Chiara, Jesse, and Helena are three young women who formerly identified as transgender. Now they think it’s a false and dangerous ideology. Here they talk to National Review.

Chiara was raised by a single mom. She wanted to start hormonal treatment, followed by surgical intervention, but her mom said no. “It was very much a desperate thing for me. I wanted it right now. . . [I] wasn’t looking forward to the future. It was all about ‘if I don’t transition, I’m gonna die.’” Now she is so glad that she wasn’t allowed to go through with it.

Like Chiara, Jesse’s parents were against her going on hormonal treatment. She explains how she got involved in transgenderism:

As a teenager, I was really involved in online activism and the rise of what people now call social justice warriors. I thought that was a very righteous cause to be a part of as a young person. So that eventually lead to me adopting more and more facets of gender ideology into how I perceived myself and others in the world.

Helena had a history of not fitting in and feeling uncomfortable with her body. She had been badly bullied and was feeling very low when she turned to transgenderism. She explains:

When I found this trans stuff online I felt it explained everything: why I didn’t like my body, why I was bullied, why I didn’t fit in. Just every question and problem that I had I just felt it was automatically answered. Explained by this trans thing. But not only was it explained it also offered me a solution.

Helena had hormonal treatment for seventeen months. She took high doses of testosterone, which has altered her voice. At the age of 18, she wasn’t thinking about her long-term future. She wasn’t thinking about the serious risks and possible infertility. She has some advice for other young people who might think they’re transgender:

Step back from the activism, the ideology, the community – think about the reasons why you might feel this way about your body. Because there’s just a lot of people with just glaringly obvious reasons why they don’t like their body…

Listen to these brave young women in their own words.