← The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
531. What Can’t Be Undone | Detransitioner Clementine Breen
01:35:35
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with Clementine Breen, a child who was moved through the transgender pipeline and has since de-transitioned. Together they walk through her story (from early sexual abuse to the daunting decision to undergo affirming surgery), the confusion and fallout thereafter, reorientation, and her lawsuit against the doctor who led her astray. Clementine Breen is a de-transitioner who experienced early sexual abuse before having her gender dysphoria misdiagnosed as being transgender. Top surgery was sold to her at age 13, all the while her parents were told the atrocious “dead daughter or living son” lie. She is currently embroiled in a landmark lawsuit against her former doctor, Dr. Olson Kennedy. This episode was filmed on January 1st, 2025. | Links | For Clementine Breen: On X https://x.com/clementine_fb
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- [00:00]
Jordan Peterson
Did you tell them about the abuse?
- [00:02]
Clementine Breen
I did not.
- [00:03]
Jordan Peterson
Well, how much investigation into your history took place?
- [00:06]
Clementine Breen
Very little, because the second we got into my history, it just came crumbling down. In my referral, it says that I had held a male identity since childhood. Besides just physical discomfort with my body and just feeling disconnected from girls, it was really no sign of prior gender dysphoria.
- [00:22]
Jordan Peterson
Discomfort with your body and feeling disconnected with girls, that's called puberty.
- [00:26]
Clementine Breen
Right. I was already cleared for surgery, so I traveled to San Francisco. Recommendation of Olson, the specific doctor. By the time I was there, I.
- [00:33]
Jordan Peterson
Had a very specific doctor.
- [00:34]
Clementine Breen
Because he doesn't have age limits.
- [00:37]
Jordan Peterson
No age limits, yeah.
- [00:38]
Clementine Breen
What's interesting about my case too, is even in my referral notes, which the surgeon saw, there's conflicting information. So immediately you can tell it's sort of rubber stamped and they didn't really look through it.
- [00:50]
Jordan Peterson
So now you wake up after surgery?
- [00:53]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [00:53]
Jordan Peterson
What's that like?
- [01:04]
Clementine Breen
Foreign.
- [01:10]
Jordan Peterson
My guest today is a young woman who has quite a terrible story to tell. But before you can understand why I have her as a guest and why she's doing what she's doing, there's some individuals that I need to familiarize you with in some detail to set the context properly. And I'm going to read that first and foremost among those is Dr. Joanna Olson Kennedy. Dr. Olson Kennedy serves as the medical Director of the center for Trans Youth Health and Development at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, that's currently the largest transgender youth clinic in the US Dr. Olson Kennedy has authored or co authored numerous studies on transgender youth concerning such topics as chest reconstruction and its effects, the development of so called gender identity, the physiology of response to gender affirming hormones, and the consequence of pharmacologically induced puberty blockade. In 2015, she led a $10 million NIH funded research project to study the effects of so called gender affirming medical practice aimed at youth. This study was a major enterprise and very financially significant by the standards of clinical investigation, one deemed publicly the largest such project in America. What were the study's results? As far as we can determine, no evidence emerged whatsoever of improvements in mental health in consequence of pharmacological blockade of puberty, which is, by the way, the purpose of such blockade. Why or why not? Well, Olson Kennedy hypothesized after the fact, which is not a scientifically appropriate thing to do, fundamentally that this was because most of the children were already doing well when the study began. Why the need then for puberty blockers, given their clear danger and the dangers of the surgical road ahead they so often establish. In any case, the notoriously progressive New York Times reported that Olsen Kennedy elected not to publish her study results so that her political opponents of gender affirming care could not use the results as an argument against the use of puberty blockers. It shouldn't be necessary, except in this insane time, to point out that the artificial suppression of undesirable findings warps the entire scientific and medical enterprise. And that's the point, as well as being utterly unconscionable given the degree of public funding for the inquiry and the motivated psychological and social consequences of abandoning it. Olson Kennedy is not the only person named in the lawsuit mounted by today's guest, nor his or place of work. Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the only institution identified and affected. Dr. Scott Mosser, a surgeon in San Francisco, has served or exploited, depending on your viewpoint, transgender, non binary and gender expansive patients for more than 13 years. He's board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgeons, co founder of the American Society of Gender Surgeons, and founder of the gender Institute at St. Francis Memorial Hospital. That workplace formalized its Gender Institute in 2016, has received numerous grants to fund gender affirming health care services, and is also a target of the suit. Now that we have these players and places named and established, let us turn to my guest. I was privileged today to speak with Ms. Clementine Breen, currently a 20 year old UCLA theater student and D transitioner. I discovered Clementine's story through one Chris Elston, a fellow Canadian known best by his online handle Billboard Chris. Clementine encountered Chris on one of his sidewalk appearances at universities across the U.S. and Canada, specifically this time at UCLA. She told him her story, which went viral, not least as a consequence of her age when the events recounted occurred. It was in consequence of this encounter and some later research that I invited her to my studio as a guest. Puberty blockers at 12, hormonal transformation, that's testosterone at 13, and a double mastectomy camouflaged terminologically as top surgery. That evil phrase at 14. It's a terrible story with at the moment a thankfully happy ending on with the show. So thank you for coming to Scottsdale today, Clementine. I know that this is likely to be a difficult conversation and so we'll try to not make it any more painful than absolutely necessary. I think we should probably start just by you telling people who you are and why you're here, what you're up to and why you're here. Okay.
- [06:55]
Clementine Breen
My name's Clementine, I'm a 20 year old college student. I don't really consider myself a super political person. I just seeing news about topics like this and other detransitioners come out and tell their stories, I just felt like I had to say something. Considering the details of my particular story. I felt like I couldn't just watch this unfold and not participate in the conversation. So I really just want to spread awareness about the reality of child transition and what actually happens to people after they decide to detransition.
- [07:26]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Now you're involved in a notorious, I would say a notorious lawsuit. Not that notorious means unnecessary or bad, but it means well publicized and likely impactful one way or another. And as far, I'm going to name the people who are involved and you tell me if that's correct. Right. So one of the physicians involved was Dr. Johanna. Johanna.
- [07:53]
Clementine Breen
Joanna.
- [07:54]
Jordan Peterson
Joanna. Dr. Joanna Olson Kennedy. And she's at the center for Trans Youth and Human Development at the Children's Hospital in la.
- [08:02]
Clementine Breen
Yes, correct.
- [08:03]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And she's also President Elect of US path, which is a advocacy group, I suppose, or a hypothetically scientific consultation group focused on transgender issues. Another defendant is Dr. Scott Mosser at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco.
- [08:26]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [08:27]
Jordan Peterson
Does that cover the territory?
- [08:28]
Clementine Breen
Also my therapist, Susan Landon as well.
- [08:31]
Jordan Peterson
Susan Landon. And she was a psychotherapist?
- [08:34]
Clementine Breen
Yes, I was referred to her by Dr. Olson.
- [08:37]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, you were referred by Dr. Olson. And what's Susan Landon's professional designation?
- [08:43]
Clementine Breen
I believe she's just a family and general therapist, but she works specifically with trans youth.
- [08:47]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, okay. So, well, let's go through these people one at a time. I'm very interested, I'm interested in the. I'm really interested with you, I think, in focusing on the personal and clinical elements of your case and we can get to the legal and social and political implications later. You said already that you are not your focus. You don't regard yourself as involved politically, particularly. Okay, that's fine. And I don't really think that this is fundamentally a political issue.
- [09:20]
Clementine Breen
I don't think so at all.
- [09:21]
Jordan Peterson
You don't think so at all? Okay, so let's start at the beginning. So what procedures did you undergo and how old were you? Let's start with that.
- [09:30]
Clementine Breen
When I was 12 years old, I had a puberty blocker implant placed in my left arm. And when I was 13 years old, I was put on testosterone, which I continued until about earlier this year. Year. But the last couple years of being on testosterone, it was kind of on and off. And then When I was about 14 years old, I had a double mastectomy.
- [09:49]
Jordan Peterson
All right, so let's go back before you were 12. Obviously, there's a reason that you were put on puberty blockers at 12. Right. How did you come to be put on them? So I guess that means how did you come in contact with Dr. Joanna Olson Kennedy?
- [10:07]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [10:08]
Jordan Peterson
How did you come in contact with this therapist, Susan Landon, and why? And so you can go back as early as you want, detailing out your childhood and early adolescence. Tell us what brought you to the physicians and the counselor or the psychologist. Counselor first.
- [10:28]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. So just to give, like, enough context, when I was about six years old, I was sexually abused. And that was something I had never even dealt with or talked about until much, much later on. So by the time that I was approaching Puberty, around 11 years old, I think I started going through puberty. I started just feeling terrible, terrible anxiety about my body and about the idea of becoming a woman. And I felt really, really isolated from my female peers because I had really a different perspective on puberty and what it meant to be a woman because of what happened to me when I was really young.
- [11:01]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, can you. Can you.
- [11:03]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [11:03]
Jordan Peterson
Can you detail to the degree that you're willing to or capable of what happened to you when you were six?
- [11:09]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. So I was sexually abused by an older classmate. He was about four years older than me. And it went on for about a year. So it was pretty intense. And I just. In my brain, I just sort of processed it as something I didn't need to think about. So I never really dealt with that until later.
- [11:27]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, can you. That's a typical response for a child, but it isn't exactly so much as that you might say that you don't need to think about it. It's really that you can't exactly. Right. I mean, part of what happens to kids if they're hurt, and this is worse, the younger they are, let's say, is that they don't have any framework of reference or any philosophical tools to understand what happened or. And certainly not why. They don't understand the motivation of the perpetrator. They don't understand their own vulnerability. They don't understand the failures of the systems that were designed to protect them. They don't have anybody to talk to. And so there's actually no way of processing that. It's not only a matter of, like, whatever avoidance there might have been on your part. It's that it's just. It's not really possible.
- [12:21]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [12:21]
Jordan Peterson
What details of the abuse. Are you willing to share? And now there's a reason I'm asking you that is because I want to know as much as you can tell. Tell me. I want to know how severe what happened to you was, how long it lasted. And the reason I want to know that is because I want to understand why it was that you became apprehensive when puberty hit. Okay. So you can tell as much of the story as necessary to explain your anxiety as far as you're concerned.
- [12:51]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. So just to put it bluntly, I was raped multiple times. So when I was coming to 11, 12, and I started learning about sex ed and figuring out what sex was, I sort of started to unpack what had happened to me. And that was fully sort of when I was able to understand what actually happened.
