Detransitioning

Do you know statistics of how common that is? I didn't realize there were so many.

 

In the UK whenever there is a trans story on BBC news they always wheel out the same one person who has detransitioned in the UK, for 'balance', because they have to be, ahem, 'impartial'..

Beth

 

Hm. But trans people very often have emotional and mental health struggles resulting from the dysphoria. Such as depression, anxiety, social phobia, ED. It can't be used as a predictor. I mean, obviously for these people these issues made dysphoria stronger than it would be without them. But it's not a universal link. I hear it often used as an argument by for example mental health professionals who aren't very versed in trans issues and from various people who have misconceptions about being trans. It for sure happens for some people, but it's not a rule.

 

This is what I wondered about too which sounds all a result of the way society is, the way people raise their kids, not an actual problem with gender identity variations. Gay and other marginalized people have higher rates of health issues for the same reasons too. It was used as a reason to keep us erased and illegal so "we don't spread that sad life to more people." They totally miss the fact that our health issues are caused by their rejecting, hating and worse to us. It's like how they use the school shooter who was trans to increase the hatred and laws to further hurt and alienate trans people. Those laws and all the lies spread while passing them lead to more violence against trans people too. Violence is not the answer or acceptable and it's horribly tragic all around. I don't think it would have happened in a world where we're raised to love ourselves and others w/o judgement and have help to reach self actualization. Like Andy Grammer says, "You're only shining when you act yourself... Oh you got magic inside of your heart, had it right from the start...I'm no good at being you, my philosphy, damn it feels good to be me!"

 

I never knew that was a thing

 

I think, honestly, there is a reality that certain people are drawn to transgenderism for some ulterior reason. I think that's going to become a lot more common as we gain more acceptance; everyone finds novelties interesting, and our existence is fairly novel to most of the world at large.

Some people are going to approach it recklessly and make hasty choices. It will happen. College roommates sometimes have nights of regret as well, and the examples run the gradient. People make choices that are wrong for them sometimes. That is extremely normal.

That said, I also think it bears mentioning that detransitioning itself is being weaponized against the 90%+ of us who stayed on the treatments and are living happily. And yes, that's what transitioning genders is; it's a treatment for a serious ailment that causes depression and sometimes suicide. It's a treatment some people don't need, but it's an effective treatment for many people.

A treatment many of us, especially the young, are being denied left and right. A treatment I, myself, do not have ready access to and I've been a legal adult now for almost half as long as I've been alive. When the spotlight shines so prominently on the people it didn't work for it delegitimizes the claims of those whom it does work for by creating a confirmation bias in the average person.

Truthfully, when I see the word anymore, I feel my hackles go up just a little bit, because there is an equal likelihood the person speaking about it is doing so in bad faith as it is they are highlighting it as a legitimate phenomenon worthy of general public attention, which it frankly isn't any more than it is if some guy changes his heart medication.

In reality transitioning and detransitioning should be discussed primarily between a patient and their doctor, not the talking heads on the evening "news" hour. But then again, we don't often get a say on how we're spoken about in the mainstream whatsoever, we just get to be told what we are and whether or not we should be allowed to exist.

On a personal note, as a transwoman, I would like to close by saying I find it very gender-affirming to have my opinion ignored by all the men deciding what rights I should have. I don't know if even estrogen's going to have THIS much of a kick!

 

Well said I myself have not been rushing into making my male breasts bigger. Before doing it I want to be absolutely sure that is what I truly want to do. I am bi-gender but lean more towards the feminine side.

 

I'm a little late to this party, but this topic is also one I seldom find here as is, and I find rather interesting.

Gender is a weird thing, and this is one of the things that comes with that statement.

We're still living in a society where strict roles and rules are becoming less and less of a thing, and the entire understanding of what gender is falls under it. That's really what conservatives are so struggling to grasp, and find as a problem. This whole "trans issue" is calling a core of it into question, and it's making a big fuss. And then there's an even bigger fuss about that fuss. The "trans issue" really, was the gay rights movement, but since marriage equality was legalized, a lot of people thought that gay people just had everything covered, rights-wise.

