Red Flags and Radicals: A Detransitioner writes

[Bittermints]

Red Flags and Radicals: A Detransitioner’s Response to the Unhappiness of Andrea Long Chu

Interesting article from a detransitioner. I skimmed through that Andrea Long Chu article in the NYT the other day and was amazed. This is not normal or healthy behaviour, and it is a sign of how messed up we have become that anyone could think it is and that people feeling like that should be given surgery and hormones on demand.

I don't care whether it's 1% or 10% or 0.1%, I'm interested in what they have to say. Particularly when they are as insightful as Carey and write with such clarity. As AAK pointed out, such a stark difference between Carey and the TRA splattering of invective and ad hominem everywhere you look. And I say this, as I pointed out above, as someone who finds what they say quite challenging, quite often.

I really liked the point about statistics of detransitioners. Without proper knowledge, assessment and research how can people be counselled properly about the major lifelong decisions they’re about to take?

If you are diagnosed with bowel cancer, a surgeon can give you clear guidance on outcomes of surgery and life expectancy based on solid research around staging. Currently people undergoing hormone therapy and surgery for trans issues (is a medical condition or not? Still not clear on what we are supposed to call this condition that wants the medical community to fix ) are not able to be told what the expected outcomes are.

As I have posted previously, surely it’s in everyone’s best interests to have good solid medical research to show failure rates, side effects, regret rates etc etc so peoole have genuine informed consent and autonomy.

At the moment informed consent and body autonomy in this instance is the right to take permanently alter their body as a shot in the dark in the hope of a good outcome.

And as Lang said it doesn’t matter how many people it is. Their impact needs to be calculated in informed consent. Even if it’s as low as 1% that’s still thousands of people world wide but we all know it’s likely to be higher but their voices aren’t heard

Again, why are you so worried about the less than 1% who choose to detransition, when a far greater number of women regret abortion? Surely, if you really were so concerned about people's welfare,you should be debating this too? But no, of course not. You don't really give a damn about them. It's just another attempt to derail the lives of people who already suffer a huge amount of abuse and bigotry, to fuel your own arguments.

It’s almost as if they’re two completely separate topics

Firstly we don’t KNOW fewer people regret transition than abortion, that’s the whole fucking point. And why would anyone talk about abortion regret on a thread about detransition? If you want to start a debate about abortion regret, start a thread. It’s just a stupid fucking argument.

“Why is no one on this thread talking about climate change/Trump/Brexit/anything else that isn’t the topic of the thread and their effect on people’s welfare. DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT PEOPLE?!”

You’re basically asking why no one is derailing the thread to your satisfaction. Why don’t YOU talk about transition regret? I’ll start you off:
Do you think we should have accurate numbers of those that detransition?
How should people prior to medical or surgical transition be counselled?
What supports should be in place for those who regret the loss of their fertility or the impact of surgery?

If your not interested in debating this, feel free to start your own thread about a completely different topic...

I would say people who transition and then detransition have suffered a great deal of emotional turmoil. If they suffer abuse and bigotry it is from those who do not wish their stories to be told. Their stories are part of the trans experience at a population level, just as abortion regret is part of the abortion experience at a population level.

The point about detransition being part of the experience is that we do not yet know it’s prevalence and how representative it is. Yet young people are making irreversible decisions by taking hormones, which will render them sterile. We need to know for medical reasons how common detransitioning is and why people do it. That is in the interests of all young people. It is in the interests of trans people because talking about detransitioning does NOT invalidate their experience when they want to transition, it helps understand why transitioning alleviates distress for some people and not for others. I could hazard a guess about this, but it would be my opinion, whereas research based on statistics, qualitative testimony and medical experiences would help.

Seeing as you want to talk about abortion regret feminist4, there have been nearly 50 attempts to change the Abortion Act 1967. At each point, the Abortion Act has been publically debated, either in Parliament or in the press. Concerns about abortion regret are addressed both in pre-abortion counselling and in post- abortion recovery (google ARCH trust) and counselling which recognises it is not an insignificant procedure for women involved. One does not have to go further than these boards to hear testimony from women about how they have felt afterwards.

