Red Flags and Radicals: A Detransitioner writes

Re: "Are we comparing like with like?" above:

1. The "1%" idea wasn't an actual statistic; it was just something one poster kept repeating to try to make fact. (The author of the article in the OP tries to make some extrapolations, but I wouldn't put heavy stock in them; her data is from before the recent surge in identification, for one, and counts detransitioners based on whether they've gone through a process that, according to her experiences and conversations with other detransitioners, very few use due to time and expense.)

2. The question being raised was: "Is detransition a common enough phenomenon to matter?" The research available points out across the board that, among children, it certainly is; in fact, it's the outcome that happens the majority of the time. Even if you believe the detransition rate among those who identify as trans as adults is flat-out 0% - which, even given the increase in maturity and one's sense of self that occurs with age, is highly, highly doubtful - you still have to address the clinical consensus that detransition is the most common outcome for children who identify as trans, which alone makes it a legitimate, pertinent topic of discussion.

Kay, bloody edit better.

re what anchormum said. Add only add to that that people who decide to de-transition find it easier than that once the " system " has dropped them. If they fail to turn up at an adult GIC, for example, there is a " miss once more and you are out, matey" letter. And they will be. A while ago it was the case that most offered a GIC appointment dropped out along the way.Dropping out of the official "system " is all too easy.

Leaving the circle of friends and fellow travellers on social media and support groups, , though , is different. I think that Anchormum is quite right to emphasise this big problem, and it could have a negative effect on the life of a young person. Even if in the long run it is the right thing.

I think we absolutely should include those who transition socially then change their mind in numbers of detransitioners. After all we are expected to accept anyone at any stage of transitioning even if only using a different name as being trans so it has to work both ways. And as the study linked above shows huge numbers will detransition. Hopefully future research will be allowed and show breakdown of detransitioners in terms of what stage of transition they were at ie social/medical/surgical and being clear about which surgery the person has had - there’s a lot of difference between someone who has facial feminisation surgery (which is offered on nhs surprisingly) and those who have had genital surgery / mastectomy etc
It’s essential these numbers are clearly known and presented to everyone being seen at gender identity clinics. Otherwise it can never be considered informed consent which is paramount in medical treatment of any kind

The profile of his patients must also have changed over the years.

We know that young lesbian women are turning to trans ideology as a solution to their trauma in numbers never seen before.

How can anyone know for sure that these young women will not come to regret their sterility and mastectomies, the loss of their beautiful female voices, the permanent facial and body hair, and the health risks that are associated with taking wrong sex hormones?

AnchorMum That's shocking.

she was told by her specialist that in many years of clinical practice he only knew of one physically transitioned patient who had changed their mind.

only knew of This is the kind of mind-set that far too many professionals are still bringing to their work. As though they'd never heard of selection bias, or the limitations of anecdotal evidence.

It's so easy to create bandwagons, but when it comes to the caring professions, once people have jumped on that bandwagon, it's very difficult to get them to jump off, because that would be admitting that they haven't done the best possible for their previous patients/clients/students, and may even have damaged them. The social workers who removed those children in Orkney during the satanic worship fiasco still claim that they believe they were right.

One way street.

Yes. There's a reason it's called a pathway.

Iatrogenesis in interventions is another area it's vital we study.

Transitioning is very much a one-way street.

Even those who 'just' transition socially will find it very hard to return to their former identity: name and gender change, political and ideological reversal, separating from an extremely tight social group who will have become their 'siblings' and 'family.'

They will have invested an enormous amount of time and energy in creating their new persona and weaving it in to every aspect of their life. Their transition will now be their life.

If you add physical transition on to this, then the journey back to their original identity becomes nigh on impossible.

And yet we are seeing more de-transitioners speaking out. This has got to tell us something very important because it will have been vastly harder to have broken out than it was to join in the first place.

I have so much admiration for those who have done this - and the ones I know about seem hugely self-aware.