So, less and less people have started going "I am going to marry a woman because I was born with a little dingly" and we're now seeing more of the kinds of possibilities people can be outside that realm.

Yeah, I'm basically saying that because more people have come out as trans, we've now found that there are quite a few detransitioners. And that will stay proportionate, I think. But it's difficult to really get a good idea of the big picture because detransitioners also fall under trans healthcare, which is only just now starting to get some kind of real legwork. A lot of that is due to taboo, a lot of that is due to simply not being funded well. If you don't have an area of any kind of healthcare well-funded, you're going to come across a lot of bad medicine. That's not trans healthcare being bad, that's just how medicine works.

Right now, whoever is in trans healthcare does mean well, but they could also be profiteering a niche area. There are going to be bad doctors along with good ones, and I don't think we're really going to get great ones until we see good, proper funding. We'll probably see a decline in detransitioners then because there would be a lot more understanding of trans health physically and mentally, but also because there wouldn't be 8-36-year wait lists on the NHS or private plans for an insane amount of money just for HRT.

But of course, I know anti-trans people will tell me that I'm shilling for (or paid by) George Soros, and I just want to take their kids and use a rusty sawtooth pizza cutter on their privates. Or that I need to check myself into a mental ward, take your pick.

 

I'm sorry but this had me laughing for some reason. I was actually picturing this device being used on a pizza. Questions like, "How did it get rusty?" and "why would they even make a saw tooth version?" came to mind. No, I'm not missing the point, I'm just strange brained.

There were studies done, and many articles written in the years prior to 2020, which I've read in 2023, that discuss something that I can't recall the acronym, but it was basically, rapid onset dysphoric syndrome or something like that. The idea being that with most things, including gender confusion, peer pressure, rebellion against authority, trauma, the internet, etc. play a role in how people, specifically teens, think. The distinguishing factor being gender dysphoria that occurs post puberty vs. pre. I won't go into detail because I'm not here trying to champion the idea, I simply read some articles. Due to hypersensitivity, there was a lot of backlash and hate speech about this very idea, and yet if we exclude the subject matter of it being about gender and transness, most everyone can at least agree that young people can become very confused about a great many things, and many get some wild notions about life and themselves. My brother, for instance, wanted to go into the military when he turns 17. A military, that in my country, doesn't even exist, lol. I myself have gone through some teenage mind game shit involving stuff on the internet that "rings true for me." So I do think it's likely that for whatever reasons, there would be some level of regret or mistakes made about gender and transitioning by some. It is refreshing that we are not all closing ranks here and just denying out of hand that detransitioning is a thing, and it can even be the right thing, for some. We all should live to be true to ourselves, and we humans are just dumb enough to have shitty ideas from time to time. It's okay to make course corrections, in fact, I'd hate to be ridiculed for being honest and trying to live my true self, whatever that may mean.

 

I know exactly what you're talking about, and what I remember mostly about it was that it was (and still sometimes is) an argument not too dissimilar to "Being gay/bi is just a phase" or "Notice this recent trend of sudden people ID'ing as trans. Follow the money, sheeple! Follow the money!". Yes, we're aware that kids can be fickle with ideas, but things that are very core to your being are seldom treated that same way. "Rapid onset gender dysphoria" was not even an actual medical term used by anybody in the field, and it was passed off like it was. Same goes with "Autogynephilia". They're meant to sound medical, but they entirely were used for political talk. It's a classic tactic that's been used against LGBT people as a whole, if you can remember the whole "gay gene" thing or AIDS being used as "the gay disease".

I'm all for discussing the nuances of gender and how people treat and respond to it, and I'm all for discussing the different ways that people just do stuff. But when it's presented to me in the same fashion as "9/11 was an inside job", that's when you lose me. I didn't get to this point on a whim, and I know nobody who's detransitioning did, either. But I'd at least like to be treated with the same kind of sincerity that detransitioners get, rather than some looney conspiracy theory. We're both outcomes of the same thing, one of us just decided to quit the whole transition thing for one reason or another. It's really that simple.