The Devil In The Details

Like any research it is all in your hypothesis which is your question that you want to investigate and from that designing the research.

Bath Spa University 'blocks transgender research'
BBC
25 September 2017

A therapist says he is "astonished" by a university's decision to stop him studying people who decide to reverse gender reassignment operations.

James Caspian wanted to write a thesis on "detransition" as part of his master's degree in counselling and psychotherapy at Bath Spa University.

He said it was rejected by the university's ethics committee because it could be "politically incorrect".
[…]
"I think that a university exists to encourage discussion, research - dissent even, challenging perhaps ideas that are out of date or not particularly useful."

He says he 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 do to, that “a university exists to encourage discussion” but that it is all in the details of the discusssion. However, I also believe,

American transgender activist Riki Wilchins said studies on transgender people could have a "political undercurrent" and potentially have a negative effect on the way they are treated.

If the study goes through I think it has a very good potential of being missed used be those who are anti-trans.

I think that if a study is ever done on detransitioning it would have to include if those who detransitioned were properly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and the study should also include the reason why they detransitioned.

I believe from the people that I know who have detransitioned that the reason wasn’t from not being trans but rather socioeconomic reasons such as not being able to find a job or because of family/religious/employment presures.

I met a trans woman who was turned down for surgery because she wanted the surgery on-demand. She didn’t want to go through all the hoops to get it, and she found a surgeon in another country that would do it for her. I always wonder how she made out, did she have any regrets?

If a study on detransitioning is done with the goals of improving out-comes and refine the guidelines I think it might be worthwhile, but if the study is done as a hatchet job on us then no.

Another factor, is detransitioning a bad thing?

I don’t think that is bad for us, just because a person found out that transitioning wasn’t right for them it doesn’t mean that it is not right for us. It also doesn’t mean that they are not trans, it just might mean that they are still trans just that going full time is not right for them.

If you believe that there is a “gender spectrum” like I do, then why do we need the binaries?