Our readers may be aware of a landmark medical malpractice judgment made in New York in late January 2026. This case involved 22-year-old detransitioner, Fox Varian, who had her healthy breasts removed just 11 months after she socially transitioned at the age of 15 years.
Some of the details that emerged during the court case include the use of coercive manipulation by a medical professional, threatening that Varian would kill herself if she did not get her healthy breasts removed. Varian suffered severe psychiatric comorbidities, including depression, anxiety, social phobia, autism, eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder, that were apparently not considered as contributing factors in her presentation. Her presentation was exacerbated by socioeconomic factors, including parental separation, estrangement from her father and regular changing of schools.
Medicalisation of trans-identification is oftentimes portrayed as the biggest medical scandal since the lobotomies of the 1930s to early 1950s. However, the current scourge of medicalisation of trans-identification has taken place in a culture that can accurately be characterised as perverse: the disavowal of prohibitory law aimed at restraining instinctive expression, in favour of compulsory practices aimed at maximising instinctive gratification. In contrast to depression that was seen as a disease to be cured by lobotomy, trans-identification is seen as a mysterious gift to be celebrated and carved into healthy bodies. This quasi-religious ecstasy around trans-identification leads to thought-terminating practices, such as blind affirmation, repudiation of competing explanations, rejection of developmental explanations for gender distress and intimidation of doubters, or those raise the alarm around such serious malpractices.
May this verdict be a first step in correcting medical practice gone astray. The full report can be found here.
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