at least they were very excited. It was like a happy day for them.It's always kind of pushed. And when you're a kid and you're uncomfortable with, say, your breasts, and you're like, oh yeah, you can just remove them. And it's not seen as like a plastic surgery where like, oh yeah, I think I'm fat, I want to get liposuction. It's not encouraged to do so. I mean, you can always care, and teenagers probably know about that procedure, but it's not encouraged.Because no one's like, oh yeah, you're fat, go get liposurgery. No one's saying that.But if you're a transgender-defined teen and you're saying, ‘I hate my breasts, I want them gone, people are like, yeah, this surgery exists, you should go get that. It'll help you a lot.’ Which is reinforcing that there's something wrong with it.Jenny: Right. It's weird enough when your own peers are doing that, people your own age, But to me, like what makes this one different is that there's so many adults, you know, like teachers and counselors and even doctors. Yeah.Maya: Yeah. I'm not sure if there's anything else I want to say about the desistance story. I think that pretty much ends where I stopped believing it and started speaking out of about it online, but it actually took a little bit for me to start speaking out, because I started desisting, or saying, I don't know, if I should say started desisting, I stopped identifying as trans, probably by the start of 11th grade, so like 16, and I didn't start speaking out really about it until like a year later, I was probably 17, or maybe, maybe a little older, when I started actually going online and saying, you know, what the heck, and I didn't really… And even then, it was just, like, online in certain forums, certain topics. I didn't start doing, like, interviews or anything like this until I was 18. But then again, you shouldn't really be doing interviews as a child.Jenny: Right.Maya: That's just a type of coincidence. But, you know, so I guess the story kind of ends with me going online and talking about it and seeing the backlash, which really made me think, like, ‘why do you hate people who do so much?’ And I don't even say a lot of backlash personally. A lot of it is what I've seen other people saying because I've seen more public de-transition. So this is just getting like really attacked over really ridiculous things.Jenny: And what kinds of social media environments are you seeing this?Maya: Mostly on X because I'm mostly on X right now.Jenny: Okay.Maya: I see I use Reddit sometimes, but Reddit is a lot more politically open.It's more like you say one thing and anything else gets like taken down. So... I use Reddit to talk about fandoms or whatever, or stuff unrelated, like jokes, memes. But I would never use Reddit for political discussions because they take down anything that they don't want to see. And that's not a place for political discussion. That's just here to say people who agree with you and to feel like, oh, I agree. And that's all. That's no discussion.Jenny: Yeah.So do you put all issues around trans in the category of political conversations?Maya: I think trans ideology is political, but this... I don't want to say political all the time because there is some health, medical, mental health aspects of it. Because you saying I have judges for it, that's not political. But the affirmation model and people not allowing any criticism of it, to me, that's political. To me, even the idea that a boy...can become a girl or vice versa, is a political ideology. I don't know if it even originated that way. I don't know who came up with this, where it started. But the affirmation is political to me. And I just call it a political topic just because it's real-life and controversial.Jenny: Yeah, I'm not disagreeing at all. And it definitely has spilled into overtly political... areas like when you think about Title IX or when you think about who's allowed in female spaces and or even, you know, like with the executive orders that try to regulate or limit the access of minors to drugs and surgeries. So it is political.It's just like you're the youngest person that I've spoken to about this. And so I'm just interested in, you know, just how you conceive of the whole thing.Maya: Yeah, I do want to bring up something not really related to me specifically but well a little bit but not really in a way i was protected from medicalizing because as achild my parent my mom said you can't do that when they'll allow me to do that but and a lot of people do but there were some states and some cases where kids were actually taken away from non-affirming parents and pushed down that path from the state intervention or from their own parents affirming but that's a little bit different.So in those states and in those cases I do believe that kids are more in danger now of going down that path especially since from what I've I mean people are torn onif this is true or not it seems to depend on the case by case basis but people have said they've gotten prescribed hormones or surgery within like one appointment and it's also not allowed to question really any kid's identity because it's seen as conversiontherapy in some places you're not allowed to question them at all so there's no there's you getting this fun one opinion when you're young it's like oh yeah be nice to trans people, some people change genders and when you're a teenager it's like and if you experience this they're saying be this is the only medical option for you is to take testosterone or estrogen and get surgery which is crazy did you always sort of know that it was crazy or did you know as a kid because i grew up knowing about transgender people i had a friend in elementary school who was transgender so i always actually believed i was like okay yeah i'm so man or trapped in women's bodies and become men through transition. And I never questioned it until I was older, probably until I was like, yeah, I didn't question that anyone was trans. Also, I was like 16, 17 years old.Jenny: Okay. So your friend from elementary school, did she have affirming parents?Maya: Yeah, she did. I mean, she was like nine to 10 when I knew her. So I feel like at that age, you didn't come into it yourself. Your parents, you're probably in full sight. I mean, you can, but I feel like that's more learned somewhere than coming to the conclusion yourself at that age. And so I knew her socially as a boy by a boy's name. She presented to a masculine. She was young, so she hasn't gone to puberty yet.So, or she was on blockers. I don't know. But either way, I knew this person as a boy who just happened to have been born and grown, whatever.
