I Was Thirteen When They Put Me on Estrogen - Jonni Skinner (#39)
Jonni Skinner was thirteen when a US gender clinic placed him on cross-sex hormones following what he says was a fabricated diagnosis. By fourteen he was receiving higher doses to halt his growth, while his mother was threatened with losing custody if she refused to comply. Eight years later he is a detransitioner with permanent physical damage and a story that speaks directly to British concerns. The abuses he describes — falsified records, coerced consent, unmonitored medicalisation of an autistic, gay teenager — echo the failures that drove the Cass Review and the closure of Tavistock.
Jonni Skinner grew up in rural Michigan in a religious household, diagnosed with autism at the age of four. When puberty arrived and he struggled with being a feminine, same-sex-attracted boy in a conservative setting, his mother turned to the gender clinic at the University of Michigan for help. He was thirteen. What followed, as he describes it in this episode, was not medicine — it was a systematic campaign of coercion, fabrication and harm that would take years to undo. The clinic diagnosed him with a fictitious endocrine disorder to justify placing him on cross-sex hormones. A year later, when his height became a concern, the same doctors gave him higher doses — framed as treatment for so-called tall stature — apparently to stunt his growth. When his mother expressed doubt, she was threatened with having Jonni removed from the family home. Medical records were falsified. He was directed to sex shops to obtain what were described as treatment supplies. Jonni spent eight years living as a trans woman before he detransitioned and began to piece together what had happened to him. His profile will be immediately recognisable to anyone who followed the Cass Review closely. Autistic, gay, struggling with body dysmorphia and religious guilt — these were precisely the vulnerabilities that Hilary Cass found over-represented in referrals to UK gender services, and which she argued had not been adequately explored before children were placed on a medical pathway. Her conclusion that the evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors was remarkably weak resonates sharply when set against Jonni's account of what that pathway looked like in practice. The specific abuses Jonni describes — fabricated diagnoses, falsified records, parental coercion — go considerably further than what was documented at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust before its gender development service was closed in 2024. But the underlying dynamic is recognisable: a clinical culture in which questioning the treatment pathway was treated as obstruction, and in which institutional momentum overrode the welfare of the child. NHS England's own review found that safeguarding was inconsistent, follow-up was inadequate, and far too many young people were fast-tracked into irreversible interventions. Jonni is speaking out now because he wants the pattern to be visible. His account raises questions that remain unresolved in Britain: who is accountable when medical records are altered, when consent is manufactured rather than genuinely given, and when children are guided toward hormones rather than supported through therapy? As new NHS gender services open under stricter guidelines and as litigation from former Tavistock patients moves through the courts, his testimony is a reminder that these are not abstractions. They concern real families, lasting physical damage, and a generation of young people still waiting for honest answers.
