From Gay Man to Transwoman... and Back Again | Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr, a Scottish man who identified as gay before transitioning and later detransitioning, brings a story that Irish listeners and healthcare professionals need to hear. His account of NHS failures, unaddressed trauma and the complete absence of any detransition pathway is a warning that applies as much to Ireland's own gender services as to Scotland's — and Stella O'Malley is well placed to draw out what it means here.
Michael Kerr is a Scottish man who, after years of identifying as gay, transitioned before eventually detransitioning. He is now the founder of Detransition Pathway UK, a peer-to-peer support organisation built to fill the void he found when he sought help through this process himself. In conversation with Stella, Mia and Bret, he traces the origins of his decision to transition — rooted in past trauma — through the clinical encounters that followed, and into the doubts that changed his direction entirely. What emerges from his account is a portrait of a healthcare system poorly equipped to look beneath the surface. Michael describes how his GP referral led him into a pathway in which clinicians focused on moving him forward rather than on exploring the psychological history driving his distress. Suicide threats went unaddressed. Clinic appointments, in his telling, offered little that resembled genuine inquiry. The episode is clear-eyed about what this kind of clinical culture produces: a person whose suffering was managed rather than understood. The physical effects of oestrogen are discussed honestly, alongside the doubts that began to surface as his transition progressed. When Michael eventually decided to detransition, he encountered fresh obstacles — including a return to the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow that illustrated just how unprepared NHS services were to support people who wanted to reverse course. The system that had moved him quickly forward had no comparable mechanism for helping him find his way back. Detransition Pathway UK is his answer to that absence. Built from direct experience of isolation, the organisation provides peer support and practical guidance to people navigating detransition without institutional help. He will also be speaking at CAN-SG's London conference on rethinking youth gender medicine in July 2026, bringing this perspective to a wider clinical and research audience. For Irish listeners, Michael's story carries particular weight. Ireland's gender services have expanded in recent years, but there is nothing resembling a structured detransition pathway within the HSE. The question of what care exists for those who later have second thoughts has attracted almost no policy attention here. Stella, who works as a psychotherapist in Ireland and has long advocated for a more cautious, exploratory approach to gender distress, draws out the implications of what Michael has lived through — the failures he describes in Scotland are not unique to Scotland. Gender medicine, in Ireland as elsewhere, has been shaped largely by voices that present transition as the primary solution. Michael Kerr's account is a necessary corrective — evidence that the same answer does not fit every person, and that clinical obligations do not end when the prescription is written.
