From Gay Man to Transwoman... and Back Again | Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr is a Scottish detransitioned man whose years inside the NHS gender system left him with questions the system refused to answer. In conversation with the Beyond Gender hosts, he speaks with unusual candour about the trauma at the root of his transition, the clinical failures he experienced, and the peer support organisation he has built to help others find their way back.
Michael Kerr is a Scottish man who spent years living as a transwoman before making the decision to detransition. He has since founded Detransition Pathway UK, a peer-to-peer support organisation for those navigating the same difficult journey. When he sits down with Stella O'Malley, Mia Hughes and Dr Bret Alderman, he brings the kind of first-hand testimony that no clinical study can replicate: a life lived inside a system that, he argues, failed him at almost every turn. The episode begins with the emotional roots of Michael's story. He describes the past trauma that left him vulnerable and, in his telling, susceptible to a pathway that promised resolution but delivered something far more complicated. His GP referral into gender services opened a door that led, over time, to physical transition — and to a set of consequences that would take years to fully reckon with. What emerges as the conversation unfolds is a picture of systemic failure within the NHS. Michael describes crisis moments — including suicide threats — that he says were not taken seriously by the clinicians involved. He walks through his appointments at the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow, the culture he encountered there, and the ways in which his broader psychological needs appeared to go unaddressed inside a process focused narrowly on gender. The hosts press him on the details, and the resulting account is both specific and damning. The question of how and when doubt sets in is one the podcast has explored before, but Michael's account is distinctly his own. He describes the physical effects of long-term oestrogen and the slow accumulation of questions that eventually became impossible to ignore. Detransition, he is clear, is not a simple reversal: it brings its own physical changes, its own psychological weight, and — as he discovered — almost no institutional support. That gap is precisely what led Michael to found Detransition Pathway UK. The organisation exists to offer practical help and peer connection to people at any stage of detransition, filling a void that statutory services have not filled. He explains why peer support — rather than further clinical mediation — is central to what the organisation offers, and what reception it has received since its launch. For the Beyond Gender podcast, this episode is exactly the kind of conversation the hosts have argued is urgently needed. Michael Kerr is not an abstract data point; he is a man who has lived the consequences of a particular approach to gender distress, found his way through, and is now working to make that path easier for others. The discussion is pointed, personal and, at moments, difficult to hear — which is precisely what makes it worth listening to.
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