#desistance

https://journals.lww.com/prsgo/fulltext/2021/11000/letter_to_the_editor__regret_after.29.aspx

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/107/9/e3937/6572526?login=false

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X22007194

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/10/1/121

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02163-w

https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p382

https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p382

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-outcomes/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11930-023-00358-x

(2020) - Study of 139,829 students finds that in comparison to other students, transgender identity, especially non-binary identity, is associated more with perpetrating bullying than being bullied. Non-binary identity was most strongly associated with involvement in bullying, followed by [transgender] opposite sex identity and cisgender identity. 

(2023) 21 leading experts on pediatric gender medicine from 8 countries wrote a letter to Wall Street Journal expressing disagreement over how gender dysphoria in youth is treated, voicing concerns against things such as the affirmative model and research conducted outside of the US has found hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria to be without reliable evidence. Among these international experts is Dr. Rita Kaltiala, chief psychiatrist at Tampere university gender clinic and author of several peer-reviewed studies on trans medicine and Finland's top authority on pediatric gender care.

(2023) Landmark study from Denmark on 3,800 transgender patients pulled data from hospital records and applications from legal gender changes and discovered 43% of this group had a psychiatric illness compared with 7% of non-trans group, and despite "gender affirming care" and legal gender changes, still had 7.7 the rate of suicide attempts and 3.5 times the rate of suicide deaths. Researchers state this rate is likely even higher due to missing data.

(2016) Study finds association with increased risk of multiple sclerosis for trans women taking estrogen/reducing testosterone levels.

(2023) Metadata study shows, at best, no improvement for patients in gender-affirming care. "The conclusions of the systematic reviews of evidence for adolescents are consistent with long-term adult studies, which failed to show credible improvements in mental health and suggested a pattern of treatment-associated harms. Three recent papers examined the studies that underpin the practice of youth gender transition and found the research to be deeply flawed. Evidence does not support the notion that “affirmative care” of today’s adolescents is net beneficial."

(2011) Long term follow up of 324 transgender people having undergone sex reassignment surgery in Sweden, found that trans women retained male patterned incidents and rates of violence and had a greater significance and rate of rape and sexual violence than cisgender men. The study also found, "Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group."

(2020) Largest study to date on 641,860 people finds association with autism and "gender diversity", "Gender-diverse people also report, on average, more traits associated with autism, such as sensory difficulties, pattern-recognition skills and lower rates of empathy — or accurately understanding and responding to another person’s emotional state".

(2022) US study examining 10 years of data on 952 people finds large percentages of young adults prescribed hormones for trans identity no longer getting the drugs 4 years later. Discontinuation rate for both sexes combined = 30%. Female discontinuation rate as high as 44%. The standard disinformation pushed is that only 1-2% of people who begin medical transition end up desisting. But these figures show that in this cohort of young adults, the overall rate of discontinuing hormone treatment ranged from a low of 10% to a high of 44% within a space of just 4 years.

Abruzzese et al. 2023 'The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch Studies—and research that has followed'

I have always seen pride flags for Detrans people/Detransitioners but i never found/seen one for Desisters so i made one :p

I don't mind if u guys use without credit but if you know who the creator is (aka me) i'd appreciate being tagged :) (it's optional tho)

Also the meanings of the flag may change idk

"Desistance as a word has its origins in criminal research,28 and Zucker explains that he was the first person to use desistance in relation to the TGE pre-pubertal youth population in 2003 after seeing it being used for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).29 In either case, desistance is considered a good outcome in criminal research and ODD. Acknowledging this history of the term is important as it reflects the pathologizing of gender identity (in relation to ODD) and the negative perspectives that have been associated with being TGE (in relation to crime).

"With the word desistance now introduced, the focus of the more recent literature in the late 2000s is interested in rates of desistance and determining childhood factors before puberty, which can be used to predict desistance after puberty commences,30–33 often seen as a way to help clinicians decide on whether GAC should be provided. From all of these collections of studies emerged the commonly used statistic stating that ∼80% of TGE youth will desist after puberty, a statistic that has been critiqued by other works based on poor methodologic quality, the evolving understanding of gender and probable misclassification of nonbinary individuals, and the practice of attempting to dissuade youth from identifying as transgender in some of these studies.4,16,34–36

"The assumption is that if GD is not present after the start of puberty, then it must also not be present during adulthood. The distinction between desistance occurring only around puberty and desistance that extends into adulthood is important. Confining desistance solely to gender identity around puberty allows for more gender identity options during adulthood. Steensma and Cohen-Kettenis discuss how some people who identified as TGE in childhood will identify as cisgender during adolescence and then as TGE during adulthood.63 While in this article, the idea was that the gender identity in adulthood was then permanent, allowing gender to be something that can change at any point in one's life will help validate those people who experience a dynamic form of gender.

"Second, some definitions of desistance focus on GD, while others focus on gender identity. An almost equal number of articles referred to desistance as the disappearance of GD as did articles that referred to desistance as the change of a transgender identity to a cisgender identity. Disappearance of GD and a change in gender identity are two concepts that, while occasionally connected, remain distinct. GD is associated with significant distress at the differences between gender and body, whereas a TGE gender identity does not require that distress. Therefore, a TGE child could still identify as TGE even if they do not experience GD. Despite having stated difference in these definitions, all the articles conflated these two ideas, implying that the disappearance of GD also meant that the TGE child identified as cisgender after puberty."

there is something really disheartening about current detrans/desister…not “discourse,” but discussions. there is an emerging theme of talking about how tragic it is for young heterosexual girls to follow this path, but thankfully now they’re back on the normal course of development. meanwhile, lesbian girls and women are being treated as if transgender identification just “makes sense” for us; sort of a tacit approval when lesbians continue on the path of ‘wrong development’ because hey, lesbians are lesser women already, aren’t they? why bother correcting their self-hatred and self-harm, or addressing their needs?

