April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It is also a moment when many trans activists and aligned organizations have taken the opportunity to bring up studies and statistics about the high rate of sexual assault for those who identify as trans. These topics are inexorably linked — something I know firsthand, as both a sexual assault survivor and a detransitioner.
My desire to transition was largely due to being sexually assaulted when I was 14. I believed I could escape myself and my sex through medicalization. I know now that, in truth, I never changed sex. And undergoing hormones and surgery did not help my mental health or heal my torment. That required facing the trauma in therapy and doing the real work of recovery.
The trans community is right that sexual assault is a real and horrible reality for too many people who identify as trans. The same is true for those who detransition — we often have histories of sexual abuse. But what the trans activists are not honest about is the timing of the sexual assault and how it relates to trans identities themselves.
Like me, most of the people with trans identities I have interacted with (both online and offline) experienced sexual assault prior to their identifying as transgender, not because of it.
I remember talking with other members of the trans community online and in my doctor-recommended support group when I was a teen. We spoke about abusive or violent sexual encounters we had experienced. Many of us were extremely young when we experienced abuse, or were still forced to endure it while simultaneously trying to medicalize our bodies. Our relationships with ourselves were fragmented and in crisis, and our relationships with each other were an unhealthy bond forged by trauma. We all believed we wouldn’t be so burdened when we could finally transform into the opposite sex.
Sexual assault is a life-changing experience. Anyone who has experienced it knows what I mean. It takes away your power and your autonomy and makes your body feel unsafe. Activists try to sell transitioning as a cure to such vulnerable people. They insist that transitioning offers the victims of sexual assault the promise of greater control over their bodies. It allows the victims to change it into something they believe is less likely to be hurt. Transitioning is described by doctors and activists alike as a type of rebirth; many people try in vain to transition into a person who was never assaulted at all.
Credit: Prisha Mosely/IWF
It is cruel and unethical for a doctor to change the body of a sexual assault victim. Our bodies were never the problem. An identity crisis is not a medical condition. Trauma is not cured with hormones and surgeries, nor are future assaults prevented that way. Any doctor selling transition to someone reeling from the distress of a sexual assault is harming their patients. There are protocols and standards of care when it comes to victims. Evidence-based and ethical, trauma-informed care is the least the medical community can do for patients who were sexually abused. Instead, many doctors are taking the easy way out and making a profit off the distress and pain of the most vulnerable by selling “cures” that will never come to fruition.
The sexual assault I experienced changed my life when I was young, but transitioning destroyed my health and stole parts of my life away from me. If my doctors had not affirmed my self-hatred and my womanhood and instead listened to my pain and suffering because of my trauma and left my body alone, I would still be healthy. I am still a sexual assault victim, only now, I am missing pieces of myself. True, my breasts will never be touched again without my consent — but now I cannot ever give consent for them to be touched either, all because a doctor decided that the thoughts in my head meant that mutilating my body could heal me.
I have healed now from the terrible trauma of sexual assault, but the chemical and surgical changes my doctor made to my body are irreversible. No person who has been a victim of harm deserves more harm as a result, even if they are broken enough to ask for it. Doctors have a responsibility to say “no” instead of aiding their patients in self-harm. I hope that no doctor will ever be as cruel to another patient who identifies as trans as they were with me — or that lawmakers make it impossible for them to do so.
This Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I urge lawmakers, doctors, and the public to reexamine what’s behind the growing obsession with trans identity and permanently altering girls’ and boys’ healthy bodies. Take it from me: the abuse I suffered altered my life forever. Mutilating my body didn’t make it better, but only added additional trauma and hardship. Sexual assault survivors deserve so much more than that.
* * *
Prisha Mosley is an Independent Women ambassador and detransitioner. IW Features, the storytelling platform of Independent Women, featured Prisha’s story as part of its “Identity Crisis” docu-series, which highlights the irreversible harms of gender ideology. Prisha’s story, including her pregnancy journey, was documented in two parts, which can be found here and here.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It is also a moment when many trans activists and aligned organizations have taken the opportunity to bring up studies and statistics about the high rate of sexual assault for those who identify as trans. These topics are inexorably linked — something I know firsthand, as both a sexual assault survivor and a detransitioner.
