Send Only Regrets

Wow! I almost stymied ChatGPT, it took an awful long time to come up with an answer.

What percentage of transgender people has regrets?

It's difficult to determine an exact percentage of transgender people who may experience regret, as everyone's experiences with gender identity and transition are unique and personal.

Studies have shown that the vast majority of transgender individuals report feeling happier and more satisfied with their lives after transitioning. However, a small number of individuals may experience regrets related to their transition. The reasons for regret can vary widely, and may include factors such as unsatisfactory surgical outcomes, difficulty adjusting to the social stigma of being transgender, or changes in personal circumstances.

It's important to note that regret is not a common experience among transgender individuals who have undergone gender-affirming medical interventions. Additionally, studies have found that transgender individuals who have had access to comprehensive transition-related healthcare, such as hormone therapy and surgery, have better mental health outcomes than those who have not had access to these treatments.

For right-wing conservatives it is not hard to answer. They just look at their daily talking points come up with some made up numbers.

How a Few Stories of Regret Fuel the Push to Restrict Gender Transition Care

In the campaign to ban gender therapies for minors, Republicans have amplified a group of activists who no longer identify as transgender, overriding objections from transgender people and medical experts.

New York Times

By Maggie Astor

May 16, 2023

When Missouri lawmakers took up bills to ban transition care for minors, Chloe Cole, an activist from California, traveled to Jefferson City to offer her story as Exhibit A.

After living as a transgender boy for years and getting a mastectomy at 15, Ms. Cole says she felt stifled by a male identity and distraught by her body’s changes. She decided to detransition, returning to her female identity.

She also decided to speak out. She has told her story in Florida, and in Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah. Republican lawmakers typically listen attentively, sometimes in tears. In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida relayed Ms. Cole’s story in his State of the State address, while she received a standing ovation.

As Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed over a dozen bills banning transition care for minors this year and have moved to restrict care for adults, Ms. Cole and fewer than 10 activists like her — people who transitioned and then changed course — have become the faces of the cause, according to a New York Times review of news coverage and legislative testimony.

If the legislators are so worried about regrets for having surgery why don’t they ban plastic surgery? According to the Medical Accident Group,

Many people regret having had cosmetic surgery, either because the outcome does not match the hoped-for image or because of complications. Research by Medical Accident Group found that  65% of people they polled regretted their surgery, though 28% were very happy with its results.

The Times article goes on to write,

These activists are fixtures at legislative hearings and rallies. Their experiences have been splashed across conservative media as cautionary tales. In Wyoming, a lawmaker named his bill to ban transition care for minors “Chloe’s Law.”

They are parade around the states by their right-wing handlers.

Their stories of regret and irreversible physical transformation have tapped into strong emotions about rapidly shifting gender norms — from hardened prejudice to parental worry. Lawmakers have used these accounts to override objections from all major medical associations, which oppose bans on transition care, as well as testimony from the far larger number of transgender people who say transitioning improved their mental health.

Even though dozens of trans children spoke out against the bill these two or three detransitioners have the spot light. The public does know the facts and hears only those who have had problems not the 98% that didn’t.

As more American teenagers have identified as transgender, it is difficult to say how many will transition medically — many transgender people do not — and precisely how many will later change course. Methodology, demographics and even the definition of detransition vary widely from study to study, which typically show that between 2 percent and 13 percent of people detransition, and not always because of regret.

I have known several who have detransitioned. Two were trans feminine and one detransitioned because she couldn’t find a job and had to go and live with her parents who required her to detransitioned, “he” is now living as a gay man. The other detransitioned because of job, family and spousal pressures but retransitioned. The other person was a trans male, she detransitioned because it was right for her. She doesn’t go around banging the drum agaisnt us, she says that she found that it was right for her but as she says it is me and it is just not for everyone. She is now a lesbian.

All the major medical associations support us! But…

Leaders in the conservative movement say it is important to amplify the voices of people who feel they have been misled by doctors and want to warn others.

[…]

But many transgender-rights activists and others warn that the outsize emphasis on a minority is distorting the policy debate.

In other words the conservatives are grooming them. They are making them into celebrities and parading them around the country and on talk shows.

Laura Ingraham invited Ms. Shupe on her Fox News show. The Heritage Foundation, whose Daily Signal news site had published her essay, offered to fly her to Washington to oppose an anti-discrimination bill. A radio producer for the Family Research Council sent her a Bible inscribed with her birth name and called her “America’s new hero.”

Before long, Ms. Shupe, a 59-year-old Army veteran, was enmeshed in what she calls a “spider web” of activists opposing transgender rights.

“I had no limits on how far I would go to please people and help them win,” she said. “At every turn, I had people heaping praise on me, which motivated me to do more and more.”

Don’t the conservatives call that “grooming” them?

In March, Chloe Cole helped organize a “Detransition Awareness Day” rally in Sacramento. She expressed hope that it would be “the largest detrans rally ever.” About 40 people participated.

I could find very little about the “Detransition Awareness Day” only from Fox News and they reported violence at the rally from “Antifa” but then Fox calls anyone protesting against right-wing protesters “Antifa” in their own article they wrote,

"I'm not quite sure what they thought the police should have done," said Judy, who noted that Antifa demonstrators never crossed the perimeter onto the grounds of the Capitol and that she never felt unsafe.

"If police had gone in there, there would have been a riot," she continued, adding there was an infant in a stroller among the crowd. "It was really obvious that the police were basically corralling them and moving them down the street away from us. They never crossed into our presence. So I felt safe the entire time, and we left safely."

So I have no idea what really happened there except that the conservatives are pointing fingers at “Antifa” their generic term for counter protesters and blowing the event out of proportions.

The Times article goes on to point out that like the people that I know many people detransition not because transition was right for them but because of outside pressures.

One, Darius Chirila, 26, said he had detransitioned not because his identity changed but because of side effects from hormones, uncertainty about taking them indefinitely, and discomfort with being visibly transgender in the South. He is considering transitioning again.

Matthew Donovan, 36, a sociology student at Columbia University, said they detransitioned partly because of community rejection and economic insecurity, and partly because they realized it was possible to be nonbinary, which fit better.

And Carey Callahan, 41, who detransitioned about nine years ago and opposes anti-transgender-rights policies, said the politicization of detransitioning had made it harder to improve care. She criticized conservative groups that view her life as “grist” for their political goals.

You have to realize that the Republicans are not against us because of medical reasons but rather for the same reasons that the Germans when after the Jews… for politician gain.