I held a focus group in Laura Becker’s car on the way to Day Two of the Genspect conference in Albuquerque. Between our overnight accommodation and the hotel conference center, a consensus formed that ‘detransition’ is an action, a verb, a transitory state like transition. The argument over ‘desistance’ is a distinction without a difference. From now on, ‘ex-trans’ describes any person who has left the cult of genderwoo regardless of their medicalization level, which is to say the level of the harm they have allowed the medical professions to inflict upon them.
Many detransitioners have argued for years that ‘ex-trans’ would prevent the stupid hierarchies that have been created by arguments over who was ‘true trans’ before they left the cult. Instead of debating who took the ‘right’ hormones or had the ‘right’ procedures, ‘ex-trans’ includes everyone, at every level of harm. All people who believed they were transgender, and who stop practicing their belief in transgenderism, are ex-trans. The new term also infers finality, a sense of returning to embodiment forever. It is a noun, a state rather than a verb implying transitoryness.
Language adapts to change this way all the time. Consider the object in your nearest parking spot. First, there were horse-drawn carriages; then, there were horseless carriages. Later, someone came up with the word ‘automobile’ to describe these newfangled machines. It took decades for Americans to drive cars made by the auto industry. Only one decade after the ‘gender industry’ opened for serious business in the USA, we have already settled on the umbrella term, the noun that will name a trend.
Stella O’Malley had mentioned the emergence of the term during Day One, and then other speakers had deferred to detransitioners as “whatever they call themselves”. Now it was the next morning, and the change had already become official for my little focus group. The people most directly affected by the transgender cult have a name for themselves, just like ex-Scientologists. It seemed as if long-delayed progress was finally happening. While the presentations were great, the conversations that continued outside the main hall were the real story of the 2025 Genspect Bigger Picture Conference.
The fashion-season of everything ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ and rainbow-flavored seems to be over. Laura Becker tells me that “people are getting tired of being associated with transition as a valid lifestyle choice. They want to be completely separate from the ideology, the behavior, and the medicalization”, so people who leave the cult of gendered disembodiment are reclaiming their individuality through a verbal act of separation from the cult.
Moreover, the usage of ‘ex-trans’ opens the conversation to stories of grooming and abuse in same-sex identification, a complicating factor in some detransition stories that is too often dismissed as ‘ex-gay’ conversion, a similar term. Becker, who works with the parents of children caught in the social contagion of ‘trans’, says we must overcome “the rigidity of thinking” around this issue. I have heard the same thing privately from ex-trans, and even happy gay and lesbian people who say their own attraction is innate. Destigmatizing the discussion does not invalidate same-sex attraction.
Sierra Weir, aka Exulansic, has used the new term for over a year, ever since she began medical desistance. “I should not have listened to the people attempting to impose this binary gender system onto detrans people,” she wrote in September 2024. Her own definition is simple: “Detrans people are those who have previously come out as trans and engaged in any behaviors performing that trans identification, and then recanted the identity.”
The word “desister” does not describe people who were socially affirmed and acting out a socially acquired theory of their distress, in my view. But, I understand why someone would choose to use desister for themselves, to be clear they have not been physically harmed by gender-affirming care, and that is their choice. Using “desister” to say someone’s transition “didn’t count” after the fact, when the person imposing the label has no actual idea what medical consequences of medicalization this person may find out about in the future, is not appropriate.
“It is a tactic of coercive control,” Weir writes: cult behavior, by “Insisters”. The last thing that people leaving a cult need is a new cult pressing in upon them, good intentions or not. Detransitioners have been overwhelmed by the expectations of a sudden surge of supportive people on the one hand and the contrary attacks from their former ‘community’ on the other. Becker works with new detransitioners coming forward, including a young man I met in Albuquerque, Jonni Skinner, to prevent them from burning out or getting ahead of their own ability to talk about their experiences.
Genspect will release video of Jonni’s ex-trans story because Stella interviewed him during the conference. His experience sounds like a clear-cut case of medical fraud and abuse, including actual chemical gay conversion. A therapist told Jonni that life would be “easier” as “a straight woman than a gay man.” His ‘treatment’ team sent him to a shop selling bondage gear, sex toys, and breast forms to encourage dysphoria. Among the health effects he now deals with are skeletal issues from the endocrine disruption that doctors did to prevent him from growing ‘too tall’, which locked his growth plates but left his bones still trying to grow.
