 Good evening, everyone. Thank you as always for joining me this evening. I've got a really, really interesting conversation for you this evening. And I want to, before we start, say a sincere thanks to our guest this evening, because it's very personal what he's going to share with us this evening. And you'll find it very interesting, which as I do. So let's crack on. I want to introduce you to Rhys. Good evening, Rhys. How are you? Hello. I'm doing well. A little bit of a midday tired, but I'm good. Thanks very much for taking the time to come on and talk to us. I really do appreciate it. And I do know what a personal issue this is for you. So I'm very grateful to you for talking to us about it. So let's start at the beginning. You have what we would call a detransitioning. Is that a fair description? Okay. So let's start at the very beginning. So I want to ask you first of all about your childhood. Not in any great detail, just about this. One of the things that we hear, just to be clear, everyone has their own story to tell and yours is yours. We hear all the time that you've got a scenario now where young children four, five, six years of age are being trans and what they will, what we'll be told is that children, even young children feel like they are a girl trapped in a boy's body or a boy trapped in a girl's body, et cetera. Is that how you felt as a child? Tell us your, tell us from, is that how you felt as a child? With hindsight in mind. Yeah. It was fun to fantasize as a kid, for sure. And you could quite easily turn that fantasy into something that is supposed to be real or it could be left as a fantasy, depending on how other people treat you in regards to it. So it was definitely in my mind that it would be fun to be a girl, that it would be nice to be a girl, that I would fit in as a girl. But in my youngest days, it was just that, it was just a fantasy, it was just a passing thought. Okay, and do you think that, I mean, I was a tomboy as a kid and I'm pretty certain that if we were living today, people would have told me that I was a boy living in a girl's body and I never wanted to be a boy, it wasn't, but that's the, do you think that if someone at that point had said, you're a girl, you would have believed them, it would have reinforced this fantasy, as you call it? Yeah, and I think that's exactly what happened just a little bit later on than childhood. Okay, all right, well tell us about that, please, Rhys. So and what happened, where were you, what happened, when did you decide to do that transitioning was what you wanted to do? So a little bit of context to how I ended up in that position, I was quite sure of myself growing up, like I knew it was at first a fantasy. Cause I had my best friend who, you know, I could always talk to about these kinds of things and I would bounce it off him and he'd come back and say, no, that's just, that's kind of stupid. And, you know, we kept each other sort of on the straight and narrow that way. And I had my girlfriend that I'd met as a teenager. We basically grew up together and as we got older, we decided to officially call it a relationship. And she too would say things like, stupid cause then, you know, that would make her gay or something along those lines. She had all kinds of fun ways to describe why it would be stupid. And eventually the fantasy as it was just got put out of my head. And I would say from the ages of about 13 up to 18 or 19, I didn't think about it anymore. It was only around those late teen years that my best friend and my girlfriend died within a year of each other, both in motorcycle-related accidents. And from there, I sort of spiraled out of control. I didn't have my anchor anymore. I didn't have any grounding. So I tried to look for new friends. And of course the internet was really coming into prevalence at the time. So I jumped on the internet and did a quick search for some friends. And I started to find friends. And of course they had quite a progressive leaning. And it sort of went downhill from there. I went to college. I met more progressives. So more progressives online. I was being surrounded by progressive type people. And when I brought this thing up that I'd gone through in my childhood, you know, this weird sort of fantasy of being a girl, you know, redressing in the wrong clothes every now and then it was exciting, stuff like that. They said, oh no, this is serious. This is a real thing. So it's almost as if I'd gone back to being a child and now somebody had said, it's not a silly fantasy. It's real. Now you have to act on this. And that was what I think started the idea that transition was the right thing to do. Coupled with just generally not fitting in because I was quite a manly bloke. And this was the time when being manly was not that popular, I guess. So you were vulnerable. You were in a vulnerable place because you'd suffered great loss and a girlfriend at the same time, effectively. And you'd gone to college and met these people and you brought up the fact that you felt this way as a child. Yeah, I can't remember what sparked the conversation but I had sort of offhandedly mentioned that I did used to play dress up and that I had this image of the ever female me in my mind kind of thing. And that sort of passing conversation then became very serious with these people online and in college. I mean, what kind of... Why do you think this... I mean, were these people who were trans themselves or were they just... There was a couple of transgender people in the group who at the time I had no real opinion of it. They were just other people. And that's kind of how I always viewed people when I was younger is it didn't matter what traits you had, you were just another person. So it wasn't that special to me at the time. But as this whole thing progressed I really started to notice that they were also transgender. I think that also