Keith Caputo Explains Decision to Detransition, Says Some Stupid Sh*t About Other Trans People
Sometimes, transgender people detransition. It happens. Sometimes someone decides they’re going to be happier transitioning out of their gender assigned and birth and then changes their minds back and becomes their assigned gender again. There are lots of reasons someone might want to detransition, some legitimate and some which have more to do with fear and denial. But anyone who wants to respect someone else’s gender transition always has to respect someone else’s detransition because that’s their choice too. As long as the person detransitioning doesn’t start saying stupid shit like “I’ve cured my gender dysphoria” and start claiming that there’s something wrong with people transitioning in the first place, they can do whatever they want. Unfortunately, all that stupid shit I just mentioned is exactly what Life of Agony vocalist Keith Caputo has been saying since he announced his detransition.
Over a decade after coming out as a transgender woman and living his life for about 13 years as Mina Caputo, Keith Caputo announced back in November that he intends to detransition back into living as his male identity again. In a recent interview with controversial transgender porn actor Buck Angel (that was transcribed by Blabbermouth), Caputo talked a little bit about his decision to detransition and, along the way, said a lot of disparaging things about the trans community:
“I felt like I was doing a disservice to the world because I’ve been medically not on hormones for about six or seven years now. I took myself off of hormone therapy in 2016, because after roughly 17 years of being on hormone therapy, it was incredibly, incredibly difficult for me. And I went on hormone therapy even after male puberty. I can’t even imagine what hormone therapy would be like for a child before puberty. Let’s just face it, as children, we all go through some kind of identity disorientation. Some things stick to us and some things just work themselves out through time, and that’s why I don’t think hijacking these little spirits, these little humans is really… I think there’s a lot of malpractice going on.”
To clarify some misinformation there, first of all it should be noted that being on hormones is not a requirement to be considered transgender and transgender people who do not take hormones and still wish to be acknowledged as the gender they feel more comfortable as are still valid. Furthermore, gender affirming care for small children only involves calling them by their chosen name and allowing them to dress as they chose, and hormone replacement therapy isn’t generally started until age 13 or 14 at the absolute earliest, and even then it’s done only with parental consent and careful monitoring from a medical professional.
Caputo continued, saying:
“Just the other day I released to my fans, I really wanted to talk about the elephant in the room and that’s me not being on hormones anymore,” Mina continued. “And I was in limbo. I was in limbo for these six, seven years, because as I started becoming more and more of my divine male self, my body changing, my facial hair, everything changing, my psychological, my spiritual, my intellectual, my emotional, everything really changed and I really went back to a very clear self, a clarity I’ve never even experienced before. ‘Cause I didn’t do any antidepressant. I’m not on any drugs. I smoke pot. I do mushrooms once in a while. But I do no alcohol. I’m on no pharmaceutical drugs. Actually, the hormone therapy was really doing such a disservice to my nature that I knew for years that I was fighting the nature codes. You can’t fight the nature codes. And every day it just got worse — the rashes, the migraine headaches. My libido was robbed from me. I’m a very sensual, sexual person — I always was. My libido was stripped from me. I had no fun. I was always depressed. Maybe I’m mislabeling it, but I felt more of a gender anxiety and depression while being on hormone therapy. I thought I was doing myself a service, man, but after all the years, I was torturing myself. And then to protect all these ideologies that I had about myself being trans and being a non-gender-conforming child, which I’ll always be… But there’s more of a clarity now. I’m walking in a more healed version of myself.”
Again, Caputo’s statement there is loaded with misinformation and, while his personal experience is valid, making generalizations about other people’s transitions is bullshit. Taking hormones is not “fighting the nature codes.” Nature codes aren’t a thing.
Caputo continued to claim falsely that gender dysphoria generally works itself out, saying things like:
“[W]hat people don’t realize is that gender dysphoria in a lot of people later on in life, it works itself out. And people — of course, the white coats, the therapists, the clinicians, the sexologists, the therapists, the endocrinologists, the surgeons, they don’t wanna hear people like me say these things work themselves out.”
For the record, the regret rate for undergoing gender transition is about 1% worldwide and detransitions like Caputo’s are extremely rare. So good for you, Keith, figuring out what works for you, but maybe shut the fuck up about other people’s transitions.