- [13:09]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, there were early psychoanalytic theories about anorexia, for example. And one of the theories, and I'm not vouching for the validity of this theory, but it's an interesting approach, and I think sometimes it's valid, is that some of the impetus for anorexia for some women, for some girls, particularly those who were sexually abused, was the attempt to forestall puberty and because of apprehension around the emergence of sexual capability, let's say, and also the possibility of sexual predation. And you can imagine just generally that it is perfectly reasonable for young women to be apprehensive about puberty because new dangers emerge. Now, there's actually a biological response to that, you know, So I don't know if your therapists told you this or your physicians, but it's necessary to know. So boys and girls under the age of puberty don't differ much in their proclivity for negative emotion, anxiety and depression. Okay. At puberty, that changes. This is cross culturally stable and it's mostly biological. And we know that because the differences are most pronounced in gender equal societies. Right. Okay. Women become more anxious and depressed than men, more sensitive to negative emotion at puberty, and that never goes away. And so then you might ask why? Well, sexual vulnerability makes the world a dangerous place for women. Then you might say, well, women also have to take care of infants, so being threat sensitive is reasonable because they can. They're going to be more sensitive to dangers to their baby, but they also become sexually vulnerable. Right. And their boys and men become physically more, much more powerful than women at that point too. So it appears as though what nature does to address that imbalance is increase the negative emotion that women feel that happens at puberty okay. But there's one more twist to that, and I. I'd like to know if any of this was explained to you because it should have been. The typical pattern that negative emotion takes in young women is body bodily concern. And it's partly because women are evaluated for better or worse in consequence of their physical appearance. And so it's very commonly the case that if a woman is anxious and depressed is experiencing high levels of negative emotion that expresses itself as hyper concern about bodily appearance.
- [15:56]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [15:57]
Jordan Peterson
Now, when you were brought, when you were little, maybe you don't remember even, but how much of that was explained to you?
- [16:04]
Clementine Breen
None of that was explained.
- [16:05]
Jordan Peterson
So. So one of the things I'd like to point out to everyone watching is there's no excuse for not explaining this. If you're a physician who's trained well enough to dare to meddle in someone's gender identity, and if you're a counselor who's counseling someone who hypothetically has gender dysphoria, especially someone female, then these are elementary facts. The first thing you do when you deal with someone who is anxious and depressed when they're female and they're entering puberty is to explain this. It's. It's psychology. I wouldn't call it 101. It's Developmental Psychology 101. And so that's minimum necessary information. Now, there's a reason that that should be explained to you. You know, so it's very frequently the case that people who are having psychological trouble, so excess anxiety and depression, let's say, they feel like they're the only people who are in that boat, so they feel isolated and alone and sort of singled out. And part of the reason you explained.
- [17:06]
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- [18:21]
Jordan Peterson
The prevalence of a given diagnosis, even to someone, is to say you're not alone. This isn't unique to you. In fact, it's quite common. These are the symptoms that are, that are commonly associated with it. These are the reasons for the symptoms. And. Well, in the, in the case of the symptoms that you describe, the typical pattern is that even adolescents who are radically gender dysphoric adapt by the time they're 18. Yeah, at least 80% of them. This has been known for, well, I'd say four decades, five decades. It's been known a long time. It's been replicated many times. It's a very stable finding. So the reliable clinicians and physicians have concluded, especially before all of this got politicized, that if a child is severely gender dysphoric, the best thing to do is Nothing until they're 18. Most of them are, what would you say? Reconciled to their fate by that point. And that's also not that atypical because puberty throws a monkey wrench into everyone's works. Now, you were at particular risk for that. And you said, why now? When you went and saw Olson Kennedy and the counselor. Tell me her name again.
- [19:40]
Clementine Breen
Susan Landon.
- [19:42]
Jordan Peterson
Susan Landon, right. Did you tell them that about the abuse?
- [19:46]
Clementine Breen
I did not. But they didn't ask.
- [19:48]
Jordan Peterson
So they didn't know about that, but they didn't ask. So what kind of history did they take from you?
- [19:53]
Clementine Breen
We had very brief discussions about my childhood and I expressed that I'd always felt sort of uncomfortable with girls and that I had mostly male friends. And I talked about my discomfort with the idea of growing into being a grown woman. That was sort of the very surface level conversations we had. And I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria on our first meeting, but I had.
- [20:14]
Jordan Peterson
Only diagnosed by who?
- [20:16]
Clementine Breen
Elson Kennedy.
- [20:18]
Jordan Peterson
How long was the diagnostic meeting? Approximately?
- [20:21]
Clementine Breen
It was around 30 minutes to an hour. It was pretty short. And she spoke with my parents as well. But by the Time I was diagnosed, I had only been living as trans for about three months, but the diagnostic criteria is actually six months.
- [20:34]
Jordan Peterson
So with Olson Kennedy, how many times did you see her? Like, how many times did you have a chance to have a clinical discussion with her of some length?
- [20:46]
Clementine Breen
We had multiple clinical discussions. I don't actually know how many times I saw her. But all the talk about gender was never beyond social setting. It was never about how I was feeling. It was more about how I wanted to be perceived.
- [21:01]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, now, you said when you first went and saw her, and then how long after you saw her, like, what. What was the sequence of events that led you to Landon?
- [21:13]
Clementine Breen
Right. I believe it was pretty shortly after, maybe a month or so, I started seeing Landon because she had referred me to her, and we had sort of similar discussions, and she kept affirming the idea that I was somehow inherently male and that was the root of my discomfort.
- [21:28]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, well, there's been a variety. See, that's a tricky issue, because in Canada, for example, and I'm familiar with this because I'm Canadian, although it's the same in many places in the United States, the standard of care is gender affirmation, the legal standard of care, the professional standard of care, which is appalling. It's appalling. And what that means is that I believe it's actually a felony in Canada for a psychologist or a physician or anyone else for that matter, anyone operating in a professional capacity to question, let's say, your feelings. Now, the problem with that is. Well, you know what the problem is. But the problem is, what if you're confused? Right now, virtually every adolescent is confused. So then the question is how? If you come to me and I'm a physician or a therapist, and you. You said you'd been living as trans, and so there's evidence already that you decided to. That you decided you were in the wrong body, so to speak, you were acting that out. In some ways, I have to step damn carefully not to actually do something illegal or sufficiently unprofessional, so to speak, that my license could be at risk. So we're increasingly in a situation where the probability that someone like you at 12 would be told the truth is zero. And this is independent of the actual, let's say, professional knowledge of the physician or counselor. So, for example, we might ask why you weren't given this elementary information that I described. I think that should have just happened baseline, because that has nothing to do with your feelings. But then it is the case that the physicians and the Therapist would have to tread on very thin ice indeed to ask you any questions of any sort. So I'm not trying to excuse this. I'm trying. I'm trying to outline for people who are listening and you why such things might happen.
- [23:38]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [23:39]
Jordan Peterson
Now, with Olson Kennedy, there's some evidence that she's a fairly avid advocate of the gender affirming process. And so that's a slightly different situation. Okay, so. So tell me, tell me exactly what you think the discussions consisted of with Olson Kennedy and then also with the therapist.
- [24:00]
Clementine Breen
It was very, very surface level, and it was all about what I wanted in the future, which for me at the time was very difficult to figure out. And obviously, I just kind of. My dream was I wanted to just be totally dissociated from my body, which is not really a healthy mindset at all. But I didn't really. I wasn't 100% certain if I was, like, truly male, if that was the truth. But they kept affirming that my discomfort with my body was related to the fact that I was supposed to be born male and that because I fit in better with males at school or things like that, that that was somehow also evidence.
- [24:39]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Okay, first of all, that's not evidence, right? I mean, some boys, it's a minority, as it is with girls, but a minority of boys are more comfortable associating with girls. And that also might be situation dependent. And it's, I think, even more common that girls are more comfortable associating with boys. But that in itself is absolutely 100% no determinant marker of which gender you are.
- [25:03]
Clementine Breen
No.
- [25:04]
Jordan Peterson
So, I mean, otherwise it would be impossible for boys and girls to have cross sex friendships without their biological identity being cast into question.
- [25:16]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [25:17]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so you didn't talk much about the past. Now, all right, you said that you'd been living transgender for a few months before you went and saw Olson County.
- [25:26]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [25:27]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so what did that mean? What did that mean? What were you doing?
- [25:30]
Clementine Breen
I had spoken to my guidance counselor about my feelings about my body, and I had suggested that I might be transgender to her, but I had also said that I might be lesbian or bisexual or things like that. We just had a lot of, like, very open ended conversations, but at a certain point, she sort of latched on to the idea that I might be transgender. And after that meeting, she called my parents and told them, and they're the ones who took me to Olson Kennedy. However, pretty shortly after that conversation with my parents, it was actually my guidance counselor who told my entire school that I was a boy and that they would only use male pronouns for me and that all the teachers had to call me by a different name. And at the time, it kind of felt nice in a way that I didn't have to really do any of it myself, but it also really removed any accountability on my end because I had really no actual control over the decision, and I didn't have to have those conversations face to face with my parents or my peers as well.
- [26:30]
Jordan Peterson
So it was taken out of your hands, essentially. But you also implied in the run up to that statement that part of your motivation was to have it taken out of your hands because it wasn't something that you particularly wanted to deal with.
- [26:44]
Clementine Breen
No. And I also, when I was living as trans at that point, before I had gone through with any medicalization, I had just cut my hair short and was wearing baggy clothes, which I was also doing because my body was changing.
- [26:56]
Jordan Peterson
Right, right, right. But. But people. And what were people calling you at that point?
- [27:00]
Clementine Breen
People were calling me Kai at the time.
- [27:02]
Jordan Peterson
Kai. And the school was informed that you were now male?
- [27:07]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [27:07]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And what you said, you correct me if I get any of this wrong, because I want to get it right while I'm talking to you. You said that was a relief to you, fundamentally.
- [27:18]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [27:19]
Jordan Peterson
Was it only a relief?
- [27:21]
Clementine Breen
No, it was definitely mixed emotions because also I was a bit overwhelmed at the same time because everything happened so fast. I mean, it was just like three months at that time.
- [27:32]
Jordan Peterson
So what. How did that change your status at school, first of all? Before that? Before that, before you started talking to the guidance counselor and so forth? How would you describe your social status, let's say? And at school?
