I work for an academic medical center that’s fairly well known both locally and in the world. However, we haven’t been known for stellar queer health. In fact, I’d say we’ve been lacking, quite a bit. Recently the school put on a talk about the medical needs of people who have detransitioned and even featured a speaker who had themselves detransitioned. It was an absolutely fascinating talk, which highlighted some of the trends they have been seeing, talked about the many reasons that people tend to detransition (mostly social pressures, as described by Devon in the piece) and talked rather frankly about the kind of online harassment these individuals had experienced for detransitioning. It was really sad to hear about the harassment, although unfortunately not something that surprised me.
Having been in plenty of online trans spaces, it’s been clear to me that there are a lot of people out there struggling and many of them can lash out at others for plenty of extremely valid reasons. Being trans means you’re constantly under attack - people invalidate your experience which prompts defense, but perhaps more importantly one often has to fight tooth and nail and expend significant resources in order to get access to medical care which in many cases can be life saving. People often convince themselves that access is more prevalent if they fall into certain boxes. Trans medicalism is one such example, a viewpoint in which advocates distill transgenderism into a very medical definition. It’s entirely an issue of nature, with no nurture component, and it has well defined symptoms and resolutions. Trans medicalism is almost always purely binary and assumes there is an “ideal” endpoint of transitioning. What this often means, is that trans medicalists will attack people who don’t agree with their viewpoint and make the argument that promoting any other viewpoint or life experiences will result in jeopardizing their access to already limited medical care.
Trans medicalists causing infighting in the transgender field is just one such example from these trans spaces where infighting (and outsiders attacking) happens and there’s some level of harassment. Luckily there’s a lot of folks who will back you up if you are attacked by these folks who are often deeply scared and hurting, but there’s a lot less support for folks who talk about detransitioning. Detransitioning highlights the fact that there are folks who will undergo some level of transitioning and regret it and reverse course. This makes the idea of transitioning scary to cis folks, and it also gives them a reason to gatekeep it, at least until adulthood, an idea which can be catastrophic given the high suicide rates of trans folks, especially those who are young and watching their body change in ways which cause serious distress. However, the literature reveals that the vast majority of folks who do detransition do so because of social pressures (averaging around 80% of the primary reason and >90% of folks citing it as at least one of the reasons) which reinforces the narrative that social acceptance of trans folks is the most important factor to their success. Regardless, the perceived invalidation of transness (that some people could choose to reverse course) means that folks who try and talk about their experience of detransitioning often get attacked online.
It would be difficult to talk about the harassment that detransitioning folks get online without also addressing that there’s a weirdly large number of people making up personas online as a way to push their political agenda. Having moderated transgender spaces online, I have personally witnessed individuals who come back, time and time again, and spread a false story about detransitioning. I say that it’s a false story because some of these individuals have been discovered to post elsewhere on the internet about the this behavior and celebrating the fact that they are sowing discord. In fact, this happens so often, that in many trans spaces I’ve been in online, they either explicitly ban or more discreetly clean up this kind of noise, likely catching some folks who truly did transition and were not indulging a false persona online.
This was the first time I had even spotted an academic talk on detransitioning and it really signaled to me the beginning of acceptance and the emergence of a group from the shadows where they have been shoved, and to stumble across an article like this from a well known semi-public trans figure was really amazing for me to see. A lot of the narratives that Devon brought forth in this post highlight a lot of the struggles that trans folks deal with and puts words to some of the tough ideas we’ll need to struggle with as a society and as an in-group (a call to action for trans folks to more vocally/actively support detransitioning). It also highlights some more non-traditional paths and viewpoints on gender. As someone who is both non-binary and agender, I personally resonated with a lot that Devon brings to the table here. I don’t often talk very vocally about my own experience because I’ve both experienced and worry about the push back that narratives like mine and Devon’s can garner. For example, being agender, I don’t experience gender based feelings - gender dysphoria and euphoria are both things I do not experience. Many people might question why I decided to transition in the first place, and my answer might also be wholly unconvincing to many.
I suspect this subset of individuals is going to be thrust into the limelight (they already have, at times, by journalism and political forces) more presently, especially as we begin to better address their health needs. Mental health, especially given the amount of harassment they receive or the need to conceal their detransitioning, seems to be especially prescient. I’m glad that we have some figures such as Devon speaking out about their experience, and helping to draw attention to all the nuances that go into one’s decision to transition and how the experience itself can be a lot messier than the media makes it out to be.