Detransition

People with regrets, a growing phenomenon

The visibility of detransition, or people with regrets, is quite recent and growing rapidly. Especially from 2016 onwards, we see how detransitioners started posting videos in which they shared their experience. Meanwhile, numerous projects have been established where detransitioners can go, such as ‘Pique Resilience Project‘, ‘Post Trans‘, ‘Detrans Voices‘ among others. The subplatform reddit/detrans already has 56,000 members.

Despite the fact that this reality can no longer be denied, gender clinics and trans activists continue to minimise their existence, citing how they were misused as an argument against transgender care.

No one knows exactly how many people have regret, as there has been little reliable research to date. What is certain is that the number of people with regret is much higher than the 1-3% figure usually quoted. Studies on regret routinely lose 30-40% (least satisfied – or … dead) of people for follow-up, while databases that do not lose people show high suicide rates after surgery. This is now confirmed in a new study by Lisa Littman, which reports that less than a quarter (24%) of people who discontinued their medical treatment informed their treating clinicians. It should also be noted that the landscape of gender care has changed dramatically since 2015. A new population of people emerged, from middle-aged men to young girls. No one can predict what the regret rate will be here.

The main reason given for detransition, and this applies to both genders, is that transition did not alleviate their gender dysphoria, and that they felt more comfortable identifying with their birth gender, due to a change in their personal definition of feminine and masculine. A majority also realised that their gender dysphoria was related to other problems. There is a difference between men and women for yet other reasons. Women often report concerns about possible medical complications, and about too much physical change. In contrast, men reported dissatisfaction with too little physical change, deteriorating physical health, mental health problems and a feeling of discrimination.

For many people, detransition is a very isolating experience. Having to admit to having been wrong, having to continue living with a battered body, is often more difficult than the initial transition. Elie Vandenbussche, a Belgian detransitioner, published the following conclusion
in a recent study ‘Detransition-Related Needs and Support‘:

Unfortunately, the support that detransitioners receive to meet these needs is currently very poor. Participants described serious problems with medical and mental health systems, as well as experiences of outright rejection by the LGBT+ community. Many respondents expressed a desire to find alternative treatments to deal with their gender dysphoria, but reported that it was impossible to talk about it within LGBT+ spaces and in the medical sphere.
These reports are worrying and they demonstrate the urgency to raise awareness on the issue of detransition among healthcare providers and members of the LGBT+ community and to reduce hostility in order to meet the specific needs of the detransitioners.

For more information, see: The Dutch Leaks: Trans Regret is Possibly 33%