+++
date = '2026-06-25T20:00:00+02:00'
draft = false
summary = 'AI psychosis mixed with the anti-transgender moral panic, conversion therapy, and more, all in one convenient vibecoded Next.js app'
title = 'An investigation into a transphobic "detransition" AI chatbot website'
tags = ['investigations']
+++

CW: **This post discusses transphobia, conversion therapy, and proponents of it.** Seeing and researching this website ruined my day and might ruin the reader's day too.

## Introduction

hi hello there!! Today I will talk about my research of a website named `detrans[.]ai`, that claims to be "the collective consciousness of detransitioners". It's a blatantly and categorically transphobic website, made by a transphobe, with a clear intent to encourage and scare trans people's families, friends, and allies to second-guess or reject their transgender identity, to promote conversion therapy, and to discredit gender-affirming care.

It's mainly a vibecoded wrapper around a slop machine that was fed the `r/detrans` subreddit and videos about "detransitioning", and given instructions to "share this knowledge to promote holistic approaches to overcoming dysphoria". "overcoming dysphoria" basically means that instead of actually helping people, with actual healthcare, it just uses these "holistic approaches" (read: conversion therapy) to delay or prevent transition.

"detransitioning" refers to a transgender person (someone whose gender identity doesn't match their assigned sex at birth) stopping or reversing their gender transition. This, by itself, doesn't hurt anyone, since it's basically just a second transition. It's absolutely possible and valid that one's perception of gender changes, or becomes more accurate with time. 

What I take issue with is the political weaponization of "detransitioners" by transphobes and/or conservatives (who may also be the "detransitioners"), to argue against (or restrict) transgender rights, recognition, healthcare, and support, or to deny the existence of trans people altogether. This is precisely what this website does and why I chose to make this investigation into it.

## First impressions

I first found out about this website on 2026-06-24 via [this YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_z0odwnOjc). I watched around a minute of it, before impulsively deciding that I needed to take a look myself:

![The front page of detrans (dot) ai. it features a lizard next to the text "Talk to 60,000+ Detransitioners" and "Perspectives From The Other Side". There's a navigation menu at the top, with the options "chat", "videos", "studies", "stats", "about", and a red "donate" button on the right.](homepage.png)

The first things I learnt are things we already discussed. The site is a wrapper around a slop machine trained on `r/detrans` and some videos. Scrolling down a little, we can see some pre-written questions visitors can ask:

![A bunch of pre-made questions one can throw at the detrans AI. In order: "Sorry, but what's up with the lizards?", "I'm curious about why some people detransition", "I'm questioning my gender identity and I think I might be trans", "I currently identify as trans and I'm thinking about detransitioning", "I"m a parent, family member, or friend of someone who is transitioning", "I want to learn about the struggles and challenges that detransitioners face", "I want you to debunk misinformation and commonly held beliefs about detransition", and "I'm wondering what the scientific consensus is on transition outcomes".](questions.png)

### Endangering trans people

Immediately, some of these presets raise questions. Such as the third and fourth ones, which are directed at gender-questioning and/or transgender visitors, aiming to lure them into taking with the transphobic slop machine.

The fifth option ("I'm a parent, family member, or friend of someone who is transitioning") is the one that concerns me the most though. Imagine an entity trusting someone, in the fascist-ran world of 2026, by coming out to them as transgender. And then, this. fucking. website, will scare the person they trusted, into giving up information about them, and promoting "detransitioning" and conversion therapy.

This can be especially harmful (and potentially life-ruining/threatening) if the trans entity is in some way dependent on, or is "legally" owned by (read: is a child of) the visitor.