- [27:49]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, at school, I was. I wouldn't call myself popular, but I had. I had friends and people liked me. I was fairly well liked. I was definitely. As I hit puberty, I was getting more awkward and definitely more reserved and shy. Going through puberty definitely triggered something in me that was kind of noticeable from other people around me.
- [28:08]
Jordan Peterson
Right.
- [28:09]
Clementine Breen
And when I originally came out as transgender, I lost a ton of friends sort of immediately. But after a year or so, I started getting way more popular than I had ever been while living as female. And why? I think it was because of the sort of initial confidence boost that I had. But also, I definitely felt more comfortable asserting myself in ways that I are traditionally masculine, that I was sort of reserved from before, definitely just because I was insecure and shy. I don't think that my trans identity benefited me in any way, but I did notice that people started to respect me more.
- [28:50]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so let me take that apart a little bit because you could imagine. When did you start taking testosterone?
- [28:57]
Clementine Breen
I started taking testosterone at 13.
- [28:59]
Jordan Peterson
What was the effect of you. What was the effect on you of the drug?
- [29:04]
Clementine Breen
Pretty quickly my voice started to deepen a bit and I started to grow facial hair. My stature changed. I got a bit more confident and I was very restless and angry all the time. As my dose increased, I started having very, very negative side effects that eventually sort of diverged into full blown psychosis. But at the time that I was 13, that wasn't happening yet.
- [29:29]
Jordan Peterson
Do you think that the changes that testosterone induced had anything to do with your shift in social status?
- [29:37]
Clementine Breen
Absolutely.
- [29:37]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, how?
- [29:38]
Clementine Breen
I think once I started to physically conform to the male identity, it was easier for people to see me that way, which also definitely made me feel better in a short term sense, but it didn't actually resolve any of the mental problems I was experiencing.
- [29:52]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, when did you or did you ever start to discuss what had happened to you when you were six?
- [29:58]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, I started to discuss that around 17 with a different therapist.
- [30:02]
Jordan Peterson
Oh. So it was quite a while afterwards.
- [30:04]
Clementine Breen
It was a while, yeah.
- [30:06]
Jordan Peterson
Why the lag and then why did you decide to delve into it?
- [30:11]
Clementine Breen
Well, I had sort of assumed that my transition would fix all of those issues because that's sort of what I was told, is that my body issues would resolve and that once I started fitting in better at school, I'd feel less shy. And that did sort of happen. But I also got more reckless and more depressed and more anxious and I could hardly sleep and things like that were just happening. And it got so bad by the time I was 17, I could hardly focus in school. I was up all night every single night. My insomnia had become psychosis. And what were those symptoms? I was having full blown hallucinations.
- [30:48]
Jordan Peterson
Auditory or visual?
- [30:50]
Clementine Breen
Visual and auditory. Mostly auditory. It was like hearing voices and whispers and shouting from the other.
- [30:56]
Jordan Peterson
What sort of things were the whispers saying?
- [30:59]
Clementine Breen
It was a lot of. This is all in my therapist notes, but it was a lot of stuff about hurting other people and specifically men, which was something I had actually talked to Landon about and she attributed to my trans identity.
- [31:14]
Jordan Peterson
Do you have an alternative attribution?
- [31:16]
Clementine Breen
I think that it was because of the sexual abuse.
- [31:19]
Jordan Peterson
Well, that would be the obvious. Right. Do you remember, as I said before we started the interview, you don't have to answer any of these questions. Right. So do you remember what the voices were telling you?
- [31:33]
Clementine Breen
Certain things Would be if I had positive relationships with people, I would always be told to hurt those people or say certain things in class. It would always be like, you have to get out of here, you have to run, or like, things like that. Lots of, like, whisperings. It would overlap at times. But it was always trying to get me to do things that were very impulsive. And sometimes I would do those things and I would act very impulsively or out of control or really high risk behaviors. I was doing okay.
- [32:00]
Jordan Peterson
And that was all happening around 17?
- [32:03]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, around 16. 17.
- [32:05]
Jordan Peterson
And has that resolved Completely?
- [32:08]
Clementine Breen
Completely.
- [32:08]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And how come? Why did it resolve?
- [32:11]
Clementine Breen
I went through DBT therapy, and that sort of quieted most of my psychosis. However, I was still having some of it until DBT being dielectrical behavioral therapy. And after completing that, I was still having some of those symptoms. But once I was fully detoxed off the testosterone, I stopped having hallucinations.
- [32:30]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So there was some benefit to the psychological treatment, if you had to guess or maybe, you know, was the primary benefit with regard to the psychosis symptoms a consequence of the psychological treatment or the cessation of testosterone?
- [32:47]
Clementine Breen
I would say it was definitely both, but I would say the cessation of the testosterone stopped the psychosis.
- [32:53]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so if I've got this right, you didn't discuss the sexual abuse with Olson, Kennedy or Landon?
- [33:01]
Clementine Breen
No.
- [33:01]
Jordan Peterson
And. And then that was forestalled until you were 17. And the reason you didn't discuss it is because you thought that you had an alternative route. Had you ever revealed anything about the sexual abuse to your parents?
- [33:13]
Clementine Breen
No.
- [33:14]
Jordan Peterson
So this was all happening in secret. Did the teachers know? So do you know why you didn't. Why you weren't able to or didn't discuss what had happened with your parents?
- [33:32]
Clementine Breen
I think the main reason was because I was assaulted by somebody who was also a child at the time. They were much older, but they were still a child at the time. So I think in my head, I sort of had the narrative of, like, if an adult hurts you, tell another adult. But I wasn't really considering that a child's actions could be that inappropriate where I'd have to tell somebody. But then by the time I had sort of realized what had happened, I. I was so ashamed. And I felt like there was no way out of it or no way to tell anybody. So I just figured I could resolve it in other ways, like transitioning. But.
- [34:06]
Jordan Peterson
Well, I'm not. Look, I'm not. I'm also not suggesting at all that, you know, there was a more appropriate route to dealing with this. It's very, very complicated. And what you just said, well, there's moral quandaries. And you pointed them out. When is it appropriate to go to an authority? You said you were ambivalent about that, and then you had other reasons for not.
- [34:29]
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- [35:53]
Jordan Peterson
For not revealing it. And it's a very complicated thing to reveal. Yeah, like, how do you talk about it?
- [36:00]
Clementine Breen
It's very. It still kind of eludes me in how I talk about it. Like, I just sort of got desensitized to talking about it at a certain point, which weirdly helped. But the first time, I could barely even get the words out.
- [36:13]
Jordan Peterson
Were you guilty about it?
- [36:15]
Clementine Breen
I felt very guilty. And especially after all of the transition and all of the things that I had done to just avoid dealing with this, There was a lot of shame in finally coming out and saying the.
- [36:27]
Jordan Peterson
Reason why were you guilty, do you think?
- [36:30]
Clementine Breen
I don't know.
- [36:33]
Jordan Peterson
Well, you know, if you're confused, if you're deeply confused about something, part of what confusion is, is the experience of a very large number of emotions, right? Because part of the way you resolve the confusion is to experience, like, a panoply of emotions to see which ones fit. So that could be shame, anger, guilt, rage, pain, anxiety. What else? Curiosity, excitement. All of those. That's all part of being, you know, deeply confused. And while you had reason to be confused, okay, so you had to keep this to yourself. And it started to happen to you when you were very young. And so now I asked you if you had discussed this with your physician or your therapist, and you said no, not until you were 17. And so then. But you also mentioned that the conversations that you had with the therapist and the physician were fundamentally centered on what you wanted in the future. Well, how much investigation into your history took place?
- [37:45]
Clementine Breen
Very little. Because the second we got into my history, I mean, it just came crumbling down. Like, even in my surgical note for my double mastectomy, in my referral, it says that I had held a male identity since childhood, which is just not true. I was a super girly child. I did choir and theater. I would play dress up. I collected dolls. Like, I just had no sign of this until puberty. Besides just physical discomfort with my body and just feeling disconnected from girls, there was really no sign of prior gender dysphoria.
- [38:16]
Jordan Peterson
Discomfort with your body and feeling disconnected from girls, that's called puberty.
- [38:21]
Clementine Breen
Right? Exactly right.
- [38:22]
Jordan Peterson
Right. Now, it might have been, as we already discussed, it might have been exaggerated in your case, likely exaggerated in your case at least, the discomfort and the confusion and perhaps some resistance to the process. I mean, that's. That seems like in some ways self evident, given that what you just said. But very little of that, Very little of what you just described deviates from what's strictly normative and expected.
- [38:46]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [38:47]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And so you said you also didn't provide a history that indicated that prolonged dysphoria that in principle is associated with being born in the wrong body. It's a very strange conceptualization, but one that you can imagine these sorts of things being more justifiable in the case of someone who has that kind of lengthy history. But it wasn't the case with you.
- [39:16]
Clementine Breen
No, they almost. It seemed like they didn't really want to talk about my childhood or as if my childhood was totally irrelevant to what was happening now, and it was just something that I hadn't seen before or My parents hadn't seen before because there really were no signs when I was a child.
- [39:31]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, now let's talk about your parents a little bit. Sure. So now you're dressing as a boy at school, or at least dressing in. Were you dressing as a boy? How were you dressing?
- [39:45]
Clementine Breen
I was just wearing baggy clothes. It wasn't really dressing like a boy. It was just big shirts and big pants.
- [39:51]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, okay. Right. Well, that's also not uncommon early pubescent female behavior. Right, right, right. Okay. And you talked to a guidance counselor at school, and the guidance counselor, you said, focused in on gender dysphoria and your hypothetical identity as a boy as a resolution to your confusion.
- [40:21]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [40:21]
Jordan Peterson
And then it was taken out of your hands by. In some ways, by the turns of events that emerged in consequence. The announcement of your pronouns. The. Now, then, you said you lost a variety of friends. Why?
- [40:36]
Clementine Breen
I think a lot of people were sort of uncomfortable with what was happening. And I also had people at the time point out how out of character this was or how, like, I had never behaved typically masculine before, or I hadn't really expressed interest in masculine things and things like that. People have brought it up to me and were very aware of how out of character it was.
- [40:57]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So a lot of the people that had been associating with you didn't know what the hell was going on, and they didn't know what to do.
- [41:03]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [41:04]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, that's enough to cause collapse of friendship right there because. Well, one of the characteristics of friendships is that you know the person and you know what to do. Okay. So then you had some period of time, I presume, after that, where your social status was ambivalent.
