The NYT Asks: Why Are There So Few Detrans Activists?

Chloe Cole and a tiny handful of political detransition activists have flown from state to state to speak in favor of bans on gender-affirming care. At long last a major news outlet noticed.

by Evan Urquhart

Chloe Cole at a city council meeting earlier this year, seated near members of the Proud Boys

The big question that has long been hanging over detransition is “Why are there so few detransitioned people who oppose transgender health care?” If transition was causing harm and detransition due to regret was common, it would be easy to find some local detransitioned people to speak at a legislative hearing to ban gender-affirming care. Instead every single state that’s banned this care has been forced to rely on the same half-dozen detrans activists. This stands in stark contrast with the numbers of transgender people who continue to feel gender-affirming care has helped them, of whom every state has hundreds who are willing and eager to testify, no outside activists needed.

Today, several years after transgender reporters started tracking the handful of activists who turned their detransition into opposition to other people’s healthcare, a major news organization has seen fit to ask this looming question. The results are stark, though not unexpected: The New York Times’ Maggie Astor reported today that fewer than 10 detransition actvists have been repeatedly tapped by conservatives seeking speakers to support bans on gender-affirming care.

screenshot from the New York Times

Unlike many previous articles on detransition, Astor represented the full range of experiences with detransition in the Times story. None of the political detransition activists agreed to speak with Astor, apparently not wanting to appear in an article which presented multiple detransitioners’ points of view. Instead of quotes from interviews, that side of the detransition experience is represented with their public testimony. Astor did speak directly with Elisa Shupe, a former detransitioned person who was part of the anti-trans activist community for years before leaving the movement behind and retransitioning to live as a trans woman. She also spoke with detransitioned people who mentioned economic and social factors which played a role in their decision to detransition, and to a long-time detransition activist who today says she does not oppose transgender healthcare. This group is far more representative of people who have detranstioned, but most news articles on the topic have typically relied on anti-trans activist groups for their sourcing and profiled only those detransitioners who are committed anti-trans activists.

screenshot from the New York Times

In all, the Times listed five political detransitioners who have testified in favor of bans on gender-affirming care: Chloe Cole, Billy Burleigh, Luka Hein, Prisha Mosley, and Cat Cattinson. Each of them have testified in multiple states, flying across the country to be the face of detransition in places where there are no homegrown ant-trans detransitioners present. Not mentioned by the Times was the fact that Cole has said she still struggles with gender dysporia. This admission suggests that Cole’s experience may be similar to that of ex-detransitioners like Shupe and Ky Schevers, who say their gender dysphoria never went away during the time they spent in the anti-trans movement. Former detransitioners like Shupe and Schevers paint a picture that is eerily similar to the ex-gay movement in the 1990s, of politically motivated people trying to cure themselves through prayer and positive thinking out of a natural variation that is fundamental to their being.

Anti-trans detransition narratives have seemed to resonate with many mainstream, cisgender Americans, perhaps tapping into the fear people have of being forced to live as the wrong gender. These stories are rarely interrogated critically because the idea of a cisgender person mistakenly believing they are trans is “too good to check” in reporter’s parlance. When you do look deeper, as Astor has finally done for a major newspaper, you find these narratives have been packaged and distorted by conservatives opposed to the existence of trans people in public life. Real detransitioners have complicated stories, and those stories deserve to be heard. Simplistic parables of mistaken transition do as much to obscure the real story of people who detransition as anything.