Selecting this option makes the chatbot output the following questions to the user, which ties into my next point:

> Before I dive into anything, can you tell me a bit more about your situation?
> 
> - **Who is transitioning?** (son, daughter, partner, friend?)
> - **How old are they?**
> - **How long has this been going on?** (When did they first express this? Have they started any medical steps?)
> - **What's your biggest concern or question right now?**

### ... and their privacy

The cherry on top is that **all** chats on this website are instantly made public, in the "recent conversations" section on the front page:

![The "recent conversations" section on the front page, showing the "featured" chats. The three chats shown are: "Woman Considering Detransition After 5 Years on Testosterone and Bottom Surgery", detrans.ai Discusses Gender Identity, Biology, and Detransitioner Views with a Trans Woman", and "detrans.ai Explores How Trans-Identified People Justify Their Identity Beyond Stereotypes".](recent-featured.png)

Now, the user is told about this <small>(in a tiny font)</small>, and is also advised not to share PII <small>(also in a tiny font)</small>. However, it's scary to think that if someone misses/ignores these small warnings, and gives out PII of an already vulnerable trans person, it will instantly be made public. Even better, one would have to contact a transphobic bearded man from New Zealand for a chance to remove it.

The only thing the [privacy policy](https://detrans.ai/en/terms) says about this is that "all chat records will be preserved", and the only time they will delete anything is if they "inadvertently collected" data from someone under 13.

### Other sections

Let's speedrun through the rest of this trainwreck: There's a [page for "detransition"-related videos](https://detrans.ai/en/videos) and one for [blatantly transphobic studies](https://detrans.ai/en/studies). This "research" mostly just reinforces the current moral panic about trans people - one of them, for instance, talks about "A 50-fold increase in recorded diagnoses [...] between 2011 and 2021".

This is just the same logical pitfall as saying that "autism rates are going up", "left-handedness rates are going up", or "pluto rates are going up". They aren't, we're just discovering things that always were there<sup><a href="#ref-1">1</a></sup>. There's also a [page for statistics](https://detrans.ai/en/stats) collected from user comments on `r/detrans`.

One of these statistics is the "transition reason", which lists reasons why users on `r/detrans` transitioned first. These reasons include things like "social role discomfort", "internalized misogyny/misandry", "internalized homophobia", "trauma", "influenced online", "mental health issues", "null", and "autism/neurodivergence".

I'm not even really sure what to say in response to that. **It's impossible to turn a cis kid trans.** The "neurodivergence" reason can probably be chalked up to ND people being more inclined to question the neurotypical-majority society and the cisgender norms set by it. As for things like being transgender being a response to "trauma", that's just bullshit through and through.

## Direct harm to trans people & kids

The ["get gender help & support" page](https://detrans.ai/en/support) has to be the second worst, most harmful & transphobic thing on this website, after the transphobic slop machine itself.

![A page on detrans (dot) ai called "Get Gender Help & Support". It has the following sections: "Online Support Groups", "Gender Affirming Care: What is it?", "Gender Exploratory Therapy: What is it?", "Find therapists", and "Resources for parents".](help-and-support.png)

I find it funny that the first section for "online support groups" links back to the same website, but whatever. Also, I just don't know how any of those options would give "support" to anyone experiencing gender dysphoria.

### Discrediting actual healthcare

The second section just aims to discredit gender-affirming care, something that saves lives and is [older than](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminizing_hormone_therapy#History) [heart transplants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_transplantation#History). It uses scaremonger-y language and far-right "anti-trans" talking points, such as "the standard (and often the only) treatment option [...] in the Western world", "irreversible surgical procedures", "serious health risks and often permanent side-effects", and ends with "Proceed with extreme caution, and make sure you watch some testimonies from people who have been down this path before going down it yourself."

It's made to sound like taking hormones is equivalent to taking random drugs one finds in other people's garbage. Most changes from HRT are reversible<sup><a href="#ref-2">2</a></sup>, and others being permanent doesn't matter (hell, it's a good thing!), because the people taking HRT/getting surgeries want them to be permanent.

### Promoting conversion therapy

The second section is dedicated to promoting "gender exploratory therapy" (GET), which is the latest repackaging of/buzzword for good old conversion therapy<sup><a href="#ref-3">3</a>, <a href="ref-4">4</a></sup>. It's described as some actual alternative to healthcare ("simply means that your therapist doesn't rush to affirm and medicalise you"). "medicalise" here probably refers to the safe, proven, well-working, evil gender-affirming care from above.

GET, like all conversion therapy, starts from the assumption that "trans = wrong and ill, cis = normal and healthy", and that trans people are "ill" and must be "cured". GET has the simple goal of delaying or preventing transition. Several providers of this conversion therapy are listed in the following section.

