space for being blunt and political

what is detransition kink, and why does our response matter?

a public service announcement about a worrying niche fetish subculture targeting those exploring detransition/desistance that is growing by the day.

Autistic women and girls, especially ssa ones, have a tendency to be gender non-conforming for a variety of reasons (beauty rituals are complicated and uncomfortable for one). At the same time, we also tend to overthink things and are taught as kids to mask and people please. So, there’s really only two responses to alleviate the distress of being constantly told that we’re doing girlhood/womanhood wrong.

“Maybe I’m not actually a girl if I keep breaking the rules of being a girl. If I’m not actually a girl, then I can dress and act however I want without being wrong.”

“Fuck patriarchy and gender roles. I can dress and act however I want and it’s not wrong because not following the rules doesn’t make me any less of a girl.”

I want to thank my leg hair for keeping my legs cozy and protected from all kinds of little bugs that try to crawl up them when I’m in nature. You also protect me from the direct sun and my legs love having that.

I want to thank my pubic hair for keeping my private parts well protected, shielded from view or impact, keeping me cozy and protected from chafing and irritation.

My thigh hair as well, thank you for making sure my thighs don’t chafe!

I think this is a pretty good question! I know there are a lot of qualms with the 85% figure I see tossed around a lot or at least with the research methods used to get the 85%, but I do think we have several clues that the desistance rate among people who don't receive an intervention of any kind must be quite high, over a long enough period of time.

Firstly, I think that anyone who's spent significant time with children should feel pretty comfortable making the claim that the number of children who insist on anything extraordinary about themselves as children, even to the point of actively growing upset when questioned on it, is in almost any instance going to be much much smaller than the number of them who grow into adults who still insist that thing about themselves well into adulthood. I think a lot of people find the "my three year old says he's a firefighter" comparisons, etc, to be trivializing, and that makes sense from an adult perspective, especially if you think all or most gender dysphoria is innate, and I think sometimes they can be used dismissively. But anyone who's spent a lot of time with children should know those comparisons are not necessarily trivializing at all, and especially should know that the children who make those extraordinary claims are not kidding, and are taking them as seriously as they can for their age, and moreover are using those declarations to do real emotional work or to learn some important concepts, etc. Child's play is very serious business- it is not unusual for a child to grow very distressed and cry when their imaginary best friend is challenged, or when someone corrects them and says they are 4 and not 9 as they insist, etc. So when we are talking about any claim made by a child as young as 3 (GIDS in the UK has publicly said the youngest person they've seen was 3 years old, last I saw, and in the US there's one very famous case of a person having been taken to professionals who allegedly presented the diagnosis of gender dysphoria at the age of 3 as well) I think comparing the proclamation of a cross-sex identity is directly comparable to the proclamation of other extraordinary identities or realities a child might make at the same age, and that that speaks to the importance of the thing being communicated in every instance and not to one being silly and one being serious.

Secondly, I think the sheer number of very loudly desisted detransitioners does tell us that the desistance rate cannot possibly be all that low, or else it should simply be very difficult to locate members of this allegedly very small subset of the allegedly also very small subset of people who've undergone transition steps.

Thirdly, the best numbers I've found from a very sympathetic source (Thomas Steensma, who helped to develop the protocol for stopping puberty in children in response to gendered distress and supports the practice to this day) still show a desistance rate, being most generous, of roughly 30%, and this in a subset of children who were distressed enough to be at a clinic in the first place. I'm getting 30% by roughly chopping out those who were counted as desisted merely because they stopped attending the clinic because that has been the best criticism I've seen of the study, but if even 30% of the children being given an extremely powerful and medically experimental protocol with drugs we know are correlated with really horrific effects even in adult use for serious medical problems don't "need" it, which is ceding for a second the concept that puberty could possibly be something a person doesn't need to experience and I'm not sold on that concept, that's a very big deal.

Fourthly, I think the prevalence of gender dysphoria among very gender nonconforming gay and bisexual women in their childhoods probably indicates that most people at least of that variety really do make it through the other side of puberty with their gender-related distress significantly lowered or resolved, and I think that could potentially only get harder and harder to see if there is less opportunity ever even presented for non-medical or even just non-transition resolution. However, I think I also have to grant that the percentage of very gender nonconforming female people I know who think of themselves as women is incredibly small right now, and to be fair you could correlate that with the fact that most gnc girls grow up to be non-gnc and heterosexual women, and the small subset that do not grow into those could be argued to be the kind of true gender dysphoric subject in question. I don't think that's a very good argument but I grant it is one you could pretty reasonably make.