When my daughter was signed off for her testosterone - aged 21, and only 10 months after she had first seen the GP with dysphoric symptoms that had started 3 months previously - she was told by her specialist that in many years of clinical practice he only knew of one physically transitioned patient who had changed their mind.

My child was, of course, ecstatic to hear this and took it as more proof she was doing the right thing.

One way street.

Are we comparing like with like?
Is what is posted above necessarily in conflict with the 1% thingy, if it relates to those who are self-identified in childhood on the one hand, and people being treated at adult ?GICs on the other.

Tavistock always say that the majority who come to them ( ie having already jumped through any hoops put in place by local GPs, Ed Psychs, etc )don't transition.

And the 1% ( which I doubt on principle as how would they know?) is supposed to refer to adults who transition through the GICs.

At least, I think this is where the apparent conflict of figures come from.
I h
ave known quite a few adult transitioners over a wearyingly long life spent trying not to transition, and no-one I have known beyond a" hi there "level has ever re transitioned or talked about it.

Just to clarify the above: the studies quoted are focused on those who identified as trans in childhood, not those who first identified as trans in adulthood. The conclusion remains: detransitioning is not an uncommon, "1%" phenomenon but a very common outcome of trans identification that cannot be discounted in considering these matters.

Feminist4 was posting some made-up statistics about detransitioning upthread, so I thought I'd post some results of actual studies of detransitioning, gathered by a psychologist specializing in sexuality.

www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

Detransitioners make up a majority (in some cases, a very sizable majority) in all studies. Even when some of the possible blind spots mentioned by the OP article are addressed, the results still put detransitioners in the majority:

www.sexologytoday.org/2017/12/faulty-statistics-on-how-many-trans.html

Yes, some who choose to transition do remain with their choice, but the majority does choose to detransition. As the author says: "Despite coming from a variety of countries and from a variety of labs, using a variety of methods, all spanning four decades, every single study without exception has come to the identical conclusion."

In the days before I left Trans websites there used to be rules about not advocating or giving info about private supplies of hormones. The assumption was that they would be fake , or manufactured in an old dustbin somewhere.

But desperate people do desperate things . Such bans are very easily got round with a pm.

I'm in despair about where we are now.

There's an article in the Mail today, about children buying blockers and hormones on line because of waiting times and age limits.

There's a massive problem with counterfeit medications in general which is compounded many times when people are buying drugs from non-authorised suppliers.

WHO estimates that 50% of the drugs for sale on the internet are fake and even though the online dispensaries might look legitimate, a survey of 10 000 of them done by America's National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) found that 9938 did not comply with NABP patient safety and pharmacy practice standards or US state and federal laws. Most said they were based in Canada but were really a front for illegal offshore operations.

afludiary.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-lancet-who-estimates-that-50-of.html

Fake medicines: fighting on all fronts: www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(18)30152-8/fulltext

Counterfeit Medications and Their Negative Impacts on Health Care: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3996380/

Poor-quality antimalarial drugs in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa: www.thelancet.com/journals/lancetid/article/PIIS1473-3099(12)70064-6/fulltext

It's incredibly dangerous to buy any medications for which you do not have a prescription online, from sites with questionable supply chains, and those actively encouraging people to do so will hopefully one day be condemned for the risks they're attempting to expose others to.

A sense of urgency, yes. Is it false? I have no settled view on this in individual cases. The problem wiy jout a solution is, I think, this;

On the one hand there is no doubt that in m to f early transition, hormones and surgery makes a massive difference to the life chances of the patient. Some early transsitioners are startlingly convincing in shape, voice, hair etc. So if transition is to happen the sooner the better..... oh but...

On the other hand neither the patient nor the professionals CAN tell if it is to be permanent, so early transition, hormones ( and surgery ) could prove to be a disaster.

Fortunately, I do not have to make such life changing " on balance" decisions. At least under the current , NHS, system, people have to go through psychiatric" gates".And the psychs at Charing Cross GC, where I went, are no pushover. Nor should they be.