My desire to transition was largely due to being sexually assaulted when I was 14. I believed I could escape myself and my sex through medicalization. I know now that, in truth, I never changed sex. And undergoing hormones and surgery did not help my mental health or heal my torment. That required facing the trauma in therapy and doing the real work of recovery.
The trans community is right that sexual assault is a real and horrible reality for too many people who identify as trans. The same is true for those who detransition — we often have histories of sexual abuse. But what the trans activists are not honest about is the timing of the sexual assault and how it relates to trans identities themselves.
Like me, most of the people with trans identities I have interacted with (both online and offline) experienced sexual assault prior to their identifying as transgender, not because of it.
I remember talking with other members of the trans community online and in my doctor-recommended support group when I was a teen. We spoke about abusive or violent sexual encounters we had experienced. Many of us were extremely young when we experienced abuse, or were still forced to endure it while simultaneously trying to medicalize our bodies. Our relationships with ourselves were fragmented and in crisis, and our relationships with each other were an unhealthy bond forged by trauma. We all believed we wouldn’t be so burdened when we could finally transform into the opposite sex.
Sexual assault is a life-changing experience. Anyone who has experienced it knows what I mean. It takes away your power and your autonomy and makes your body feel unsafe. Activists try to sell transitioning as a cure to such vulnerable people. They insist that transitioning offers the victims of sexual assault the promise of greater control over their bodies. It allows the victims to change it into something they believe is less likely to be hurt. Transitioning is described by doctors and activists alike as a type of rebirth; many people try in vain to transition into a person who was never assaulted at all.
Credit: Prisha Mosely/IWF
It is cruel and unethical for a doctor to change the body of a sexual assault victim. Our bodies were never the problem. An identity crisis is not a medical condition. Trauma is not cured with hormones and surgeries, nor are future assaults prevented that way. Any doctor selling transition to someone reeling from the distress of a sexual assault is harming their patients. There are protocols and standards of care when it comes to victims. Evidence-based and ethical, trauma-informed care is the least the medical community can do for patients who were sexually abused. Instead, many doctors are taking the easy way out and making a profit off the distress and pain of the most vulnerable by selling “cures” that will never come to fruition.
The sexual assault I experienced changed my life when I was young, but transitioning destroyed my health and stole parts of my life away from me. If my doctors had not affirmed my self-hatred and my womanhood and instead listened to my pain and suffering because of my trauma and left my body alone, I would still be healthy. I am still a sexual assault victim, only now, I am missing pieces of myself. True, my breasts will never be touched again without my consent — but now I cannot ever give consent for them to be touched either, all because a doctor decided that the thoughts in my head meant that mutilating my body could heal me.
I have healed now from the terrible trauma of sexual assault, but the chemical and surgical changes my doctor made to my body are irreversible. No person who has been a victim of harm deserves more harm as a result, even if they are broken enough to ask for it. Doctors have a responsibility to say “no” instead of aiding their patients in self-harm. I hope that no doctor will ever be as cruel to another patient who identifies as trans as they were with me — or that lawmakers make it impossible for them to do so.
This Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I urge lawmakers, doctors, and the public to reexamine what’s behind the growing obsession with trans identity and permanently altering girls’ and boys’ healthy bodies. Take it from me: the abuse I suffered altered my life forever. Mutilating my body didn’t make it better, but only added additional trauma and hardship. Sexual assault survivors deserve so much more than that.
* * *
Prisha Mosley is an Independent Women ambassador and detransitioner. IW Features, the storytelling platform of Independent Women, featured Prisha’s story as part of its “Identity Crisis” docu-series, which highlights the irreversible harms of gender ideology. Prisha’s story, including her pregnancy journey, was documented in two parts, which can be found here and here.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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