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add better sourcing to the lede per NPOV tag - this ia a classic "phenomenon vs. term" debate
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{{Transgender sidebar|medicine}}
{{Transgender sidebar|medicine}}


'''Detransition''' is a term used to describe people (sometimes called detransitioners) who revise their [[transgender]] [[gender identity|identification]] or [[Transitioning (transgender)|gender transition]].<ref>Ennis, Dawn (July 17, 2015). [https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/07/17/ex-trans-activists-exposed-big-name-behind-their-fight-against-gender-transit 'Ex-Trans' Activists Exposed: The Big Name Behind Their Fight Against Gender Transition.] ''[[The Advocate]]''</ref><ref>Heyer, Walt (December 14, 2017). [https://thefederalist.com/2017/12/14/formerly-trans-14-year-old-message-questioning-kids/ This Formerly Trans 14-Year-Old Has A Message For Questioning Kids.] ''[[The Federalist]]''</ref>
'''Detransition''' is the cessation or reversal of a [[transgender]] [[gender identity|identification]] or [[Transitioning (transgender)|gender transition]], whether by social, legal, or medical means.


Direct, formal research of detransition is lacking. Professional interest in the phenomenon has been met with contention. Detransitioners (persons who detransition) have similarly experienced controversy and struggle.
Direct, formal research of "detransition" has shown political parallels between the ex-trans movement and the [[ex-gay movement]].<ref>Robinson CM, Spivey SE (2019). [Ungodly Genders: Deconstructing Ex-Gay Movement Discourses of “Transgenderism” in the US.] ''Social Sciences'' {{doi|10.3390/socsci8060191}}</ref> Professional interest in the phenomenon has been met with contention.<ref>Lopez, German (August 9, 2016). [https://www.vox.com/2016/8/9/12404246/transgender-children-detransitioning-transphobia The debate about transgender children and “detransitioning” is really about transphobia] Vox</ref> Detransitioners have similarly experienced controversy and struggle.


==Background and terminology==
==Background and terminology==

Revision as of 23:29, 5 November 2019

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Detransition is a term used to describe people (sometimes called detransitioners) who revise their transgender identification or gender transition.[1][2]

Direct, formal research of "detransition" has shown political parallels between the ex-trans movement and the ex-gay movement.[3] Professional interest in the phenomenon has been met with contention.[4] Detransitioners have similarly experienced controversy and struggle.

Background and terminology

Transition is the process of a transgender person changing their gender presentation and/or sex characteristics to accord with their internal sense of gender identity.[5] Transition commonly involves social changes (such as clothing, personal name, and pronouns), legal changes (such as legal name and legal gender), and medical/physical changes (such as hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery).

Detransition (sometimes called retransition) is the process of halting or reverting a transgender identification or gender transition.[6] Like transition, detransition is not a single event. Methods of detransitioning can vary greatly among individuals, and can involve changes to one's gender expression, social identity, legal identity documents, and/or anatomy.[7] Desistance is a general term for any cessation,[8] and it is commonly applied specifically to the cessation of transgender identity or gender dysphoria.[9] Those who undertake detransition are known as detransitioners.[10] Detransition is commonly associated with transition regret, but regret and detransition do not always coincide.[11]

Occurrence

Formal studies of detransition have been few in number,[12] of disputed quality,[13] and politically controversial.[14] Frequency estimates for detransition and desistance vary greatly, with notable differences in terminology and methodology.[15][16] Detransition is more common in the earlier stages of transition, particularly before surgeries.[17] The number of detransitioners is unknown, but one study suggests it is growing.[18]

A 2008 study of gender dysphoric adolescents found 61% desisted from their transgender identity before reaching the age of 29,[19] and a 2013 study found 63% desisted before age 20.[20] A 2019 clinical assessment found that 9.4% of patients with adolescent-emerging gender dysphoria ceased wishing to pursue medical interventions and/or no longer felt that their gender identity was incongruent with their biological sex within an eighteen-month period.[21]

A 2018 survey of WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) surgeons found that approximately 0.3% of patients who underwent transition-related surgery later requested detransition-related surgical care.[22] The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that 8% of respondents who had transitioned reported having ever detransitioned, and 62% of that group had later returned to living in a trans gender role.[23] A 2003 German study found evidence for an increase in the number of demands for detransition, blaming poor practice on the part of "well-meaning but certainly not unproblematic" clinicians who—contrary to international best practices—assumed that transitioning as quickly as possible should be the only correct course of action.[24] Surgeon Miroslav Djordjevic and psychotherapist James Caspian have reported that demand for surgical reversal of the physical effects of medical transition has been on the rise.[25]

