A young man who gained widespread attention for challenging California lawmakers over the negative impacts he claims to have experienced from undergoing a medical transition during his youth is now raising concerns about new legislation. Jonni Skinner, a vocal detransitioner and Genspect ambassador, is publicly opposing a proposed bill that he believes might hinder vulnerable minors from receiving essential counseling.
Recently, Skinner spoke at a California Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, voicing his objections to SB 934. This legislation, introduced by Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener, aims to allow individuals who underwent “conversion therapy” to seek damages through malpractice lawsuits, regardless of how much time has passed since the therapy. According to Wiener’s office, conversion therapy encompasses attempts to alter an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
Opponents of SB 934, such as the California Family Council, argue that the bill’s broad language could potentially expose therapists to legal action simply for engaging in conversations about sexuality and gender identity.
Skinner recalls his upbringing in a religious household in a small Michigan town, where he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism as a child. He often felt different from his male peers and faced bullying due to his interest in traditionally feminine activities. As he entered puberty, he became increasingly uneasy with his body and worried about the prospect of being gay or perceived as effeminate. Influenced by online figures who had undergone gender transitions, he found the concept tempting.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Skinner shared that he was directed to a gender therapist and an endocrinologist, both of whom supported his feelings and proposed that transitioning medically could help him feel more “normal.”
“The medical and mental health professionals never questioned the reasons behind my feelings,” Skinner recounted during his testimony to Senator Wiener. “They subjected my body to blockers and hormones, halting my puberty and affecting my development. Now, at 23, I’m a gay man who’s never experienced an orgasm and may never do so. Think about that.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
