You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 176. Jessi.mp3
Jessi Harris:
At one point, probably when she was 20, 21 years old, she told me that I took her mother away from her. That was a big stab in the heart. It really was. I mean, at the time, because I was so self-centered about everything that I was doing, I dismissed it. But after detransitioning, it hit me like a ton of bricks that my transition affected my family in deep, deep ways. You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Today, my guest is Jessi. She is a 69-year-old woman from the Pacific Northwest who lived as a so-called trans man for three decades before detransitioning in 2017 and then retiring from her career in the medical field in 2021. She is now committed to sharing her journey, offering perspective for women navigating the complexities of gender issues. And she's writing a memoir about her experiences. We're going to have a unique perspective on detransition today from Jessi with, you know, between three decades and how this issue has impacted her family. So I'm really glad that she reached out to share her story. Jessi, welcome.

Jessi Harris: Thank you, it's nice to see you.

Stephanie Winn: So it's really an honor to have you here. I know you know Gina, who was recently on the podcast and that episode came out titled, Detrans Grandma. So such a unique experience, Gina brought to the table, both as someone who is a detransitioned grandmother, as well as a lesbian. And I don't know if you're a grandmother or not, but I do know that you're, You are as well, okay, wow. And you wanted to share about how this issue impacted your family as a parent, which is just such a unique side of the story we so rarely get to hear about because so much of the conversation right now with this exponential increase that we've seen in recent years in trans-identifying young people is about the parents who are grieving or worrying about their children. But we do have stories like yours and Gina's coming from, you know, sort of an earlier wave of people who went through this process before there was, you know, it was as popular. So I'm really curious to hear your story today. And I've let you know and I'll let our listeners know that I'm going in blind as I have been doing a lot lately, just because I've been in a really busy season of life. Just like, sure, you have a great story. Let's get you on the podcast. No, I don't have time to listen to your other stories, but I'm going to hear it for the first time along with my listeners. I might be surprised by what I learn as I get to know you.

Jessi Harris: OK. Surprises are good, mostly.

Stephanie Winn: So where would be a good place to begin with your story?

Jessi Harris: Well, I actually my story is kind of out there on a few other podcasts, so I'm going to try to condense a lot of it. And I actually, you know, have the book coming out, too. So I don't want to give away the plot too much. But I am a 69 year old lesbian who decided a long time ago in 1985 to start exploring transitioning as female to male. The unique part of that is that back then no one was talking about that. I mean, I literally did not know about it until I watched a talk show, a Geraldo Rivera TV show from way back, who was and he was talking to a gentleman. And I'm going to use gentleman because the person that he was interviewing Totally looked like a guy to me. And the reason why it caught my attention was because they were talking about transitioning as a lesbian. And kind of, you know, that was, those were words for my ear. And the reason why I transitioned was not because I wanted to be a man. I transitioned because I came out as a lesbian in 1976 with a big chip on my shoulder and I was part of the separatist community. I was very vocal with gay rights activism and I was not afraid to talk about things and it made me a big target. Uh, back then in the seventies, it was dangerous to be a lesbian. And on top of that, I was a brand new lesbian mom. My oldest daughter was born almost six months before I actually came out of the closet. So she was a baby when I came out. Uh, she's now 48 and, um, Part of the family story is that I didn't know until I detransitioned just how much of an effect my transition had on her over the years. It was pretty significant.

Stephanie Winn: So I'm starting to think about the timeline here. Full disclosure, the year that you so-called came out as trans is the year I was born. And so I'm thinking, I'm putting myself in that timeline and thinking about your daughter's age. So she must have been eight years old when you came out as trans.

Jessi Harris: She was actually just about or just into junior high school.

Stephanie Winn: Oh, okay. I got something wrong in the timeline there.

Jessi Harris: So she was born in 76. I came out just after that in 1976. Came out as a lesbian. As a lesbian, yeah. I learned about transitioning as female to male in 1985, but I didn't officially start my transition until 1987.

Stephanie Winn: I see. Okay, thank you.

Jessi Harris: That's probably the time frame.

Stephanie Winn: So I don't know if you're interested in sharing how you became a mother as a lesbian.

Jessi Harris: Well, it was my last ditch effort to try to be heterosexual. And it just wasn't happening. I actually Right about that time, probably a year before that, I met my very first official lesbian couple in San Francisco. I'll call them my husband because for about five minutes we were married. We used to street sing in the streets of San Francisco down by the Fisherman's Wharf and so on. It was a big deal back then during the hippie days. And while I was down, we were down there, uh, at one point we were hanging out actually in the Castro district. I did not know at that point how significant that was, but I met my very first lesbian couple and that's what gave me the name for me. That's, it was my, uh, my actualization moment, I guess. I'm not sure the word for that, but it, that's when I, the aha moment, that was it. And right after I met them, I decided that I needed to come out as a lesbian because that's who I was. And I knew it at that point.

Stephanie Winn: And so you were married very briefly to a man.

Jessi Harris: Very briefly. It only happened because his parents were Catholic. And it didn't last long because my family was Jewish. And back then that was oil and water. I don't know what it's like anymore, but back then Jewish families and Catholic families were two ends of the spectrum.

Stephanie Winn: Right, plus there was the matter of your sexuality. So did he stick around to help raise your daughter?

Jessi Harris: No, he actually lost his, collective mind over it. He got very upset with me and he actually ended up going to Southern California and living in a religious commune. And, you know, accusing me of being all kinds of bad things. And he was one of the people that announced that lesbian mothers were unfit. And he was actually one of the first people that tried to take my daughter from me because of that. So that and that was the start of my issues with, um, Well, that led up to my deciding to transition. That was just one of the issues because back then lesbian moms were kind of targets by the mainstream and gay people weren't, it wasn't okay to be gay and had kids. It was a big no-no for that timeframe.

Stephanie Winn: So if I'm understanding you correctly, Jesse, you're saying that he didn't have any specific complaints about your parenting. His complaint was that you were a lesbian and therefore supposedly modeling bad behavior or living in a corrupt lifestyle. And this somehow fed into your motives for transition?

Jessi Harris: No, actually the motive was that, like I said, back then it was dangerous to be a lesbian and back then the mainstream society deemed it unfit and unhealthy for children to be in the presence of anybody that was gay. And it was just a huge thing back then. He was not the only person that tried to take my daughter from me. There was a couple other people as well that tried the same thing. And I ultimately sent her to my parents to live with them so that Children's Protective Services wouldn't come and get her.

Stephanie Winn: Wow. OK, so that was a really unstable time for everyone.

Jessi Harris: Yes, absolutely. Especially gay parents. Gay parents were frowned upon.

Stephanie Winn: And all this was in California?

Jessi Harris: It was actually everywhere. I just happened to be in California at the time.

Stephanie Winn: I guess it's not the version of California in the 70s and 80s that lives in my head.

Jessi Harris: Hmm. Yeah, I guess. But, you know, considering the time frame that you were born, uh, you know, this, she was born in 70, 1976. So, you know, I, I was hanging out with hippies and doing all the crazy things and not in front of my daughter necessarily, but because I was a lesbian, there was the mainstream opinion that I was an unfit parent just for that reason.

Stephanie Winn: So did you feel like you had to send your daughter to live with your parents to avoid a legal case with your ex?

