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.

Nah it's fine. You are correct! anecdata is meaningless

I was actually trying to make the point that actually some of us care a lot about potential detransitioners, because of blah blah blah, and instead it came across in another way entirely. I think because I was trying to do Duplo trains with the toddler at the same time so didn't actually type what I thought I had!

Not thought provoking to those that have a better understanding of dyphoria than some people on this board seem to have.

I do wonder if some of the trans men will get to their 30s and have a similar epiphany. I really really hope they don't have the sorts of regret I do as you can never get your young body back....

It's a very good analogy and Carey pretty much addresses the various commonalities here in the article:

Longstanding patterns of identity diffusion, social skill deficits, struggles with emotion regulation, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies tend to be obvious to the people around us, and hard for the individual to recognize. Ideally this is what the therapy room can be: a place where it’s safe for us to see the ways we cause trouble for ourselves.

I am glad you made it through.

Anchormum. Just because there are GFs desperately trying to make the thread unusable for productive discussion doesn't mean we have to engage with them, especially those of us for whom doing so would be painful rather than just irritating. Keep talking to the rest of us, if you can.

There is another parallel: recovery from EDs mean giving up your whole identity as the "Ill" one. The thin one. The special one
Admitting everyone else was right (apart from your entrenched pro ana friends), and that you were wrong.
Constructing a whole new identity with interests, a new body, adjusting to just being one of the crowd again.
It's hard! Especially when your entire life for a decade or more has revolved around your ED.
Detransitioners must surely experience something similar?

Thanks Lang. To be honest I don't think it will ever totally leave me ,(had a bit of a mini relapse last year,), but recovery is pretty cool. :)

Also in that it can threaten friendships that feel very important, Crapper. It's like leaving a cult in some ways.

That's a very insightful post at 19.34, ABitCrapper. Thanks.

ABitCrapper
Thank you for explaining.

The original article IS interesting, anyone could agree on that. Well the subject matter could be nothing else, and it is well crafted of it's type.

Whether it is very helpful though?...….

The tone was oddly familiar, and I've worried about that for a few days, and it has come back to me where I ( almost ) recognise it from.

It reminds me very strongly of the written documentation of the therapeutic guidance ( underpinning was the phrase often used) we came across in schools for emotionally and behaviourally troubled teenagers in the 1970s and 80s; well written, presenting itself as of the time and well informed, and yet, strangely unhelpful when questions such as what should be done, how should it be done, and how would we assess if it had been done properly, or done at all. Somehow, not throwing much light on the matters in hand.

Stylish, and sort of impressive in it's way, but ultimately, in the words of Alan Bennett, it doesn't move us any further forward.

i feel like I need a shower after reading that comment at 8:22:25

I agree, it was fucking disgusting

Is there much support available for detransitioners? There are obviously NHS clinics and support for people transitioning, but what any detransitioners?

A-B-C;
Fair question. I wish we knew the answer.

As far as I know, the answer is no. have never heard of any. But if anyone has any information, it would be fascinating to know.

My assumption, and that of any other transsexual people I know ( I personally do not know many people in the broader " trans" category) , is that they would slip back into their previous life.

Especially if, like the person in the article quoted, they had not made a long term or visually obvious transition before backing off .But would they be "scarred"?

Some would get support from other detransitioners, no doubt found via social media. I should imagine that that would be of great value to them. Sticking together against a suspicious world , etc.

Private or NHS MH support services would be expected to provide support , if required. You'd hope so.

But..... the very nature of detransitioning may mean that there is some secrecy involved. Whatever anyone does or tries to do makes someone angry and unwilling to accept them!

You'd guess that there will be a lot of them in the coming years, because the current wave of trans/ non binary/ undefined cannot be all on the road to a permanent transition to anywhere.

