The sticky subject of detransition comes up a lot in trans communities. Detransition undermines trans claims and demands in the healthcare sector, threatens the broader political objectives of trans activism, but most of all, the specter of detransition stalks individual trans people. Detransitioners say: You can be absolutely sure you’re trans and that you absolutely must transition. And you can be wrong. Fui quod es, eris quod sum, etc.
It doesn’t help that the typical trans person isn’t absolutely sure and that the typical online trans community expends a great deal of time and energy smothering doubts.
A recent post in r/ftm asks: Why do detrans people blame us so much?
Just to clarify, it’s not all detrans people. There are plenty who are still alright, but I’m specifically talking about the detrans sub. My mom is stupid and has been sending me stuff from that sub and all I hear is shit like “the trans community groomed me” or “transitioning is extremely glorified” or “so and so convinced me I was trans”. They act like trans people existing is forcing them to be trans. Like if they’re that susceptible, they need to get help and grow the hell up instead being transphobic.
There’s a willful blindness here, a refusal to consider detransition on its own terms.
Maybe detransitioners are just trans people in denial—that would be awfully convenient:
Almost always because people who “detransition” are still trans, they just didn’t feel comfortable/safe/able to be authentic. But the idea of that is understandably incredibly painful, so unfortunately some of them demonize transness in an attempt to convince themselves otherwise. It would be sad if it wasn’t so fucking disgusting.
And a belief widely held among people who identify as trans as well as among gender-affirming clinicians is detransition is an utterly individual misstep. Under this worldview, there’s no room for influence—or medical responsibility for harm and regret—and detrans people are accused of self-victimizing and ‘weaponizing’ their identities as female victims against the trans community as a whole:
Imagine: You realize you fucked up. The consequences of that fuck up are humiliation, dysphoria, and transphobia. You have group A, which says "I'm sorry you fucked up, but that's on you." You have group B, which says "it's not your fault you fucked up, you were manipulated."
Most people would feel comforted by group B. The shame of getting something this big wrong is definitely real, and probably not very fun either. TERF BS would let you shift responsibility from yourself to the Other.
Because FTMTFs (especially white ones) get public empathy by playing into the misogynistic "stupid little girl who can't make decisions about her body on her own" role.
detransitioners are often rejected by both cis AND trans people which is a golden opportunity for terfs. they immidiately get fed this narrative that noo it wasn't your fault noo you were manipulated and lied to, as a band aid on what is probably a really painful and unfortunate mistake. (and it is telling that terfs only tell afabs this, because silly women don't know how to think for themselves and must have been subject to coercion while Scary Men must be acting maliciously when transitioning)
It's really so baffling to me. To blame the very community who welcomed you and supported you for your own feelings and decisions... If I were ever to detransition (which I doubt I will obv) I wouldn't regret my transition at all because I'd know that it was part of my journey to figuring out who I am. I definitely WOULD NOT start shitting on everyone else and try to get their rights taken away. It's such a self-centered thing too. To think that your feelings apply to everyone else. "If it didn't work for me, it can't possibly be working for anyone else." Ridiculous.
It’s a lot of people not wanting to take accountability and it being easier to blame a group that everyone already hates than admit they were wrong.
IMO it comes largely from the issue of bigoted white cis women historically having a tendency to weaponize victimhood against other marginalized groups, and opting for self-infantilizing in order to punch down and gain sympathy from oppressors (“the scary trans people/people of color/etc made me do it, we should make laws against them to protect me, an innocent hapless victim”) over taking accountability (“I made a choice for myself that I regret”). Plus even removed from marginalization and privilege/oppression dynamics, I think lots of people have a very hard time facing the fact that they were wrong about something, that they made a choice that they regret, or that something is “their fault.” It feels a lot better and is easier to gain support and sympathy if you position yourself as a victim, and it takes a lot of strength to admit that the course of your life was altered by a choice that you yourself decided to make and are now learning and growing from it.
Or maybe people are lying about being detransitioners:
Detrans, the subreddit, is mostly not even detransitioned people. I highly doubt many of their userbase ever thought they were trans. It's easy for a TERF to lie, and the few that are actual detransitioned people are probably isolated and susceptible to bad actors.