contributed to a feeling of belonging. What happened after that? So was there a point? Was there a moment when you thought, okay, I'm going to start quote living as a woman and how did you start that process? So it was through talking to these peers online and in college that this idea became more and more serious and less of a fantasy. So I went to my doctor and my doctor is... He's a wonderful doctor, very impartial. He didn't say one way or the other. He didn't affirm or deny anything to do with gender transition. He referred me straight on to a gender clinic. When I went to the gender clinic, there was quite a lot of affirmation from staff and therapists and other people in the clinic. And there was very little skepticism really in there. So I think that snowballed. Once I got to the gender clinic, it snowballed on. And how did it... I mean, did it give you a place in the world? Did it make you feel... Did it validate you? Did it make you... Were you less confused or more confused with all this affirmation? I think at the time it felt great because I felt like I wasn't fitting into society. I didn't have a place as a young manly man, quite aggressive and competitive. I didn't really feel like there was a place for me. I knew this reality, by the way. I hadn't seen anything in terms of conservative commentary or anything from the other side of the fence. It was just this wild that I existed in in the Progressive College and the Progressive Online Friend Group. So it really did make me feel like I was fitting in, like I was making the right choices, and I was going to have a happier life. And all of the people around me were affirming this at the time. Looking back, I mean, do you... You said the doctor sent you straight to a gender clinic. Do you think that was the right thing to do? I think with the tools at his disposal and the job he's supposed to do, I think that is the best he could have done. Obviously, he's not really supposed to have an opinion on these kinds of things. I don't really hold any ill will to my doctor. I think he did the best he could in the situation. And at the gender clinic, it was just affirmation, affirmation, affirmation. There was only one narrative. Almost all the way, yeah. There was one, I think... I'm not sure if there were therapists or an endocrinologist, but it was an older gen, and he basically contacted my parents and said that he didn't think that my gender dysphoria was sincere. And of course, because I was surrounded by all these progressive types and all this affirmation, my first go-to was to dismiss him as a transphobic. So that happened a lot, honestly. My middle brother also didn't think that this was the right thing to do, and my middle brother had been somebody who kept me on the straight and narrow as I was growing up. He kept me looking for jobs. He kept me from falling into bad habits, like smoking and drinking, things like that. But when he dissented from this particular thing, I'd been so conditioned at this point that I disowned him almost instantly. My second oldest brother, who was my role model growing up, he wanted to dissent from it, but he didn't want to upset me. So we ended up sort of becoming awkward and distant, even though he was, like I say, he was my role model growing up. I didn't have a father figure growing up, so it was my oldest brother. And how old were you at this point? 18, 19? When I started the transition properly, I think it would have been about 25. Oh, okay. So quite late. I'd spent a long time sort of deliberating back and forth on it, like I said, this was the only reality I knew, so it seemed like the way forward. So how soon after you went to the gender clinic did you start to the actual transition? I think it was within a couple of months I got a prescription for the testosterone blockers. I think it was Spiro something and the estrogen tablets. And then I was on the start of the two years living in role, and it took a couple of months to get there. Okay, so you're in the gender clinic and they start to give you drugs. What kind of drugs did they work? It wasn't straight away. It was three or four months, maybe, I think. It's kind of fuzzy to remember that bit. But the medicine I remember was called Spirolactane or something like that. I don't remember the exact name, but it was a testosterone or preandrogen blocker. And a estrogen tablet. I can't remember what that one was called either. It was a two milligram tablet or estrogen or something like that. And once I was on those, I started to notice a change straight away. What were the changes like? I lost a lot of my aggressive tendencies. I wasn't quite so quick to be confrontational, which at the time I thought was a fantastic thing. Obviously, my body started to change shape pretty quickly. I have not got rid of all of that. This is not a weight issue you're seeing here. This is my chest is quite pronounced even with a binder. And overall, I just sort of felt a lot more subdued and calm. Not like I'd been sedated, but like the need to compete and prove myself had been taken away with this medicine. And physically you grew breasts. Yes, quite prominent as well. I'd lost quite a bit of muscle mass because I used to be able to lift a lot. I've worked a lot on cars. Cars are my first and most important passion in life. And that also played a part in this. I used to do the bullheaded things like if a car was in the wrong place in the workshop, I'd pick it up by the wheel arch and slide it across the workshop. And we were trying to put an engine on the crane because it was just a block. So it wasn't all the accessories that make it really heavy. It was just a block. I squatted down and dead lifted it up and the guy locked it in with the chains. And he was like, why did you do that? You could put a jack under it. I just felt like doing it that way. But I lost all that strength to the point where a lot of