Probably this is where blockers come in, on a " least worst option" to buy a little more time?

Also the TRA mantras create a false sense of urgency. You must do it now, or it will be too late.

There's an article in the Mail today, about children buying blockers and hormones on line because of waiting times and age limits. This quote from the Tavistock mentions detransitioners.

‘It is incredibly dangerous to buy these online,’ said the spokesperson, who pointed out that many young people later change their mind about changing sex. ‘By getting drugs off the internet, adolescents may start on a path they don’t want to tread later on.’

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6448105/British-children-buy-sex-hormone-medication-foreign-sites-no-questions-asked.html

Langcleg

Yes, Max Planck, thanks!

KayM2 I think your contributions are very valuable, not "bibble" at all!

I was just doing some more thinking about this, and what you said about "dancing about architecture", and about the whole research thing, and it occurred to me as well that, even if research were to reach a dead end as far as digging out useful information about GD, it would still be valuable to collect as many individual accounts as possible together, both from long-term transitioned people and from detransitioners, if only to provide individuals with a variety of insights and ways of reflecting on their own experience: yes, that matches what I feel, not that doesn't. Because I think that can be a really helpful approach for an individual to clarifying any psychological issue.

I do believe that psychological research, properly conducted, can tell us things, and I believe/hope that eventually that research filters down to the practice of those in the caring professions, improving their practice. But it's undoubtedly a long, slow process. I forget who said that "science progresses one funeral at a time", but it is unfortunately true.

Max Planck? I think!

And we're back to the paucity of research and the ideological opposition to funding any, aren't we? Because better one funeral at a time than fear of results leading to more harm than necessary.

I'm OK with all that. Thanks for responding to my bibble .

Sorry, I should have said above that the reason I was mentioning Freud was because those ideas about autism/homosexuality were based entirely on his (highly unscientific) work.

Kay M2 You make a very important point here, and one that has been an interest/concern of mine for a long time:

Over the centuries very clever and thoughtful people have come to have views that now seem unbelievable. In my career I have worked with people who thought that EBD children were as they were " because of the moon", and that autism / homosexuality was caused by bad parenting. And on the latter thing these people could refer to respectable academic and medical " evidence".

But when you say "these people could refer to respectable academic and medical 'evidence'", it's important to remember that the standards of evidence supporting those ideas were incredibly low. We can and do do much better these days, and the vital thing is to keep plugging away at raising the standards, and criticising and exposing flawed research.

The whole underlying premise of psychological "research" used to be based on an almost religious worship of Freud: but that has been largely overturned now, and although he still has some adherents in terms of therapeutic methods, research psychologists generally regard his ideas as nonsense. I do believe that psychological research, properly conducted, can tell us things, and I believe/hope that eventually that research filters down to the practice of those in the caring professions, improving their practice. But it's undoubtedly a long, slow process. I forget who said that "science progresses one funeral at a time", but it is unfortunately true.

Carey understands that if you want people to believe something you have to explain why. And even if you do they still may end up not believing, and that's a normal feature of how societies work.

Imagine the strength of character it takes to put this stuff out there rather than go for the cheap option of my experience uber alles that all the others do. It really is something else.

But I like her so much because she knows she is going to incite conversations like the one we're having here - bad faith and desperate-to-distract contributions aside - and isn't afraid of us having them.

Exactly. Despite well organized attempts to push changes through in a no debate sort of way society isn't really having it - at best people have been cowed into silence, which is not the same thing as acceptance and is a very long way from belief. Carey understands that if you want people to believe something you have to explain why. And even if you do they still may end up not believing, and that's a normal feature of how societies work.

Also the TRA mantras create a false sense of urgency. You must do it now, or it will be too late.

Absolutely. As does the addiction to social media such as YouTube, where this stuff is prevalent. More that needs proper research. More proper research that isn't being done because it challenges the interests of middle-aged, middle class males.