I actually personally don't think desistance rates are all that important honestly, and I don't really like much focus on them- the only way in which they matter to me personally all that much is I suspect that puberty blockers and the affirmative model may be actively locking children into identities which will compel them to make choices that cause real harms to their health and body over time. To get to your question about the new 2.5% study, I did see it in the NYTimes and I don't think much of it. I don't think it tells us anything that a child could speak up about distress with regard to gender norms and their body at the age of 6.5 (which was the average I think initial questioning age) and then be handed an entire narrative that affirms and describes and gives real form to a form of distress they are experiencing by professionals in white coats who say it is best that they be allowed for instance to engage in cross sex behaviors from which they were previously barred, and then have their brain development paused (not all of the children were on blockers in the study is my understanding, but some were) while they are experiencing this severe emotional distress about their developing body and the gender norms ascribed onto it which they think about constantly because the purpose of the protocol is often said to be allowing children time to think (I would say obsess) about their distress, and then still be experiencing that distress in a way that lines very neatly up with the narrative they were fed at the age of 6, 5 years later. None of that surprises me given my experience with and understanding of the deeply obsessive nature of a lot of people who struggle with gender dysphoria, the role of homophobia in the distress, the rigidity a lot of these children have around roles, etc. The problem now is that in order to untangle the impact of social and medical transition steps we would need control groups, and while I think the medicalization of this issue in children is unethical, there are others who think that having a control group of children not given blockers if deisred would also be unethical. But without control groups none of this really means all that much to me.

Hot take

Hot take

Hot take

These three flags are garbage and look gross.

Let’s go back to the original, please?

2: I am literally trans

3: The original flag didn’t exclude people of colour, it treated them the same as everyone else. I don’t understand why you would need an extra stripe or two to “appreciate POC more”. Also, right before he died, the creator of the flag (Gilbert Baker) added a lavender stripe to represent diversity.

4: The black bar already had meaning. It represented those who were lost to AIDS. The people who added the brown stripe completely appropriated the meaning of the black one and painted over its meaning and history, which is honestly pretty disgusting in my opinion.

“the pink stripe is ugly” just say graphic design is your passion and go. also gilbert baker wasn’t consulted on the bullshit design, and they released it like a MONTH after his death. that’s fishy as fuck.

here’s a higher quality version:

the meanings:

Lavender- Diversity.

Pink- Sexuality.

Red- Life.

Orange- Healing.

Yellow- Sunlight.

Green- Nature.

Turquoise- Art.

Indigo- Harmony.

Violet- Spirit.

here’s a picture of Gilbert’s actual flag!

WHAT?

[source] [source]

It’s literally a homophobic pride flag and I think the design is pretty well made in this regard. Because it’s fucking obvious.

How tight is your gorilla grip bussy?

Which boypussy videos do you watch to alleviate your dysphoria over gay men not wanting to fuck you?

Are you an autoandrophile or HSTS?

Did your parents divorce before or after you decided you were a boy?

Are you a smol goth prince or a feral rat himbo?

Which is your favorite yaoi smut fic?

How big is your penis-sona?

Which cosplay conventions have you been to recently?

Which homophobic slur do you like appropriating the most?

How many blowjobs have you given to gay men under the pretense that you were also a gay man?

How many pride flags are in your room?

When was the last time you took a shower?

When were you diagnosed with autism?

Which shade of Manic Panic hair dye is your go-to?

Do your wear your pronoun pins on your schoolbag, or your jacket?

Who makes your telephone calls for you?

“Leukippos (Leucippus) fell in love with Daphne, but despaired of winning her to be his wife by an open courtship, as she avoided all the male sex. The following trick occurred to him by which to get her. Leukippos was growing his hair long for the river Alpheios (Alpheus). Brading his hair as though he were a maiden, and putting on woman’s clothes, he came to Daphne and said that he was a daughter of Oinomaos (Oenomaus), and would like to share her hunting. As he was thought to be a maiden, surpassed the other maidens in nobility of birth and skill in hunting, and was besides most assiduous in this attentions, he drew Daphne into a deep friendship. The poets who sing of Apollon’s love for Daphne make an addition to the tale; that Apollon became jealous of Leukippos because of his success in his love. Forthwith Daphne and the other maidens conceived a longing to swim in the Ladon, and stripped Leukippos in spite of his reluctance. Then, seeing that he was no maid, they killed him with their javelins and daggers.“  (Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 20. 2 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) (source)