Jessi Harris: I sent her to live with my parents after two other attempts, one being an ex-lesbian partner and a babysitter who also both accused me of being an unfit parent because I was lesbian. It was just what it was back then, it was the times.

Stephanie Winn: And there were no other specific complaints about what about your behavior was harmful to your child?

Jessi Harris: Just because I was a lesbian.

Stephanie Winn: Wow, okay. So what age was your daughter when you separated from her?

Jessi Harris: I sent her to my parents when she was, let's see, in 1983. So she was seven, I want to say. She was born in 76 and it was 83. So she was about seven, seven, eight years old when she went to live with my parents.

Stephanie Winn: And how long did you go without seeing each other?

Jessi Harris: Not terribly long after that, because they ended up moving. I was originally from Alaska, and that's where my family was at the time. And my parents moved down to Vancouver, Washington, and we joined back up then. But at the moment, because of everything else that was going on, I had separated from a relationship with a lesbian partner who went back to religion. She went back to being a religious person and that turned that her opinion of me turned into I was, you know, I wasn't good because I was a lesbian. So she actually tried to take me to court to get custody of my daughter also. But because she was not blood family, that didn't go over so well. And then I actually had a babysitter try to turn me into CPS for being lesbian and having a daughter. It literally was a problem back then for a lot of lesbian moms.

Stephanie Winn: It's a big change in the ethos of CPS in less than 50 years to hear that they were persecuting families because of the parent sexual orientation. And now it's like they're committing the opposite problem, right? With taking children away from safe parents because the parents refuse to affirm this gender identity stuff.

Jessi Harris: Yeah, it's kind of an ironic situation. There's similarities for me in my memory banks. By the same token, it's one of the things that I have a real problem with because not everybody believes in this ideology, the current conversation, and I have an issue with child protective services, even thinking that it's okay to take their kids away from them. It really should be between the parents. And unfortunately, because people can be so ugly during a divorce, I really don't, it's still not okay. It's still not okay to take those kids from anyone. And I feel that very personally because it did happen to me, or at least there were several attempts in that same vein.

Stephanie Winn: I think it's a system that has been abused and overstepped its bounds and also been very inconsistent. I mean, even in my time as a therapist in jobs where I did have to work with CPS quite a lot, there was a great deal of inconsistency in the enforcement of rules between times that they were hard on parents who were trying their best to times that they were not. intervening enough when a child's actual welfare was in danger, which I think is the point of something like CPS is for those rare cases where a child's actually in danger. I think there should be more objective criteria for what constitutes danger than things like ideological differences. which is clearly what this is about both in the 70s and now.

Jessi Harris: Yeah, I agree in that. And my stance with it, regardless that I lived in transition for as long as I did and took that path, I don't believe, my own personal belief about it is that children have no place in the transitional story. I just don't see it. I have a real problem with it. I have a real problem with people that say that two-year-olds know who they are at two. I mean, kids just don't know those things. And so it's a real struggle for me. I know that there are people that transition works for them, but they all started their transition as an adult. And I think that pushing transition on a little kid who really doesn't even know what they had for lunch yesterday or even that day, This is too big. It's transitioning and gender identity and even sexual orientation is too big at two years old or five or seven. My daughter was not talking about these things when she was seven.

Stephanie Winn: No, and I think, I mean, you're preaching to the choir here, and my stance is perhaps more radical than yours on these issues. But let's get back to your story, because I'm hearing that the climate was a lot more hostile to lesbians than I understood. I mean, I understand that it wasn't as accepting then than it is now, but I didn't really understand this piece that lesbians who had children were being intervened with by CPS simply on account of being lesbians. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt that, you know, we're not talking about abuse here. We're not talking about using drugs in front of children or neglecting their basic needs. So this created a tremendous amount of instability. And so your daughter had to live with your parents for a while. And then you said it was in 1985 that you first heard of the idea of the trans man on Geraldo Rivera. I remember that show.

Jessi Harris: Yeah. That was when I first heard about it, yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, and I think you said earlier that it wasn't that you wanted to be a man. Correct. So between the time that this idea was planted in 1985 and the time that you yourself openly identified as trans in 1987, what was going on there that pushed you in that direction?

Jessi Harris: First off, the constant struggle to keep my daughter out of the hands of CPS. And because I was so out and so obvious, I was having difficulty maintaining a job. And I was being evicted from housing because people at that time, prior to I'm not even sure when, probably prior to 1990 when anti-discrimination laws started popping up. It was okay for people to kick other people out of their apartment just because they were gay and they could get away with it. And I couldn't keep a job for the same reason. I actually went to a job in 19, I want to say 1985, maybe 84. I went looking for a job in a particular neighborhood and I was told that they don't hire dykes there. And that's exactly what the man said.

Stephanie Winn: Wow. What kind of job was this?

Jessi Harris: I was actually a truck driver at the time. So I was told when I went in for an application that we don't hire dykes here. Verbatim, that's what he told me. So between the the harassment of having children around, you know, being in the presence of children, the inability to maintain employment and the being evicted from my home in several different locations. When I heard about. transitioning female to male because I knew about male to female transitioning. I knew about trans women prior to that. That was something that was almost a popular conversation. Christine Jorgensen and Renee Richards were around at the time and they were like, the representation of trans women and the transsexual transsexuality, I'm going to say. So I knew about that, but I wasn't aware of female to male transitioning. I actually was working in a lesbian bar in Portland. way back. And I heard one of the folks that frequented the place say in a conversation that they were going to have a sex change operation. And that was like, what? what is that? And that was prior to me seeing this program. So when I saw the program, that's another thing that perked up my attention was, what's all this about? And the contemplation at that moment with my current partner she wanted to have a child and because I already knew how difficult things could be for lesbians with kids I thought maybe this is an option so I paid attention to the program and at that point in time there was no www you know and nobody had gmail so I had a phone number at the end of the program that was listed and I called and the number and it was a phone number for a Ingersoll Gender Center up in Seattle.

Stephanie Winn: So putting this in the context of your life experience, you've faced all this discrimination as a lesbian. It's severely impacted your ability to do things like hold a job and raise your own child. You're trying to create some stability in your life. You have a partner. She wants children. Presumably you're considering like sperm donation or something.

Jessi Harris: Oh, yeah. That's why lesbians had to do it back then.

Stephanie Winn: And so So this is looking to you like a way of forming a stable family. This is looking to you like you could have a relationship, maybe a marriage, where to the world, it's a man and a woman and the man's child from a previous relationship. And then the man and the woman have a child together. And it's this nuclear family, heteronormative, problem solved, end of discrimination. That's how this is landing for you.

Jessi Harris: Yeah, and there were a few other incidents that happened, and I don't really want to get into the details, but because I was so obvious, I was actually assaulted several times, so that kind of added to it. I was sexually assaulted for being a lesbian also by a man who thought that he knew better than I, and that if I really wanted to be a man, that he'd show me what it was really like. So there was that piece too. And, you know, minus all the gory details, being assaulted was, you know, added to it. It was like icing on the cake in my mind.

Stephanie Winn: So the idea of transition felt like a way of protecting yourself.

Jessi Harris: As well, yes.

Stephanie Winn: Protecting yourself and your daughter and your potential future wife and potential future child.

Jessi Harris: Yeah, I just wanted to live life like everybody else. You know, like the mainstream anyway. So, yep.