The only detransitioners I have known have been adult, rapid transition people who went private. They" disappeared". Dead? Back into "normal life"?.

kay

I think you're right there, i think there will in theory be a lot of detransitioners as they didnt really transition in the first place and may well have been 'questioning' their identity unlike other transpeople who 'know' they should transition and feell better for it

So the young transwomen i know hasnt done anything physically yet, it would be easy for her to go back to her old life

She does intend taking hormones and having surgery though but she is at the early stages of discussions

Thats really garbled i know but im struggling to clarify that I believe that there are transpeople and people who are more questioning...but arent trans

Its a pain in the arse having to type this...maybe i should do a voice recording instead

Plus punctuation would have been useful

The problem is the likelihood of those people being steered and peer pressured into taking steps that are difficult or impossible to reverse because of exposure (of society, not just the individuals themselves) to TRA propaganda. We're currently looking at a potential future of people who had unnecessary mastectomies and their plumbing rearranged and changed related to artificial hormone use because society didn't like boys playing with dolls/girl wanting to kick footballs around in the mud.

I wonder if this is what the first people who found out what Thalidomide was doing to children whose mothers were prescribed it while pregnant felt like.

Absolutely angry

completely and utterly agree

I am frightened for the young person i know struggling with this

Is there much support available for detransitioners? There are obviously NHS clinics and support for people transitioning, but what any detransitioners?

Clearly not much as even GIDS isn't tracking people sufficiently and James Caspian can't even get research done to provide an evidence base to construct services.

Also, because tracking is so poor and because many ROGD parents are trying to avoid the juggernaut the medical pathway has become, we don't even have a clear demarcation between what constitutes desistance and what constitutes detransition. Does one desist from a social transition or detransition from it, for example? Does binding for a length of time constitute a physical intervention and therefore transition?

We know that roughly 80% of kids desist from an original cross-sex identification and we know the puberty blockers are pretty much iatrogenic and prevent desistance but, crucially, that is all we really know.

It's disgraceful that nobody is prepared to fund such vital research. Especially when powerful and articulate writers such as Carey are providing such important detail.

And you can see how desperate the lobby - both its extreme and so-called moderate wings - is to avoid detailed research and discussion of this and to dismiss anybody writing about it in any way it can.

Reckless. Dangerous. Vile.

Stylish, and sort of impressive in it's way, but ultimately, in the words of Alan Bennett, it doesn't move us any further forward.

It's a complex piece, that raises a number of different points. However, it clearly is calling for more research into detransitioning, and criticising the opponents of such research. So that would be one way forward.

I was also interested in the way she criticises the specific sub-group of transitioners she idenifies as "the radical queer community" for taking a specifically self-destructive approach, contrasting them with a wider group of transitioning individuals who just get on with it. The phrase the conflation of individual self-harm with political defiance captures that mind-set really well, and shows how tempting yet damaging this approach can be to young people who want to see themselves as revolutionary and special.

It's disgraceful that nobody is prepared to fund such vital research. Especially when powerful and articulate writers such as Carey are providing such important detail.

Indeed, and isn't it fascinating that people are so desperate to avoid this issue being discussed that if their initial attempt at preventing discussion of the ideas presented doesn't work they'll then methodically try every other method they can think of, presumably on the assumption that if you throw enough shit at the wall some of it is bound to stick eventually?

I was also interested in the way she criticises the specific sub-group of transitioners she idenifies as "the radical queer community" for taking a specifically self-destructive approach, contrasting them with a wider group of transitioning individuals who just get on with it.

That's another interesting parallel with pro-ana communities, the valorization of suffering and the way self-harming behaviors spread.

The phrase the conflation of individual self-harm with political defiance captures that mind-set really well, and shows how tempting yet damaging this approach can be to young people who want to see themselves as revolutionary and special.

Indeed it does and it's a vital point that shouldn't escape readers who are coming with good faith. If I were doing my own version of Stonewall's umbrella, it wouldn't be confined to physical bodily state or presentation, that's for sure.