Wisconsin Detransitioner Told Surgeon She Was Suicidal. The Surgeon Performed a Mastectomy Anyway

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth installment in a series on individuals who have “detransitioned” in the wake of gender-related medical interventions. Read the first four installments here.

As a kid growing up in Wisconsin, Laura Becker often felt alienated from her peers. This feeling was exacerbated when she began to experience premature puberty at nine years old. At eleven, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which caused irregular periods, hormonal mood swings, acne, and weight gain.

While puberty is difficult for most adolescents, it was intolerable for Becker; at age eleven, she was diagnosed with autism, which compounded the suffering.

Becker struggled with emotional regulation, socialization, and sensory issues. Simple hygiene and personal upkeep were very uncomfortable. She rejected hugs and other physical touch.

“Brushing my hair, brushing my teeth, showering, all of these things that are considered basic, I was very sensitive to that physically,” she told National Review. “So, when my breasts started developing at nine I really wasn’t able to handle that. It was very unwanted”

Becker only wore comfortable clothes. Over time, she hardened into a tomboy.

“Feminine clothes were constraining and tight,” she said. “I didn’t like the fabric. Boy’s clothes were a lot more comfortable and practical.”

She also lived in a demoralizing home environment filled with emotional manipulation and chronic verbal abuse. One of her parents routinely called her “it” and “thing,” and told her she was unwanted and worthless.

“It really destroyed my sense of self,” she said. “I already was vulnerable because of the autism.” Her childhood trauma was so intense, she said, that she developed complex PTSD.

In high school and on Tumblr, Becker learned about gender identity – a concept that appealed to her as a way to categorize herself since she so frequently felt like an outcast.

Tumblr has many niche online groups and fandoms. Becker’s favorites were the rockstar pages – benign enough. But “queer ideology got into every single community on there,” she said. Many users she interacted with had mental-health issues and autism. The platform made her increasingly LGBT curious.

There was a “general attitude of nihilism and complete distrust of any traditional wisdom,” she said. It was “a peer-led social contagion of people who were different.”

At the Gay Straight Alliance Club at Becker’s high school, the concepts of gender identity and sex fluidity were popular. Into her early teens, Becker identified as gender queer and presented as androgynous and quirky, she said. As high school progressed, she began to take on male attributes. By then, Becker was already suicidal and had begun cutting herself, overeating, and abusing alcohol, marijuana, psychedelics, and pills, she said.

As she shed her female characteristics, Becker had to square her new persona with her sexual orientation. The only women who looked like her were masculine lesbians. She couldn’t relate to them because she was heterosexual. Becker also had several unrequited loves with gay friends who identified as queer at the time, she said.

“They led me on and used me emotionally as a steppingstone to realize they were homosexual,” she said. “I had a breakdown because I felt so unlovable and worthless in my body.”

She started having severe gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia. She ruminated about her female body, especially her genitalia, and fantasized about what her life would be like if she was a gay man rather than a straight woman.

At 18 years old, Becker started wearing a binder and changed her pronouns to they/them. A couple months later, she came out as a transgender gay man. She officially transitioned at 19, when she first took testosterone prescribed by a gender clinic in Chicago. After informing clinic staff of her gender dysphoria, they gave her the prescription “that day, for a very high dose of testosterone, 200 mg per week to inject,” Becker said.

“I didn’t have any idea that was a very high dose for a female to be taking,” she said.

The testosterone severely exacerbated her hormonal and mental-health issues. “It basically caused a mental breakdown,” she said. “When I was on it, I was very suicidal and was very desperate to feel some relief.”

At 20 years old, Becker had a double mastectomy in Madison, Wis.

The surgeon who performed the mastectomy told Becker to go off testosterone into order to prepare her body for the surgery. She went off cold turkey, prompting another mental breakdown. On the day of the procedure, Becker told the surgeon she was feeling suicidal. When he asked if it was related to the surgery, she said it wasn’t. Looking back, “it definitely was,” she said.

“I just wasn’t in a mature or healthy mental place to be able to consent to any of these things,” she said. “Throughout the entire process, the clinic, the psychiatrist, and the surgeon rushed me through. There were no questions asked. It was like ‘ok you’re trans, here’s the hormones and the surgery, good luck.’”

Becker declined to provide the names of the medical professionals who encouraged her transition, though National Review independently confirmed she did in fact undergo the procedures.

The surgery did not help Becker feel better about herself, she said. While she temporarily felt better immediately after receiving the testosterone prescription and the surgery, since they represented milestones she had long aspired to, the feeling didn’t last.

What was left were permanent side effects, such as a permanently deepened voice and persistent hair growth that still requires shaving. Her double mastectomy required a revision surgery to remove excess fat and she is now dealing with disfigurement, including huge scars, nipple grafts, and lack of sensation in her breasts. She feels a profound sense of loss over the fact that she will never be able to breastfeed, she said.

“In the last couple of years, that biological drive has kicked in,” she said. “I really want to have a family.” Luckily, she was only on testosterone for seven months, so she believes her fertility is intact.

Three years after transitioning, Becker detransitioned. Now 26, she resents the medical professionals who overlooked her preexisting conditions, namely autism and polycystic ovarian syndrome, which one 2018 study found is more common autistic women.  Several studies have also linked autism to gender dysphoria and several women who have spoken to National Review for the Detransitioners series believe autism contributed to the discomfort they experienced during puberty.

“There wasn’t any exploration of my comorbidities at all,” she said.

Now, she sees that she can be a heterosexual woman with a “funky” persona and still have a good life. But she’s angry that more young people will have to suffer the same fate she did.

“I’m still processing the grief,” she said. “When you wake up and realize, ‘wow I hated myself that much that I pursued this,’ and this world is evil enough that this was allowed to happen, and it was said to be a positive thing. It’s a really rude awakening.”