While mainstream media applaud young people openly transitioning to opposite-sex lifestyles, they tend to ignore those who made the transition and regret it. An exception is a recent Sky News report. It describes Charlie Evans, a woman who identified as a man for almost a decade before de-transitioning herself, saying she has met hundreds of 19- and 20-year-olds who regret having undergone gender reassignment surgery.

Surgery is the most extreme treatment for gender dysphoria, when someone feels a conflict between his or her “gender identity” and biological sex. Gender dysphoria is being promoted with increasing frequency and zeal within medical circles thanks to pressure from transgender advocates and activists. Despite its promises of success, however, in its wake are many people plagued with remorse.

There are no studies reflecting the number of people dissatisfied with their “new gender,” but Evans said she has spoken with several young people who, after having surgery, wished they hadn’t. “[T]heir dysphoria hasn’t been relieved,” she says. “They don’t feel better for it.” This should not be surprising considering the irreparable mutilation of healthy tissue that such surgeries entail.

Evans has encountered these individuals as part of her work establishing a charity to help people de-transition. They surely speak for many others who are similarly disillusioned by their decisions. But as one young woman told Evans, “she felt shunned by the lgbt community for being a traitor.”

The transgender movement is vigorously recruiting young people, and of younger and younger ages. The Tavistock and Portman National Health Services Trust offers gender identity services for children as young as age 3. Children are being taught about transgenderism in public libraries. Schools are introducing pro-transgender books into their curricula. The Church of England is encouraging children to “explore the possibilities of who they might be without judgment or derision.” Doctors are encouraging teenagers to “change” their sex.

All this indoctrination is succeeding in making more and more young people question their biological sex. A Brown University study found that the average age of transgenders between ages 11 and 27 is 15. (Interestingly, it also revealed that 87 percent of the teens and young adults became gender dysphoric after their friends did—a strong indication that in many cases, this condition is not inborn, but chosen.) And more and more of these youths are being presented with and pressured into increasingly radical “solutions” that have permanent consequences. As Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker wrote in his article “Transgenderism and the Pursuit of Happiness”:

[Transgenders] think changing their gender is not only possible but fairly straightforward. But the reality is, biological differences between men and women are extensive and complex. Hormone blockers can prevent a boy’s voice from getting deeper or a girl’s hips from getting wider; hormone treatment can shrink a man’s testicles or cause a woman to grow facial hair. Surgery can remove body parts specific to male or female, and it can attach artificial body parts. But no treatment or procedure can turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man.

Transgender advocates present themselves as being strong advocates of children and children’s physical and mental health. Were this true, however, they would be attentive to the voices of these unhappy youths who are grieving over what they have done to themselves. They would work to prevent such irremediable mistakes in future lives. Instead, as Evans said, they treat “de-transitioners” as “traitors.” This exposes the cold, radically political, and fundamentally wicked nature of this trend.

To learn more about the true solution to the problem, read “Transgenderism and the Pursuit of Happiness.” To learn more about the source of this trend and where it is leading society, request our free booklet Redefining Family.