Detransitioners have commonly cited trauma, isolation, dissociation, inadequate mental healthcare, and social pressure as motivations for pursuing transition.[26] Informed consent and affirmation of self-diagnosis (both newer but increasingly employed models for transgender healthcare) have been criticized for failing to meet the needs of those who eventually detransition.[27] Among eventual detransitioners, the progression of transition has been found to magnify, rather than remedy, gender dysphoria. Sufferers may fixate on passing (being perceived as their preferred gender), leading them to pursue ever further steps in medical transition.[28]

Motives for detransitioning commonly include financial barriers to transition, social rejection in transition, depression or suicidality due to transition, and discomfort with sexual characteristics developed during transition. Additional motives include concern for lack of data on long-term effects of hormone replacement therapy, concern for loss of fertility, complications from surgery, and changes in gender identity.[29] Some people detransition on a temporary basis, in order to accomplish a particular aim, such as having biologically related children, or until barriers to transition have been resolved or removed.[30] Transgender elders may also detransition out of concern for whether they can receive adequate or respectful care in later life.[31]

Individual accounts

Mike Penner, a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times, publicly identified as transsexual in April 2007 under the name Christine Daniels and wrote of his experience with transition until October 2008, when he resumed his male identity. He committed suicide in November 2009.[32]

Since 2011, Walt Heyer has written several books on his experience of regret and detransition.[33]

Carey Callahan began speaking openly about her detransition in 2016. Callahan identified as trans for four years. Her employment at a gender clinic led her to seek alternatives to transition. She advocates for detransitioners and gender-nonconforming people while working as a licensed therapist. She was profiled by The Atlantic in 2018.[34]

Longtime New York performance artist Brian Belovitch (formerly known as Tish Gervais) transitioned in 1972, following social pressure to conform his feminine personality to binary gender norms. He lived as a trans woman for fifteen years, detransitioning in 1987. Belovitch cites his changed views on his own gender identity (referring to himself now as "genderqueer or gender nonconforming") for prompting his reversal. He was profiled by Paper magazine in 2018; he published his memoir later that year.[35]

In March 2019, James Shupe, the first American to win legal recognition of having a nonbinary gender, criticized his transition and publicly re-identified as a man. Shupe had lived as a trans woman for two years and as a nonbinary person for three.[36]

Cultural and political impact

There is a lack of legal, medical, and psychological guidelines on the topic of detransition[37] and a perceived atmosphere of censorship around researching the phenomenon.[38] Detransitioners say they have been harassed by activists who view detransition as a political threat to trans rights.[39]

In August 2017, the Mazzoni Center's Philadelphia Trans Health Conference, which is an annual meeting of transgender people, advocates, and healthcare providers, canceled two panel discussions on detransition and alternate methods of working with gender dysphoria.[40] The conference organizers said, "When a topic becomes controversial, such as this one has turned on social media, there is a duty to make sure that the debate does not get out of control at the conference itself. After several days of considerations and reviewing feedback, the planning committee voted that the workshops, while valid, cannot be presented at the conference as planned."[41]

In September 2017, Bath Spa University revoked permission for James Caspian, a counselor who specializes in transgender therapy, to research regret of gender-reassignment procedures and pursuit of detransition. Caspian alleged the reason for the university's refusal was that it was "a potentially politically incorrect piece of research, [which] carries a risk to the university. Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher, but may involve the university. The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university."[42]

WPATH's Standards of Care have offered no mention of detransition,[43] though a majority of WPATH surgeons have expressed desire for detransition guidelines to be included,[44] and former WPATH president and longtime chair of WPATH's SOC revision team, Eli Coleman, has listed detransition among the topics that he would like to see included in the eighth edition.[45]