- [41:21]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [41:21]
Jordan Peterson
And then it switched in a more positive direction. Yeah, yeah. Well, see, one of the complicating factors, of course, too, is that once you start to take testosterone, think about testosterone, is that it can quell anxiety and depression as a pharmacological agent. Right. So that makes. That makes differential diagnosis of its effects very complex. Because you could say, well, the reason that you're not as depressed and anxious as you were is because you finally found your true identity. Or you could just point out that it's a side effect of testosterone. Yeah, right. And it's very difficult to separate those.
- [41:58]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. Or, for example, I was crying all the time before the testosterone, and then after, I stopped crying, and I just wouldn't have these fits of crying. And in my mind, I was like, oh, that means it's working. I'm getting better.
- [42:09]
Jordan Peterson
Right, Right.
- [42:10]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [42:10]
Jordan Peterson
Right, right. Okay, so the sequence is 12 years old. 11. When do you start dressing in this ambivalent fashion and your name changes? Is that 11?
- [42:23]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. Or 12.
- [42:24]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, but it's also a 12 that you're put on puberty blockers.
- [42:27]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [42:28]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so describe the route to puberty blockers and the duration it took from first contact with the physician to diagnosis and prescription.
- [42:42]
Clementine Breen
It was about three months between coming out as trans and then being seen by Dr. Olson. And Dr. Olson recommended puberty blockers immediately, but it took a few months for her to convince my parents to agree to it.
- [42:57]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. What do you mean by immediately?
- [43:00]
Clementine Breen
She immediately asserted that I was definitely trans and that puberty blockers would be the right path for me.
- [43:06]
Jordan Peterson
And immediately as the first session?
- [43:09]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. After the first time we had spoken for about.
- [43:11]
Jordan Peterson
And that's 30 to 60 minutes.
- [43:13]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [43:14]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Now it takes some time to convince your parents. Okay. Do you have siblings?
- [43:20]
Clementine Breen
I do. I have a brother.
- [43:21]
Jordan Peterson
Older or younger?
- [43:22]
Clementine Breen
Older.
- [43:23]
Jordan Peterson
Older. Okay. I'm just trying to situate you in the family. Okay. So now your parents. Why do your parents take you to Olson Kennedy?
- [43:32]
Clementine Breen
My parents had definitely noticed that around puberty I got very reserved and shy and was acting sort of different. And they definitely noticed the signs of depression. It wasn't really severe, but they noticed that it was happening. And around that first meeting, Olson asserted that I would be at very high risk for suicide.
- [43:50]
Jordan Peterson
Okay.
- [43:51]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. And that immediately got them terrified for what happened to me.
- [43:56]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so would you rather have a live trans kid or a dead kid?
- [44:00]
Clementine Breen
Those words exactly.
- [44:02]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so why did they take you to Olson Kennedy, though, rather than to someone who specialized, let's say, in depression and anxiety? Was that. I'll just let you answer that first.
- [44:12]
Clementine Breen
Sure. Yeah. I mean, my guidance counselor had been the one to have this phone call with them, so I don't actually know.
- [44:19]
Jordan Peterson
The parent with your parents.
- [44:20]
Clementine Breen
I never tell my parents.
- [44:22]
Jordan Peterson
But you said at school that you had already started, you'd had conversations with the guidance counselor, and you'd already been set on this gender transition path.
- [44:31]
Clementine Breen
Right. And.
- [44:32]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so now your parents know you're depressed and anxious and that it's manifesting itself in this transition path. Then Olson Kennedy becomes a logical person to go see.
- [44:41]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [44:42]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. So she tells your parents on the initial encounter that puberty blockers that you're definitely a male and that puberty blockers are the appropriate course of action and that that reduces suicide risk.
- [44:57]
Clementine Breen
She also asserted that that was basically the only treatment available.
- [45:01]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. There is no evidence of that suicide risk. That is a lie, and it's a pathological and manipulative lie. I don't think that I've run across any deeper lie told by psychological counselors and medical professionals than that. Gender affirming care is the only alternative to suicide, the safest alternative to suicide for kids who have gender dysphoria. I don't think there's a shred of evidence anywhere in the clinical literature, no matter how you look at it, to support that conclusion. Right. So, okay, so now your parents are in a bind.
- [45:40]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [45:41]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so what's happening with them? You said it takes a few months. Tell me what happens.
- [45:46]
Clementine Breen
My parents were very reluctant originally, and they were constantly like, are you. Like, I don't believe this. You have never expressed this before. And Olson would have conversations with me where. Or conversations with them where I wasn't there, or conversations with me separately. And then she'd talk to my parents. I don't know exactly what was said, but I know it was just asserting the same rhetoric that I was at very high risk for suicide, that my depression was gonna get worse if they didn't act on this now. And it was also, there was a lot of social pressure put on me because Olson kept bringing up keeping up with male peers and keeping up with people in my class.
- [46:23]
Jordan Peterson
Time is of the essence.
- [46:24]
Clementine Breen
Right. As if there was some need to act as quick as possible.
- [46:29]
Jordan Peterson
How many times do you suppose you and your family were instructed by Olson Kennedy, let's say that there was a ever present risk of suicide, that that was real and immediate and that this was the appropriate treatment. How many times do you suppose that was discussed?
- [46:48]
Clementine Breen
That was something that was probably expressed to my parents every time my parents spoke to her.
- [46:53]
Jordan Peterson
Got any estimate of a numerical.
- [46:55]
Clementine Breen
Like probably a dozen.
- [46:58]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And you said as well that that was. That was the only treatment pathway.
- [47:03]
Clementine Breen
That was the only treatment pathway. It was what she would.
- [47:06]
Jordan Peterson
So you could imagine two models of unhappiness. Right. That would be relevant in your case. One model would be your gender dysphoric because your identity is reversed, inverted. And the depression and anxiety are a consequence of that.
- [47:23]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [47:23]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. There's a problem with that assumption. The problem is, is that there's almost no, let's say, psychiatric condition that isn't primarily depression and anxiety. Right, right. Because, well, people don't go to consult with a physician or a psychiatrist or a psychologist unless they're miserable and afraid and unhappy, because why would they? Narcissists, for example, very rarely go to see psychologists because they're not particularly distressed by their condition. Same with criminals. Okay. So the logical inference pathway is that the primary disorder is depression and anxiety. And then there may be secondary manifestations, but you have to be damn sure that the secondary manifestations are real before you make them. Before you make the depression. Anxiety, secondary to that. So one alternative treatment in principle would have been treatment for depression and anxiety directly. And then to see if the gender dysphoria resolves, let's say, on its own. I'm not saying that would have been the only alternative, but it is the appropriate default alternative. Especially when the alternatives are puberty blockers, which aren't trivial hormonal transformation, which is a major medical and psychological intervention, to say nothing of surgery. Right. Because the other default position that psychiatrists, etc, physicians, surgeons should adopt is don't do anything harmful and permanent.
- [49:01]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [49:02]
Jordan Peterson
Right. Okay. Okay. So now your parents are told that you're definitely a boy, despite the fact that you've being feminine your whole life and that if they don't do something, all hell might break loose.
- [49:21]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [49:21]
Jordan Peterson
You're told you better get at it.
- [49:24]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [49:24]
Jordan Peterson
And that there's no alternative treatment. Yeah. You're certain of this, eh? That this is how it played out?
- [49:30]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [49:31]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Okay. Now I'll leave it at that. Okay. So now your parents, how do they come to a decision and what happens in your household? Well, that's occurring. You implied that there was a fair bit of back and forth.
- [49:47]
Clementine Breen
Definitely.
- [49:47]
Jordan Peterson
And your parents.
- [49:48]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, I mean, we didn't really fight too much. It was just they were very distressed about it and they didn't want to agree, but they also felt kind of backed into a corner and they sort of felt a bit.
- [50:02]
Jordan Peterson
The purpose of that threat is to back them into a corner.
- [50:05]
Clementine Breen
Exactly.
- [50:06]
Jordan Peterson
That is the purpose of that threat.
- [50:08]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [50:08]
Jordan Peterson
Because there's no clinical evidence for its validity. Right. First of all, even the medical organizations.
- [50:17]
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- [51:34]
Jordan Peterson
Purport to address the long term viability of gender affirming treatment state that partly because of prejudice against gender dysphoric people, there are no long term studies. Well, you can't have it both ways.
- [51:52]
Clementine Breen
Exactly.
- [51:52]
Jordan Peterson
There's either no long term studies or you don't know what the suicide risk is. Plus there's an additional issue. People who are depressed and anxious are at higher risk for suicide. That doesn't mean that they're at higher risk for suicide because they're gender dysphoric. Those are very separate issues. Yeah, right. So, okay, so now your parents, they've been delivered a warning by a medic. What's the, what's the therapist doing at this time?
- [52:19]
Clementine Breen
She's sort of just reaffirming all my beliefs. And every problem I had was attributed to the fact that I was somehow inherently born in the wrong body and that I was intrinsically male and I should have been born in a different body. And that's why I feel so anxious and that's why I hate school and that's why I can't focus. And all my problems were attributed to my gender dysphoria. Yeah.
- [52:42]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so that's convenient for you in the short term, right?
- [52:45]
Clementine Breen
In my mind I'm thinking, oh great, this is treatable. I found the problem. I found what's wrong with me.
- [52:51]
Jordan Peterson
Did you? Okay, this is a hard question. Not that the other ones haven't been. When you were thinking your private thoughts at this point, when you were listening to the therapists and the physicians, what did you believe? What did you doubt?
- [53:06]
Clementine Breen
I don't think I actually doubted much. I mean, I in my mind truly believed that this might be the answer.
- [53:15]
Jordan Peterson
And hoped or believed.
- [53:17]
Clementine Breen
I think I Hoped. And I was waiting to see if it would resolve, and it didn't eventually. But I was also kind of naively trusting them and assuming that this was right, especially because people around me.
- [53:31]
Jordan Peterson
Hard to tell how much of that's naive. You know, the thing about being an adolescent is that you know how people are. They're always on the cases of. On a teenager's case to not be so susceptible to peer pressure. It's actually being susceptible to peer pressure is developmentally appropriate for a teenager. So imagine when you're a child, you're susceptible to the influence of your parents. Okay. Well, when you're a teenager, you're not ready to be on your own. Who should you be susceptible to? Well, obviously your peers. Why? Well, they're going to be your community. So if you're a normal teenager, what your peers think matters.