Stephanie Winn: I'm having similar feelings to how I felt when I interviewed Xander Kegg, who is still living as a trans man, but similar motivations, not the same backstory, you know, different generation. But I remember listening to Xander's story. in the story was I was so discriminated against as a lesbian, I figured it would be easier if people saw me as a man, because I act like one. And I remember just feeling so saddened by that. And like, I don't know what, you know, how Xander is expecting me to process or, you know, like, but to me, this feels like a really sad story, transitioning to escape discrimination. So did you end up forming a family with that woman or?

Jessi Harris: Um, my first partner and I, uh, separated and I left Alaska. I met my second partner who actually started the transition process with me, the woman that wanted to have a child. Um, she went along with me for several years and then couldn't do it anymore. And she and I separated right after we actually did have a child and that child was a year old.

Stephanie Winn: So you were planning on helping her raise this baby that was genetically hers, I presume.

Jessi Harris: Correct.

Stephanie Winn: And you say she couldn't do it anymore.

Jessi Harris: You mean… She was not interested in living life the way I had to as a trans person. She was not willing to… She wanted to be with a lesbian. She didn't want to be with a guy. So, I mean, she tolerated for as long as she could, and I don't resent her for it. I understand the reason. She went with me as far as she could, and then she decided she couldn't anymore. The unfortunate part was that we did have a child together. She had the child, and this little girl was a year old was the last time I got to see her because she made it impossible for me to maintain a relationship with the daughter, our daughter.

Stephanie Winn: Well, I certainly hope that after that separation that their life wasn't as impacted by discrimination as yours had been as you'd you'd followed and they'd kind of followed in similar footsteps, you know, the lesbian single mom experience that she had from there. I hope that it got better.

Jessi Harris: I think she actually, when we separated, she was actually having a relationship with a man. So I think because of the way that we went about having a child, she actually started a relationship with the man that she had sex with that created this child.

Stephanie Winn: So the upside here being that's the child.

Jessi Harris: That's just my assumption because After that, we didn't see each other anymore.

Stephanie Winn: But what I'm hearing is that the child got to have his or her father in their life.

Jessi Harris: Yes, and now she's a young adult and she actually has a child as well. And I only know that because my now partner found them on Facebook.

Stephanie Winn: That's how it goes sometimes. Okay, so we got into some of your motivations, which had to do with escaping discrimination, trying to create some stability for your family. Some of that didn't work out, but by this point you were already well into the process.

Jessi Harris: Yeah, I was seven years into it when she and I separated.

Stephanie Winn: Oh, wow. OK. So what was it like back then? Because now it's all over the media and social media. It's this widespread cultural phenomenon. Back then, it was really this niche thing, you know, in our film No Way Back. Joey Bright, who's, I think, close in age to you and also lesbian, she shares recalling going to lesbian bars back in the 80s, I believe. And someone she could only presume was actually a big pharma sales rep showing up, like giving out free samples of testosterone. So she shares that perspective on how this was marketed to lesbians in the 80s. Well, tell us what it was like for you way back before this idea of trans was getting so much press.

Jessi Harris: I met a couple of trans women along the way and I wasn't the nicest person to them because at that point, that's all I knew about it and I had no idea that I was gonna travel down that road at some point years later. Being trans wasn't as, it just wasn't a thing like it is now. Now everybody and their brother and their sister can claim to be trans and back then, we didn't talk about that. I mean, I was 20 years old before I even started using the word gay or lesbian. And now those words are almost archaic. There's a lot of us that insist on still using gay and lesbian, and we always will, but those words are almost transphobic sounding now for some people. We didn't talk about that stuff. And in 1985, I wasn't on the internet. There was no social media. I mean, nobody had an email address. We barely had a cell phone in our pockets. I remember times back in those days where we had to go find a payphone on the corner to call someone. So, you know, it was very basic and very rudimentary kind of lifestyle back then. And everything was word of mouth. It wasn't on social media because there wasn't social media. I mean, computers were around, but, you know, they just weren't being used for that kind of stuff yet.

Stephanie Winn: Right. So how did you begin the process back then? I'm curious how much the process has changed.

Jessi Harris: Like I said, I found a phone number at the end of the program and I called and left a message. And it took a couple of weeks before I actually got a response from the person that was actually interviewed on Geraldo's show. And I went to Seattle to meet the person. And at the time, The process was governed by Harry Benjamin's standard of care. It wasn't WePath by any means. It was a series of gatekeepers that were in place, very seriously in place. And one of the things that I had to do in the beginning was find a counselor and go through the therapeutic, the therapy process for a minimum of a year. And back then, that particular person didn't have enough education on this subject to really counsel me. I mean, we talked about stuff as lesbians because I insisted from the very beginning that I had a lesbian counselor and she was very, it wasn't common. It just wasn't a common conversation. So she really couldn't counsel me on it. But I stayed the course and did a year and she ended up I had to have a letter for the next layer or the next step, which was acquiring testosterone. And through this letter, I took it to another person that was I was referred to through Ingersoll, who was an internist. And we had a nice little chat and He actually prescribed me testosterone at the time, but I had to go back to his office for an injection. I mean, they just didn't hand it out and say, see you next year. I literally had to stay plugged in. And I also had to go out and get a job in real life as a man. And it had to be documented. And in particular, this letter, and a few people have mentioned how odd this statement is, but it had to say in the body of the letter that this was not an attempt to defraud. And that letter is what I had to carry with me to go to the internist. I had to use it to go to the DMV and get my driver's license changed because I was driving truck, which meant I had to have my documentation changed. I had to go to Social Security and change my sex marker with them because I had to work. So documentation, It started, my documentation started being changed almost immediately because of the job that I was in. I had to work. And people that worked had to have, you know, they have to have a work history and they have to have, drivers in particular, have to have driver's licenses. So all that documentation had to be changed in the process of being a man in real life. And it was, I basically was, it was, I was already working in a male-dominated field as a driver, so that part wasn't hard. And then from that, the internist was then, a year later, gave me my letter for an approval for surgeries, but I did not pursue that part. The only surgery I've had is a hysterectomy and that was a complete result of the testosterone and the effects of vaginal atrophy.

Stephanie Winn: And I wanna talk about that maybe a little later if that's okay, because I'm still thinking about what you said about therapy. So just to fill in some blanks for those who haven't been spending years in gender critical spaces, when Jesse said Harry Benjamin Society, so that was the organization that predated WPATH and evolved into WPATH. And a lot of people on the more I guess you could call it like moderate side of the gender critical debate would say that we should still have the standards we had back then, which Jesse was describing, that you have to go to therapy for a year and then get this letter and take testosterone in the office, not at home. And, you know, there is. I think this illusion of there being some safeguarding in that, but I really wanted to dig into the therapy piece, if that's okay, because you said that you wanted a therapist who is a lesbian and that you talked together about lesbian issues, but I'm not hearing that there was much discussion of, so why you want to be a man?

Jessi Harris: Well, that was one of the questions she asked me, and we did talk about that. And I explained to her, you know, the being assaulted and my daughter being in jeopardy of being taken from me. And she understood all of that because she was lesbian. And that was important to me because she understood my situation for the most part. She didn't have the difficulty of being kicked out of apartments or losing her job over it or not being hired for something because she was in private practice. Um, and she's gave me that letter with the intention that at some point I would make my own mind up how far I wanted to take the process. So she gave me the letter to take to the internist and it had to say in the body of the letter that it was not an attempt to defraud.