the manual tasks that I generally do, like keeping the guard and decorating. I was not doing quite so well with those anymore. I've definitely become a whole lot less manly very quickly. And this two years that you live as a woman, what does that look like? You started wearing women's clothes. Did you wear a wig? What does that look like? I had quite long hair and it was a dark blonde color naturally. I just thought I've always had long hair because there was a little bit of a rock type personality going on. But yeah, I started wearing women's clothes, softened the voice, started getting laser depilation. So the beard on my cheeks and jawline just doesn't grow anymore. This is all that survived. I think it was 14 sessions of laser depilation. It was just a little goatee. Softened my voice and all that kind of stuff. It's been a long time since I've done the feminine voice, but it was decent enough that most times I answered the phone, it would be hello, miss, or hello, love, or things like that. And you basically have to live in role for two years before you can be considered for surgery and things like that. So you did that for two years. How are you treated? How was life for you? What were your friends? What did you work? What was life like? The people, the friends that I'd made through the college and through online, they were, you know, rallying around me like I was doing the beautiful and brave thing. So I had a group of friends that seemingly I could never lose no matter what I did. Work was difficult because I was struggling in college at this point as well, just struggling to make ends meet in college, working part-time, things like that. So I didn't have a job at the time to worry about in terms of making this change. So I dropped out of a job, I started going through this change and then I came back into a job. And the new job, as you might expect, just they didn't bring it up. I didn't say anything about it. So I fell out with a couple of my family members because I was told to dismiss them as transphobic. Other than that, I didn't really have any friends left over from the time before because, you know, the two friends that had passed on, they were sort of my branch into all the other friends that I had. So when I didn't have that go-between, I fell out of touch with, I guess, my classic friends, my old friends. So you have you at your two years under your belt. What happened then? Then it was a case of the consultations and the therapy really stepped up and gearing towards the surgery thing. And I brought that back to my group of friends and brought that back to my mother who, of course, you know, a mother always wants to be supportive. So my mother was very affirming of this as well. I don't hold any ill will against her. She's just doing what mothers do. And through all of that affirmation and through this increase in the intensity of the consultations and therapy, I was led to the conclusion and also brought myself to the conclusion that it was the right time to go for surgery about 26, going on 27 years old. And tell us about the surgery. So when I was going into the hospital after it had been confirmed that I'd lived in roll for long enough, I think I was almost at three years at this point. At the time, I was honestly quite excited because I thought I was going to come out the other side of this with a whole new body and a whole new feeling and be able to indulge many new pleasures. I think by this time I was openly by and I don't think it was ever a sexual attraction. It was just wanting to be close to people. And I guess in a way I thought that this was going to let me be closer to more people. So I was excited at the time. And then when I woke up after the surgery and lifted up the sheets and looked down, I was like, oh, so that really happened and I can't go back from that. And that was sort of the first little inkling of doubt, but I still had my friend group at the time. So I didn't worry about it. I still had the people to go back to. So just to be clear, and I know this is all really, really personal, but your genitals were removed in this surgery? Yes, completely sterile now. I don't have any natural sex hormones either. So I'm on medication for the rest of my life. You are... It's an incredible thing. So you wake up in hospital, you said you had a first inkling of doubt at that point. How did life progress from there? How did you... presumably this was your womanhood on it? What was life like after that? So it was interesting after that because now that I felt like I was quote-unquote complete, I started venturing into all kinds of new experiences, so to speak. And I had that group of friends who were just endlessly affirming and constantly praising me. But from there, I felt like I now had the confidence and the body in the presentation that I could now go and see more of the world as than me that I thought that I wanted to be. So off I went to America, of course. Being told that America's quite transphobic and all this kind of stuff, especially the rural areas, the Republican areas, they say, oh, they're very transphobic. You don't want to go there and all this kind of nonsense that it turned out to be. Because when I was in America, I went to rural Kentucky, rural Indiana. I think I was there a total of 12 months. I encountered no issues, no bigotry of any kind. In fact, a lot of people were just fascinated because I had quite a strong English accent at the time. So it was lovely. And that was also sort of the first part of the awakening to the mistakes that I'd made. Explain that. People were kind and accepting of you, but this awakened you to a mistake you'd made. In what way? As I was saying about the college and I've made it university, the colleges and the online friend group I had, that little circle was my entire reality. All of those progressive type things were my entire reality. So when I went