Prisha Mosley can spend hours gazing at her six-month-old son, marvelling at how he’s beginning to reach for objects, sit up with support and make babbling sounds. The first-time mother says her favourite moments are when the baby wakes up in the early morning and they snuggle in bed.
These occasions are precious but full of regret for the 26 year old, who has been left with permanent health problems after transitioning from female to male as a troubled teen, only to decide she’d made a mistake and reverse course a few years later.
Having undergone a double mastectomy at the age of just 18, she is unable to hug her baby properly and breastfeeding, of course, is out of the question.
‘He looks for milk and it’s not there,’ she sighs. ‘My chest is numb and covered in scars and lumps so it’s not soft and pillowy, like it should be for a baby.
‘I can feel him against my neck, shoulders and stomach, but it’s like there’s a big hole where my chest should be, because there’s no sensation there.’
Prisha is one of a rising number of young people who believe they were failed by medical professionals and fast-tracked into changing gender without being made fully aware of the consequences.
It’s an issue, of course, that’s becoming increasingly fraught in the UK, with the Government announcing an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for children last week, saying they present ‘an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people under 18 years without significant additional safeguards’.
Prisha’s case is remarkably similar to that of Keira Bell, one of the most prominent former patients of the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock Institute in north London.
Prisha Mosley as she is today, angry at the irreversible changes she inflicted on her body – including a double mastectomy
After detransitioning from a boy back to being a girl, Bell described her treatment as ‘experimental at best, destructive at worst’.
Her legal challenge against the Tavistock, which ran the clinic, over whether children under 16 considering gender treatment are mature enough to give informed consent for puberty blockers, was initially won in the High Court before being defeated in the Court of Appeal.
In the first lawsuit of its kind to proceed to court in the US, Prisha is suing the medical professionals she claims pushed gender-change as the solution to her mental health problems. ‘It was sold as this wonderful thing that would take away all the distress I was feeling,’ Prisha says. ‘But it didn’t help at all. It made me feel worse and I’m left with a lot of shame, guilt and anger.’
We’re meeting via Zoom at Prisha’s home in the small college town of Big Rapids, Michigan. With her dyed red hair and fashionable spectacles, she looks just like any young mum. The body that she says is disfigured is hidden in a big, woollen sweater.
Prisha, who also has a five-year-old stepdaughter with her boyfriend, doesn’t want to reveal her son’s name because of the threats she’s received since becoming an activist against gender-affirming care for minors and launching her legal case.
‘Every day I’m told that I’ve got the blood of children who need to transition on my hands,’ she says.
‘People threaten to take away my child, report me to child protection services, say they are going to “trans” him – all kinds of awful stuff.
‘My phone number has been posted online without my consent. I’ve been threatened online by people I know, who are in my town, and I can’t go to certain places or take my children to certain places.’
Prisha Mosley as a girl aged 15, left, and, right, the dramatic changes just two years later, aged 17, when she began her transition into a man
This remarkably self-assured young woman says she tries to ignore the torrent of vilification because she believes other vulnerable and confused teenagers should know about the risks of making medical decisions to try to change sex.
‘I was under the misconception that it was possible to change sex, and I thought I would never want children or change my mind about living as a man,’ she says. ‘But I grew up and realised I’d made a terrible mistake.’
By her own admission, Prisha was a troubled teen, who suffered from anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and suicidal thoughts during her childhood in North Carolina. At 14 she was sexually assaulted, became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.
At 15, she thought she would be better off being a boy. She recalls: ‘I wasn’t good at being a girl. I thought I was ugly and fat and not like the girly girls you see on TV or in the movies.
‘I thought a lot of the trauma I experienced didn’t happen to boys and they were stronger and tougher and had easier lives.’ In her vulnerable state, she says she was targeted by trans activists who entered a pro-anorexia internet chatroom that she belonged to.
‘I was being told by these activists that my misery was because my body was fighting to be a boy.
‘I was a child, and I believed it. I thought: “My body’s not just horrible, it’s entirely wrong. All my problems are because I’m really a boy.”’
She started using the name Charlie online and at 16 ‘threw a bit of a fit’ about having periods to the nutritionist treating her anorexia. She said she felt she was a boy trapped in a girl’s body.
Almost immediately, she says, she was put in touch with a gender therapist who said Prisha was suffering from gender dysphoria.
She was prescribed injections that would stop her from menstruating and, at 17, Prisha started testosterone. It led to her growing body and facial hair and developing larger muscles.
Her parents did not want their daughter to have treatment but were manipulated into agreeing to it, she claims. ‘My parents never thought I was a boy or that I’d been born in the wrong body, but they did know they had a child who was unhappy and had talked about suicide.
‘They were basically asked: “Do you want a dead daughter or a living son?” So they went along with it,’ she says.
While still a child, she was also given forms to change her name, her sex on her birth certificate and her social security number and, aged 18, at her request, she had a bi-lateral mastectomy.
One of Prisha’s biggest regrets is that, looking back, everything was so rushed. ‘They call it a life-saving issue because you’re going to kill yourself.
‘That’s why you are medicalised so fast, and the treatment is so extreme,’ she says, referring to gender-affirming care.