High-dose estrogen caused his nipples to discharge. “Welcome to womanhood”, Jonni’s endocrinologist told him. Usually, we hear about this phenomenon in the context of older, paraphilic men who enjoy it. Jonni was horrified. Now physically sick from identity politics, he does not want to adopt the transitional label ‘detransitioner’ either. “I’m a survivor of medical abuse as I feel it’s more accurate to my own experience,” he says, but Jonni can “completely understand why some people” prefer the term ex-trans “to just ‘be done’ or completely be free from the concepts related to gender ideology.” If only his clinicians had been free of ideology.
Jonni was able to have a long conversation with Sierra Weir about his symptoms and some potential solutions. “I absolutely felt I left the conference with a lot of answers and a stronger support network,” Jonni tells me. “It’s all very troubling of course but it’s helpful to have contact with others who are either experiencing something similar or are very knowledgeable in the topic.” Being in a room with others like himself was a tonic all on its own. “I learned a lot and made some strong connections that are helping me try to get justice in my own situation”, he says. We will stay tuned for updates.
Just the size of the room was a psychological boost. To Jonni, “the conference was a very powerful, very eye opening experience for me” because the room was full. “To see so many people who care about the long term well being of folks in my position was so huge for me in my own journey towards healing.” Informational bubbles are bad, but it is a relief to be among like-minded people who already agree in advance that you are not crazy, that the ideology of ‘gender identity’ is insane.
The only drawback to Albuquerque was the city itself. Genspect is a shadow conference and WPATH simply chose this location first. Deeply ‘blue’, New Mexico’s largest urban area is beautiful, but it has attracted its share of social problems: homelessness, addiction, crime, mental illness in the streets. Jonni found the scene “really unfortunate” and ended up spending most of his time at the hotel, only going out “in groups with some of the ex-trans crowd” — his new friends. “The conference itself was a fantastic experience though, I can’t wait for next year’s.”
“There’s been a longstanding curiosity in medicine about whether growth plates close because growth stops, or because the hormones in the body have made the growth plates close”, Weir explains to me. “In Jonni’s case, they gave him a lot of estrogen” to limit his height, and “now he’s gone off the hormones and his bones seem to be growing again even though his growth plates have been force-fused, and this is very painful for him.”
After the conference, riding with your author and Sierra Weir in Laura Becker’s car, Graham Linehan watched the passing desert and talked about the conference as a re-energizing experience. His legal woes are exhausting and expensive, but he is producing pages of jokes once again, and he says his future seems bright for the first time in years. A lot of us were feeling that way in Albuquerque. Everyone had the energy of a movement finding its feet and making progress in the long march back to sanity.
I asked Maia the Peace Poet what she thinks about the shift to ‘ex-trans’. She noted that like ‘desist’ and ‘detransition’, the new term has “conceptual limits”. The previous terms still have their uses for people who fit them. “It’s going to be hard to find a cohort that fits the label” of desistance as it is being used these days, Maia explains. Detransition also has its uses and limitations. We can legitimately say that Jonni desisted, that he has detransitioned, and categorize him as ex-trans, while allowing him to use the legal terminology “survivor of medical abuse” as much as he wants. We can use all the terms.
For in the beginning, the “clinical context” of desistance in the writings of Ken Zucker and the designers of the Dutch protocol was gender dysphoria in a pre-pubertal child who outgrows those dysphoric feelings in puberty, whether or not they ever socially transitioned. Usage of the term has slipped so far in meaning that Maia, who spends more time in the discourse than anyone I know, calls it “retarded”, borrowing directly from “trans activist nonsense” to invalidate the experiences of ex-trans people: “gaslighting”.
Binding is harmful. Tucking is harmful. These should not count as “social transition,” Maia says, because they can cause physical deformity, nor should the mind-warping psychosocial effects of ‘social transition’ count less than the medicalization that it makes possible. “Every single intervention has its own unique harms,” Maia says. “The harms compound.” The activists pushing this ‘therapy’ and ‘medicine’ on their victims always press their cult converts towards greater medicalization, encourage new dysphoric ideation and new cosmetic solutions.
Instead of recognizing this reality, the discourse has created a hierarchy of harm in which desisters are a lesser category who “got lucky” by leaving the belief-system earlier than others. “It is just straight up taking from the trans activists. It’s all about aesthetics and not about function.” Maia says that it will prove impossible to define ‘detransition’ because the word ‘transition’ remains undefined. Some people are stuck in bodies so altered that they cannot ‘pass’ as their own sex anymore, but they no longer believe they were ‘born in the wrong body’. What do we call them?