to America and I met people who live outside of this reality because they seceded from this sort of overbearing government control of everything you're allowed to see and hear, I started to see and hear other opinions. I started to see people actually living a free life as in, you know, free to make their own choices and make their own way in life. People who'd worked as hard as I'd worked and come out way higher up the ladder than I had. So it started to really open my eyes to there's a whole world outside of this progressive reality that I basically grown up in and transitioned in. So it wasn't a matter of you felt you could have been yourself in this realm of freedom if you hadn't been... Is that... Yeah, I think if I'd been born in America and grown up in America I'd be a very different person because there was two sides to the coin in America. Yes, sorry. Were they trying to... Was there any persuasion from the people you met in America that you had made... Did someone say to you you've made a mistake? You should have been... There was no... There was nothing like that. There were people who were very, very supportive and almost coddling of it. Sort of the same as there is in the UK in my former progressive group of friends. They were very supportive of it. And then people who didn't really have an opinion or anything about it. So I never really met any strong opposition whilst I was in America. I even volunteered a couple of churches trying to see if I could maybe get workplace sponsorship for immigration. And even in churches, conservative churches, Catholic churches, old school churches, I still didn't run into any issues. In fact, I think the only place I ran into issues was probably California. Which... Yeah. So you started to question whether or not you've done the right thing when you were in America. What happened next? How long were you having these thoughts? Did you come back to the UK and you were still thinking I've made a mistake? So whilst I was in America, seeing this whole other side of things that I started to think maybe I'd made a mistake, because obviously this was about 2015, 2016, 2017, 2017, across those years. So this was the start of Donald Trump's presidency and there was all kinds of propaganda about him being transphobic and anti-LGBT and all of this kind of stuff and of course I believed it straight away and thought what a terrible, terrible person he is. But then I got speaking to people on the conservative side, people on the Republican side and they cleared up a lot of the lies and propaganda and I brought that back with me to the UK. So I now had a lot of questions and the moment I started voicing any of these questions or asking any of these questions my little progressive friend group got smaller and smaller and smaller and the last nail in that coffin that really made me realise I've made a terrible mistake and I've been living in this fabricated reality is when this whole zealous obsession with the green movement started to really pick up in the UK and like I said, the cars are my thing. That's all I've ever really wanted in life is to have a nice car especially a classic and I was quite I started questioning that and that was sort of the last progressive friend dropped me at that point because how could you be a climate change denier? How could you? Except I just wanted to know what actually is it and how dangerous is it and what is it without the media and the propaganda behind it and that was almost I would say that that was the tipping point. I went from I'm okay being a woman to oh my god I've made a terrible mistake when all those progressive people just dissolved around me and I'm out on my own no more support from the gender clinic or anything like that either they basically push me out the other side I'm a successful statistic and that's it and now I've got to figure out the rest So you have been you had lived as a woman for how many years altogether? I think by the time that I actually finally socially detransitioned I think it'd been eight years eight years and what was it like when did the point come when you thought okay I'm going to return to maleness So when that group of progressive friends dissolved around me while suddenly alone I'd come back from America with all these questions and now I had no friends to ask I thought screw it I'm not going to listen to any more of what they tell me I'm allowed to listen to I'm not going to listen to any more propaganda any more news media any more politicians or anything and I just went and did all the things that I'm not supposed to do I went and listened to Jordan Peterson I went and looked at conservative Christianity I even listened to others who came to my door who were also a big part in this I listened to them you're not supposed to listen to them if you're progressive you're supposed to have no religious callers on your door or something like that but I listened to them and then we came in we had tea and coffee and we talked about the Bible and that was where really strongly started to come to the detransition resolution particularly started to return to Christianity because when I was quite young I was brought up Christian and then the government I don't remember this the government did that sweeping ban on prayer and hymns in schools whilst I was still in primary school so religion was just taken out of my life just like that and I would come back to it and in particular being honest avoiding deceit not telling lies things like that really started to hit home I think I came to a realization at this point that I've got to do something about all of the terrible policies in this country all of the terrible things that are being done in the name of progressiveness and if every single one of my interactions is a risk of a conflict that's not going to help me do that because being misgendered of course as a transgender is quite hurtful