- [54:15]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [54:16]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. So now you're already in a milieu at school where you've got your pronouns, you've got your male identity, plus there are figures of authority who are driving that home. I don't think that it's. I don't think that the fact that you are susceptible to that is indicative of what I would describe as naivety. It's what you'd expect. The other thing that's useful to know is that. Imagine that two things determine how you respond in a situation. One might be your personality, your temperament, even your knowledge. The other might be the demands, the social demands of the situation.
- [54:54]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. Okay.
- [54:54]
Jordan Peterson
Then you might ask for the typical person, which is the greater influence? And the answer is clearly the social influence. Yeah, that's what it means to be social. So here's an example. People decide when they're not hungry by noticing when they've eaten the same amount of food on the same size plates as everyone else at the table. So even something as biological as hunger and its satiety is actually mediated by social observation. Well, why? Well, you don't want to be the person who habitually eats all the food. Right. You're not going to make yourself popular, especially when food is scarce. People are very sensitive to social pressure. Pressure, norms. That's appropriate.
- [55:39]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [55:39]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so now your situation is. You're confused. Well, puberty does that, but you had additional reason, and now you've been delivered an identity. And it's in your interest for. In a variety of ways to accept that, because it actually solves a complex problem in principle, which is what the hell you're supposed to do with your fear. And. And then people are promising that it's going to work, then you also have the situation where, at least in potential, the testosterone is making you more confident.
- [56:12]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [56:12]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. So I don't think you should have necessarily expected yourself to sort that out. I am curious, though, and it's worth thinking through. Like you told me already that you had a conflict. You knew there was something in the past. Or did you. How much did you know that this thing in the past hadn't been addressed?
- [56:30]
Clementine Breen
I knew that it had happened, and I was very aware of what happened. But I didn't think it was also something that needed to be addressed until probably around 16.
- [56:40]
Jordan Peterson
And you said you figured that out because these other things didn't work, Because I was still.
- [56:45]
Clementine Breen
I had gone through the surgery. I had been on testosterone. I was fitting in much better as a teenage boy than I had been as a teenage girl. And everything was worse. I was so much worse off, and I was so much more suicidal.
- [56:59]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And so that's. Okay. So how did you come to the realization that it might have had something to do with the abuse?
- [57:05]
Clementine Breen
I didn't. I think I sort of just knew once I was looking at my life and looking at the way that I was acting and I couldn't function properly, to put it bluntly, I. I figured there was something still going on that I had.
- [57:19]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, the thing is too, you know, you're also getting older doing during all this period of time. And that means that, you know, as you age and mature and gather more wisdom and are less naive even, let's say you take a different view of things that happen to you in your past. Right, Right. So you can realize the significance. Like, you're not. What the hell's a six year old gonna do about understanding sexual abuse? Like, no, that's not gonna happen. So then at what point do you start even seeing that it was abuse? And then at what point do you start, well, delving into its effects? Maybe you could make a case that, you know, you weren't ready or able to do that until you were 17, especially given that you had an alternate hypothesis and strategy at hand. Okay, so things are getting worse and they got better.
- [58:13]
Clementine Breen
Yes, yes.
- [58:14]
Jordan Peterson
And then they got worse. Okay, now 12 years old, you're on puberty blockers. And what were the consequences of the puberty blockers?
- [58:24]
Clementine Breen
The puberty blockers made me kind of light headed all the time. So it also sort of put a little more pressure on me to start testosterone because I was sort of feeling the effects of having no estrogen or testosterone in my system. And I was Getting hot flashes and just feeling kind of lightheaded. But otherwise, it just stopped any breast development, which was causing me distress at the time. But it also sort of deformed the breast development that I did have. So in a way, it sort of relieved my discomfort with my breasts, but it also made it a lot worse because then the tissue was somewhat deformed.
- [59:00]
Jordan Peterson
You know, one of the questions looking at your history is, like, when did you pass threshold? I know that it's relatively common for people who start taking puberty blockers to proceed to the surgical route.
- [59:12]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [59:13]
Jordan Peterson
And that. That begs the question of, like, when do you make the fatal decision, so to speak, the big decision? And you might say, well, that's just before surgery. You might say, it's just before testosterone. You might say it's just before puberty blockers. So as far as you're concerned, if you had to decide, when did you make the determining decision? At what point?
- [59:37]
Clementine Breen
The decision to have surgery?
- [59:39]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, the decision to. Yeah. Well, the decision to see this all the way through, let's say.
- [59:44]
Clementine Breen
I think it was around when I started testosterone and I started, you know, noticing my voice dropping and noticing that people were starting to just respect me a little bit more now that I looked more physiologically male once that happened, and I was sort of fitting in socially as male, but then I was looking at my body and just seeing the disconnect. And then because of the puberty blockers, the deformities of my breast tissue was causing me so much discomfort. So it was really that sort of immediately after I started testosterone at 13.
- [60:16]
Jordan Peterson
So you were trapped between fish and fowl at that point.
- [60:19]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [60:19]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Okay. And so tell me how you were evaluated before the surgery. You're 14. There's two things I want to know. How you were evaluated before the surgery, and then what you think of now about the fact that you were giving consent for that surgery. Well. Or for the puberty blockers. Puberty blockers at 12, testosterone at 13, and then a double mastectomy at 14. Right. So no medical procedures are supposed to be administered without informed consent. And informed means you got all the information, and consent means you understand what the hell you're doing. Okay, so evaluation before the double mastectomy, what kind of evaluation did you get from the surgeons?
- [61:06]
Clementine Breen
Well, the two people who wrote my referral letters were Olsen and Landon. So I hardly had any extra psychological evaluation because they just wrote the letters because they'd already been seeing me, and they didn't really ask me much additional questions. And Then when I went in for surgery, I had already had everything scheduled. I was already cleared for surgery. So I traveled to San Francisco just because it was recommendation of Olson, the specific doctor. And by the time I was there.
- [61:34]
Jordan Peterson
Why specific doctor?
- [61:35]
Clementine Breen
Because he doesn't have age limits or BMI requirements and.
- [61:40]
Jordan Peterson
No age limits.
- [61:41]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [61:42]
Jordan Peterson
And that's part of Olsen Kennedy, in principle, from what I understand, opposes. What does she call it? It's not blockade, exactly.
- [61:52]
Clementine Breen
Gatekeeping.
- [61:53]
Jordan Peterson
Gatekeeping, yeah.
- [61:53]
Clementine Breen
That's the word they use.
- [61:55]
Jordan Peterson
Right. And the. Those who oppose gatekeeping assume that more harm is done the longer the delay.
- [62:01]
Clementine Breen
Yes, Right. Right. Which I wish I had been delayed because at 14, I was really, really impulsive and not thinking things through.
- [62:10]
Jordan Peterson
You know what that's called?
- [62:11]
Clementine Breen
Being 14?
- [62:12]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, that's exactly what that's called. Yes.
- [62:15]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. So, I mean, by the time I had. Was being evaluated for surgery, it was already. The next day, it was already scheduled. They were drawing markings on me, and they just sort of briefly went over what the procedure was. It was just called top surgery, not mastectomy. I didn't know even what breast she looked like. I think it's important to realize how desensitizing they make everything. I don't think I realized the actual damage I did to my body until much, much later on. I mean, calling it top surgery doesn't even really acknowledge that there are specific glands there that are organs. Yes.
- [62:52]
Jordan Peterson
As vague a term as you could possibly invent. As vague and harmless a term. Yeah. Right. And that's purposeful and motivated, like bottom surgery.
- [63:00]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [63:00]
Jordan Peterson
Which is. Although it's difficult for things to be worse. That's worse.
- [63:06]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [63:06]
Jordan Peterson
So, okay, now you said, okay, top surgery. Now you're marked up and you're ready to go. You already have some ambivalence about the way that you appear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And now the surgeons have decided that you've already been cleared by the people who need to clear you.
- [63:24]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [63:25]
Jordan Peterson
For surgical appropriateness.
- [63:27]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [63:27]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. I guess one of the things you're going to discover legally is how much additional responsibility surgeons have to ensure that the people that they're relying on to clear people for top surgery have done their jobs properly.
- [63:44]
Clementine Breen
What's interesting about my case, too, is even in my referral notes, which the surgeon saw, there's conflicting information. One of them says I had held a male identity since puberty, and the other one said I'd had a strong male identity since early childhood. So immediately, like, you can tell, it's sort of rubber stamped. And they didn't really look through it, because if they looked through it, they'd see that glaring contradiction.
- [64:08]
Jordan Peterson
And you have those records?
- [64:10]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [64:11]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so now you wake up after surgery.
- [64:17]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [64:18]
Jordan Peterson
What's that like?
- [64:19]
Clementine Breen
I felt like I'd been hit by a car. Like I didn't even going into surgery. I was not nervous. I was totally calm. I had zero feelings about what was even gonna happen. And I wasn't even shaking.
- [64:33]
Jordan Peterson
What do you mean, zero feelings?
- [64:34]
Clementine Breen
I was so numb at that point. And I think I just didn't really. I was so dissociated as well.
- [64:40]
Jordan Peterson
What do you mean, dissociated?
- [64:41]
Clementine Breen
I wasn't living in my body. I wasn't thinking of myself as part of my body. I was totally disconnected from my physical being and I think my identity.
- [64:51]
Jordan Peterson
Do you know what derealization is?
- [64:53]
Clementine Breen
Yes. Yeah.
- [64:54]
Jordan Peterson
How come?
- [64:55]
Clementine Breen
How come you know, I've heard about it from psychologists I've spoken to.
- [64:59]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so that's your. That's your state of mind going into surgery?
- [65:03]
Clementine Breen
Essentially, yeah. And it was pretty glaringly obvious in my opinion. I was smiling and bubbly. I had no nerves, I had no questions, nothing to ask. And when I woke up, obviously all of that was gone. I was just in tremendous pain and very out of it physically.
- [65:20]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, what's been the consequence of the surgery?
- [65:23]
Clementine Breen
Well, I.
- [65:24]
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- [66:27]
Clementine Breen
Didn'T have breasts. And I have a lot of chest pain related to hormonal cycles from the tissue that was left over, which is pretty painful to this day, and wasn't something I even realized until I fully stopped testosterone. Because once I stopped testosterone and my hormonal cycle was able to somewhat regulate, then I started having really intense chest pain related to my hormonal cycles.