Stephanie Winn: I'm just really hung up on this piece though. I get the not an attempt to defraud piece, but part of what I'm hearing is there's sort of this seeing eye to eye, maybe arguably degree of collusion. These are issues that happen to lesbians because of discrimination. But to me, it feels like collusion to have the therapist endorse via a letter. That's a very concrete form of endorsement. Therapists can also endorse narratives in much more subjective and abstract ways that only take place verbally or even non-verbally. But endorsing that because of being sexually assaulted and discriminated against and all these bad things that had happened to you, that that meant that being a so-called man was a solution. Which to me feels like collusion with the scapegoating the body, right? And a form of internalizing, which as two women, and that therapist being a woman, you know, one thing we women do sometimes is internalize. So it feels like a collusion with this kind of internalization that I was discriminated against, therefore, I'm in the wrong body and I need to change my body to not be discriminated against rather than I need to grieve what has happened to me and face the injustice of it and figure out how to protect and love myself even better in a world that's unkind to me sometimes.

Jessi Harris: Oh yeah, I understand the confusion and I've over the years had a real hard time explaining that to people. And at this point, my comparison to that conversation is in the gender affirming model that people deal with now. I mean, literally doctors, the gender affirming part of it is, okay, you want to be trans? Here you go. I mean, if in retrospect, that's practically what she was doing now in defense of her limited knowledge on the subject, because she literally had no formal education. There's, you know, there's all kinds of stuff out now. Everybody talks about it. Everybody writes a book about it. There's all kinds of psychologists that deal with it. She wasn't. She just was a. counselor, a therapist who dealt with regular, I'm going to say regular ordinary things. But she just didn't have the background that people have now. And in my mind, gender affirming care allows people to do on a whim just what I did on a whim. Well, maybe it'll work. There's no, you know, people aren't allowed to push back these days. And she didn't know really how to.

Stephanie Winn: How old were you when you started testosterone?

Jessi Harris: I was 32.

Stephanie Winn: And how many years were you on it before you had that hysterectomy?

Jessi Harris: I had my hysterectomy in 2001. So from 87 to 2001 is how many years? Quite a bit. That's 14 years. So after 14 years on testosterone. I had to have a hysterectomy. And there were years before that I had all, I had several incidents prior to that where I was having medical issues with, I didn't know what at the time and nobody knew what at the time because there were, you know, it just wasn't, Stuff that people knew then, but because I was presenting as a man and going into an emergency room saying, I think I'm having problems with my female reproductive system. I was a novelty and an abomination in a lot of people's eyes. So I went years and years struggling with it before I actually found someone who was willing to investigate it and then help me.

Stephanie Winn: And can you tell us in as much or as little detail as you're comfortable sharing what the testosterone did to your body?

Jessi Harris: It created vaginal atrophy. And how it was explained to me was estrogen is essentially what protects our reproductive organs as a woman. And because testosterone supersedes that in giant amounts and almost immediately, it starts affecting that level of estrogen that is there to naturally protect everything. It kind of, you know, takes over. And I was feeling that. I could feel that war going on inside of me. I didn't know what it was. It felt like serious menstrual cramps to me. And that's all I knew about it. I just knew that my period wasn't happening. And there was at one point right after my breakup with my second partner that I had to stop taking tea because I couldn't afford it. And my menstruation came back. with a vengeance and it was awful because at that time I was not living in a place where I could take care of it like right away. I was living in my truck at the time. And then when I started T back up again, because at that point in my journey, I felt obligated to continue, which is a whole nother piece of the story. Once I started testosterone back again, my period stopped. And this cramping thing and all these episodes that I was experiencing started up again. It took years for somebody to say to me, there's something up and since you're a woman, let's look into this. I was being ridiculed and laughed at prior to that. because I was presenting as a man with, you know, problems with my female reproductive organs. One of my interests and one of the situations I got into is that I was having an episode and I went to an emergency room in Sunnyside, Oregon, right outside of Clackamas. And I explained to the person that I was having And at that point, I'd gone through this with enough people that I was very guarded with my words. And I said, I think I have a UTI. And so the nurse handed me a cup, and they did a urinalysis on my sample. And the doctor came in and said, well, you know, it's inconclusive. So the only other thing I can do, Mr. Harris, is check your prostate. And I looked at him and that was like the first time that I had a good laugh and said, go right ahead. And if you find one, please let me know. Because he thought I was male to female. I had told everybody I was trans, that I was a trans presenting person, but they had it backwards and thought I had a prostate. So, you know, a little funny, but it wasn't funny at all. It was just amusing.

Stephanie Winn: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit ROGDRepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SOMETHERAPIST2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGDRepair.com. Something I just want to stop and make sure listeners understand, in case some of this information is new to them, is that the effects Jesse is describing, it's not a matter of if, but when these effects will happen to the female reproductive system that is affected by estrogen, excuse me, by testosterone. And for exactly the reason that Jesse just described so succinctly, that the female reproductive system It's part of a complex whole body that is beautifully designed to operate according to the hormones that our body naturally produces. And when you mess with that, you cause atrophy to those tissues. Interestingly enough, I've, I mean, interesting is one way to describe it. It's probably not the best word, but I've heard stories where so-called trans men who are having these types of vaginal problems are then prescribed topical estrogen as a cure. It doesn't surprise me that you went 14 years before the hysterectomy because there was such a lack of information at that time. I've heard that on average, it's about four years on testosterone before a female really starts feeling a lot of the pain of these effects. For you, do you remember about how long it was that you were on testosterone before you started having some of these concerning symptoms?

Jessi Harris: Probably, I don't remember having this issue prior to my partner and I breaking up, the woman that I started the transition with. We broke up after the seventh year of me being living in transition. And I believe right about then is when I started noticing stuff. And I say stuff lightly because, you know, I was starting to have pain, but it wasn't It wasn't as serious as it got, that's for sure. And it just gradually became more and more of an issue. And like I said, at one point I was living in my truck right after that breakup and had to stop testosterone, which I believe broke the cycle. And then I started taking testosterone again, which stopped my periods again. And that's when the cycle started up again. That's my theory. And I'm pretty confident in that.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it makes sense. Right when you were describing stopping the testosterone during the time that you had a gap because of financial reasons, I was actually hearing the word vengeance in my mind because I've heard that before. I've heard women say that their periods came back with a vengeance, that it was extra painful, extra symptomatic.

Jessi Harris: It was nasty. It definitely was.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, and I mean, it's just there's so many tricky aspects to how this whole thing works. And one of them is that young women are sold this really easy hook, right? If you hate anything about being a young woman, it's just don't be one. And so menstrual periods and all the discomfort that come with them, it's one of those things that's very easy to kind of hook girls with. And so it's this like magic bullet of, oh, wow, I get to stop menstruating. What's not to love about that? Stop menstruating. And I get to be this cool, tough guy. And it's this one thing in their heads, but it's like, what goes up must come down with anything. There's always an equal and opposite reaction. So it's like, of course, course, yes, you stop menstruating, but then what happens when you start again, plus everything that's happened? I mean, overall, in terms of net impact, much more pain and discomfort in the reproductive system from doing this to oneself. So anyway, it was about seven years before your symptoms became really bad. And then another seven years from that point to the point where it was recommended that you have a hysterectomy. So you must have really been suffering.