and you want to confront or correct the person straight away and that puts them in a defensive position because if they misgender you they can get in all kinds of trouble for it and having that sort of potential conflict on every single interaction was not going to help me make the country I'm in or my life any better and I think the day when I finally decided was that day that I drove up to Swansea with a couple of the four Britain members from down in south west and at that point I was like I'm going to be talking to hundreds of people every single year and it's obviously not been sitting well with me for a long time this gender thing I don't want that kind of confrontation with people every time and I just decided at that point yeah I'm just going to go back to being socially male regardless of what's going on in my pants or under my shirt grow a beard put the deep voice back on and just be approachable and be normal so to speak but normal is a weird word anyway it is do you feel, I mean you said something interesting there that religion brought you to the thinking that you needed to tell the truth and sort of be authentic if you're like do you feel that you were living a lie all that not consciously but do you feel that you were living a lie for those eight years? in hindsight yes because I at the time believe well that's it now I can officially call myself a woman but of course the reality of it is that I can't bear children you know all kinds of other biological things and that I'd lived the formative years of my life as a man so in hindsight it really did feel very dishonest especially since all of my interactions online I also never told anyone about the transition so it really did feel quite dishonest in hindsight to get a little bit personal again Rhys if you don't mind what was your romantic life during this time during the eight years at the time it felt quite successful I'd mean in a couple of very long time relationships one had lasted two and a half years I think the other one had lasted three years and it was through those relationships that I actually went to America in the first place but looking back on those relationships I realised that a lot of it was trying to be somebody I'm not to fit into something that I'm not really supposed to be so at the time it felt like it was the right thing but afterwards I realised it was just an indulgence in vice really I wasn't getting anything out of it other than stuff and contact and pleasure so when you decided it's probably the wrong word but you know what I mean I came clear to you I suppose it's a better word to become male again to live from this male again is it a matter of taking more medication or stopping taking medication or what is the physical changes that you made at that point so I'm still working a lot of that out and I spoke to my GP again and you know it was very neutral on everything one issue that transgenders really need to be aware of and I really hope to make people aware of it before they consider transition is things like bone density can be greatly affected by the hormone level so if you're not getting enough hormone whether that be testosterone or estrogen you can have problems with things like bone density and problems with mood and depression weight gain and weight loss even sometimes things like that so the doctor recommended putting me on a very low dose of estrogen which I'm still on now I'm still trying to get a referral to just a regular endocrinologist to get back on some kind of normal male hormone level so that's um I think it's been almost a year since that swansy trip so it takes a lot of time and unfortunately I'm still struggling a lot with the changes that were made to my body over that period of time and how do you feel about yourself now how do you feel about do you feel more authentic do you feel definitely I definitely feel a lot more authentic and a lot more genuine and now that I've listened to all these people I'm not supposed to listen to and I've seen a much more I don't want to call it simpler reality a much more realistic reality than all of these things you have to remember for the progressive reality I've become a lot more calm relaxed open approachable some people would even call me charismatic I don't know about that I don't want to blow my own trumpet just in general everything's been a lot better and are you openly detransitioning I mean if you go on have you got social media accounts and things where you will announce yourself as someone who is detransitioning yes I reach out on quite a lot of platforms to do that as well because I think it's important that people see the skeptical side of transgenderism and I've been banned from so many peer support groups and so many platforms and I've been kicked out of meetings transgender meetings for expressing a negative view of transition and the majority of the people who are in here either still in their two years living in role or in the two years after surgery where everything feels great so maybe in sort of eight years they're also going to be going I wish I'd listened hopefully if I share my experience some people who aren't some people who are not quite sure why they're there or they've got doubts or issues along the way might stop themselves from making a decision they can't come back from I'm hoping in a way to save people from gender transitioning and you said you've been kicked out of groups and I've been banned from social media and I know it's like to be banned how overt is the hostility if you look at for example J.K. Rowling and you must have seen what the death threats and things that she gets for being very reasonably very politely question is have you got that kind of hostility towards you is there a threat to violence is it that bad it's quite nasty especially from the online peer support groups that organisers are very very hostile and something I've noticed