Detransition has attracted interest from both social conservatives on the political right and radical feminists on the political left. Activists on the right have been accused of using detransitioners' stories to further their work against trans rights.[46] Those on the left see detransitioners' experiences as further proof of patriarchal enforcement of gender roles and medicalized erasure of gays and lesbians.[47] This attention has elicited in detransitioners mixed feelings of both exploitation and support.[48]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ennis, Dawn (July 17, 2015). 'Ex-Trans' Activists Exposed: The Big Name Behind Their Fight Against Gender Transition. The Advocate
  2. ^ Heyer, Walt (December 14, 2017). This Formerly Trans 14-Year-Old Has A Message For Questioning Kids. The Federalist
  3. ^ Robinson CM, Spivey SE (2019). [Ungodly Genders: Deconstructing Ex-Gay Movement Discourses of “Transgenderism” in the US.] Social Sciences doi:10.3390/socsci8060191
  4. ^ Lopez, German (August 9, 2016). The debate about transgender children and “detransitioning” is really about transphobia Vox
  5. ^ Fenway Health 2010; HRC n.d.
  6. ^
  7. ^ Clark-Flory 2015; Herzog 2017a; Graham 2017; Tobia 2018
  8. ^ Merriam-Webster n.d.; Collins n.d.
  9. ^ Marchiano 2017; Steensma et al. 2013; Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis 2008
  10. ^ Herzog 2017a; Graham 2017; Singal 2018
  11. ^
    • "Not everyone who detransitions regrets transitioning in the first place, and, like transitioning, the process of deciding to detransition is a very individual and personal choice." Yarbrough 2018, p. 130. See also Graham 2017; Herzog 2017a.
  12. ^
    • "There is a paucity of literature." Danker et al. 2018
    • "We urgently need systematic data on this point in order to inform best practice clinical care." Zucker 2019
  13. ^
    • "The research on outcomes post-transition is mixed at best." Marchiano 2017
  14. ^
    • "[R]esearch in this field is extremely controversial." Danker et al. 2018
    • "[A] potentially politically incorrect piece of research carries a risk to the university. Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher, but may involve the university. The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university." Weale 2017. See also BBC 2017
  15. ^ Detransition estimates:
    • "Eight percent of respondents to the 2015 [U.S. Transgender] Survey reported detransitioning at some point, that is, returning to living as the gender they were assigned at birth; however, most detransitioned only temporarily, and 62 percent of those who had once detransitioned reported living in their felt gender identity." Boslaugh 2018, p. 43
    • "Detransitioning after surgical interventions ... is exceedingly rare. Research has often put the percentage of regret between 1 and 2% ... Detransitioning is actually far more common in the stages before surgery, when people are still exploring their options. 'There are people who take hormones and then decide to go off hormones,' says Randi Ettner, a therapist who has served on the board of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. 'That is not uncommon.'" Clark-Flory 2015
    • "A 50-year study out of Sweden found that only 2.2 percent of people who medically transitioned later experienced 'transition regret'" Herzog 2017a
      • "There were 15 (5 [female-to-male] and 10 [male-to-female]) regret applications corresponding to a 2.2% regret rate for both sexes. There was a significant decline of regrets over the time period." (Dhejne et al. define "regret" as "application for reversal of the legal gender status among those who were sex reassigned" which "gives the person the right to treatment to reverse the body as much as possible.") Dhejne et al. 2014
  16. ^ Desistance estimates:
    • "There is a wealth of replicated research that tells us that 80–95% of children who experience a cross-sex identification in childhood will eventually desist and come to identify with their natal sex as adults." Marchiano 2017
    • There have, however, been almost a dozen studies looking at the rate of desistance among trans-identified kids [which] James Cantor summarized [as] '[V]ery few trans kids ... transition by the time they are adults'. The exact rate of desistance varied by study, but overall they concluded that about 80% ... identified as their sex at birth.... [T]he most recent study ... found that two-thirds ultimately identified as the gender they were assigned at birth." Herzog 2017a
    • "For decades, follow-up studies of transgender kids have shown that a substantial majority—anywhere from 65 to 94%—eventually ceased to identify as transgender." Brooks 2018