Jenny: Are you still in high school?Maya: Yeah.Jenny: So you'll graduate this spring?Maya: Mm-hmm.Jenny: And how has life been since you decided – you said when you started your junior year in high school, you decided to kind of back off. It seems like you were backing off sort of gently. You weren't making a big announcement, right?Maya: Yeah.Jenny: Do you want to talk about how that was going back to school?Maya: Yeah, so essentially I stopped introducing myself by the male name or male pronouns or even saying I was trans. You can call, this is my name, which is my birth name. And you can call me however I still feel that way. If you want to call me, you can go for it. I don't buy into this pig, choose your pronouns. Because that's choosing how people talk about you. Because I'm still a female just because of my chromosomes and my birth gender. That's just who I am. You can call me whatever. But there were people who knew me before as transgender and still called me that male name, male pronouns. And so they, I didn't correct them because I didn't want to have an argument with them I didn't want to I thought it'd be awkward .
But also at the time there was an interesting law it happened to be right before I desisted that you're not allowed to call at school I don't know if this is statewide orcountywide I'm assuming statewide because my county's pretty blue and my state's pretty red but there was a rule where you couldn't call people by a chosen name without parent permission and obviously I wasn't going to get parent permission. So teachers were not allowed to call me by the male name. This happened to be the rule when I desisted. But students are, of course, still allowed to because they can say what they want.Jenny: So that law was introduced when you desisted, but like when you were identifying as trans, your teachers were supposed to call you by your chosen name?Maya: I don't think that was a rule that they had to.Jenny: Okay.Maya: They chose to.
Jenny: Okay.What state are you in?Maya: Florida.Jenny: Oh, interesting. Is it okay to have that in the podcast?Maya: Yeah, why not?Jenny: Okay. All right. I don't know why I was just assuming you were in the Northeast. But yeah, I mean, Florida is a very interesting case study because they've been the most overt about moving in and saying what's what with kids.So like, um, do you, were you old enough when governor DeSantis, uh, signed the, what was called the don't say gay bill into law. And I, that's not what he would call it, but were, were you like, what was that part of your like information environment?Maya: I think I was kind of old enough to where I was kind of questioning the narrative. So I don't remember what year it was connected. I'm going to find out.I don't, I think I was at the point where I was either desisting or questioning certain narratives.Oh, let me find out when I was announced it.Jenny: Yeah, yeah.Maya: Sorry.Jenny: No, no, that's... I'm glad you're doing it.Maya: So that was in, like, 2022, so that was... I was probably questioning certain narratives. I think I was, like, depending on what month. I was either 15 or 16.So this was probably before I desisted, but to the point where I was off Travis Basin. So I kind of knew it wasn't really don't say gay. It was discussions related to it.And at the time I didn't really care.Jenny: Okay.(00:35:30):Jenny: I'm really interested in the idea of Trevor because I think of the Trevor project as a suicide prevention hotline. And the way you describe that Trevor spaces, it's almost like, they're sort of generating potential new customers, which sounds crass, but it's like the feelings you describe about having to really curtail your speech and the way you think and be conscious of all these trigger warnings. It can really be, it sounds very stress inducing. And it just seems like if a kid had never thought about self-harm or suicide going into that kind of online environment. He or she could very well be having those thoughts after spending a lot of