about this I think in my entire life I've met maybe two people who transitioned and are still happy nearly 10 years later everybody else that I knew at the time that transitioned is sort of in a similar position to me now I don't not that I talk to them anymore but I keep an eye on their feeds and stuff like that but something I noticed in all these peer support groups is it's almost predominantly male to female in the online support groups and the moment I show any kind of dissent from the orthodoxy or that this hasn't worked for me or that you know anything like that any kind of doubt it's almost as if I get an aggressive male response back you know I get the door slammed in my face I get shouted at get sworn at some sorry sometimes I even get threatened and I've had random occurrences happen that the police say are just that random occurrences things like eggs thrown on my car or mirrors being smashed off or new scratches appearing all down one side of it horrible reviews left on my business page and things like that I've got all this sorted out now and it doesn't happen anymore because I've taken the necessary precautions but being really out there with the de-transition and not having necessarily an opinion whether transgenderism is real or not but just being out there with how this doesn't work for me and it doesn't work for so many people has really sparked quite a lot of anger in the group of progressives and I would have called friends back then and similar kind of people to that You said you knew about two people who were happy after about ten years after transitioning how many are we talking about so two would be a percentage of what do you think So I think in total I probably met it's very hard to record all this because it's all a little bit of a haze probably about eight male to females and probably about two female to males through my whole time through college and that friend group and all that and one of them I watched all the way up until probably almost a year ago now I watched their feeds and everything like that we weren't talking anymore but I was just curious so any feed that I could see I'd go see are they doing well are they happy and they seem to be happy their partner fell very far down the progressive rabbit hole they've got the you know the new pride progress flag they've got that all over their profile and the other one that I think is still happy in a way is the female to male one I'm trying not to mention any names because I knew them all quite personally still in that progressive mindset still you know basically making the walk towards communism more or less but they still seem happy in their gender identity and all of the others feel like it's been some kind of regret a lot of them have lost touch with and I wouldn't be surprised if I tried to get back in touch I'd find out that they dopped it out or something like that so if we're saying two out of around maybe ten maybe a fifth would be the word I perhaps would use would be genuine genuine I think there may be a case of some cases being genuine like I said I don't have an opinion either way whether transgenderism is a real thing or not I think by and large it's been very damaging to a lot of people I think then again they're still in that progressive place and I think if they came out of it they might have a different opinion but like I said I don't really talk to them so I can't pry and figure that out and I don't think it'd be decent of me to do that anyway and is there is there a support group for de-transitioning do you have a human contact with other people who are de-transitioning because there's lots of groups for people who are transitioning is there a support network for people who are de-transitioning I think there is but not that I've found locally there's a couple of web forums and things like that but I find that the more I step away from that whole area that I was in, I keep calling it progressive I don't know where to describe it in topsy-turvy world the further I step away from that the less I find I need things like support groups the more I find that I am pretty much all I need so I guess I wouldn't really know if there is because I just haven't felt a need for it that's interesting and actually quite positive everything's been a lot more positive since the de-transition you said yourself that's a very strong statement and one that I feel myself to be honest with you you're the only person you have to live with for the rest of your life that's pretty much the sum of it if you like yourself you're in a pretty good place that resonates with the people you talk to if you're confident, if you like yourself they feel comfortable and at ease and confident around you it spreads a lot quicker than pessimism and depression does absolutely so how do you see the future what's your future look like what do you hope it is what do you want out of life now where are you going from here I want to slim down a lot and get rid of these annoying things on my chest that was one of the other physical things was having to wear a binder so that it's not as obvious I want to keep moving forward with the things I've got on the go right now I've got my project cars on the go I've got some big engines and some nice stuff that I don't want to disclose yet but it's exciting and noisy fix my body I'm hoping maybe at some point in the not too distant future to look at adoption I don't know if I'm ever going to settle with a long-term partner again maybe the right person hasn't come along but it's a lot of criteria a conservative self-confident woman who also has absolutely no interest in intimacy because I can't provide any of that anymore and it doesn't come together very often but I've come to terms with that I'm fine with that and to work on this political side of things quite a lot as well I'm hoping to be part of the grassroots swing back to a more conservative