### Resources for child owners

If the reader doesn't know why I replace "parents" with "child owners", read [this post](https://transfem.social/notes/amzkk2anr0s603nk) by 2something about shadow prisons.

This section starts with introducing "Stephanie Winn's ROGD Repair Program". "ROGD" is "rapid onset gender dysphoria", which is yet another transphobic dogwhistle/talking point that once again boils down to "trans people are just imagining it", "they're being peer pressured", and company<sup><a href="#ref-5">5</a>, <a href="#ref-6">6</a></sup>.

The fact that it's called a "repair program" (like if trans kids are a malfunctioning HP laptop) just once again shows that these people see trans people as "ill" or "broken". To top it off, this hellhole within a hellhole also has its own LLM wrapper:

> New ROGD Repair memberships now come with unlimited access to RepairBot, the first and only AI tool designed specifically to help non-affirming parents of gender-distressed youth. RepairBot is trained on the entire ROGD Repair curriculum and serves as an excellent sounding board, homework buddy, and communication tool helper!

"non-affirming parents of gender-distressed youth" is just such a sad sentence to even look at. But wait! There's more! And it's in a differently colored box too!

![The same page talking about "ROGD Repair". The text on the bottom is in a highlighted container that slightly highlights it. There's also a big green box on the bottom, advertising a coupon code.](rogd-repair.png)

This last subsection contains the rawest possible transphobia anywhere on this website. If it somehow wasn't already obvious that this is a transphobic operation, this box will do the favor of openly displaying it yet again. I'll just copy-and-paste:

> **Your kid says they're 'trans', but you just want them healthy and safe.**
> 
> Your child's health and future are at stake, but your leverage and influence are limited. Perhaps they started black-market hormones behind your back, or storm out angrily when you 'misgender' them, or are away at an 'affirming' college. You need to communicate effectively in this tricky situation, before someone gets hurt. That's where ROGD Repair comes in.
> 
> ROGD Repair is a self-paced online course and community for parents that teaches the psychology concepts and communication tools you need in order to understand your child's mental state and how to reach them. Membership now includes RepairBot, your 24/7 AI assistant trained on the approach.
> 
> ROGD Repair and RepairBot were created by a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over a decade of experience working with trans-identified youth and their families, who now exclusively guides parents that know there must be a better path than 'affirmation.'

It's probably easier to write everything wrong here as a list than in prose at this point.

- Putting trans, misgender, and affirming/affirmation into quotes, which intends to further invalidate entities' existence, and is something I don't see the website doing anywhere else
- Talking about "black-market hormones", once again, as if hormones were something as dangerous as drugs one'd get from a dealer in a shady alleyway. Or if young people just simply don't have bodily autonomy.
	- <small>my take on drugs and generally controlled substances in general is a rant for another time, but it boils down to 1-4-6-8, smash the church, smash the state</small>
- If your kid is away at college, they're probably old enough that you're no longer the "legal" owner of them
- Equating being transphobic with "leverage and influence"
- "need to communicate effectively in this tricky situation, before someone gets hurt" signals that being trans, and using actual medicine to alleviate gender dysphoria, is dangerous and risks "getting hurt"
- "understand your child's mental state" once again signals that being trans is an illness; a simple, curable state of being, like the flu

To end this page, there's a coupon code to get your gender "repair program" or whatever at 50% off. It speaks volumes that the author of this transphobic hellhole is getting paid by another transphobic hellhole to promote their "repair program" for the "non-affirming" owners of unconsenting trans kids. This is just disgusting.

## Who made this?

This website is made & maintained by [Peter James Steven](https://xcancel.com/pjamessteven), from Wellington, New Zealand.

I didn't find this because I'm such a 1337 hacker <small>(even though i am)</small>, I found it because it's written out several times on the website (once at the bottom of the homepage, on the contact page, and the donation page).

### How much money did this make?

I can only check the [author's bitcoin address](https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/bc1qtag945t26vspn7gnh9vaczqpgpkgqwf0j2l4ys) published on the donation page, which in total received around €40. I can't check how much money was donated through the other easier channels, but my guess is (around) a few hundred to a few thousand euros at maximum.

