Stonewall should set aside money from their huge budgets for the current and future needs of detranisiitoned people. Also they should encourage this in the many other countries they are now working in.
Also they should fund independent research into detransitioned people’s needs now. Then they should publicise the findings widely, including in those other countries they are working in, and start funding specialised service provision and support accordingly.
None of this is antithetical to Stonewall’s clearly heartfelt support of trans people and endlessly restated commitment to their needs- in fact it should be seen as absolutely part of their support of trans people.
The detransitioned group in the UK can only grow (as more people, mostly women are transitioning) and I have seen stats on FWR threads that more people will not persist with their new gender identity, than will continue with it after puberty. (Sorry, I don’t have the ref for that). But regardless of the exact proportions clearly there will be a growing number of people in this category.
Hence the responsible healthcare approach is to provide non-politicised clinically-specialised mental health support for gender dysphoria (do Stonewall campaign for this care or support it- if so, I’ve not really noticed that?) but always to take a very cautious ‘watch and wait’ approach to moving further to any permanent physical interventions like puberty blockers, hormones, surgery. Especially for under 18s.
Everyone (policy makers and particularly influential advocacy organisations like Stonewall) should be concerned about where this growing group of detranisitioned people will get their needs met from, especially as the deliberately polarised, highly-politicised ‘ideologically pure’ current approach to promoting trans identity only in a positive, ‘affirming’ way, suspending the normal rules of safeguarding, medical ethics, evidence based medicine, essentially advocating politically as a matter of belief ‘#nodebate’ with anyone with a different perspective.
This means that alternative views including those of detransitioned people themselves may be suppressed and unheard, advocacy for their care needs is not done, and those who do detransition are either rejected by or feel very isolated from the trans community and the advocacy groups around it, because their experience is apparently so politically taboo to voice, making them especially unsupported and vulnerable.
So where will their needs be met from?
While gender critical women have always said that transmen are welcome at any stage in their journey to talk and have as much right to women’s spaces etc as any other woman, and have never actually ‘left’ the community of women... this cannot be a problem for gender critical people to solve.
Regarding actually supporting the specific mental health and health needs of detransitioned people, or providing organised peer-to-peer access within the community of detransitioned people, this is a specific area of expertise.
Clearly gender critical women advocating for women’s rights within this clash of rights, have no budgets. As political advocates gender critical women do not run peer support organisations for this group and aren’t acting as service providers to communities or mental or medical health experts by virtue of setting out gender critical thinking.
This expertise and money for solutions has to come from the trans lobby itself. The detransitioned community’s urgent and complex set of mental and physical health needs, which can in some cases be inherently arising as a result of the advocacy of the trans lobby, needs to be talked about openly by everyone and supported by specialists.
Where is the welcoming support and specialised services for female and male detransitioned people? Note- this will likely require some separated single-sex services for natal men and women because they will have very different needs.
This is because male and female biology are different and society’s gendered expectations will impact them differently as detranisitoned people who are seeking to build a life in their original birth sex, but still possibly dealing with permanent issues arising from the transitioned period, which affect their everyday. Plus the possibility of still dealing with gender dysphoria that is still being experienced but without the belief being held out any more that transition is a good solution in their own individual case. A very tough position to be in, clearly.
Responsible advocates should seek more research on this, plan services for this need and fund these.
Seeing stonewall’s huge bank balance on this thread, it feels to me that this should be a key part of the pitch of an incoming CEO for a future work plan for the charity.
And regardless of whether the next CEO candidates suggest it or not, it should absolutely be the new direction of travel insisted on very publicly by the Trustees of Stonewall.