‘I wasn’t well. I was unstable. I’d been seeing therapists for years for my mental health struggles and suddenly, because one day I changed from saying I hated myself and I was fat to saying I thought I was a boy, all my symptoms were put into a single category of gender dysphoria.’
Parents are being left out of these life-changing situations, she points out.
‘They’re painted as abusers because they don’t want their child to undergo this extreme medicalisation. I’m in contact today with parents who have taken their kids to hospital because they are cutting themselves, or the kid says they are transgender and they’ve been removed by child protection services and the parents haven’t seen them since.’
For a few years, Prisha believed she had done the right thing, and she moved into LGBTQ+ accommodation in Florida.
But doubts began to creep in and it’s sad to hear Prisha describe how it began to dawn on her that gender-affirming care was, in her case, a mistake. ‘I remember the hope I got when I thought I was going to magically transform into a boy who would never be hurt again. I thought I would pretty much become a new person . . . all that optimism.
‘I’d fully bought the lie that I was going to become this whole new person, with all my problems behind me. But my problems were still there and I was feeling worse.’
She wanted her feminine body back and secretly stopped taking testosterone. In October 2022 she went back to living as a woman, having found happiness with a ‘kind and empathetic man’.
Having thought she was infertile, she unexpectedly became pregnant. While she was grateful, carrying her son was not easy, she says.
She is one of the first wave of detransitioners to experience motherhood and faced myriad health problems, while also feeling isolated and alone. ‘It was a high-risk pregnancy and the whole time I was worrying if the baby would be healthy because of all the cross-sex hormones I’d been taking,’ Prisha says.
Prisha Mosley lovingly cradling her newborn son – the baby she believed she never wanted
She suffered severe nausea: ‘My doctor said women get morning sickness because of the sudden influx of progesterone, and it was severe for me because I was already so low on all the female hormones I needed.’
Other complications ensued, including the fact that her hormonal balance, post-transition, caused the baby to be big while her uterus was small.
‘Because I didn’t finish puberty before I started taking testosterone, my hip bones were too small so there wasn’t a lot of room for the baby to grow. It was painful every time he moved.
‘I was also having problems with incontinence before becoming pregnant and had to go off the medication I was taking, so that got worse. And I couldn’t have a natural delivery – it wasn’t a choice I could make.’
Prisha’s son was born healthy by Caesarean section, but more problems arose.
‘I produced milk that was trapped in my chest with no way to reach my nipples because they had been severed, reshaped and reattached to my chest in the wrong spot so it could look like a boy’s chest. It was the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life,’ she shudders.
Thankfully, her baby is thriving, but Prisha says she still has health problems because of detransitioning, including chronic pain.
‘The muscles on my neck and shoulders are big and disproportionate, and they burn all the time, like electric shocks.
‘My female frame’s not designed to carry giant muscles at the top and nothing at the bottom,’ she says. ‘I have to take medications because my pancreas is messed up, I’m insulin-resistant and I’ve got polycystic ovary syndrome because of the years of taking testosterone.’
She also suffers from vaginal atrophy, a condition that happens when the body has low oestrogen levels and the vaginal walls become thinner, drier and more fragile, making sexual intercourse difficult.
‘It’s not just vaginal atrophy – it’s pelvic and uterine and bladder too,’ she says.
Another regret is that her voice has changed. ‘I was told by doctors that I would still be able to sing. Instead, I have pain. I can’t raise my voice or scream. My singing voice is gone, and that’s painful for me,’ she says. ‘My voice isn’t just deeper, my larynx doesn’t fit within my thickened vocal cords properly.’
She has raised money for breast reconstruction and takes oestrogen and progesterone. She has also undergone laser hair removal therapy. ‘I’ve still got hair on my chest, which I hate, but I had to stop treatment temporarily because laser therapy is so expensive,’ she says.
As an advocate for limits on gender-affirming care, Prisha’s story has been met with both sympathy and criticism in the US. She has become a voice for detransitioners while others see her as a threat to transgender rights.
She is currently an ambassador for the conservative think-tank Independent Women’s Forum and has testified at state legislatures across the US about the consequences of gender-affirming care.
In July 2023, she sued the doctors, therapists and clinics in North Carolina that convinced her to transition as a teenage girl to a boy, even after she was diagnosed with various mental health disorders.
Hers is the first case that will go before a judge and the healthcare professionals involved in the suit will face charges of civil conspiracy and fraud. They deny the charges.
‘This is the first substantive ruling we are aware of in which a court has held that a detransitioner’s case against her health care professionals is legally viable,’ Prisha’s lawyer Josh Payne said in a statement after the ruling earlier this year.
‘We are honoured to represent Prisha as she pursues justice for herself and her family and tries to prevent what happened to her from happening to others.’
Despite her many health problems, Prisha is clearly revelling in motherhood. Many women generously donated breast milk for her baby in his early days and now he is on formula and starting solids.
‘I’d like to have more children, but I’d need surgery so I don’t face the agony of what happened with trapped milk again,’ she says.
‘Transition was like putting a mask on and sometimes I think that I haven’t been able to take that mask off, that I’m locked in this cage with lasting health problems that keep me from being fully present in the world.
‘But I’m determined to speak out and alert other teenagers to the possibility of regret. I feel like I was an experiment and gender ideology has robbed me of my health in the future.’
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