#detransitioning

I an article in Transgender Health Arjee Javellana Restar (photo), Kristi Gamare and Don Operario argue that recent political attention on "transition regret," treatment discontinuation, and detransition is misleading and out of proportion to the actual evidence.

Under the Trump administration, U.S. federal agencies have begun prioritizing research funding for these topics, framing them as major concerns in transgender health.

However, the authors show that regret after gender‑affirming care is extremely rare. Systematic reviews consistently find regret rates below 1%, and population‑level data suggest the true rate may be closer to one in a million people.

Because these outcomes are so uncommon, the authors argue that focusing research resources on them creates serious methodological problems. Studying extremely rare events requires huge sample sizes and often produces unreliable or easily misinterpreted results.

More importantly, this political focus diverts funding away from well‑documented health disparities that affect far larger portions of transgender communities - such as discrimination, barriers to care, mental‑health stressors, and socioeconomic inequities.

"Clarifying the Less than 1%: The False Alarm of Transition Regret, Discontinuation, and Detransition"

I wasn’t told, or my clinician was unaware, of some of the other effects that were specific problems for bio women taking cross sex hormones, and that they would start in my 20s.

Over the 10+ years I injected testosterone, I developed liver dysfunction, sleep apnea from the growth of my neck and larynx blocking my airways, abnormally high blood pressure, vaginal atrophy, frequent UTIs due to the hormones changing the microbiome of my urinary tract. These are not problems that cis men face.

I’m not anti trans, and I still consider myself transgender (perhaps “person of trans experience” would be a better way to phrase it). Wanting to get this information out isn’t my attempt at gatekeeping people who want to start HRT. I know I ultimately cannot convince someone who cannot be swayed by the reality of a stranger on the internet.

It’s so important for detransitioner stories to be heard! However, the detrans stories that receive the most media attention and coverage are often from biased right-wing sources that twist and repackage detrans narratives for an anti-LGBT and anti-woman agenda. This makes it even more crucial to spread awareness and information about detransitioners from unbiased sources that do not support the right-wing/conservative agenda, and so that misinformation is not further spread.

Detransitioners need the support, empathy, and kindness of the left-wing as much as all trans people and other LGBT+ people do, since many continue to suffer from dysphoria even after detransitioning, sometimes feeling worse than they did before. So I’ve linked some informational resources and websites below.

Post Trans is a website founded by two detransitioners from Belgium and Germany, which shares a collection of detrans stories from detransitioners and desisters.

Are You Asking Why? is a website for a grassroots organization created and run by a group of detransitioned and re-identified women since 2013.

Link to a transcript of a 2023 Q&A Panel with seven detransitioners.

@detransition is a Tumblr blog that shares resources and stories and answers questions about detransitioners as well. See their About page for more info.

@detransstories is another Tumblr blog where stories from detransitioners and desisters were shared. This blog is associated with the Pique Resilience Project website, created by a group of four detransitioned and desisted women, to provide resources for support for those who may be questioning their gender or identity. This 2 minute long YouTube video by them addresses some misconceptions about detransitioners.

Detrans Joy is a youtube channel independently made by a detransitioner who has been making videos to document and talk about her experiences and struggles with gender-affirming care.

Here is a link to an informational booklet created by the Post Trans organization (mentioned earlier), in which they gathered the written experiences of 75 female and male detransitioners and created the content based on their wishes, advice and thoughts. The 50-page long booklet has the objective to reach detransitioners and desisters, their relatives and close ones, people who consider a transition and wish for more information, health professionals such as endocrinologists or therapists, or anyone who wants to learn more about the topic.

Detrans Awareness Day website link, which also has a helpful Resources section.

There are many more other websites, blogs, articles, videos, organizations, and social media accounts that I could’ve linked to share some really valuable and enlightening stories about the experiences of detransitioners with the healthcare system, but I didn’t want to risk accidentally including any links that could espouse any potentially bigoted, conservative, right-wing, misogynistic, and/or anti-LGBTQ+ agendas. Regardless of what the detransition rate currently is or whether the statistics are up-to-date, detransitioner stories deserve to be heard, so that more research can be done to make sure that all gender-dysphoric people can receive the appropriate healthcare and treatment options to help, since social or medical transition may not work for everyone, but their pain and dysphoria still deserves to be addressed.

Most detransitioners are not people who realized that they mistook their identity, rather they are that gender but are not in a safe position to express that. For example a transwoman might detransition because she is in a very transphobic community. A lot of cases are people detransition for their own safety.

While some detransitioners are trans people who just got the gender wrong. They may have thought they were a transman and gone on T and changed their gender marker and socially transitioned to be perceived as a man, but then realized they're nonbinary and would be more comfortable not being perciverd as man or a woman.

And some are trans and know they're gender but just for whatever reason want to or need to stop taking hormones.

Detrans kink is so prolific that the attempted pro-trans detrans Tumblr Community got marked Mature Content. I think for just using that word because of how associated with kink it is. This isn’t me saying that it’s necessarily bad for someone to be turned on by being forced into detransition. But I feel like if there’s a point where it starts to stop SFW communities from forming, that’s a problem.

I’ve seen this issue brought up before, and the response tends to be that there’s nothing wrong with kink disrupting genuine communities because most of the people within that genuine community are transphobes. Which… I’m not going to lie, that’s not wrong. The entire reason that I’m sending this ask to the varsexism ask blog rather than the actual detransition ask blog is because that blog has promoted an actual conversion therapy organization whose entire mission is to convince trans people to detransition and to radicalize those who have already decided to detransition into transphobia (someday I might send you a rant about that organization. short version of said rant: fuck them forever). But not all of these people are transphobes. And they do need something to actually call themselves.

I have seen the “identifying with your AGAB is called being cis” argument. And, like, a lot of these people are cis. But I don’t think that’s the full story. Most cis people don’t have experience living as another gender, especially not for years. Most cis people do not need to take steps (social, medical, and legal) in order to be more recognized as that gender. Like, depending on which steps someone took in transitioning and for how long, this can be somewhat similar to a second transition. But we both know the people arguing against the term detrans wouldn’t let these people call themselves transfem or transmasc if it goes against their AGAB either.

Sorry, this got a bit off topic and I’m rambling right now. And once again, this isn’t me believing that genderplay kink in all its variants should no longer exist. I do think that there is something to be said for how prevalent it is. I saw the ask regarding forcefem and forcemasc and figured I should add my perspective on another form of genderplay kink that I have at times seen the effects of.

This is varsexism and transphobia (as many detransitioners consider themselves to be retransitioners in the sense of "transitioning backwards.")

Detransitioning/retransitioning is not inherently a kink and I really do wish people would label their kinks in a different way. It's like how people with bigenital kinks label cosexual and dualsex content as "intersex" or use intersexist slurs, and lead people to have severe misconceptions about intersexuality and assume intersex = porn trope.

Detransitioners, you are not inherently a kink. You are not inherently a fetish. You do not deserve to have your community tagged as such.

Detrans kink fetishizers need to come up with new tags or names for their kinks/fetishes.

My suggestions for new kink/fetish tags to replace the detrans ones would be:

-Transstop

-Reversetrans

-Trans reversal