Jessi Harris: I was. It wasn't constant. It wasn't every single day, of course. And it was I want to say cyclic, you know, kind of monthly a little bit, because that's the cycle starts. And then because of the testosterone, it's shut down, or at least blocked. And like I said, I went for a while without testosterone. So I got a break kind of got a break there. But the big thing that happened amongst all of that is that nobody believed me. I was presenting as a man going to the emergency room saying, I think I am having problems with my female reproductive organs. And I was being looked at like some kind of abomination. I mean, literally, I was not taken serious. And They just didn't have the knowledge to go, whoa, let's check into this. And they were being very lackadaisical about it. I was being treated very poorly about it. And it took an obstetrician, a woman, to go, there's something up with this, and I am willing to help.

Stephanie Winn: So what happened at that point when you found that doctor?

Jessi Harris: She, you know, checked it out, gave me a physical and decided that I needed a hysterectomy because for some reason she had that education. And I believe it was because she was an obstetrician. I really do. I think it's because she was a woman who knew about the reproductive system of a woman and how hormones interact with each other or don't. I believe she had enough knowledge that she knew I needed to have a hysterectomy. And that was the only thing that was going to fix it. And oddly enough, she got it covered by my insurance. I don't know how she did that. I really don't. I had Blue Cross Blue Shield at the time. I only paid $300 for that entire event. And a hysterectomy in a hospital stay is way more expensive than that. But for some, I don't know how she did it. She was some kind of angel. Come along and help me out. That's all I can tell you.

Stephanie Winn: To what extent did the hysterectomy resolve your symptoms?

Jessi Harris: 100 percent. I didn't have any issues after that. It was a long recovery. Hysterectomies are no fun. And it wasn't laparoscopic. It was they opened me up and took things out physically, you know, the way traditional hysterectomy would have been performed. So.

Stephanie Winn: I'm realizing I have all these questions about the medical stuff and what you're going through psychologically at the time, but also that I really want to hear about your relationship with your daughter. That was something we discussed being an important part of our conversation today. So I'm wondering which way we should go now, Jesse. What do you think?

Jessi Harris: Well, it's really the subject that I wanted to talk about. And the reason for that is it took It took de-transitioning and a seriously good therapist to help me understand the impact. Because in my opinion, and the way I experienced it, transitioning in any form is very self-centered. It's, you know, it's a, it's one of, somebody mentioned just this morning that it was kind of an addiction. You just go to the next step, and the next step, and it doesn't work, so let's do some more, almost like a drug. That's how it was described to me today. I didn't experience it that way. I don't believe that I, it was probably because I didn't go into it in the same fashion as a lot of people do. Cause I didn't want the hit the surgeries. I, all I wanted to do was just get on with my life and stop being harassed. So T solved that. You know, testosterone is a serious drug, and it takes a hold of a woman's body and turns you into a man in almost seconds. That was my experience anyway. So my desired result was almost instantaneous, and that's all I wanted to do with it. The unfortunate part was that it did physically affect my body. in more than just a hysterectomy. I actually in 2012 experienced several heart attacks and they were directly involved or they were directly linked to my usage of testosterone.

Stephanie Winn: Was there a doctor who was willing to be honest with you about that or was it through your own research?

Jessi Harris: Nope, I ended up in a cardiac unit in 2012. I had two of them back to back actually. Between the stress of everything involved, because there was a lot of things before then, and the usage of, my long-term usage of testosterone. That's what the cardiologist explained to me. And she explained the process of why that happened. And she was in full agreement that the testosterone was the major culprit. And she explained to me that testosterone kills men. And that's exactly what it was trying to do to you.

Stephanie Winn: I have such mixed feelings because at first I was like, well, I'm so glad that this doctor was honest about how testosterone increases dramatically women's risks of heart disease. But there is that kind of common line that gets used that, oh, well, now your heart disease risk is the same as a man's. Well, you know.

Jessi Harris: I don't know for a fact. I do know with my expertise in the lab that there are different metabolic differences between men and women. And when I started having, when I had that heart attack, I knew enough to know that I was having one because I was in the medical field. But the warning signs were mixed. And at that point in time in medicine, the adage was that women had certain warning signs and men had other warning signs. And I was getting all of them. I do know that A biological male's, it's called a PSA test, it's a particular antigen that happens with possible prostate cancer, is different in trans women versus men that haven't been taking estrogen. So there are differences, metabolic differences between us and these these hormones that we're taking back and forth that don't belong in our bodies because we weren't born that way affect things. So after those heart attacks, I tell people that, you know, these signs, there are different signs and you should probably just look out for all of them, especially people that are messing around with testosterone and estrogen and stuff. Because it changes things. It just does.

Stephanie Winn: What makes you a medical patient for life just dramatically increases your risk of all these things. But let's talk about your daughter. Did you ever regain custody?

Jessi Harris: I never lost custody. of my oldest daughter. She continued to stay with my mom until I got my collective shit together. And she came back into my life and back into my parents' life over the years and graduated in the… I don't even remember when she graduated. She's 48. I know that much. But she has recently told me that She felt very isolated by my experience. When she was in high school, she came out as bisexual. So she was dating women and messing around with guys and that kind of thing. She told me the other day that the biggest issue she had was that none of her friends had gay parents. She was raised in the gay community. I mean, I was, you know, I was a lesbian from the beginning and she lived in my, with me and my partners along the way and every, all my partners were lesbian. So that's what she knew was living in the LGBT community. But she never had anybody, any of her friends to have gay family members. So she felt very isolated in that. And at one point, probably when she was 20, 21 years old. Her anger, it was, I'm guessing it was probably anger, but I'm sure it was largely just upset. She told me that I took her mother away from her. That was a big stab in the heart. It really was. I mean, at the time, because I was so, self-centered about everything that I was doing, I really didn't, I dismissed it as, well, I never was your mother anyway. You know, it got ugly. I said some not so nice things. And right about that time, my brothers and sisters were saying, you know, you took my sister away from me. So I didn't know it at the time. I heard what they were telling me, but I didn't really care because I was kind of wrapped up in my own self. But after detransitioning and dealing with that, because detransitioning is a whole nother cycle, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I, my transition affected my family in deep, deep ways. My mother was my biggest supporter and yet she struggled with it. And two of the things that she struggled with was the fact that I was born a baby girl and now I want her to call me her son. She had a problem with that. My whole family had a problem with me changing my name. And none of them had a problem with me being a lesbian. It was when I started transitioning is when family issues started. And honestly, I did not see those things then because I didn't care. And I was too wrapped up in what I was doing for me. It took detransitioning, it took a seriously good counselor to help me weed my way through all that stuff and understand just how impactful my transition was on my family members. And in the meantime, because I could understand it now, I was able to apologize to my daughter. And it was huge. She quit talking to me for about eight years. And when I went to her and told her that, we now have our relationship back. I mean, it was like almost overnight as soon as I apologized. And in sincerity, not just like, oh, well, I'm sorry. But literally, I understand now what I did to you and I apologize. So it was huge. It really was. And our relationship is You know, it's rumpled and it's scarred, but we're talking our way through it. The big deal is that I'm a grandparent also, and her daughter is a senior in high school now, my granddaughter, and she's having issues with me because of the way I treated her mom. You know, and that's just a whole nother set of repairs that need to be made. But in the meantime, her mom, my daughter, is at least a liaison for the two of us. The last time I had any dealings with my granddaughter was when she was little. And unfortunately, it was over the funeral of my mother, her great-grandmother. And I think the death of my mom impacted, well, it impacted everybody in the family, but it really upset my daughter because she spent a lot of time in their care. That was her grandma. That was her maternal figure for many, many years. We haven't fixed everything, but my apology did huge things in the way of repairing it and getting back on track. And that was important to me. You know, one of the things that detransition has kind of impressed on me is that it's almost like a 12-step program. And I'm not a drinker and I don't have those issues in my past where I've had to, you know, get clean and sober or anything. But I understand what a 12-step program is and what it involves and part of it is making amends, you know, and admitting the fact that I messed up and I was a mess. I was, you know, that's a big one in that program.

