Listen to Detransitioners
People figuring their lives out shouldn’t be turned into debating tools.
by Evan Urquhart
Detransition is on the frontmost of the front lines of the culture war, often to the detriment of people who detransition themselves. Opponents of trans rights eagerly amplify the stories of a handul of highly political, anti-trans detransitioners. In response, trans people and allies often insist that detransition is rare, and not representative of most people’s experience with gender affirming care. Detransition is relatively rare among people who transition, but being transgender is also relatively rare in the general public! An experience which is rare can still be meaningful, and harping on the rareness of detransition can make folks with that experience feel ignored and overlooked. The refrain on the right has been “listen to detransitioners.” So, yeah, let’s do that.
A piece in the notorously anti-trans Daily Mail, of all places, captures the situation with detransitioners well. Here’s the piece’s humorously long headline in full: Canadian detransitioner says she feels 'nauseous' because others like her STILL continue to push pro-transgender message, while ostracizing her for saying she regrets getting boobs and uterus removed.
The ensuing piece delivers exactly what’s been advertised. Michelle Zacchinga, a Canadian detrans woman who is suing the doctors who once helped her transition, has spent time in detransition spaces and she doesn’t like what she sees. Zacchinga was particularly unhappy after attending a symposium on detransition research in Toronto last November.
screenshot from the Daily Mail
These kinds of experiences, which Zacchinga describes as nauseating, rarely make headlines—unlike stories of regret which are constantly being amplified and discussed. While more research is needed, there’s reason to think non-regretful experiences are more common among those who detransition than the intense regret and return to cisgender identification we more typically see described in the news. In a qualitative study of detransition experiences, researcher Kinnon MacKinnon found many detransition stories did not involve any regret at all (one third of his participants experienced regret, two thirds did not).
There are also stories of retransition, such as that of Toby Pick who was profiled today in Pink News. Toby first socially transitioned as a teen, then spent a time as one of the active political detransitioners opposing all transition on ideological grounds. More recently he’s had top surgery and now identifies as a nonbinary transgender man.
screenshot from Pink News
Few people’s journey through life is simple. The experiences of people who detransition are as important as anyone else’s, and may provide many valuable insights for the rest of us. Listening to detransitioners doesn’t mean ignoring trans people, and it doesn’t have to mean limiting access to gender affirming care. It might mean improving such care, if detransition stories help researches figure out how it can go wrong for some folks, and it might mean increasing the support for trans people who’ve been made hyper-vulnerable by the difficulty of being trans in a highly transphobic world. Trans people and allies have nothing to lose by listening, and a lot to gain.