### Vibecoding

Looking at the [repository](https://github.com/pjamessteven/social-project) of `detrans[.]ai` (inventively named `social-project`), it's a whole another dumpster fire. Let's take a quick look at the readme:

> **detrans.ai** is the collective consciousness of detransitioners. It's primarly [sic] a chatbot which uses RAG (retrieval augmented generation) techniques to integrate detransition experiences posted on the /r/detrans subreddit and on YouTube into chat responses.

It's also mentioned that it's written in Next.js, and uses the Vercel AI SDK. If the reader doesn't know what those are, it's basically techbro nonsense for making slop-coded TypeScript slop machines faster.

Looking at the contributors to the repo, you'll see it's made by Peter as well as `aider-chat-bot`. I looked around the commits a little and found this absolute banger message for [`57bf207`](https://github.com/pjamessteven/social-project/commit/57bf207345b3d5f65612eec93966ccfb7f5a2316), which added the "50-fold increase" study we discussed earlier:

> The changes look good. The summary captures the key points of the study concisely and highlights the significant 50-fold increase in gender dysphoria/incongruence prevalence. The formatting is consistent with other study entries, and the description provides a clear overview of the main findings.
> Would you like me to generate a commit message for this change?

Yes, that's the commit message. The commit itself is co-authored by `aider (openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-chat)`.

### Digging deeper

Some other thingies of interest I stumbled upon include the `@DetransAI` [twitter account/bot](https://xcancel.com/DetransAI), that seems to do the same thing as the website. I also found another project made by Peter named [partymap](https://github.com/pjamessteven/partymap-backend), which seems to also be vibecoded. I also found an [empty discord server for it](https://discord.gg/25NAyaAp5N).

However, as I was about to conclude my research, I decided to also try looking up the site on [Censys](https://censys.io), not really expecting to find anything interesting.

I ended up finding a now-defunct sister site of `detrans[.]ai` that used to run as `genderaffirming[.]ai`! Now it's just a 301 Permanent Redirect to `detrans[.]ai`.

![A censys search for detrans dot ai. There's a result for genderaffirming dot ai.](censys.png)

How can I prove these are ran by the same Peter Steven?

- The domains were bought 5 days apart (2025-09-03 for `detrans[.]ai` and 2025-09-08 for `genderaffirming[.]ai`), at the same registrar (namecheap)
- They're in the same cloudflare DNS zone, indicating they're managed by the same user/organization
	- [yes, I know I already used this trick once](https://mk.absturztau.be/notes/aira7drgifdz01b4)
- The two websites basically look the same, have the same icon and design
- `genderaffirming[.]ai` used to link to `detrans[.]ai`, before just redirecting to it
- The [contact page](https://web.archive.org/web/20251216202857/https://genderaffirming.ai/affirm/contact) on `genderaffirming[.]ai` also shows Peter as the recipient, just like `detrans[.]ai`

(archives of both websites from late 2025/early 2026 on the Wayback Machine. this is the only archive that exists of `genderaffirming[.]ai`.)

![Archives from around the start of 2026, of genderaffirming (dot) ai and detrans (dot) ai open side-by-side. The logo, donate button, page layout, and design elements are all the same. The left page shows a trans flag emoji, and the text "Talk to 600,000 Trans People" and "Infinite affirmation & Validation". The right page shows a lizard emoji with the text "Talk to 50,000+ Detransitioners" and "Support, advice, and knowledge."](similarity.png)

Some questions that arise here are:

- What happened to `genderaffirming[.]ai`? Why did our openly transphobic protagonist even create a "personal gender-affirming AI therapist" to begin with, only to then around half a year later, be shilling a coupon code to "non-affirming" child owners to "repair" trans kids?
- Why was it shut down? Did Peter just decide to pull the plug on it as he got more transphobic somehow? He already was pretty transphobic in early 2026- just look at this "compare perspectives" page that was on `detrans[.]ai` back then?

![An archived page from detrans dot ai, about comparing the "mainstream trans perspective" and the "more critical" "detrans perspective".](compare.png)

You can already see Peter use the same language he uses when technically describing his site now. "Western political bias", "holistic approach to dysphoria", etc.