Stephanie Winn: So you said that it was through having really good help that you were able to see clearly the selfishness of your past actions. So as you came to see that, what are some insights that you had about how your behavior had impacted your daughter and the rest of your family?

Jessi Harris: Well, I mentioned a few of them. My siblings were mad at me because I took their sister away. I was the oldest of seven kids. So I was, you know, I was their leader just because. And my parents were upset over my insistence that I was their son when they were objecting to that, my mother especially. And one of the things that I learned along the way is that parents form a parental bond with the name that they give their children. And when I decided to change my name from girl to boy name, and I still keep my boy name because I like it better, but it's gender neutral at this point. I didn't care for my female name. And when I changed that, they were very upset. I'm not… Unfortunately, my parents both died before I could have this conversation with them, so I don't know exactly to what extent it affected them, but I know it did. I just know it did. And my mother was a very big supporter. And at some point she just cut me off. She just had had enough. And like I said, she was my rock for years and she just couldn't do it anymore. And I didn't get it at the time because I was being selfish. And I wish I had had the moment in time to be able to apologize to both of my parents, but I didn't get that chance. I have since apologized to my daughter and my two youngest sisters. I mean, they flat straight up told me, you are obnoxious.

Stephanie Winn: If your parents could hear you, what would you want to say to them?

Jessi Harris: that I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused them and all the defiance I threw in their face after them being such staunch supporters. When I think about not being able to apologize to them, it really makes me choke up. So I'm a little hesitant to get going on that, but I, I wish I could apologize to them. That is for sure. I really wish I could have had the chance to say I'm sorry to both of them because I just, I was miserable and I was mad and miserable with myself. And that's what caused it was I was mad and miserable and I made everybody around me mad and miserable. I mean, that's kind of what happens when you put everybody in the same space. Somebody is going to get their feelings hurt.

Stephanie Winn: I hear your hesitancy and I respect that. You know, sometimes people do end up getting emotional on this podcast and I always welcome that. But it's it's a lot to be vulnerable with someone you're just meeting and to know that it's being recorded for the world to hear.

Jessi Harris: A lot of my hesitancy is because I'm writing this book. And when I write about those things, that's when I lose my own sense of, that's when my sense of loss comes around. And I've had to walk away from this book so many times. I've had to scream and holler in the dark because of this book. I don't have the same therapist that I had in 2012, but she was with me for 12 years, and she helped me through a lot of this stuff, and she helped me see the light, if you will. She was very effective. She retired, unfortunately, because I would have liked to have shared detransition with her. She was the one that brought it to me. A lot of my emotion over this is stifled because I've had such a life of its own kind of book that I'm finally wrapping up here. I've actually gotten to the chapter where I'm talking about shame and embarrassment. So those are two big words that I would use to describe my feelings towards my parents.

Stephanie Winn: Well, and that's such a big stumbling block for young, immature people. You seem to be going through things that match the chapter of life that you're in, right? At this stage in life, people are thinking about What is their legacy? How have they treated other people? Are they being generative? What mark are they leaving on the world? And most people tend to reach that stage, if they do some things well, of maturity to be able to really honestly self-reflect on all that kind of stuff. But I explain this to parents all the time, that the number one reason that it might backfire to try to share detransitioner stories with young, stubborn, trans-identified people is because you're asking someone who's in a stage of having a lot of ego a fragile, rigid ego that they're using as a defense mechanism because of how unprepared for life they feel, you're asking someone in that stage to identify with someone who has been humbled. Someone who is talking about their shame, embarrassment, guilt, and remorse. Someone who's saying, yeah, I used to be so dead set on thinking that this was who I was, so much that I permanently changed myself. And now here I am saying, oops, I was wrong. Wow, how humiliating. I can't believe that I put everyone through that and put myself through that only to be so wrong. Of course, there's going to be a huge boulder to climb over there because a young person doesn't want to see themselves in that position of, oh, that could be me. I could be that wrong. How embarrassing. Yeah.

Jessi Harris: Well, and that's the struggle between the trans activists and the de-transitioners at this point, because our stories are so contrary to what they're trying to put out. And to go back to when I started looking into detransitioning, my therapist sent me an article that was written by Katie Herzog that she found in The Stranger, which was an old magazine rag that was put out in Portland, actually. And Katie Herzog had written an article on detransitioning, or detransitioners, and Reddit was referred to. And I went to Reddit, and all I found were 20-somethings talking about it. And they'd only been doing it for a few years. And I was, at that stage in my life, older than they had been alive. And so it was very difficult for me to where their experiences and I had to go look for stories that I could relate to. And that's one of the biggest reasons why I'm out here now is because there are older people out there that don't know how to do this. They don't know how to get out. I went through several different experiences where I wanted out and I didn't know how to. And when I finally was able to get out, there were no stories for me to listen to. I respect the fact that 20-somethings are detransitioning and they had their own life experience, and I don't wanna poo-poo that at all, but it doesn't relate to someone who's done this for three decades. I mean, my entire life, I lost 30 years of my life flying under the radar like this. I lost my entire lesbian community of friendships. I didn't gain any friends through the trans community because I told everybody that I was lesbian identified still and I regretted every minute of it. And that was not the message they wanted to hear. And they still don't want to hear it.

Stephanie Winn: You said you spent three decades living as a trans man but you said that you regretted every minute of it.

Jessi Harris: I did.

Stephanie Winn: And you felt that consciously the whole time?

Jessi Harris: I can say maybe not all of it consciously, but I can say that, yeah, I regretted it. I just didn't know how to do it any other way. At some point, I was obligated. And I use the example of my work career as a truck driver. I had to change all my documentation in order to work. Um, my birth certificate was changed, but it was botched by the state of Georgia. Uh, it includes every single original piece of information on my amended birth certificate. Um, my passport is useless and I wouldn't even want to use it right now. Um, I did, I, I, I affected my relationship with my family to the point where they turned their back on me for years. I literally came out of the darkness, the dungeon, with the therapist that came to my hospital room in 2012. She saved me from myself and helped me screw my head back on right. And I, to this day, wish that I could share my detransition experience with her because she's the reason for it. Not the entire reason, but she was a catalyst. She opened that door for me with that article. She knew I wanted it.

Stephanie Winn: Well, perhaps you'll find a way to share this interview or your upcoming memoir with her.

Jessi Harris: No, I'm gonna send her my book. She's the reason why I wrote it. She asked me, have you ever thought about writing a book?

