From Laundryandtaxes

from laundryandtaxes

I can kind of understand people’s inherent shock at the (growing, and increasingly difficult to ignore) existence of detransitioned people given the prevalence of the notion that transition is The Treatment for gender dysphoria and the prevalence of the notion that gender dysphoria is not at all like other forms of psychological distress- depression, anxiety, etc- but functionally a soul level characteristic that does not abate until treated with The Treatment.

But I have to say that their shock at the fact that lots of detransitioned people come out of detransition with very different ideas about gender than they had when they went in really highlights how little thought most people have given to any of the relevant questions around what transition is, around what gender dysphoria is, around what transition can do for someone vs what it cannot do, etc.

If someone went into a process being told (including by medical professionals) that something called a gender identity made them more or less inherently a person destined for cross sex hormones in order to actualize that identity, that their distress (dysphoria) was being caused by living out of alignment with that soul level characteristic, that this treatment would not only alleviate their gender dysphoria but would even alleviate the other mental health problems that many many people bring with them into transition, that this treatment would make their life better in immeasurable ways that would make it worth all of the downsides, only to find out that literally none of that ended up being true for them, it is absolutely not even slightly surprising that they might come away from the process not just feeling that they “made a mistake” facilitated repeatedly by mental health and medical professionals that they trusted to do right by them and to not cause them harm.

It is not at all surprising that they might come away from the process with an entirely different understanding of what the process itself is. It is not at all surprising that someone who’s taken cross sex hormones for a length of time might eventually come to realize that cross sex hormones are not in fact magic, they’re just hormones, and that leaning on magical thinking (having been born in the wrong body, etc) to source their psychological distress and then on cross sex hormones to fix something that was not a medical problem to begin with, is an approach to this problem that they’ve personally tried and found to be fundamentally lacking.

If you dislike the criticisms that many detrans people make of transition as a process, that’s one thing, but it’s another to act shocked about how and why that happened simply reveals that you haven’t even allowed yourself to ask some very fundamental questions about what kinds of decisions people are making and what factors are driving those decisions.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

I’m always amazed and humbled every time I come across a piece of writing that so perfectly and succinctly predicted the future. It proves to me there is clairvoyance in art. Heller wrote this in the late 1950’s. It was published in 1961.

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Bell says that, for many young people in a similar position to her own, “Regret is really what we’re talking about, as opposed to detransition itself, which has an abstract sort of meaning, and people interpret it in different ways. 

“There are people that are technically still transitioned, who have those regrets, and they wouldn’t dare mention it. So it’s a much bigger issue than people realise.

“It can be painful for people to turn back. And I don’t think a lot of people will. They’ll continue with it out of fear. People wouldn’t dare speak up because suddenly they’d be called transphobic and ousted from their friendship group.” 

She adds that it is not only trans rights campaigners who can cloud the conversation. “In an ideal world I would want political influence to be taken out of these services that are dealing with vulnerable people,” she says. “I worry about political influence on both sides. The trans rights side and the people that are more focused on women’s rights, which can sometimes get in the way of real care in this sort of area.” 

Today, Bell, who has been so honest about what she has been through, is now trying to spend some time out of the limelight. 

“I want to feel I’m in a bit more of a stable place. But I’m making moves. I don’t want a crazy life. My life has been so up and down, from a young age, so I’m just trying to find peace. It’s a work in progress.” (x)

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

Chrysina sp., focus stacked