- [66:53]
Jordan Peterson
When you stopped testosterone, did you re. Undergo female puberty? What happened?
- [67:01]
Clementine Breen
I wasn't sure what would have happened if I stopped. So I had talked about it with doctors, and they were like, we don't know. But I sort of progressed a little bit through female puberty, but mostly no changes, just sort of slight redistribution of fat and things like that.
- [67:16]
Jordan Peterson
Do you know what your reproductive status is?
- [67:19]
Clementine Breen
I don't know.
- [67:21]
Jordan Peterson
Were you. How was the issue of your reproductive status dealt with by your physician, your counselor, and your surgeon?
- [67:30]
Clementine Breen
It was always brushed over by people. It was always something like, oh, well, how could you worry about that when this child is suicidal? Is what they would. Sort of how they would deal with it. With my parents, who would always bring up, well, what about future fertility? They'd be like, well, that's not important when we're dealing with something. So.
- [67:46]
Jordan Peterson
So the crisis justifies. Okay, okay. And what about sexual function? How was that dealt with and discussed?
- [67:55]
Clementine Breen
That was also something that wasn't really brought up as a concern. And then later on, I had to go on topical estrogen as well. And that was also something that wasn't really brought up as a potential thing that I would need to do in the future.
- [68:08]
Jordan Peterson
Why did you have to go on topical estrogen?
- [68:10]
Clementine Breen
Because of vaginal atrophy.
- [68:12]
Jordan Peterson
How much did you understand when you were 14, do you think? And let's try to give the devil his due. Right, because you'll have to do that in court. For example, like, how much of that. How much do you think you understood of what you were doing in terms of its permanence and significance?
- [68:31]
Clementine Breen
At the time, I truly believed that I would become male and that this would somehow fix all my problems, which is so not accurate to what was actually happening. So I say I understood basically nothing of what was actually going on and what was actually chemically happening to my body. I didn't really understand hormonal cycles and how much that plays into emotions.
- [68:55]
Jordan Peterson
Did you have any. How did you reconcile the. I mean, you had your. You had top surgery, but you didn't have bottom surgery. So how did you reconcile that obvious difference between you and the man you were supposed to become? Yeah, and how was that dealt with by your physician, your therapist, and your surgeon?
- [69:16]
Clementine Breen
It was something that was always sort of like, well, you can fix that. Like, I was thinking about bottom surgery when I was a teenager. It was brought up to me by therapists, and I had been thinking about it and researching it. And, you know, by the time I was 16, 17, and I was breaking down in ways that were unrelated to my gender, I started getting help, and my gender dysphoria was just gone after that. I just felt no desire to keep doing it or no reason to continue presenting as male. After I had sort of gone through therapy about the sexual abuse, but prior to that helped.
- [69:50]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. So. Oh, okay. So let's. Let's delve into that a little bit, because I guess that's associated, because one of the things we haven't discussed is, why did you detransition? Right. And you. You've made some reference to that now, I think. Okay, so now I guess we'll just keep walking through it chronologically. You've undergone surgery, but not bottom surgery, let's say. But that's, in principle, offering itself in the future. Okay, so now what happens? Was there any reconciliation of your discomfort about how your upper body appeared? No.
- [70:29]
Clementine Breen
After top surgery? Not really. I mean, the problem of I have breasts was gone. But also at the end of that, I was also thinking, well, I didn't really need to do that because they were already somewhat deformed anyways, and I still don't like the way that I look, and I still feel uncomfortable. So that didn't really resolve. But at the time, I was sort of done transitioning, so I was in this place of, like, I don't really know where to go next, and things are just getting worse, and it just kept getting worse.
- [70:59]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, and you're 15 now?
- [71:02]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, I'm 1415.
- [71:03]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, now when do you find another therapist?
- [71:08]
Clementine Breen
16, 17, I believe.
- [71:10]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, and you said that that was effective?
- [71:14]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [71:14]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, tell me that story.
- [71:16]
Clementine Breen
Well, I had sort of started opening up and realizing I needed to deal with a lot of the sexual trauma that I had.
- [71:22]
Jordan Peterson
Opening up to who?
- [71:23]
Clementine Breen
I had talked a little bit to my parents about it and sort of just came to terms with it in my own.
- [71:28]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so you revealed some of it to them?
- [71:30]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [71:31]
Jordan Peterson
How did they react?
- [71:31]
Clementine Breen
Vaguely, I revealed some of it, and they were very, very concerned and very distressed. And I think they immediately sort of questioned why I was in gender therapy, and they immediately wanted to put me in treatment for sexual assault only Oh, I see.
- [71:46]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so once they had the other details, they could put two and two together.
- [71:50]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [71:50]
Jordan Peterson
And so they encouraged you to find another therapist. They help. How did that play out?
- [71:55]
Clementine Breen
They helped me find another.
- [71:56]
Jordan Peterson
They helped you. Okay, so you found another therapist. Why didn't you find. Why did you find a different therapist?
- [72:03]
Clementine Breen
Because the therapy that I was doing was so surface level and wasn't actually addressing any issues in my mind. It was just creating more issues.
- [72:11]
Jordan Peterson
Why did you come to that conclusion?
- [72:13]
Clementine Breen
Because they kept affirming that I was somehow intrinsically male and that would solve all my problems. And then once I matched the outward appearance of a male and I didn't feel better, they had no answers for me.
- [72:24]
Jordan Peterson
I see. Okay. Okay. And then you open up to. Okay. So then you start more deeply considering the potential effect of the sexual abuse.
- [72:33]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [72:33]
Jordan Peterson
Then you talk to your parents. Then they help you find another therapist.
- [72:37]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [72:37]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. How does that therapist differ from the previous therapist?
- [72:42]
Clementine Breen
That therapist barely spoke about my gender. We didn't even discuss it. Maybe we've talked about it. Maybe once we went over it and I said, yeah, I've been trans identified. And then we just sort of only really dealt with my childhood trauma, my sexual assault.
- [72:57]
Jordan Peterson
How was your new therapist trained? What was their specialty?
- [73:01]
Clementine Breen
DBT and CBT were their therapies.
- [73:03]
Jordan Peterson
PhD psychologists.
- [73:04]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [73:05]
Jordan Peterson
Do you know where they were trained?
- [73:06]
Clementine Breen
I'm not sure.
- [73:07]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, fine. But Ph.D. psychologist.
- [73:09]
Clementine Breen
Ph.D. psychologist.
- [73:10]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Okay. And it was a more behavior therapy oriented approach. Okay, so. And what did they do with you?
- [73:18]
Clementine Breen
We went through dialectual behavioral therapy. And then I also did something called imaginary vaginal exposure therapy, which sort of helped me remember a lot of the gaps that I didn't actually have filled in. And then once we did that, we just did a lot of general talk therapy.
- [73:33]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, why do you think that? What did you talk about that you think was helpful?
- [73:38]
Clementine Breen
The number one thing that I think was helpful that we talked about is how that experience from childhood made me think about what it meant to be female and what expectations.
- [73:48]
Jordan Peterson
And what did you conclude?
- [73:49]
Clementine Breen
I concluded that I had been attributing a lot of self hatred to femaleness. I had been putting a lot of my own experiences onto femaleness as a whole, and I had been taking that out of myself for a very long time.
- [74:02]
Jordan Peterson
Right, so femaleness as the cause of your suffering?
- [74:05]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [74:06]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Okay. And this therapist was effective?
- [74:10]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, very.
- [74:11]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. And so what. What were the consequences for your symptoms of depression and anxiety?
- [74:16]
Clementine Breen
Just really resolved pretty quickly. I mean, I still was on medication associated with That I was on medication. When I was 15, I started being put on antipsychotics and antidepressants.
- [74:28]
Jordan Peterson
That was when you were still taking testosterone?
- [74:30]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [74:30]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so you went off the testosterone?
- [74:32]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [74:32]
Jordan Peterson
You went off the psych meds before you went to therapy?
- [74:36]
Clementine Breen
No, I went off the psych meds around the time I was going to therapy with a second therapist and then I stopped testosterone after that.
- [74:44]
Jordan Peterson
But your depression and anxiety resolved even though you stopped taking testosterone?
- [74:48]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [74:50]
Jordan Peterson
Why?
- [74:51]
Clementine Breen
I think the main factor was definitely the testosterone because.
- [74:55]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so that, that quelled the psychosis. Why do you think your depression and anxiety went away?
- [75:00]
Clementine Breen
I think it was because I was actually going through therapy that was actually talking about my issues and not just.
- [75:07]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So you think you got to the cause, the actual cause. How did you resolve it? I mean, you had reason to blame your femaleness, so to speak, because that did make you vulnerable in that way. So how did you, how did you and your therapist, what reconfiguration of the way you looked at things worked for you?
- [75:28]
Clementine Breen
I started really focusing on what I wanted my life to look like on my terms and not just how I could fit into other things, and started trying to focus on more goal oriented things rather than letting my mental problems be the main focus of my life.
- [75:44]
Jordan Peterson
How did you discover what your goals were?
- [75:46]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, we just sort of talked about things I like and things I'm really passionate about, beyond gender, beyond my mental health issues and what I really love doing. And that gave me sort of purpose. I mean, I love theater, I love literature, and that gave me a lot of drive to go to school as well.
- [76:03]
Jordan Peterson
How did you, or did you, and if so, configure your view of being female?
- [76:08]
Clementine Breen
I mean, that sort of came second in a way because we were going through this whole therapy process and not really talking about my gender at all. And then sort of after I was done with therapy, I'm in college, I'm much better off. And that's when I came to the decision I wanted to detransition because I had built a life around me that had nothing to do with my gender and I had reconciled with my own problems. And that's sort of when I came to the conclusion that there was no reason to keep presenting as male.
- [76:37]
Jordan Peterson
That's a complicated realization. I mean, yeah, you had to. Okay, that really requires some unpacking because that's actually really hard. You know, if you wait 40 minutes for a bus that's supposed to be there in five minutes, it gets harder and harder to Move away from the bus stop because you've already invested 40 minutes. Right. That's the sunk cost fallacy. Well, you had a social community around you at school that established your identity. Your parents had gone through hell, and you as well along the way to establish this new identity. You took puberty blockers, you took testosterone. Then you had surgery. How in the world did you reconcile yourself to the realization that that was not right? Yeah, because like, you'd put a lot in. There was a lot at stake.