Stephanie Winn: Now, when you talk about the selfishness that impacted your family, I'm wondering, there's a lot of levels that you could mean that on, right? So one that I can think of is the I mean, obviously there's asking everyone to gaslight themselves and see you as something you're not. Of course, there's a lot more detail I'm sure you could get into about the selfishness in the mother-daughter relationship particularly. And I'm also thinking about the mood altering effects of testosterone and what role that might've played, so.

Jessi Harris: Oh yeah. Oddly enough, it's very interesting to me is that I was, a very angry, outspoken separatist. And when I started taking testosterone, I don't know why, but I settled down. But what happened in that same process was that I started looking at women differently. I started looking at them with a more intense eye, and I didn't like that. And I my biggest thing, unfortunately, was that I was always afraid of men finding out that I wasn't one of them. Being a butch lesbian from the beginning, I was it was easy for me to step into the male role, although there were people along the way that told me, you know, you don't you don't stand like guys do. You know, men take up space and women don't kind of thing. I use too many words and men don't. I learned a lot about men as I was going along. I think more than anything, I learned humility. I was pretty pompous as a separatist and as a loud and out and proud chip on my shoulder lesbian. I had a lot of attitude. And it kind of put me in my place, this whole thing.

Stephanie Winn: It seems ironic the shift from being a lesbian separatist to, because a lesbian separatist wants separate spaces for lesbians who are by definition women. And then to live as, you know, trying to pass as a heterosexual man, that seems like a 180.

Jessi Harris: I lost my entire circle of friends over it. Absolutely. And when I, Back in 2020, I actually found property in Southern Oregon that was lesbian land. And I had to run the gauntlet of old school lesbians. And they had been told that I was a former lesbian, that I was really a man. And they wanted to know my story. And every single one of them were my friends, because we were peer. group people. We grew up in the same era. Some of them, quite a few of them are older than me, but they understood and that was comforting. I don't know how I would have assimilated back into the community had it not been for them. But I've run the gauntlet with friendships in the lesbian community and I was never heterosexual, so hanging out with straight couples just wasn't something I did. It was pretty solitary being in transition for me.

Stephanie Winn: Do you remember at the beginning when you first decided to try to live your life as a straight man? Did you have a rosy vision of yourself clicking with all these other heterosexual couples or what was it then?

Jessi Harris: No. I really just wanted people to leave me alone. I really did. I just, I had been assaulted way more times than anybody should have been and not in very good ways. I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted people to just leave me the hell alone and let me get on with what I thought was a good life. you know, just like everybody else was doing. I really didn't have any connection to the heterosexual community because I just wasn't. I wasn't heterosexual any more than a straight person is gay. They just aren't.

Stephanie Winn: So you wanted to be left alone, but you ended up isolated.

Jessi Harris: Mm-hmm. From my lesbian friendships. That's where I miss the most. It was a big price to pay.

Stephanie Winn: What do you wish someone had said to you or what would you have said to you at that moment in time that you thought that that was going to be the solution to your problems?

Jessi Harris: It's easier it's easy for me to say. You know what, it's okay to be a lesbian because it really is okay to be a lesbian. Back then it wasn't. So it's a mixed feeling of that's what I'd want to tell myself. And I really did believe that back then, but it was so contrary to what was happening at the time that it was hard to believe every single day of it. But that's what I'd say to myself now is it's okay to be a lesbian. There is nothing wrong with me as a lesbian. That's really the biggest message I could pass along to me.

Stephanie Winn: And as far as this idea goes, or went, this idea that you had that so-called transition was going to be a way to escape discrimination, because you did have a real problem. You were assaulted, you were evicted, you were not hired or fired. Discrimination had real consequences in your life. At the time you thought being a so-called man would solve that I mean It's one thing to tell yourself. It's okay to be a lesbian, but when the whole world is Telling you that being a lesbian means that you don't get opportunities and That you'll have more problems Was there any other way now that you could see that you could have dealt with those issues?

Jessi Harris: I don't really know the answer to that one because they were such different times. I mean, like I said, I lived in in a time frame and I'm not the only one. There's lots of lesbians lost their kids through divorce and their husbands being able to take them in court and poof, they were gone. So I'm not the only one that experienced that. But it's there's such a contrast between then and now. Because now people can be just about anything they want to be. I can't, I won't say that women are in the working world anywhere equal to men yet, because I know better. But they have more opportunity, and they absolutely have the opportunity and the ability to speak about it. Back then, they could discriminate against me, and nobody cared. Nobody stood up and said, no, you can't do that. It wasn't until the 90s when anti-discrimination laws started becoming a topic. You know, I stood in front of the Portland City Council twice, once as a lesbian, once as a trans person, talking about these bills that were going through. I was in direct conflict with the Oregon Citizens Alliance and Lon Mabon. I got in his face one day. Back then, no, people could hurt you and it wouldn't have been anything. And now, it would be like a story in the paper, at least, if not national headlines. It's just such a difference between then and now in a lot of different ways.

Stephanie Winn: So nowadays, gays and lesbians have so many more rights, so many more protections from discrimination than they faced back in the day. And yet, there's this whole new wave of problems facing younger lesbians, those who know that they're women, those who know that they're attracted to women, right, with the intrusion of males into their safe spaces, their sports, demanding access to their dating apps, and so on. I'm not sure if it's possible to, for the sake of imagination, remove that from the picture, but setting aside, if we can, for a moment, the invasion of men into these women's spaces, knowing that lesbians do now have so much more protection, in theory, at least from the type of discrimination and harassment that you faced back then, How does it feel to look at the fact that, I don't know, I'm just imagining that from a lesbian perspective, it might be like, women these days have so much more freedom. Why are they abandoning themselves? What's it like to see all these women escaping into transition as the latest thing rather than moving forward with the protections and rights that they have?

Jessi Harris: I walk a real thin line between the two worlds because I did live 30 years in the trans community. And I do have respect for several transsexual people that I am familiar with. But I think that there is, homophobia is still alive and well. And that's what a lot of the younger people are dealing with because what I understand and what I experienced in a different form back then was it's not okay to be gay. Even though there's rights out there, even though there's laws out there that protect us from various things, It's a subliminal message that I believe that people are still getting And I think there's still quite a number of families that they Really don't want a gay son especially gay sons because men have gay men really they grew up and a lot rougher times I think sometimes than lesbians did because They were looked down upon harsher in a lot of ways. And I still think that happens in a lot of cases. I'm conflicted with the whole transing the gay away, but it almost feels correct to me.

Stephanie Winn: What do you mean by that?

Jessi Harris: It confuses me, that's for sure, because I don't see where people think that having a male daughter, and I'm just using these terms as a description, I don't understand why it's okay for a family to have a girl that transitions to boy in order to then go and have a relationship with another girl and it looks on the outside like they're straight. But the family knows for a fact that that girl, that boy, is actually biologically female and I don't understand why that is more okay than just letting her be a lesbian. So the whole thing is very confusing to me and I wish that I didn't have to walk a very fine line between what I experience and what I think about the whole thing. I mean, quite literally, I have, I have things in my head that I refrain from saying because of the politics that is involved, but I am, I'm pretty much a firm believer that there's conversion therapy going on. I can say that much.

Stephanie Winn: Here comes the Trevor Project banner on my YouTube channel, trying to control the narrative about conversion therapy.

Jessi Harris: That's exactly why I refrain from saying some of the things that I do, because I don't want someone else to get in trouble by something that I might say.

