A young man who went viral for confronting California lawmakers about harms he says he faced from childhood medical transition is speaking out against a bill he believes could make it harder for vulnerable minors to get proper counseling.
Jonni Skinner, a detransitioner and ambassador for Genspect, testified at a California Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week against SB 934, a bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener that would let victims of “conversion therapy” seek damages through malpractice lawsuits, even years after the counseling occurred. Wiener’s office defines conversion therapy to include “sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts.”
Critics, including the California Family Council, say SB 934 is so broadly written that it could expose therapists to lawsuits for talk therapy on sexuality and gender identity.
Skinner says that he grew up in a small town in Michigan in a religious family and was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at a young age. He said he struggled with feeling different from other boys and was bullied for having stereotypical feminine interests. As he reached puberty, he became increasingly uncomfortable with his body and carried shame that he might grow up to be gay or an effeminate man. After seeing online influencers he admired undergo gender transitions, he said he found the idea appealing.
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Skinner told Fox News Digital that he was referred to a gender therapist and an endocrinologist who affirmed his feelings and suggested medically transitioning would be a way he could feel “normal.”
“The medical and mental health providers didn’t bother to ask why I felt the way I did,” Skinner told Wiener at the hearing. “They poisoned my body with blockers and hormones, arresting my puberty and messing with my development. The result is I’m a 23-year-old gay man who’s never had an orgasm and may never experience one. Let that sink in.”
Though his mother resisted the idea of making permanent changes to his body, Skinner said the medical professionals told her that his gender dysphoria originated in the womb from a hormonal imbalance, claiming he had a “girl brain in a boy body.” He said they were told that transitioning with hormones was the only solution to his problems.
But the drugs left him with fainting spells, painful muscle spasms and urinary problems.
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In 2023, a new endocrinologist suggested he stop taking the drugs to see whether that would resolve his problems. Around the same time, he began questioning what doctors had told him over the years after reading leaked internal reports from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, which he said revealed doubts about the science behind the treatments.
This led Skinner down “a rabbit hole of research essentially.”
“And I had found that there was, you know, no — low quality to no evidence to doing this to me,” he told Fox News Digital.
Skinner said he eventually stopped treatment, but years later still suffers from urinary problems and sexual dysfunction that he attributes to the drugs. He said those lasting effects are part of what now drives him to speak out.
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He believes the California bill targeting “conversion therapy” as it relates to gender identity is one that would “actually end up harming gay people.”
“For me, it did very much act as a chemical conversion therapy,” he told Fox News Digital.
Skinner argued that therapists should be allowed to explore the underlying causes of a minor’s distress before steering them toward a gender identity outcome.
“In all those years, if one therapist would have just talked with me about the origins of my distress, instead of just affirming me and suggesting, you know, further medical intervention is the only solution to me, perhaps I could have been spared much of what I’m suffering with today,” he said.
“And this bill, SB 934, would criminalize therapists for questioning that,” he continued. They’re not able to, under this bill, question gender identity or really delve with these patients into the underlying causes of their dysphoria. That would be considered conversion therapy under SB 934.”
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Skinner believes lawmakers are not fully grappling with the permanent consequences of these treatments for minors.
“They feel like they’re doing it out of compassion because that’s what they’re being told … but no one is thinking along the lines of, well, what is making these kids distressed in their bodies? No one is trying to delve in and understand where they’re coming from or how they’re arriving at these conclusions,” he added.
Sen. Wiener’s office disputed Skinner’s claims in a statement to Fox News Digital defending the bill.
“Conversion therapy is psychological torture and quack science that does nothing but harm vulnerable young people,” Wiener said. “SB 934 cracks down on that horrifying practice, but makes clear that therapists will not be penalized for good faith explorations of a patient’s gender identity or sexuality. They will be penalized if they attempt to intentionally change a patient from any one gender or sexual orientation to another, such as from gay to straight, straight to gay, trans to cis, or cis to trans.”
The bill is currently pending in the California Senate after passing one committee and is scheduled for another hearing on April 20.
The California bill comes following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Chiles v. Salazar last month, where the court ruled that a Colorado law banning so-called “conversion therapy” violated the First Amendment because it discriminated against certain viewpoints.
