Detransition is the process, usually social sometimes medical, that young people go through when they reject their transgender gender identity after having under gone medical treatment to imitate the opposite sex. When this happens before any medical intervention it is known as desistance. We know that desistance rates are high, about 85% in studies, and this figure is most likely higher if we consider those who had an incongruent gender identity so fleetingly they escaped academic study.
Detransition is not rare, either. A simple search of YouTube for the term ‘detransition’ will yield many videos of young people describing their detransition experience. For every YouTuber who feels they need to tell their story, how many do you think are just quietly getting on with their lives?
The personal testimonies of detransitioners are powerful. To parents of children seeking undergoing gender transition they are sources of hope.
More powerful still is when these stories are discussed by medical professionals experienced in the field. Doctors Julia Mason of SEGM and Dr Az Hakeem, formerly of The Tavistock and author of the book ‘Trans’, are both disbelieving of the 1% figure.
We have no idea what percentage of young people who identify as transgender will go on to detransition. As ever in the field of gender medicine – more research is needed.
When James Caspian tried to establish a study into detransition at Bath Spa University he was prevented from doing so. In 2017, the climate was so hostile to anyone questioning the genderist narrative that the University was afraid of the backlash on social media.
“Engaging in a potentially ‘politically incorrect’ piece of research carries a risk to the university. Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher but may involve the university.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41384473
James Caspian has been fighting for justice ever since and his case is on Crowdjustice.
Four years later evidence-based organisations like Our Duty, Transgender Trend and SEGM are pushing for the truth; and a growing corpus of detransitioner groups like The Detransition Advocacy Network, Post Trans and Detrans Voices are being formed and making themselves heard.
The climate has changed.
In the same city where James Caspian was denied the opportunity to research detransition by Bath Spa University, a new research study has commenced at the University of Bath.
All support to De-trans; because if ideals are met, and there is a ‘rollback’ (for the want of a better term), there’s gonna be a group of folk left without the summertime friends and fashionistas and ‘keyboard revolutionaries’ of GI.
Autism is an area of study for me, and it’s relationship with GI/Non-bins is more than concerning. Of late, I’ve seen an AS on-line advocate talking to camera with her ‘trans-daughter’. If this is GI getting bolder, and using children frontline, we got a problem- as if you didn’t know that already! AS has been cuckoo as a platform for GI (or jumped into bed for visibility, throwing itself upon a Bonfire of Vanities and has stalled the sober path Autism was trying to debate to agency. Now it’s a 180 degrees spin and return to Medicalisation and ‘social adjustment’ – at the amplitude of the internet!) and advocates on-line have fallen for it wholesale. But they don’t represent all AS folk just the naive who have an uncertain and disabling relationship with screen technology, and I disagree with Helen Joyce that it is just a matter of B&W thinking. That is there, but AS history as become obscured for a false validation.
Genspect and Helen Joyce have shown some lack of nuance, re autism history and place in this, and are not giving it the same grace as LGB (I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think AS is Helen’s area. Imo, a retrace of how AS got so involved in GI, may offer some insights into how to present an information to hopefully counteract the GI propaganda. I; also hoping that AS doesn’t get side-lined with GI).
Some of the advocates on YouTube are not even AS, but folk talking on behave and creating GI narratives for those naïve of the media they seem to rely on, by hijacking AS subjectivity.
I have a limit of info, but am trying to find the place for it. I was starting to write a book on AS and what has beleaguered it, but like Helen Joyce, I need to stick my head out and make forward progress because of the real effects of GI. Autism need a wake up call re the end result of this.
Any suggestions to where I can go and add my pennyworth?