Stephanie Winn: Well, you don't need to worry about me because so for all the people in the comments, you already just heard me say it. Yes, feel free to leave a comment on YouTube because it does help the algorithm. Thank you for those comments. That being said, you don't necessarily need to point out that there is a Trevor Project banner underneath any video that contains mention of the phrase conversion therapy because the Trevor Project is trying to control the narrative. about conversion therapy. I've done plenty of previous talks on this subject. Jesse, you don't need to worry about me. I just either monetize a video or I don't, depending on how controversial it is. Right. And then the other thing is if I want to cut something out, we just cut it out in the editing process.

Jessi Harris: Yeah. There are other podcasters out there that I'm I am fond of, even though we haven't met in person. And they have to deal with the same, you know, stuff. But I think when we start talking about that, we're talking about the controversy of free speech. And in my mind, when you have the consequence of free speech is that someone's going to get their feelings hurt. and I think people need to just get a thicker skin. But then again, I could have said the same thing to myself when I started thinking about transitioning. Why don't I get a thicker skin and just buck up? I had lots of friends back then that told me the same thing and then turned their backs on me as they were calling me a traitor. It's a complicated world we live in today. See, I actually have made the comment to other detransitioners that are younger than me that I think that they, I know they come to their transition in a different way than I did. And they come to their detransition in a different way than I did. And I give them lots of credence for the things they put up with and the things they have to deal with. We weren't talking about puberty blockers when I was 30 years old. That was used for different things. It wasn't used for medicating children with, you know. It's just, I think it's just a little overblown these days. And I think they have, they come to their transitions in a different form than I did. And I give them a lot of credit for sticking to their guns, some of them.

Stephanie Winn: We never talked about your actual choice to detransition and I think there was a bit of a timeline there between when you first made that choice and began the process and when you socially detransitioned because of where you were at in your career. Did you want to briefly explain that part? Like what was the final straw after 30 years of living this way?

Jessi Harris: There were many, many times in my 30 years that I wanted out and I felt terribly obligated for one reason or another. But when COVID hit and I had to isolate myself because I have medical conditions that caused me to leave my job. And then I, in the middle of lockdown, I turned 65 and it just all kind of was the right time and the right place. What I didn't do before then, I mean, I was already playing with detransitioning before COVID. But I was in a position in my career that I didn't feel like it was fair to my patients that I make this change in front of them. And that there were people that I had his patients that would not have understood it. And they had a great respect for me to take care of them. They depended on me to take care of them all the way. And I didn't want to confuse anybody. My coworkers knew that I was trans identified and they knew that I wanted out. But they also respected me for not wanting to confuse the patients.

Stephanie Winn: When you say you wanted out, was it the medical consequences? Was it feeling like you were living a lie?

Jessi Harris: It was all of it. It was definitely a big old lie for me. I did it because I got tired of getting beat up and I wanted to keep my job and I wanted to raise my family. I didn't do it because I wanted to be a man. I wasn't born in the wrong body or any of that stuff. So in some ways, it was a big old lie. I know there's other people out there that it's a big old lie for too, but I can't, you know, I can't dictate their lives.

Stephanie Winn: During your 30 years, was there ever a time that you woke up in the morning thinking, yep, I'm really a man, or was it always kind of like putting on a suit of armor?

Jessi Harris: I never, not once did I say, yep, I'm a man, because I wasn't. I was pretending.

Stephanie Winn: What a way to live. I remember William Allen saying something really similar. Those are probably my most related interviews. I mentioned Gina earlier, who's also a grandmother. William Allen also spent 30 years living as trans. So it sounds like apologizing to your daughter, she really took that in and you've gone a long way towards making amends in that relationship. Sounds like your granddaughter, there's still a lot of heartache there.

Jessi Harris: Yeah, I don't know to what extent, because she's dealing with her own things, but I know that her mother, my daughter, is the liaison between her and I, and I would like to think that at one point we get to resolve that issue, and it would be nice to be able to do that. I really wish that it hadn't gone the way it did, but it did. And, you know, we just have to fix things along the way that we can. I mean, you got to do it in sincerity. You can't just do it because it doesn't feel good anymore. But my daughter actually said that she was proud of me at one point, which surprised me.

Stephanie Winn: If your granddaughter were listening, what would you say to her?

Jessi Harris: that I would like for her to just sit down and talk to me and listen to my story. I would like to tell it to her in person, but I know she's hearing it from her mother because my daughter has been, even though there were eight years, nine years where she wasn't speaking to me, she was still my biggest fan. I mean, she actually told me that.

Stephanie Winn: Huh. How does that work?

Jessi Harris: I don't know. You'd have to ask her and I haven't even asked her that yet.

Stephanie Winn: What advice would you give to other detransitioners who want to make amends with people in their family?

Jessi Harris: Honesty is the best policy. Honesty. Even though, I mean, there are things that I've said in my attempt to apologize that were just as hurtful as not saying anything or being nasty about it. But it takes a certain amount of maturity to be able to listen to somebody's anger as an adult and to know that it's valid. Their feelings are valid, just like mine are. Everybody has, you know, we all experience life in a different form, and there are some lessons that we all have to learn, but I think humility is a very important one, especially when trying to make amends with somebody that's important.

Stephanie Winn: Good advice. Well, is there anything that you wanted to say that you haven't said yet?

Jessi Harris: Yeah, but I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I really think that the trans craze is out of hand. How's that?

Stephanie Winn: That's about as close as- I don't know how much of my podcast you've listened to, but I'm pretty opinionated on this subject. The more I learn about it, the more crazy I think it is.

Jessi Harris: Oh, yeah. Okay. As long as you said it first, I do believe it's absolutely out of hand.

Stephanie Winn: I mean, that's that's part of why my, you know, sort of cheeky subtitle, if you will, on X is sanity specialist, because I feel like mental health professionals, you know, the baseline for what we're here to support should be sanity. Like that's like the bottom floor standard of mental health. below that you are underground. And so if we can't, as mental health professionals, declare what is sane and differentiate that from what is insane, I don't know why we exist at all.

Jessi Harris: Well, with that in mind, I think there's a generation that got away with an awful lot of stuff and now they don't have to. They can do whatever they want and they don't have to.

Stephanie Winn: I'm sorry, which generation are you throwing under the bus? Is it yours or mine?

Jessi Harris: No, I think I'm throwing the, well, I guess they'd be between 20 and 30 years old right now.

Stephanie Winn: Gen Z. Yes.

Jessi Harris: See, I don't know which one is which, so I just use ages.

Stephanie Winn: Okay.

Jessi Harris: I really think that the trend, because I know that all kinds of other things have been trendy, I think that it's just gotten a little out of control and I think it has a lot to do with the lack of discipline.

Stephanie Winn: Well, Jesse, I very much appreciate you sharing your story. Anywhere else people can find you? Do you have any social media?

Jessi Harris: No, no. I don't. I live in the woods. I don't live on social media. Other than the podcast.

Stephanie Winn: In the real world.

Jessi Harris: Right. You can share my email address with folks. I've gotten a lot of positive emails back from older women that really enjoyed hearing my story.

Stephanie Winn: Oh, great. OK, we'll be sure to include Jesse's email address in the show notes as well. Jesse, thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Jessi Harris: I really appreciate it. It's nice meeting you.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.