Detransistioning

Many trans people want to deny the fact that some trans people detransition and many that do detransition start proselytizing against us. This popped up on my Facebook feed…

Dispelling the Myths Around Trans People Detransitioning
Vice
By Amber Roberts
November 17, 2015

In the past month, the press has highlighted a number of trans people who have decided to reverse their transition, or 'de-transition'. Chelsea Attonley was described by The Mirror as "want[ing] taxpayers to reverse breast and gender reassignment surgery," whilst Ria Cooper was described by The Daily Mail as "Britain's youngest sex swap patient to reverse her sex change treatment." At first glance, it's easy to see why those unsupportive of trans rights would swoop up these cases as confirmation of their biases.

But instead of moaning about how much transgender reversal surgery would cost the NHS, I set out to speak to the people wanting to undergo surgery again, to find out why they'd considered embarking on the process of detransitioning. What they told me painted an altogether different picture from that of the aforementioned articles. It turns out that after speaking to both Ria and Chelsea, neither of them actually wanted to – or indeed ended up – detransitioning permanently, and their reasons for questioning their transition were not as clear cut as the Mail and the Mirror had made them out to be.
[…]
Chelsea chose to start her detransition because she felt lost. "I felt that I didn't fit into the male gender role, and I didn't fit into the female gender role, I was this third gender." Chelsea felt she was always viewed as a trans woman and not simply a woman. "One day I looked in the mirror and I thought to myself 'God, if I can't even look like a woman and I don't feel like a woman, I'm not going to be a woman.'"
[…]
This may explain why it's more common for someone who has originally transitioned from male to female to want to detransition; the eight most common examples of those who have detransitioned are all male to female to male. According to Dr Bowers, female to male to female detransitions are almost unheard of. "I've never heard of a female to male detransition and I think that's fascinating – you never hear it because they're so convincing as men. It would be difficult to imagine. I've just never heard of it happening."

And Rita said,

Ria was on hormone blockers and then oestrogen but stopped taking them because she had a mental breakdown and couldn't leave the house or afford the trips to London to visit the hospital. "I'd never say that I made the wrong decision in transitioning because I didn't, but I was going through so much," she tells me. "I was doing escorting and then I got attacked by a client. Everything just went wrong for me and that's why I had a breakdown."

While for the guys, Dr. Bowers said,

…According to Dr Bowers, female to male to female detransitions are almost unheard of. "I've never heard of a female to male detransition and I think that's fascinating – you never hear it because they're so convincing as men. It would be difficult to imagine. I've just never heard of it happening."

The number of trans people who detransition is very low, some estimates put it at around 1%. I know of only one person who detransitioned and she (I use she because that is how I believe she sees herself even though she is now presenting as male) when she told me that she couldn’t find employment as a woman and her wife couldn’t make enough for the two of them to survive. Her wife’s parents in Kansas offered to take them in only if she detransitioned.

I believe that many trans people who detransition do so because they cannot integrate into society, or because of social pressures, or because of religious pressures not because they are not trans.

I believe that gender dysphoria is with you your entire life whether you transition, detransition, or if you never transition at all… GD is always in the back of our minds.