Woman who had breasts cut off, took hormones to live as "male" now regrets "huge mistake"

A British woman says that her seventeen-year attempt to live as a male, which included being injected by hormones, having her breasts cut off, and having a fake male reproductive organ attached to her, was a “huge mistake” that she now deeply regrets.

Debbie Karemer, 61, was in the spotlight this week as she broke a new taboo: publicly admitting to “detransitioning” from so-called sex-change therapies (see photos here).

“I’m a woman,” she said. “I’m not meant to be a bloke. I’m trapped. I feel completely mutilated. It’s a complete mess ― where do you even start? I just regret the decision.”

Karemer now believes that the self-hatred she suffered almost all her life was a side-effect of being sexually abused by her own father when she was a teenager. But in 2002 she saw a daytime television talk show episode about transgender people, and was suddenly convinced that her problem was that she was in the wrong body. She was 44.