time there.Maya: So I do want to say that it's run by the same people, but it's two different. They do the Trevor Project, which is a suicidal hotline or crisis hotline, and the Trevor Space, which is an affiliate with them, which is just a forum website social media page. So, most of the kids finding out about this probably found out about it from the Trevor Project.I think almost everyone on the site either was suicidal or had mental health issues or previously were. Like, I don't think there were very few, if any, people who just came into it with no mental health. It's just me like, yeah, I'm LGBTQ. I mean, maybe there were. Now that I think about it, but it was most of the kids had mental health issues or were suicidal. And at the time, since dysphoria obviously was pretty uncomfortable and painful, if you had any, like, suicidal thoughts, you're always kind of told it wasn't the sight causing it, it was more like your gender dysphoria causing it or caused by anything else, because you wouldn't think that way, especially at the beginning, when everyone's so nice to you. You associate these people as being your friend. And you're, in my case, or some other cases, your only friend.So... you would never consider that to be the source of your mental health or increasing mental health issues. It's a coincidence or it's another cause because you would not associate your only friends or your friends to be causing issues in your life.
Jenny: And were there moderators or adults kind of monitoring the space?Maya: No, there were, but they did not really do their job. It was like a known thing on the site, like moderators are not going to step in. There was actually one incidentAfter I came back, there was someone who, like, kind of trolled the site, like would mass report people to try and get their accounts banned. And so, and if the site, how the site worked, apparently, was if it got enough reports, they wouldn't even look into it, it would just get banned. And the moderators didn't work on weekends, so they would come in on Saturday, start the mass banning, and they didn't know, even no one had any, nobody did anything about it until Monday. where that person got banned off the site.Jenny: What kind of things would be grounds for banning?Maya: Um, you could just, uh, I guess, like, typical social media stuff, like hate speech, but they had anything, like, they had a specific rule where they're not allowed to question anyone's identity that was considered hate. I'd have to look up exactly what it is, but it was really typical stuff, except for, well, how'd you be taking something?I could find out.Hold on. Okay.Yeah, so don't demean people, says don't use transphobic, biphobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, fat-shaming language. Don't invalidate people's identities or experiences.Don't accuse others of faking anything or doing something for attention.Don't say identities aren't valid or real.Don't harass people, no name calling, whatever, that's very typical.Don't threaten someone, typical.If someone asks you to leave them alone, leave them alone.Don't try to interfere with someone's account access.Or impersonate someone. It's pretty typical.Don't ask for sexual pictures, especially since there were kids on the site. That's, again, typical.Don't use it for sexual encounters.If you're 18, you cannot engage in sexual relationships with someone under 18.Don't use it to make money.Don't make new accounts to get around a band.Don't abuse the reporting system to mess with someone, which is what that person was doing.Because, apparently... Yeah, you got a certain number of reports.Yeah, that's pretty much it.Jenny: So also, the space was formally available to people from age 13 to 24, did you say?Maya: Yeah.Jenny: But you were able to...be a part of it at age 12 because all you have to do is say you're 13.(00:40:15):Maya: There's no real age verification system, but I think most sites are like that. You just say, oh yeah, I'm totally 13, don't get on.