- [77:30]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [77:31]
Jordan Peterson
So that's. So how did you do that?
- [77:33]
Clementine Breen
It was really, really difficult. And once I sort of started to think about it and think about do I really want to do this? And skipping injections and missing testosterone doses and just everything around me sort of came crashing down and I just started feeling this tremendous grief about what I had just done. It was really.
- [77:54]
Jordan Peterson
No doubt. No doubt. But even that could be an impediment to, like, admission that the path was wrong.
- [78:01]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [78:02]
Jordan Peterson
I mean, there's a lot of things you have to realize that the path was wrong. Your parents were deceived. That would be part of the realization. You were hurt and damaged in consequence of it. There's all these years that you spent in limbo, at least, that were misapplied. You have to admit that not only you were wrong, so to speak, but everyone around you was wrong, including the authorities. The so called authorities. Which means that now your relationship to authority is also altered. I still don't exactly understand how you managed it. The therapist helped.
- [78:42]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, therapist help.
- [78:43]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Now, partly because you said that you were focused on some things that you actually wanted to do.
- [78:48]
Clementine Breen
Right? Yeah.
- [78:49]
Jordan Peterson
That weren't gender related.
- [78:50]
Clementine Breen
No.
- [78:50]
Jordan Peterson
You started to plot out a pathway into the future.
- [78:53]
Clementine Breen
Right. I started to think about things other than myself and thinking about school and what I wanted for my future, which led me to the conversation in my own head of do I want kids one day? Which also helped with that realization.
- [79:05]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so why? What did you realize?
- [79:07]
Clementine Breen
I wanted kids and I could not picture myself as someone's father. And I really tried to picture.
- [79:13]
Jordan Peterson
And yeah, I talked to another young woman who. She didn't go as far down the path as you did, but one of the things that stopped her, eventually she started living as a boy at school and she didn't let her parents know, but. But she was on the path.
- [79:28]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [79:29]
Jordan Peterson
And then they found out and. But one of her realizations was she said she fantasized about being a father, let's say about being adult male at some point in the future. And thought.
- [79:41]
Clementine Breen
No. Yeah. Yeah.
- [79:43]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So had you not done that before?
- [79:46]
Clementine Breen
No.
- [79:47]
Jordan Peterson
What? Was there no projection into the future that far?
- [79:49]
Clementine Breen
No.
- [79:50]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, that's not atypical either. You know, like, I've worked with adolescents, young adolescents, trying to get them to plan out their future to some degree. By the time you're in your early 20s, you might be able to do that for five years into the future.
- [80:04]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [80:05]
Jordan Peterson
My sense with 13 and 14 year olds was a few months into the future is a long ways.
- [80:12]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [80:12]
Jordan Peterson
And even tomorrow is quite a distance. Right. And that's part of cortical maturation too. Right. The more you mature cortically, the longer time span you can take into account. So you just hadn't projected yourself that far into the future?
- [80:27]
Clementine Breen
No, I just couldn't picture it in my mind, really.
- [80:30]
Jordan Peterson
Right. But then you started become able to do that.
- [80:32]
Clementine Breen
Once I was older and actually like in college and thinking about my future in a way that was more tangible, it started to hit me.
- [80:40]
Jordan Peterson
Two things I guess I'm curious about now is why the lawsuit? Three things. Why the lawsuit, why the podcast? And. And who else have you talked to broadly, publicly, why the podcast? And also then maybe finally your attitude towards being female now.
- [80:59]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. The lawsuit specifically is because Olson Kennedy, and she said this in countless interviews and talked about this very openly. She doesn't believe in gatekeeping, and she's very open about how she doesn't think it's possible that mental health comorbidities could ever affect someone's gender identity. And I just want to say that that is so wrong and that's directly hurt and ruined in my eyes, my life. And I think that that approach to healthcare is so dangerous. And it's not just dangerous, it's malpractice, at least in cases like mine. And I think the reason for talking about it so publicly is I also just want to spread awareness that this does happen. People like to act like this never happens, or no, children transition. But that's not true.
- [81:47]
Jordan Peterson
Yes. It's seriously not true.
- [81:48]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [81:49]
Jordan Peterson
Right. And while it's worse than that, because as I pointed out at the beginning of this interview, it's illegal and unprofessional. If this was a clinical interview, what I did in this interview would be illegal and unprofessional. Right. It'd be enough to get me barred from my practice. In fact, my practice is actually under threat for questioning. Exactly. This kind of process. Yeah. Well, it stops. I was in a fortunate position to some degree because I'm not dependent on my professional status, for my financial support or for that of my family. But most people don't have that option. Right. So that means I would have to lie to you.
- [82:33]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [82:34]
Jordan Peterson
Right. And that's not good, to say the least, because the last thing you need when you're 12 and confused is some idiot professional lying to you, especially when they're trying to justify their own ideological stance.
- [82:47]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [82:48]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so. So when did you publicly announce the lawsuit and what have you done publicly on the detransition front? Have you spoken and interacted with other detransitioners?
- [83:04]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, I've spoken to some detransitioners, mostly, like online or just phone calls. And that's been really nice to hear that other people have also gone through this. Even though I'm sad that they've also gone through this. It's nice that I'm not alone. The lawsuit came out, I believe, December 6th, but I had spoken to Billboard Chris a bit before that, pretty publicly.
- [83:25]
Jordan Peterson
He's quite the effective troublemaker.
- [83:26]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. So that got a lot of attention, and I just sort of outlined my entire story in that short little street interview.
- [83:32]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. How'd you meet him?
- [83:33]
Clementine Breen
It was totally coincidental. I was walking home on UCLA campus and.
- [83:38]
Jordan Peterson
Oh, so you just bumped into him?
- [83:39]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [83:40]
Jordan Peterson
Tell everybody who Billboard Chris is.
- [83:42]
Clementine Breen
Billboard Chris is awesome. And he just stands around with a billboard and has conversations with people about puberty blockers. And I just totally ran into him, and we had a nice conversation.
- [83:53]
Jordan Peterson
Now he's a Canadian.
- [83:55]
Clementine Breen
Yes.
- [83:55]
Jordan Peterson
And he travels all over the world doing this. Standing on sidewalks and often being harassed.
- [84:02]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [84:03]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. He's quite this strange character.
- [84:06]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [84:07]
Jordan Peterson
And he's obviously very committed to this. Okay, so you just happened to bump into him?
- [84:12]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [84:13]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so tell. Tell that story.
- [84:15]
Clementine Breen
Well, I'd seen his stuff online before, and I'd seen him be harassed and had coffee thrown at him, and I just wanted to tell him, like, ask somebody directly impacted by puberty blockers. I really appreciated what he was doing. And then he just asked about my story, and we sort of had a conversation about it, and it got a lot more attention than I was expecting because I had had that conversation weeks before the lawsuit was supposed to come out. So I wasn't really supposed to be talking too much, so I tried to keep it vague when talking to him, but it got a lot of attention, and it was nice to see that other people were so sympathetic to my story.
- [84:50]
Jordan Peterson
Why do you think it got attention? I mean, he gets some attention.
- [84:53]
Clementine Breen
He definitely gets attention on his own.
- [84:56]
Jordan Peterson
But no, it was particular. I think that's actually where I became aware of you. I think that's. I think it was that event that triggered my reaching out to you initially. You know, I found out afterwards about the lawsuit and that it was also aimed at Olson Kennedy, who's someone I'm interested in for a variety of reasons. But I think it was that Billboard Chris interview. So why do you think? What's your understanding of why that was so widely viewed and attended to?
- [85:25]
Clementine Breen
I said Olson Kennedy's name, and that was right after that information had come out about her hiding the study. And it was also, I think, just because of my age at the time that these things happened. It was definitely jarring. Yeah.
- [85:41]
Jordan Peterson
Right. Yes. Well, you also. You're also quiet and soft spoken and eminently reasonable in your public presentation, and so that probably didn't hurt. Right. So. Right. Okay. So the lawsuit, are you mounting that, or are your parents, like, how is that progressing, and how is it supported? It's expensive. How are you doing this?
- [86:08]
Clementine Breen
I'm mounting that mostly, but I'm working with some awesome law firms, and I'm working with Campbell, Miller Payne, and all they do is detransition lawsuits. They work with Preesha Mosley as well, and other clients who are also detransitioners. So that's kind of all they do. So they were able to help me out a lot, and it's mostly me mounting it. I mean, my parents are supportive. They just don't really want to be public about it, which I totally understand.
- [86:32]
Jordan Peterson
Right, right. And where are you with the lawsuit?
- [86:35]
Clementine Breen
We just started. It was filed in December, so things are okay.
- [86:38]
Jordan Peterson
So this is really new.
- [86:39]
Clementine Breen
Pretty fresh, yeah.
- [86:40]
Jordan Peterson
And what are the. What are you asking for? What are the. What are the claims and what is the. Describe the suit.
- [86:48]
Clementine Breen
I mean, vaguely malpractice and just asking for damages. And I've gone through breast reconstruction surgery and had to pay out of pocket for that. And all the medical costs associated with future things like fertility or my other medical problems related to hormonal things, I would just like some compensation for those costs.
- [87:05]
Jordan Peterson
Right. And then with regards to the public impact of this, what are you hoping for?
- [87:10]
Clementine Breen
I am hoping for change. I don't want to demand anything. I'm not a lawmaker or a doctor, so I can't make any broad assertions, but I definitely think the standard of care where it's at right now is pretty abysmal.
- [87:21]
Jordan Peterson
What would you like to see be the case?
- [87:24]
Clementine Breen
I would like to see people working on helping People, rather than pushing as many things as quickly as possible and getting people to agree to as many things quickly as possible. Because that's definitely what seems to be the trend, not actually helping kids and investigating what's going on with these kids. It's more the fight to prescribe them as many things as possible.
- [87:44]
Jordan Peterson
Well, the standard of care before all of this became politicized was some of this was established in Alberta at camh. And the man who established it, he was just a clinician. He had his career destroyed. He had been working with kids with gender dysphoria for a very long period of time. And his conclusion was the overarching condition is depression and anxiety. Some of that's focused on bodily concerns. The basic standard of care should be focused on the depression and anxiety. You should, and you should leave well enough alone, at least till the age of 18. Where most people.
- [88:25]
Clementine Breen
Exactly.
- [88:26]
Jordan Peterson
It reconciles, just like puberty reconciles for most people. Right. And his career was destroyed for that once it became politicized.