Britain smaller government less regulation and I can honestly see I'm going to have to commit pretty much the rest of my life to making that happen because the other side, the progressive side is quite strong and it's got a grip on almost everything yeah it does what message would you what would you say to people if you could talk to your teenage self and there are other you know the number of teenagers now who are going through this stuff it's insane it's the true epidemic it is, it is what would you say to them Bruce slow down take your time really think about this really think about where you're going to be in 20 years you may not think you want kids now you may not think you want all your stuff intact now but in 10 years you most likely will it's the same similar body clock we're all very rebellious at that age and then later on we settle down, we want to start a family we want to own a home, we want to create our legacy and if you've rushed into it at this point it's going to be really hard to create your legacy, not impossible but really really hard to do it create your legacy that's it that's a beautiful phrase I've been thinking a lot about the legacy thing lately a lot of the youngsters in my family since I've detransitioned and been more approachable and confident they've been drawn to me I've got a nephew who looks up to me basically like he's here or something because of the kind of cars I drive because of the kind of cool toys I have like I've got a sim wheel for doing the racing games and stuff like that he really loves all that and I take him to the airsoft range and he loves playing with all of the BB guns and stuff like that so he's really looking up to me and I like that and I want to be able to create my own legacy as well as be part of theirs Fantastic What car do you drive, Ruth? Oh, I see So I've got a Ford Granada Mk2 big square body I've got a little Mazda MX-5, tiny little roadster which is surprisingly good fun I only picked it up as an intermediate car and now I could never let it go and a little Mini Cooper one of the newer ones and that car is surprisingly fast not my favourite though, the Granada is my favourite Any car in the world would be Any car in the world What car would you have? Oh, that's a good question I think I might want to go for a Volga 24 which is a four door sedan from the Soviet KGB era in Russia for two important reasons one, it's a constant reminder that communism happened and shouldn't happen again and two, it's a big square body sedan so I can put a massive engine in the front of it and all that good stuff You like the big I like big square cars That's why I got the Granada which is also a favourite car It's hard to choose It's like picking between your pets or picking between your kids, it's really hard to do Well, I'm going to have to look up that KGB car Rhys, thank you so much Thank you so much for coming on Thank you so much for sharing your very personal story with us We have so many I think to me there are so many people who are looking for a place in the world They are lacking in self-confidence and this is normal for teenagers I think They're looking for somewhere to belong and this offers them something It's a little insidious Yeah, and then you have this trans-activism group which is almost to me praying praying upon vulnerable young people and persuading them I say that sounds exactly right Drastic for political reasons and you know what's interesting to me there aren't even trans-sexuals It's like all of the activisms going on right now on that side of things the people that are advocating aren't even part of the group that they're advocating for Yeah It's bizarre It reminds me of the Black Trans Lives Matter March in London Yeah It was a load of white people I don't think there was a single trans-person there To me it is an element of control and an element of reshaping society and making objective truths unfashionable and this is of course the road to you and I agree on this I think communism That's a big reason I've become so politically active is the green movement the identity movement the race movement they're all the good intentions that pave the road to hell they all go straight to communism and a lot of people are just unaware of it and they need to be aware of it because communism doesn't work out well No It's got a really bad track record for the amount of people that have died and suffered under communism communism Rhys, I wish you nothing but the very best I'd love to see you in parliament one day as an MP for Britain perhaps Yes, I'm definitely considering it I wish you, thank you Just cleaning up my internet for you a bit at the moment Fair enough Listen, thanks Rhys, thanks for sharing this with us I really wish you well and do stay in touch do stay in touch and hopefully I'll see you in person again Yes, I'll be good Take care, thanks Rhys, thanks very much Thank you, thanks for having me Fantastic interview Thank you so much Rhys for having the most fascinating conversation and again in my own view on all this I do think there are a very, very small number of people who are happier and will be happier having undergone this transition but as Rhys says, this is a tiny number in comparison to those who are left unhappy by this I do believe that we are a lobby a political lobby an extreme left political lobby exploiting people at their most vulnerable and putting them through, or the result is and the effect is to put them through irreversible changes in their bodies and their lives and we need to say something we need to speak up against this so I'm brave of Rhys to do so but we almost join Rhys and do the same, this is insidious this is dark and this is praying on vulnerable people Thanks everyone for watching I'll see you back on my live stream on Monday night and sincerest thanks again to Rhys for this fascinating discussion Thanks everyone, see you soon