Most people on r slash detrans are actually terfs fishing for detrans horror stories and terfs larping as detransitionners to feed the former group. Very few actual detransitionners
So you can expect pretty strong anti trans sentiments on there, because that's what brought them there in the first place
Some commenters demonstrate greater empathy, while still labeling detransitioners who criticize trans ideology as radicalized. The line about detransition not needing to be “framed as ‘getting something this big wrong’ or as anyone’s ‘fault’” sounds very familiar (I’ve heard more than a few self-serving gender clinicians say the same):
I think there's maybe a bit more nuance we can inject here than just "detransitioners don't want to take responsibility"? Detransitioning doesn't need to be shameful at all, and doesn't need to be framed as "getting something this big wrong" or as anyone's "fault" at all - so much of that is a narrative that is unnecessarily and cruelly pushed on people who re/detransition by others. When they try to access medical care, seek social support from family and friends, even just try to find the words to talk about their experiences, they are very likely to encounter (even unintentional, subtle) *shaming* over having "gotten it wrong," not just an internal sense of shame out of nowhere. That does, unfortunately, sometimes come from trans people who they may previously have considered their community. I suspect this is because some trans people are uncomfortable/reactive around the idea of detransition - the idea of "making a mistake" is scary to a lot of people, and some of the emotions and identity exploration that detransitioners go through can feel threatening to people who are going through the "opposite" process. It can be very traumatic to lose your place in a trusted community, and it can make people very vulnerable to radicalization. Not a *justification* for why some detransitioners get sucked into TERF stuff, but I think an explanation for some of it. Any port in a storm, and so on.
But these communities aren’t monoliths. There’s genuine insight here on how online trans communities can “affect people into believing they’re something they’re not because they do/don’t follow stereotypes”:
Now trans online spaces have developed a view of "If you don't subscribe to strict gender roles or feel that those roles are wrong? EggIRL!" You can't really say anything or go anywhere that's against gender roles or differing gender expression without that sub coming up, as if gender roles and stereotypes are the only thing that makes trans people trans.
Again, IRL it's more chill, but online most LGBT communities have adopted really strict viewpoints that can affect people into believing they're something they're not because they do/don't follow stereotypes (Especially people who don't have IRL access to LGBT people to decide for themselves what they are or want, they just have these strict online communities). So while I don't agree, I do understand why they'd feel so angry with the online trans community, because differing forms of gender expression is not accepted in most trans online spaces.
i think the stigma around uncertainty and regret is also causing a lot of people to deny their own uncertainty, to be seen as a Real and Valid trans person. we need to encourage exploration more and encourage people being honest and not shame uncertainty or people in gray areas not being sure what they want yet. and even go as far as to support people who got it wrong
because people feeling pressured to bury their own uncertainty to access support and community is just gonna make regret later on more likely. its a cycle that feeds into itself
In my opinion, there is a bit of an echo-chamber in some of these communities. I mean you say the wrong thing about neopronouns in this sub and you get booted/post gets taken down etc. So when someone comes in here and says I think I might be trans, all they see is affirmation and nobody every questions them. Then they get to the point where they want to detransition and think why did everyone affirm me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not trans people on the internet’s responsibility to question people’s gender identity, but there are also people that outright say cis people don’t question their gender identity and that everyone who does is trans. Henceforth leading cis-questioning people to transition and then regret it, leading to detransitioners hatred for the trans community.
TLDR: trans spaces tend to be affirmation only which obviously doesn’t work as not everyone that thinks there [sic] trans is, these people then detransition and get angry that they were affirmed
And some commenters reflect on how perceived political necessity (“our access to [transition] is always hanging on by a thread”) renders some transition experiences, like regret and detransition, inconvenient and inadmissible:
I de-transitioned hormonally. Done it twice. I’m not cis though, I guess you could say that capitalism “coerced”me into a gender prison. There’s this phenomenon that happens with repressed medicine/oppressed people in our society that forces marginalized communities to be unrealistically positive and ignore the shadow for the sake of advocating for their human rights. Like I remember when weed was more criminalized, people were like “Omg” you can’t have an addiction to weed. Cause, people had a need they weren’t getting met. Same with hormones and surgical procedures. This is life saving medicine that we need. And because our access to it is always hanging on by a thread, we can’t afford the luxury of speaking of the full trans experience.