Anyone who stops or reverses ‘transition’ — a verb — at any stage is detransitioning, a verb, Maia argues. Every one of them needs help. Instead of “dishonest” definitions, ex-trans applies to everyone who has given up the belief in magical sex change medicine, at every level of harm, detransitioned or not. It also gives them “breathing room” to define themselves without detailing their harms, Maia says, ending the DARVO abuse from both the TRA and GC ‘community’.
But ‘ex-trans’ is also a purely political label, Maia warns. Ironically, like ‘transgender’ it is an umbrella term that includes many different kinds of people. Because it exists in opposition, it will be used oppositionally.
As I wrote for Genspect in my reaction to the conference, the Bigger Picture is an opportunity to connect with people you have only known online, creating personal trust connections that are better than online connections. People share interests and outlooks. I was proffered a tantalizing investigative journalism story from someone who needs to remain anonymous and you will read it here first. This is how the work gets done: by getting together and comparing notes and sharing what works. As long as it goes on, Genspect will bring like-minded people together for networking.
The painful and even dangerous condition that Jonni suffers from as a result of his ‘gender affirming care’ is likely afflicting many ‘trans kids’ in adulthood because height limitation was a primary goal of clinicians like Norman Spack. As he explained in his 2014 TED Talk, Spack was very proud of his aesthetic achievements with early intervention on boys. He was especially eager to point out the “normal size” of Jackie Green’s breasts. Jackie’s mother Susie Green, former CEO of Mermaids, gave her own TED Talk in 2015. Green described her husband’s homophobia around Jackie’s toy choices and ‘joked’ that the puberty blockade had left her son’s surgeon “very little to work with” when she flew Jackie to Thailand for castration at the age of 16.
Boys were the expected ‘patients’, since men were a supermajority of adult cases in previous generations of transsexualism. But then around 2018, the demographics of ‘transgender’ youth identification suddenly flipped, which is a strong signal of social contagion. Dr. Lisa Littman, who coined the term rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) for the sudden surge of transgender identification in girls, was also in Albuquerque. Her ongoing, one-on-one study has found more than 90 percent of more than three dozen ROGD youth either have an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis or are presumptive for such a diagnosis.
The clinicians at the conference were united in rejecting the evidence-base for ‘gender affirming’ medicine. “If there was ever an evidence-based case for medicalization, it is now passed,” Corey Cohn said. His presentation showed how liberal Protestant churches are now becoming the spiritual sanctuaries for transgender identity. Regular readers will know my argument that ‘trans’ represents an ersatz spirituality. Cohn and I have made an appointment to discuss this hypothesis.
I also talked to Josh Payne as he was leaving the conference. He is an attorney based in California who represents claimants against ‘gender affirming care’ in court. He personally oversees or advises most of the litigation that is going to destroy the gender industry in America. I secured his agreement to discuss those “landmark cases” with The Distance when they make history. Much of the work reporting what I learned at Genspect will go into my reporting here for years to come.
Security was the tightest it has ever been, and Genspect has done a terrific job of security generally in the three conferences I have attended. Being in a restaurant with other like-minded strangers, or at the hotel bar hip-to-hip with podcasters you have known for years without ever meeting in person, has amazing healing properties. Graham Linehan’s experiences are just one example of the trauma that comes with taking up this fight. Everyone at Genspect has lost something to the ‘gender revolution’: time, health, children, family, friends, careers. There is tremendous consolation in being together, forging new connections.
The inside scoop on Genspect is that if you go, you will learn about the trends and make new friends. I cannot recommend it enough. Some people criticize Genspect for various reasons, and that’s fine — you do you, boo — but I find that rather few of those critics have ever actually attended in person. More often than not, I still eventually catch them tweeting out videos of speakers at Genspect to make some point or other, because they have become reliant on what they claim to oppose. So far, they have not organized a comparable conference of their own.
That makes Genspect something of a monopoly as long as the cultural backlash to ‘gender identity’ continues. While I cannot say that Genspect will still be happening in ten years — for I question whether WPATH will even make it to 2028 — I will be going to the conference for as long as it exists, for I am among friends there.
How Gender Madness Captured The Health Professions: An Expert Witness
Dr. Kristopher Kaliebe is a highly-qualified expert witness on the madness of medical policy capture by gender activists. From inside the professional organizations where activists have taken over committees, to the courtrooms where puberty blockers are litigated, to the juvenile corrections facilities hosting transgender cases, Dr. Kaliebe has seen it all. He says “the experts” have become too powerful and too political.