Jenny: But even if they were able to really verify and restrict it to people who are actually between 13 and 24, does that strike you as appropriate, that range?Maya: It doesn't strike me as appropriate age range. I have no idea why they would think I mean I guess since they're saying young people in general have mental health issues they started a suicide hotline and people who are 18-24 do struggle with mental health issues at a disproportionate rate too so I guess the reason but I can't believe no one thought how inappropriate it is to have them share a site
Jenny: yeah did you ever encounter comments or conversations with from people who seemed older or who just didn't seem to be... I don't know. Did anything inappropriate cross your...(00:41:26):Surprisingly and honestly, nothing immediately comes to mind of an inappropriate interaction I've seen with an adult and a minor.Because in general, there weren't a lot of people, adults on the site. I mean, there were some. But typically, people saying they were adults...acted appropriately i don't know why they'd want to be on the site with a bunch of children but they acted generally appropriately like everybody else I'll say appropriately as inappropriate for the site I mean a lot of kids in the site acted like and with that getting patrolling people's opinions being crazy but they weren't acting atypical for the site although i imagine if you're an adult and she wants to use the site to act to interact with kids i don't know why you wouldn't just lie about your age even though they allow adults Because there was actually a forum for romance, not sex, but interest in relations with people.And the age you put on the site would restrict if you got the child or the adult page for that. And you couldn't access the other page based on the age you put in your account. So if you wanted to be romantic with children on that site, you would probably put your age as younger.Jenny: Wow.Maya: Just to get into there. So maybe people were lying, but I don't have any explicit examples. I don't know if it was going on or not.Jenny: Yeah. Wow. So, okay, so how's your life going now?Maya: It's going better now that I'm not really identifying that way anymore. I mean, now that I'm not ruminating about it and not reinforcing that my body is wrong, I'm not going to say I'm perfectly confident in my body. A lot of people are, but I don't really have that such strong gender dysphoria anymore.(00:43:00):You know, I don't feel the need to have people call me a boy because I'm not. I don't feel the need to lie. And so it's maybe a lot easier for me to interact with people because I'm not expecting them to change their way of thinking and the way of speaking just to interact with me. But my life is going pretty typical now, honestly.Jenny: Good. So the way you wrote the essay that you published in Pitt and also the way you just have described your journey, you know, to me, it's… It seems like you are very much the agent of the whole experience. You know, you don't like you don't blame whatever happened on friends or the influence of a crazy teacher or anything.And that's impressive to me. But I'm also wondering whether your relationship with your mom had any impact on the way you traveled through this experience? You know, like, were you able to talk to her about it at any point? Or did you really, you know, kind of resist that?Maya: So I didn't actually, when I was identifying that way after that initial not...a firm reaction i'll say i didn't really talk to her about it i haven't really talked to her about desisting honestly just because it's a little bit awkward today and I'd have to tell i wasn't actually allowed to use social media as a child so I had the whole point I'd have to be like ‘hey guess what, I was breaking your rules for five years but here's my story so that's a little awkward right? I haven't talked to her about that i also do want to mention um …
The reason I don't really put blame on anybody is because I don't think one person is responsible for this. I blame the ideology, not a person. And a lot of the kids who I do want to say manipulate beings of thinking this way just because of the reaction of, to me, expressing a different opinion and not wanting to hear anything new from the site, they are victims themselves too. A lot of them. They had probably similar issues to many different issues. and they were led down this path to live a lie essentially to chase something that's not true and to they are encouraged to harm or alter their body because of it and so they are victims too even though they isolated us manipulatively i don't know or wrongly they are victims too yeah and Even teachers who teach this, I haven't had a teacher who explicitly taught this to me, but even teachers, they're trying to do the right thing. They genuinely believe that these people are marginalized, that they are going to kill themselves, that this is true, that this is right, and this is what's being taught. So they're almost victims of an ideology, too.The ideology, to me, is the problem. There's no one person, there's no one villain, there's no one abuser. It's the ideology. And it's beyond me. It's beyond my story. It's way beyond my story. It's just about everything right now.Jenny: Yeah.I think that's a very insightful, you know, way of describing it. And I couldn't agree more. It's like, it's a problem that's being inflicted on kids by adults. And, you know, like as an adult watching this, it's incredibly dystopian and, just very difficult to watch.
