Detransitioning - Discomfort Before Something Greater | Soren Aldaco
Soren Aldaco, researcher and producer of the Beyond Gender podcast, speaks openly about her journey away from a transgender identity in an episode recorded for Detrans Awareness Day. For Irish listeners, her account of social contagion, algorithmic influence and the slow accumulation of doubt offers something almost entirely absent from public conversation in Ireland: an honest, grounded reckoning with what medicalisation of gender distress actually means for the person who later turns back.
Soren Aldaco is a researcher, a producer of the Beyond Gender podcast and an ambassador for Independent Women. She joined Stella O'Malley for a special episode released on Detrans Awareness Day, March 12th, to speak candidly about her own experience of detransitioning — of stepping back from a transgender identity she had held for years and rebuilding a sense of self on different ground. It is a conversation that asks hard questions not just about one woman's story but about the systems and ideas that shaped it. The episode traces how a personal identity can be formed and then captured by outside forces. Soren describes the role that algorithms and online communities played in reinforcing and intensifying a particular way of seeing herself, and how what began as something closer to roleplay was steadily translated into a medical pathway. The concept of overvalued ideas — convictions that feel absolutely central to the self but that may not survive scrutiny — runs through her account and gives the conversation an intellectual weight that extends well beyond the purely personal. Central to Soren's story is what she calls pebble moments: small, accumulating instances of doubt or dissonance that, taken individually, seem manageable but that gather force over time until they can no longer be ignored. She is clear that her journey back was not a sudden reversal but a slow process of noticing, questioning and eventually finding the courage to act on what she noticed. The honesty of this description will resonate with anyone who has tried to hold a difficult thought in an environment that actively discourages it. The later part of the conversation turns to what comes after — the search for community, the challenge of communicating one's experience to people who may not wish to hear it, and the practical business of setting boundaries and avoiding what Soren describes as thought traps. The advice she offers is grounded and unsentimental: not a triumphant recovery narrative but a realistic account of ongoing navigation through unfamiliar terrain. In Ireland, detransition remains almost entirely absent from public conversation. Healthcare pathways for young people experiencing gender distress have expanded without any corresponding infrastructure for those who later have doubts, and political culture has been slow to create space for voices like Soren's. For Irish parents, therapists and policymakers who have been told that social contagion is not a meaningful factor and that medical transition is straightforwardly beneficial, this episode offers a counterpoint that is difficult to dismiss. Stella O'Malley has long argued, as both a practising psychotherapist and a public voice, that the full complexity of these stories deserves to be heard. Soren Aldaco's account is exactly the kind of testimony that makes that case.