I like this answer. I think there's extra friction between trans and detrans people right now because some detrans people perceive trans people as "hiding" the full realities of transition from the public - and I don't think that's... entirely wrong? I think some of us *are* afraid to speak about our own negative experiences with healthcare providers, gaps in research, irresponsible or coercive practices we've encountered, etc, because we know if we do, those things will be weaponized against us to try to prevent us from transitioning. Of course, we could instead frame negative experiences as a violation of the right to gender-affirming care, and call for *better* access to transition, with fewer barriers/harms in the process. That is, gender-affirming care that is safe, accessible, respectful, and well-researched benefits everyone, and there are reasons for both trans and detrans people to fight for it. But instead we're stuck on the defensive, arguing about whether there are any problems with our healthcare ever and whether anyone could conceivably have a bad experience, because transphobes are always ready to pounce on any acknowledgment of work to be done and start yelling "AND THAT'S WHY TRANS PEOPLE SHOULDN'T EXIST."
Acting as if fellow trans people don't downvote comments about negative consequences of hrt or surgery is just lying. Detrans people generally bring up that information is stifled and that negative talk is suppressed. It's common in the phallo subteddit, for example, where you can't even talk openly about doctors that mistreat their patients and disfigured them by doing a surgery badly bc it's transphobic to call someone botched and exploited. I get downvoted all the time for saying synthetic hormones cause different issues when it's a fact .people hate being told doctors are taking advantage of us
The dynamic these commenters highlight absolutely protects irresponsible and abusive providers. From the silence imposed on detransition, nothing good comes, only a temporary quiet of the mind.
I want to pull on some threads brought up by Linoak and Athena in earlier comments: the ideas of a person who is truly trans (“born in the wrong body”) and collateral damage. There is a huge question that doctors (and politicians and activists) aren’t answering and journalists aren’t asking that is KEY in this discussion. They believe there are “true trans” people who are really “born in the wrong body” (put aside for a moment any feelings you have about this belief - just accept for a moment that these people either genuinely believe or are comfortable believing it’s true). How many cases are you willing to get wrong so that the “truly trans” person can access everything they want as quickly as they want and with no obstacles or discomfort whatsoever? And what are you going to do to help those people who got the wrong treatment?
We already know they think 1% collateral damage that’s ignored and dismissed and not supported is just fine (as a small example, go to the website of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association. Search “transgender voice” and “detransition voice” and see how many results come up for those in the two groups - transgender and detransitioner - seeking information on voice therapy). It’s time to start pinning people down with some hard, pointed questions. So what is your acceptable number of people harmed so that the “true” people get everything they want immediately and without question? 5%? 10%? 25%? *IS* there a number where someone like Jack Turban or Chase Strangio would say, “Whoa, we’re getting this wrong too often. We need to make changes.” Is there a number where the endocrinology society, the APA, the AAP, gender clinics, the ACLU, Rachel Levine, or Jeffrey Marsh would even talk about or acknowledge detransitioners, much less care about them and say they deserve respect and proper support? It seems like even the more nuanced and sympathetic commenters in the article would be unlikely to publicly voice any support or concern for detransitioners. They seem willing only to go as far as to express some reservations about the least sympathetic takes within their own self-recognized echo chamber.
I have wondered why trans-identified people are so okay with the GAC protocol. If they aren't preoccupied with denying known risks and outcomes, they should be pretty dissatisfied with it. Imagine any other medical treatment where the patients didn't want to speak up about bad outcomes, as if allowing others to suffer harm is somehow standing up for their rights… to be medically harmed? Is everything associated with this the upside down/newspeak? I get the MDs, who are the self-serving, ideological, ignorant monsters in this, but the SJW 20- and 30-somethings should get that they are indeed just collateral damage and cash cows. I would assume they'd have no problem calling it out in any other population.