We're Not Mad At Detransitioners

On intra-community discourse, right-wing media, and the inevitability of grifters.

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Here’s the “TL;DR” version of online pro-trans advocacy: In a world where gender transition is becoming increasingly illegal, it’s more imperative than ever that we highlight trans success stories. If we can show people that transitioning has overall positive outcomes—a truth that’s more than backed up by all the available scientific research on the subject—the more likely we are to “win people over” and onboard more people into the pro-trans movement, which should eventually result in the universal adoption of transition care into medical and legal systems. Additionally, on a broader scale, people who aren’t trans (those who don’t necessarily need to “transition” to another gender identity) can have a deeper sense of their gender without relying on stereotypes and heterosexist assumptions about “what is a man/woman”; trans liberation means liberation for all. Failure to gain broad acceptance of trans people will lead to increased violence against us, especially those with intersecting marginalized identities such as trans people of color, and the continuation of negative social outcomes for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals. Hence, trans liberation now.

The dominant political narrative (currently being propped up by Republican talking heads and remaining largely unchallenged by national Democratic leadership) is that transitioning is unnatural, immoral, dangerous and overall just gross. This has manifested in legislation that has made it harder for people to access gender-affirming care, as well as an increase in anti-trans discrimination. Part of their rhetoric is that people only transition because they’re broken, confused, being pressured to do so in order to “fit in” to a social group, etc.

So, a large part of the political project of trans liberation has been to make accessing transition care easier: sharing our stories on social media to show that the process is neither dangerous nor scary, helping trans people secure gender-affirming care by referring them to local medical practitioners who we know are trans-friendly, and overall pointing out to whoever will listen that even if being trans makes one’s life harder, that’s because of transphobia, not an inherently brokenness or mental illness within us. In our view, the more people who are able to safely explore their gender identity, the better off we are as a society.

But what about those who go through parts of a gender transition—socially or medically—and then go on to reverse their decision? In a bigger-picture sense, there should be no problem with this: more people should engage in gender exploration even if they’re cisgender, and besides, many people try new things—hobbies, jobs, foods, genres of music—only to find out it’s not for them, with gender presentation simply being a slightly higher-stakes version of this (due to the social pressures on all individuals to present their gender to the world in a certain way). In a perfect, gender-liberated utopia, perhaps people would be able to try in new genders with the same ease as trying a new hairstyle, with no grand social pressure to “permanently” alter anything. However, in our specific political context, a slight tension arises when people transition—change their gender presentation and perhaps pursue HRT or surgery—only to “go back” to “being cisgender” (more on these air quotes later). This is mainly because such people are held up by conservatives as a justification for why nobody should be allowed to transition. As the conservative argument goes, what if there really are just two genders, the boundaries between which cannot be crossed, and everybody who claims to want to change genders is merely still stuck in that same phase of delusion as these people were before “coming to their senses”?

People who detransition (colloquially called detransitioners), hold an awkward place in our current political landscape. Due to conservatives embracing detransitioners and holding them up as an example for why transitioning shouldn’t be a thing for anybody, many trans people hold a deep resentment towards them, and in some cases, we send them huge amounts of hate and vitriol online, which is then held up as even more evidence of our apparent collective delusion.

I’m here to lay out the reality of this situation for pro-trans newcomers, and for my trans audience, I’m here to argue why the hatred of detransitioners is misplaced. But first, some quick math…