Abortion and abortion regret are very well discussed in the media. I suspect I know more about it than you feminist4 from my line of work. I would like to discuss them further but this thread is about de-transitioning. To understand the implications of a phenomena, one has to understand all angles. The parallel with abortion regret is false because there are fifty one years of evidence and discussion following the passing of the Abortion Act. Campaigning for safe abortion had gone on for at least three decades previously. The desire for abortion law reform came from the medical profession as well as women seeking safe termination. This is all well documented.

Whereas gender dysphoria has massively increased in scale in a short period of time, particularly in young women, and does not necessarily bear the same hallmarks as what medical professionals have long understood by clinical levels of gender dysphoria. Young people are offered life changing hormonal treatments without knowing the long term impacts or whether the dysphoria might itself resolve. Programmes to address this lack of knowledge and offer alternatives are being and have been shut down. Debate around abortion has not been and was not shut down, it has gone on in Parliament, among doctors, among women and their loved ones, among the Churches, in the media - FOR decades. The suffering of those who regret abortion should not be ignored - BUT it has not been and is not (see above) - you are drawing a false equivalence.

Researching and talking about both transitioning and de-transitioning matters because by understanding that, doctors, teachers, parents, and young people themselves would be better placed to respond to and understand their own experiences. De-transitioning does not invalidate the experiences of those who transition, any more than abortion regret invalidates the experiences of those who feel relief. Neither group in either scenario should be unable to speak or be heard or have their experiences ignored.

So, let me get this straight Feminist4: we are expected to make a song and dance and fashion our whole policies around a group of people, transpeople, and spend public health care money on their medical transformation because of a nonmedical condition, even though transpeople only make out 1% of the population.

Now that we do all this catering for the 1%, you tell us that we should just ignore the 1% of the group that we actively harm by this, while we pay for getting them harmed with public money, because 1% are nothing.

So, what is it?

And for what it is worth, I would like to debate abortion and the way out it offers men from their responsibilities to the women they have sex with, but EVERYTHING has to centre trans. That is not the fault of posters on this board. Just look at the recent vote in Ireland on abortion reform - literally within hours, trans groups were criticising it for talking about women and not pregnant people.

So the language to talk about abortion and abortion regret as a phenomenon which affects women and replicates patriarchal power structures whilst offering women a veneer of ‘choice’ is eroded. How do we define ‘women’ as a class affected by this if transwomen are also women and we have to talk about pregnant people? Because the structure of power which I want to talk about do not only affect pregnant people, they affect all people born with female reproductive organs and vulvas and ‘assigned’ female at birth. I am fairly sure they are also at play in the rapid increase in gender dysphoria amongst young women. But if I cannot define vulva owners as a group without reducing them to body parts (very dehumanising, and women go through enough dehumanising experiences), then how do I talk about the experiences which affect them uniquely as a group - such as abortion and abortion regret?

Excellent post, KataraJean.

On detransition numbers/ percentages; Can there ever be definitive "facts"?; as someone said earlier, those people who " go private" are not recorded in any central list, and cannot be.Even the NHS GICs don't seem to have much formalised follow up. AFAIK.

Anecdotally, more of the fast track private patients de transition and/ or regret. But as for figures? I've met a few who went through very rapidly indeed, and then disappeared: are they happily living somewhere, in the acquired identity , with no-one knowing? Or are they de-transitioned. I suspect that some at least have detransitioned. Perhaps quite a few. Some trans people say none will have.

In addition, de-transitioning can sometimes take place not because the transition was " a misdiagnosis", but because the thing was too stressful/ harmful to family/ economically a disaster. I personally know of at least one who was simply too physically unsuited, and had too many family members depending on the income earned, to carry on. This person is on officially obtained female hormones to damp the GD, but is living in the old, male role.

And some people de-transition, then transition again later.

And finally, abortion regret - whilst tragic for those concerned - is about the loss of one potential child. Those who transition before having children - if they take hormones and/or have surgery - lose all options to have their own children. The NHS has stopped sterilising women as a condition of having an abortion. Hormone treatments for gender dysphoria do sterilise men and women, unless I am mistaken.

Thank you bittermints - hopefully that puts the abortion regret parallel to bed and the thread can get back on track

It's unethical to carry out serious medical interventions without conducting proper follow-up studies. The Guardian ran a series of articles this week about surgical implants and how the medical industry failed patients by not taking post-treatment concerns seriously. This is just the same as that, and I'd not be surprised if Big Pharma was colluding with the shutting down of proper research.