So what would you advise parents? Let's say I'm a mom of a 12-year-old girl, and I think she's struggling at school with making friends, or she seems to be having a hard time accepting, going through puberty, and maybe she has hinted that she's exploring what, you know, her gender identity. What would you advise a parent to do in that situation?Maya: So the first thing I would do, unrelated to accepting and affirming any action, but is to teach your child that there's nothing wrong with their body, that there's nothing wrong with who they are, what they like. And so if they're not reaffirming that there's something wrong with them, they will feel less of a need to identify that with in the first place. if you happen to affirm gender ideology or gender identity in your child, that's reinforcing that there's a problem with their body. And even just enforcing gender rules, because that teaches them that there's a wrong way to be a girl or a boy, and that they can't do this or like this if they're not the opposite gender, which is another.To me, that was also kind of a factor for me. I mean, considerably not one was for a long time as a kid. I hated being a girl because I thought it limited me, and what I could like. So, that's one thing. I would say, in most cases, don't allow your child to medicalize, obviously, because that's a permanent decision as a child, but they, many, because the desistance rate is pretty high, actually.But in some places, yeah, you will go, your kids, they can go do it for themselves. If it's you're in that place, um, get out. Also, just try
If you have to hide it, like, your discomfort with it, if you have to be like, oh, I support you, but I want to wait on the medicalization, try that, I'd almost say, if you're in that situation. I hope to get out of that situation if that's you, but just try really not to let them get to that point of medicalization. And teach them biological reality that they can't, don't affirm the trandgender ideology to teach them, if you're able to, that you cannot change your sex, even if you want to.Even if people transition medically, that's not really becoming a boy or a girl. It can make you look more like a boy or a girl on the outside, but nobody has ever actually changed their gender, even through, like, bottom surgery, whatever. It's not even the opposite sex genital. It just looks like it a little bit.Jenny: Right.(00:49:41):Maya: And what else do I want to say?Teach yourself to question what they're seeing. Don't just blindly affirm to anyone ideology to fit in with a group. Teach your kids to think critically about what they're seeing. I gave some advice to some parent on PITT to say that to let your child view the media that they disagree with and have them critically think about it and why they disagree with it. Even debates help because when you're debating or defending your opinion, you have to really think about why you have this opinion and really think about why you should have this opinion. So they should come to it on their own if they have something that really doesn't align with their morals or that really is questionable. They'll come to it on their own through debate, I think.And also, if you have an advocate that identifies as trans, I'd say you can still do this without them seeing it as hate. I mean, it's harder because you're taught to believe that in questioning this hate. But even watching people like Blair White or any other names that are trans and question it, because they might not view that as hate if it's coming from another trans person, and make, again, teach them to really critically think. Do you or I do disagree with this? Another one I'd say is to educate them about cults, actually. I wrote an article on PITT. I don't know. Which one did you read? I wrote two. I believe you read the one about my desistance story.Jenny: Yes, it was just published last week.