imo this is the result of a large number of voices being from parents, not detrans or desisted women and girls. and a lot of people really do believe that lesbians are basically sexual inverts and it just makes natural sense if we don’t feel like women (since we barely are!) and surely it doesn’t harm us as much to identify as non-women. 

surely it’s natural for us to not want our breasts and hate ourselves and try to change who and what we are. i want the discussion to focus on helping to heal the damage that these movements have caused all women, straight or bisexual or lesbian, and it’s okay to discuss the specifics of each group but i really sense that the lesbians are getting somewhat left behind, because we’re already viewed as mannish and perhaps more “natural” transitioners. 

i don’t think it helps straight detrans women to act like the reason that detransitioning is good is because they can now be gender-conforming hetero women either. in general, detrans discussions focusing on how socially acceptable we now appear are based on parents’ interests more than our own.

short answer: i realized my dysphoria was a combined reaction to being a lesbian who was scared of other women along with depersonalisation due to misogyny

long answer: i started identifying with the transgender community when i was around 12 or 13 years old, around the time i was in middle school. in elementary school i was friendly with boys and girls but as i grew older and the social cues for being a "girl" became too complicated, the other girls regarded me as weird and i was always lumped in with the boys.

i had childhood friends who were girls but a combination of mental health issues and abusive platonic relationships made it difficult to hold onto them. by the time i entered my sophmore year of high school, i no longer had any friends in my grade, and i resorted to helping for a very male-dominated gaming club as a last resort, which i stayed with until graduation. the gaming club was extremely libertarian conservative (i once got into an argument over whether "water is a human right") (it is, obviously). i was full on "not like other girls"ing my way through high school. my primarily male friendships continued into college, where i joined a game design degree program with a total of maybe 4 women including me in my entire class.

in the fall semester of my only year of college, i was constantly sexually harassed by a male "friend" and then manipulated against the rest of my friend group by a different male "friend" who ditched me after winter break when he realized i wasn't going to fuck him. in my spring semester i was completely alone (i had no roommates) and actively suicidal. it was at this time i threw myself into trans identity politics. i'd always been uncomfortable with my breasts because i developed earlier, and i bought my first binder, began tucking my hair into hats and attempting to pass as male on the rare occasions i would leave my dorm room.

i had waist-long hair from middle school until this point, where that summer i chopped it off, broke up with my long-term online girlfriend, and called myself a gay trans man. really though, the only men i was attracted to were fictional (comphet). i transferred to a community college and was still actively suicidal along with doing nothing about it. i blamed it all on my dysphoria.

covid hit that spring, and given some time to myself, i realized i was a lesbian. i jumped head first into being part of the lesbian community on twitter at the time, and it felt so right, like i'd finally figured out a last puzzle piece. my mental health still wasn't great due to other reasons but i didn't feel at odds with myself anymore.

after i lost my summer job and swapped to retail, my suicidal ideation and depression came back in full force. i got a new job at a grocery store and ran into a former childhood friend who happened to be a guy, and my complicated feelings towards him i mistook for love. boom, i was iding as a trans gay guy again, i continued to throw my mental health down the trash can because "IF I TRANSITION EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE", developed an eating disorder, and ended up in an intensive outpatient program for lgbt+ young adults.

i turned a corner when i learned to stop caring what others thought of me. to be secure in myself and not rely on other people to validate my feelings, my appearance, my identity. i had my ups and downs but by the time january hit, something felt different. i no longer felt "socially" dysphoric, i stopped caring about people calling me "she" or "a girl", but my trans identity had become such a huge part of my life that i was extremely torn. i began looking up detransition resources, desisted to "nonbinary/genderfluid" until i stumbled across some radfem blogs.

i'd always been told to avoid radfems because they "hated trans people" and "WANT you to detransition". but they were the only people to take my thoughts of desisting seriously. i reached out anonymously over the course of several months to several different blogs and i was blown away by the grace and kindness i received. i really want to thank blogs like @woman-for-women and @detransition for their wonderful posts about female depersonalization and dysphoria, they really helped nudge me in the right direction for me.

The majority (55%) felt they did not receive an adequate evaluation from a doctor or mental health professional before starting their transition1.

38% believed that their gender dysphoria was caused by something specific such as trauma, abuse, or a mental health condition.

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Abstract

The study’s purpose was to describe a population of individuals who experienced gender dysphoria, chose to undergo medical and/or surgical transition and then detransitioned by discontinuing medications, having surgery to reverse the effects of transition, or both. Recruitment information with a link to an anonymous survey was shared on social media, professional listservs, and via snowball sampling. Sixty-nine percent of the 100 participants were natal female and 31.0% were natal male. Reasons for detransitioning were varied and included: experiencing discrimination (23.0%); becoming more comfortable identifying as their natal sex (60.0%); having concerns about potential medical complications from transitioning (49.0%); and coming to the view that their gender dysphoria was caused by something specific such as trauma, abuse, or a mental health condition (38.0%). Homophobia or difficulty accepting themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual was expressed by 23.0% as a reason for transition and subsequent detransition. The majority (55.0%) felt that they did not receive an adequate evaluation from a doctor or mental health professional before starting transition and only 24.0% of respondents informed their clinicians that they had detransitioned. There are many different reasons and experiences leading to detransition. More research is needed to understand this population, determine the prevalence of detransition as an outcome of transition, meet the medical and psychological needs of this population, and better inform the process of evaluation and counseling prior to transition.

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