    • "Only very few trans- kids still want to transition by the time they are adults. Instead, they generally turn out to be regular gay or lesbian folks. The exact number varies by study, but roughly 60–90% of trans- kids turn out no longer to be trans by adulthood." Cantor 2016
  17. ^ Marchiano 2017
  18. ^ "The growing number of detransitioners is a possible indication that there are significant numbers of people who are not satisfied with transition outcomes." Marchiano 2017
  19. ^ Stein 2009; Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis 2008
  20. ^ Brooks 2018; Herzog 2017a; Steensma et al. 2013
  21. ^ Churcher Clarke & Spiliadis 2019
  22. ^ Danker et al. 2018
  23. ^ Boslaugh 2018, p. 43; James et al. 2016, p. 111
  24. ^ "In jüngster Zeit gibt es jedoch einige Hinweise für die Zunahme von Rückumwandulungsbegehren und es stellen sich zunehmend Patienten vor, bei denen schondie erste diagnostische Exploration Hinweise auf übergreifende Identitätsstörungen, u. U. auch auf transvestitisch-fetischistische Neigungen, auf unrealistische Erwartungen hin-sichtlich eines „völlig neuen Lebens“, jedoch nicht auf eine gelebte und innerlich fixierteGeschlechtsrollentransposition gibt. In Anbetracht derartiger Verläufe besorgt die zwarwohlmeinende, aber keinesfalls unproblematische Einstellung einiger Behandler, die annehmen, dass das möglichst schnelle Bedienen der vehement vorgetragenen Patienten-wünsche die einzig richtige Vorgehensweise wäre,„da man da sowieso nichts anderes machen kann.“ Dies widerspricht eklatant den Erfahrungen internationaler Gender-Zentren" Bosinski 2003
  25. ^
    • Borreli 2017
    • Shute 2017
    • "... his preliminary findings that suggested growing numbers of young people, particularly women, were regretting gender reassignment ... [H]e was first alerted to the issue of gender reassignment reversal in 2014, when a Belgrade doctor told him he had been asked to carry out an unprecedented seven reversals that year." Weale 2017
    • "[H]e wanted to study people who had swapped gender and then changed their minds after coming across evidence of a growing number of people who regretted having the surgery and finding no research had been done into the subject ... 'I found it very difficult to get people willing to talk openly about the experience of reversing surgery. They said they felt too traumatised to talk about it ...'" BBC 2017
  26. ^ Marchiano 2017
  27. ^ Graham 2017; Marchiano 2017; Singal 2018; Yoo 2018
  28. ^ Marchiano 2017
  29. ^
  30. ^ Americo 2018; Kanner 2018
  31. ^ Witten 2015
  32. ^ Pieper 2015; Friess 2009; Herman 2011
  33. ^ Heyer n.d.; Dumas 2015
  34. ^ Pollock 2018; Singal 2018; Graham et al. 2017; Murphy 2018; Graham et al. 2017
  35. ^ Tobia 2018; Belovitch 2018
  36. ^ Showalter 2019; Christian Today 2019; Shupe 2019
  37. ^ Graham 2017
  38. ^ Shute 2017; BBC 2017; Borreli 2017; Stein 2009; Veissière 2018
  39. ^
    • "'The complexity of our viewpoint is pretty inconvenient to people on all sides of the political spectrum,' Carey says in the film. For her, detransitioning has resulted in the most harassment she has ever faced in her life." Pollock 2018
    • "This has ignited a contentious debate both in and outside the trans community, with various sides accusing each other of bigotry, harassment, censorship, and damaging the fight for trans rights. It's such a fraught issue that many people I interviewed requested anonymity. (All the names of detransitioners have been changed.) Others refused to speak on the record, afraid of the potential fallout." Herzog 2017a
    • "[Other messages received] were from clinicians and detransitioners, thanking me for presenting a perspective they felt so many were scared to voice." Veissière 2018
    • ""[T]he trans community does our best to pretend that retransitioning never happens ... trans people who have retransitioned are often treated as outcasts, as aberrations or as an embarrassment to our community's goals. They are assumed to be failures, traitors to the cause of trans liberation." Tobia 2018
  40. ^ Rodriguez 2017; Herzog 2017b
  41. ^ Mazzoni 2017
  42. ^ BBC 2017; Weale 2017; Hurst 2017
  43. ^
    • WPATH 2012
    • "There are currently no professional guidelines or resources for providers who encounter patients who experience regret and/or seek detransition." Danker et al. 2018
  44. ^
    • "88% of respondents feel that WPATH SOC 8 should include a chapter on detransition" Danker et al. 2018
  45. ^
  46. ^ Ford 2018; Herzog 2017a; Bowen 2007; Tobia 2018
  47. ^ Herzog 2017a; Bowen 2007
  48. ^ Herzog 2017a; Bowen 2007

Sources

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Further reading

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