Nonetheless, this is really weird and confusing. I only looked at one archive from ~6 months ago, so this is definitely not the entire history of this slopshow. As I said, the domain was purchased in September 2025, so this post doesn't cover the first ~4 months of the site's existence.

Another funny detail is that the website used to have a **content warning**, which also isn't present in the current version:

![A content warning on detrans dot ai, with the text "This website contains stories, experiences, and perspectives from ex-transgender people. Topics include transition regret, medical complications, and holistic views of dysphoria. This information may challenge commonly held beliefs about gender identity and transition."](cw.png)

## Why does it exist?

At this point, I climbed back out of the rabbit hole, back to the [YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_z0odwnOjc) where my research started at. This video is a reaction to an [interview on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2bcnHxsbVo) Peter did on the podcast *Beyond Gender*. Some parts of this interview will be discussed here.

The (first minute) preview alone already made me want to stop watching. It consists of Peter whining some more about "trans-positivity", and how it's a "belief" that "everyone has a gender identity". Most of the discussion is just more transphobia.  In the later parts of the video, Peter discusses how watching porn & having sex with men made him "lose interest in woman" for some time. I couldn't really understand this part, but it isn't relevant to `detrans[.]ai` anyways.

The part specifically relevant for us is why Peter chose to make `detrans[.]ai`. He states that he has a transgender brother (who he consistently misgenders with 'they' and 'she' pronouns), and Peter chose to make this website when he found out his brother started taking testosterone.

This shows that Peter was transphobic already when first making his website, no matter how much he tries denying it or how many CWs and disclaimers he put on it. No one, who isn't transphobic, upon finding out that they have a transgender brother, chooses to make an LLM wrapper about the experience of people who've regretted transitioning. That's just nonsense.

We also learn that the domain cost Peter $200, which is ridiculous (I got wasp.best for a few euros), and at the time of the interview, he spent $1500 on running the website, which he says is mostly AI tokens. He also mentioned that he was $5000 in debt at the time of the interview.

## Conclusion

I'm really just **sad** coming away from this. How many trans kids were possibly hurt by these "holistic approaches". How Peter's brother is doing, and how he reacted to having an entire "detransitioners" website made in response to him taking hormones. How much money and water was wasted running this slop machine.

i mostly wrote this blog post in hopes of raising awareness against this. together we will overcome the slop

thank you, stay safe, **remember to drink plenty of water**, and have a great rest of your day!

> "detransition" makes no sense as a concept. That's just a second transition. you are not undoing a process, you are doing a second process. if i drive back home from work i am not undriving to work
> 
> @eri@mk.moth.zone on [2026-06-22](https://mk.moth.zone/notes/ant5ss6e6vh605zp)

## References

| #   | author(s) & date               | title                                                                                                                                                                                                       | published in            |
| --- | ------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- |
| 1   | Jane Coaston (2023-07-20)      | <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/opinion/gay-trans-lgbt-americans.html" id="ref-1">More Visible L.G.B.T.Q. People Isn’t a Curiosity or a Crisis — It’s Normal</a>                                | *The New York Times*    |
| 2   | Aly (2018)                     | <a href="https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/#effects-and-timeline" id="ref-2">An Introduction to Hormone Therapy for Transfeminine People (§ Effects and timeline)</a>                     | *Transfeminine Science* |
| 3   | Chaaz Quigley (2026-04-02)     | <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/04/is-gender-exploratory-therapy-just-conversion-therapy-with-a-new-name" id="ref-3">Is “gender exploratory therapy” just conversion therapy with a new name?</a> | *LGBTQ Nation*          |
| 4   | Jack Molay (2026-02-18)        | <a href="https://trans-express.lgbt/post/808877046645276672/how-exploratory-therapy-becomes-conversion" id="ref-4">How “Exploratory Therapy” Becomes Conversion Therapy in Disguise</a>                     | *Transgender World*     |
| 5   | O. Rose Broderick (2023-08-24) | <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-undermines-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-claims/" id="ref-5">Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims</a>                      | *Scientific American*   |
| 6   | Florence Ashley (2018-12-04)   | <a href="https://psychcentral.com/lib/there-is-no-evidence-that-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-exists" id="ref-6">There Is No Evidence That Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria Exists</a>                           | *Psych Central*         |