Even if the ultimate outcome is to provide a service that results in more transitioning with fewer regrets, the research still needs to be carried out. It isn't about finding evidence to support a particular agenda, it's about making sure we have the best information possible to support people who are vulnerable. This is likely to become the big medical scandal of the 2020s imho.

But although it may sterilise it doesn't necessarily prevent them from having children. But what a brave thing to do, which in my mind shows the need for our support and understanding, rather than derision and scorn.

Feminist4 Yeah, no idea what issues people have with, say, the Nazis, ridding the gene pool of all kinds of nonconforming children by sterilizing them. It is not like they could never have children, after all.

Well, if there was a tangent you could have picked from my posts feminist4, you have found it. Way to go in failing to engage with the substantive issues and minimising the distress caused to trans people by the loss of their fertility...

Oh and show me the ‘derision and scorn’ in what I wrote.

Also, I don‘t think parents who have their children sterilized are particularly brave. I find it quite cowardly, actually, to hide behind the children and ‚their‘ brave decision. As if parents didn‘t have parental responsibilities.

“Derision and scorn “ = disgreeeing with me

Someone who is prepared to be sterilised in order to transition is not just dabbling in a fantasy so they can rape your daughters in the female changing room. Your concern for their wellbeing is phoney and not welcome. It is similar to parents who force their gay children to be straight. Fight your pathetic anti-men battle in a way that doesn't hurt and upset vulnerable people.

I do agree that the current wave of transitioners will probably be a medical scandal in the future. No-one seems to be able to provide any facts about it, beyond the idea that there is ( internet driven? ) contagion.

But; research? yes, we need it. But done by who? Done how? Over what period, and with what parameters? The argument that people have tried to do it, and have been rejected on grounds of " political correctness" sounds initially plausible ,and is believed implicitly by many, but it tends to look less convincing when one looks at the CV of those who have wanted to do it. They may not be unbiased, or may have an agenda.

That might even be said of James Barratt's "Transsexual and other disorders of Gender Identity "( 2007); after all, as a consultant psychiatrist and lead practitioner of the NHS's largest Gender Identity Clinic, some would say he has an agenda. It is his career. Though the book is edited by him, not written by him, so contains varied viewpoints.

As does "Trans Britain" Ed Christine Burns ( 2018) again, a number of different voices .But who is objective?

Calling for research? yes, good. It IS needed. Something worrying is happening. Assuming that research is being silenced , or is easy to do? Easy to say,not so easy to prove.

Feminist4 someone who is prepared to be sterilized to transition and is underage most probably simply cannot grasp the full consequences. This is why Youth is generally so ‚brave‘ in all kinds of situations. And this is why parents are the ones who make the high stakes decisions.
It is quite telling how some parents abdicate their responsibilities while making it all about the ‚brave choices of the child‘.

Frankly, Kay the ‚agenda‘ of a researcher is a non-argument. It is not like fervent pro- transition advocates would be prevented from doing research. But that is not what they want. They want NO research, because the mention of detransitioners alone is akin to heresy.
Whatever the agenda of a researcher, if it makes them choose biased methods, this can always be unmasked and critiqued, as the methods must be disclosed in the paper. Else, the data speak for themselves.

What are your experiences of young people being allowed to take unreversable steps? Can you give me your own experience of this, or are you an armchair fighter, dabbling in other people's battles, that don't affect you and yours.

Why are you worried about hurricanes when earthquakes also happen, you earthquaking loving monsters?

They may not be unbiased, or may have an agenda.

This is where the nature of science and scientific methods comes in. Science doesn't work by only allowing those who are "unbiased" to do research.

It works by: 1) following accepted scientific methods, which must be described openly in scientific papers, including a section on the potential limitations of the research; 2) scrutiny and criticism of those methods by other scientists, pointing out possible flaws; 3) further research to try to correct those flaws; 4) attempts by other scientists to disprove the hypotheses proposed by the first set of scientists, again with full disclosure of methods. Rinse and repeat, until verifiable facts emerge.

This is why science and scientific methods actually work: because science, as a method, is self-correcting. It accepts that humans have biases, but provides a method to compensate for those biases.