Maya: I wrote another one about cult dynamics and trans ideology.(00:51:25):Jenny: Oh, interesting. Yeah, I'd love to hear you talk about that.Maya: Yeah, I'd just say educate them about cults and how they can use manipulation to get people to believe insane, insane things. Because nobody's better than immune to manipulation.Even adults. Because adults form cults plenty. Not even vulnerable — it's like regular people. So yeah, teach them that manipulation of power form can get you to believe the same things and to teach them to really question what they see at all times because again, you can believe something crazy told to you in a feeling of light.(00:52:17):Jenny: So you decided to research cults and cult dynamics on your own in reaction to you know, to your experience of identifying as trans and then desisting. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, when did you get the idea to look into cults?(00:52:22):Maya: So I didn't actually come to that conclusion until I was like later 17, early 18, but I was really reading more about or being expressive about my opinion on trans ideology. And I happen to know, I actually like came across it accidentally, like coming across cults and manipulation tactics. And it really struck me. Like, this is very familiar, actually. This is something I have experienced. I don't know.I almost don't want to call it a cult because it's not a perfect definition. But I'm going to say cult just to describe the global manipulation and control, group control, that was in these dynamics. I read about him. There was, like, certain posts of people talking about cults and I… when they described the manipulation aspect of it, it seemed extremely familiar. And I'll be on my own to research it. I'm not deep, deep researching it, but I read certain articles about it. I've watched videos, episodes of shows about it.I link two specifically in my article I wrote, which is one I came across on social media, which is The Bite Model of Mind Control by Stephen Hassan. He just, essentially, there's categories of manipulative aspects like ways people or cults control your thoughts and actions, and um, another one was i kind of came across this accidentally there was a series on Netflix called ‘explain it,’ they pick different topics explain it in a half hour video segment one of the topics was cults and during that episode they laid out like i think it's called the seven elements of cult indoctrination — essentially how people go from, I guess, being in a vulnerable place in their life to being captured and manipulated by a cult. I don't know if I should get into it right now or just link the article. We'll talk about this either now or whatever.(00:54:24):Jenny: With your permission, I'll link both of your pit articles to the show notes.Maya: Okay, yeah. It's like seven elements of starting from being a vulnerable place in your life to being introduced to an idea a life-changing idea that causes you to create a whole new essentially reality where this idea is the truth that you've been enlightened and then just portray anyone who questions that or some group as the enemy to be feared control you based off of fear and group expectations because now that you're in like you've been enlightened and you don't want to be an outsider because then you see them as evil. And another big one was peer pressure from the group itself, which is very powerful to essentially conform more to the group standards. And this is how cults use that peer pressure and that indoctrination to control people and not just trans ideology, but any cult really use that influence to make people believe and do insane things.Jenny: Yeah. And you talked about the love bombing that you got at the beginning.(00:55:34):Mm-hmm.Jenny: How did you stumble on PITT?(00:55:41):Maya: I was actually just looking for places to tell my story. I actually heard of Our Duty, the group first, from YouTube. I just saw a YouTube interview from them, and I reached out to them, like, yo, can I help you out in any way? Can I share my story here? They connected me with other resources. They connected me with PITT and Genspect, but I haven't really done anything for them yet. They connected me with you. They connected me with someone else on YouTube who I did an interview for, but that's not published yet.Jenny: It's interesting because I know some people at Our Duty and I know some people at Genspect. And so have you been able to connect with other desisters that are more your age?Maya: I've interacted with some desisters and detransitioners on X. Some of them are close to my age. Some of them are older.Although I haven't been super close to them, I've been interacting with their content essentially.Jenny: Yeah. Do you kind of now think of yourself as a desister or would you rather just kind of move on and leave this whole experience behind?(00:56:47):Maya: I do identify as a desister. I mean, it's not, it's just not that I don't feel like I'm a desister in my soul. That's really important to me. But it kind of is because I feel obligated to speak out on this because other people are still getting harmed.Other people weren't —I'll say lucky — and in an environment where they weren't affirmed constantly and weren't medicalized, more people that happened to, people are still getting indoctrinated, and this is still harming people. And there has not been justice for so many people. So I want to speak out against this as much as I can, because even though I'm not de-trans, I haven't medically transitioned, I know there's bad aspects. I still feel like I have some valuable insight just because of experiencing that social transition and so i want people aware of how manipulative this can be and how wrong and also I’ll say delusional it is that this is even a belief system and howwidespread it is is crazy.
Jenny: Well, I think you can be very proud of how you confronted it with your mind and your you know respect for your own critical thinking and how you were able to separate yourself from the ideology. And also that, that alone is something to be proud of, but also it's really great that you are speaking out and I really appreciate your speaking to me.So I've taken more than an hour of your time and I should probably let you go, but I just want to thank you again. And I wish you all the best as you graduate from high school and, you know, whatever you decide comes next. You're starting adulthood, it seems to me, in a really good, healthy place.Maya: Thank you.Jenny: Okay. All right. Take care, Maya.Maya: Bye-bye.
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