- [88:33]
Clementine Breen
That's crazy.
- [88:34]
Jordan Peterson
Right. And he was. He launched a lawsuit on the people who just against the people who destroyed his career and was eventually vindicated. But, you know, it took like, I don't know how many years, very long period of time. Right. So that was a perfectly sane and professionally appropriate standard of care. And it's based on the principle of first do no harm.
- [88:58]
Clementine Breen
Exactly.
- [88:58]
Jordan Peterson
Right. Which is a good rule of thumb. Right. Okay. So what are you doing with your life at the moment, apart from the lawsuit?
- [89:07]
Clementine Breen
Right now I'm just in college and trying to get to.
- [89:10]
Jordan Peterson
Are you at ucla?
- [89:11]
Clementine Breen
Yes. Hmm.
- [89:13]
Jordan Peterson
So what that. What's that been like now that you have a certain degree of notoriety and UCLA is quite a politicized campus?
- [89:20]
Clementine Breen
It's been a little difficult, I won't lie. I've definitely been noticed a bit more times than I'd like and noticed how people have asked me about things and brought up very sort of. A lot of the information that I'm talking about publicly is very, very personal and not something I really just want to, like, talk about in everyday conversation. So having people like, very kind of hostilely confront me and tell me that I'm a bad person for talking about my experiences or things like that.
- [89:47]
Jordan Peterson
How often does that happen?
- [89:48]
Clementine Breen
Thankfully, infrequently, but it's happened a couple times.
- [89:52]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah, well, it doesn't have to happen that often before. It's like you don't have to be accosted hostilely by strangers very often for it actually to be a concern Right. Is possible for you to continue at UCLA under those conditions?
- [90:06]
Clementine Breen
I hope so. I think so. So far, most people close to me have been awesome and really supportive and most people that know me are nice.
- [90:13]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So you have a social support network.
- [90:15]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [90:16]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, so maybe we'll close this part then with the discussion. You went through dialectical behavior therapy and with some marked degree of success under relatively trying conditions. So that's quite surprising. And maybe that's a testament to your persistence and honesty and also to the skill of your therapist. That would be my guess. And now your. Your attitude towards your sex has changed. Okay. You said partly that was because you. What exactly you understood what happened when you were six.
- [90:58]
Clementine Breen
I started.
- [90:58]
Jordan Peterson
How did you reconcile yourself to that?
- [91:00]
Clementine Breen
I started to contextualize it and truly understand it as abuse and something that I shouldn't just avoid, which is how I had seen it for a very long time. And once I started to reconcile with that, I was actually able to confront.
- [91:14]
Jordan Peterson
Right, so that takes some of the guilt off you.
- [91:16]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [91:17]
Jordan Peterson
Well, this other kid was 10.
- [91:19]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [91:20]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So it wasn't like he was particularly well supervised. No, 10 is also not very old.
- [91:26]
Clementine Breen
Exactly.
- [91:27]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So there's a story there too.
- [91:29]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [91:29]
Jordan Peterson
So you know, from the perspective of a 6 year old, a 10 year old is. Might as well be an adult.
- [91:34]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [91:34]
Jordan Peterson
But from the perspective of a 17 year old. A 6 year old and a 10 year old are both kids.
- [91:40]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [91:40]
Jordan Peterson
So. Okay, so you could contextualize it more effectively and that removed some of the guilt shame from you or all of it.
- [91:48]
Clementine Breen
Most of it. And I was also able to sort of understand, obviously I can never understand why. Exactly. But you also mentioned, like with another kid, there's also something happening on that end and I was able to fully sort of understand that it wasn't something I did and something wrong.
- [92:03]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, who knows what the history that kid was.
- [92:05]
Clementine Breen
It's probably something awful as well.
- [92:07]
Jordan Peterson
Well, that would be at least something you would investigate if you're trying to figure it out because something happened. And then you'd also wonder, well, what. Why was. How was it situationally that this could occur repeatedly in secrecy? Right. Because that's part of the situational determinants. Okay. But you worked through that. Okay. And then what? That alleviated some of your concern about being female as well.
- [92:35]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, I mean, to me, I. Once I started sort of thinking about what had happened to me and I started thinking about why I was doing the things that I was doing. Why was I really trying to hide my chest, why Was I trying to conceal my sex? And it was really just because I was suffering from really, really concealed PTSD that I had just thought wasn't happening. But I was just in constant fear, essentially.
- [93:00]
Jordan Peterson
Right, right. And so. Okay, so why do you think that fear and PTSD reconciled? Resolved.
- [93:08]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. I mean, I think once I was able to notice it, I was able to think about other ways to sort of calm that instead of just. Just letting it rule my life. And that's what I was doing by living as a different person. Right.
- [93:20]
Jordan Peterson
So once you identified it.
- [93:21]
Clementine Breen
Right.
- [93:22]
Jordan Peterson
And work walked through it, reconfigured it. So that took out the shame and the guilt, but also some of the fear of being female.
- [93:31]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [93:31]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Now, you said at the same time you were also starting to think about, say, having kids.
- [93:35]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [93:36]
Jordan Peterson
So you were starting to contemplate in the future, well, the preeminent advantage of being female, which obviously is to have kids and that. And that. What. That became attractive.
- [93:48]
Clementine Breen
Yeah. I started thinking about wanting to have kids and how much satisfaction that would bring me, and it made me really sad that I might have taken that opportunity away from myself at such a young age.
- [93:59]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So now you could see. I see. So once you shed the guilt and the fear and the shame, you could see opportunity.
- [94:08]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [94:09]
Jordan Peterson
Right. Right. Well, that's a good definition of reconciliation. So as far as you're concerned, now, how would you characterize your identity? Now?
- [94:19]
Clementine Breen
I'm female, and I'm happy to be female. I don't really try and think about my identity because I think spending so long attributing everything in my life to something wrong with my identity or my physical being was what was driving a lot of my unhealthy behaviors.
- [94:35]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. Okay. All right. Well, I think. I think. Is there anything else that you want to bring up that we haven't covered? Is there anything you want to tell the audience, let's say, before we bring this to a close?
- [94:46]
Clementine Breen
Not specifically. Nothing beyond the fact that I don't really have a political agenda. I'm not doing this for. I've already been accused of doing this for attention, and that's the last of my wants. I just want to spread awareness about this, and I can't sit by and let people say that this doesn't happen when this is something that is truly, like, ruptured my life.
- [95:07]
Jordan Peterson
Okay. So if you were gonna. And you are, in fact, doing this. If. If. What words do you have to say to someone who's 11, who's female, who's confused.
- [95:18]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [95:19]
Jordan Peterson
So you you can address people like that right now. You've been through the mill, let's say.
- [95:26]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [95:27]
Jordan Peterson
So what do you say to someone who's. To you when you're 11?
- [95:31]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [95:31]
Jordan Peterson
What do you say?
- [95:32]
Clementine Breen
I would say that there is nothing physically wrong with you and anything that you think is physically wrong with you is because something external is making you feel like there's something wrong with you, that there is nothing you need to fix about your body. You're fine. You're perfect just the way you are. Anything that's making you feel differently is totally external and so should be dealt.
- [95:55]
Jordan Peterson
With in that manner.
- [95:56]
Clementine Breen
Right, right.
- [95:57]
Jordan Peterson
So don't look to your body first.
- [96:00]
Clementine Breen
Right, Exactly.
- [96:02]
Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Well, that's very much akin to the principle of minimal necessary intervention. Right. Don't use surgery where discussion would suffice.
- [96:11]
Clementine Breen
Exactly.
- [96:12]
Jordan Peterson
For example. Right. Or more than suffice in your situation, it not only sufficed, but was curative.
- [96:19]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [96:19]
Jordan Peterson
Right. And so that should have been a tempted first. Obviously.
- [96:24]
Clementine Breen
Yeah, exactly.
- [96:25]
Jordan Peterson
Right. So your depression and anxiety should have been dealt with. You know, I talked to Chloe Cole.
- [96:31]
Clementine Breen
Yeah.
- [96:31]
Jordan Peterson
And I structured the conversation similarly, at least insofar as delving into the particulars of your diagnosis. Right. There's no excuse for not telling you that that dysphoric state is common. Right. That it's, it's, it's part of what young women experience when they go through puberty, that exacerbation of depression and anxiety that can be severe, that desire to hide that and that elevated sense of concern about bodily appearance. Obviously, you're going to be concerned about bodily appearance when all sorts of strange things are happening. They indicate a new status and vulnerability that you have no real idea how to deal with. And you're mutable, however, so it's inexcusable that you weren't told that. Now, I would say with regards to the abuse, that's more complex. Right. Because you didn't tell them. And then that begs the question of whether, you know, that was just abject refusal on your part or whether some additional time and a bit more curiosity, a little less jumping to conclusions. Well, we could. Let's, let's end with that. How much questioning do you think it would have taken when you were 12 to find out from you that something had happened to you when you were little?
- [98:11]
Clementine Breen
Right. I mean, I'm not a psychologist, so I obviously can't put myself in their shoes. But in my opinion, I don't think it would have taken much because I had had a lot of strange ideas about what it meant to be female or what it meant to be male or sexuality or things like that. And it had even been pointed out by my peers that my knowledge of sexuality was a bit inappropriate. And I think if they had just poked a little bit about some of the experiences that I had had, or my opinions, or just even asked if I had had any inappropriate experiences with other kids, I think I would have been able to say something.
- [98:50]
Jordan Peterson
Okay, well, I think we'll leave it at that. I think what we'll do for everybody watching and listening, I think what we'll do on the daily wire side is delve a little bit more into issues of identity. Right. Because one of the subtexts in this conversation was, and this is a consequence of the reign of a particular sort of ideology is that identity is best conceptualized, let's say, in gendered or even sexual terms. And that that's by no means obvious. And there's a fair bit of reason also to assume that that in itself is harmful. So one of the things that personality and clinical psychologists know, for example, is that narrow self concern and misery are identical statistically and conceptually. Any ideology that enhances narrow self consciousness necessarily produces negative emotion. So we should talk, we'll talk about identity on the daily wire side then. That gives us an additional half an hour for this conversation for those of you that are inclined to join us there. Clementine, thank you very much for coming to talk about this. And you do it in a remarkable, remarkably calm and composed manner, given the, what would you say, severity of the situation. Right, yeah. So thank you. Yeah, thanks, everybody.