Don't Trust Therapists
People experiencing feelings of unease "need a therapist who will listen to them," said Watson. When she first detransitioned, her therapists treated her badly, she said. "They just didn't want to speak about detransition," she noted, adding that "it was like a kick in the stomach."
Watson said she'd like to see more training about detransition, but also on "preventative techniques," adding that many people transition who should not. "I don't want more detransitioners — I want less," she said.
"In order for that to happen, we need to treat people with gender dysphoria properly," said Watson, saying that the affirmative model is "disgusting, and that's what needs to change."
"I would tell somebody to not go to a therapist," said Carol. Identifying as a butch lesbian, she said she felt like her therapists had pushed her into transitioning to male. "The number one thing not understood by the mental health professionals is that the vast majority of homosexuals were gender-nonconforming children," she said, adding that this is especially true of butch lesbians.
Therapists — and doctors — also need to acknowledge both the trauma of transition and detransition, she said.
Kaiser, where she had transitioned, offered her breast reconstruction. Carol said it felt demeaning. "Like you're Mr Potatohead: 'Here, we can just...put on some new parts and you're good to go,'" she said.
"Doctors are concretizing transient obsessions," said Helena Kerschner (@lacroicsz), quoting a chat room user.
Kerschner gave a presentation on "fandom": becoming obsessed with a movie, book, TV show, musician, or celebrity, spending every waking hour chatting online or writing fan fiction, or attempting to interact with the celebrities online. It's a fantasy-dominated world and "the vast majority" of participants are teenage girls who are "identifying as trans," in part, because they are fed a community-reinforced message that it's better to be a boy, claimed Kerschner.
Therapists and physicians who help them transition "are harming them for life based on something they would have grown out of or overcome without the permanent damage," she added
Doctors "Gaslighting" People Into Belief That Transition Is Answer
A pervasive theme during the webinar was that many people are being misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria, which may not be resolved by medical transition.
Allie, a 22-year-old who stopped taking testosterone after one-and-a-half years, said she initially started the transition to male when she gave up trying to figure out why she could not identify with, or befriend, women, and after a childhood and adolescence spent mostly in the company of boys and being more interested in traditionally male activities.
She endured sexual abuse as a teenager and her parents divorced while she was in high school. Allie also had multiple suicide attempts and many incidents of self-harm, she said. When she decided to transition, at age 18, she went to a private clinic and received cross-sex hormones within a few months of her first and only 30-minute consultation. "There was no explorative therapy," she said, adding that she was never given a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
For the first year, she said she was "over the freaking moon" because she felt like it was the answer. But things started to unravel while she attended university and she attempted suicide attempt at age 20. A social worker at the school identified her symptoms — which had been the same since childhood — as autism. She then decided to cease her transition.
Another detransitioner, Laura Becker, said it took 5 years after her transition to recognize that she had undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from emotional and psychiatric abuse. Despite a history of substance abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and other mental health issues, she was given testosterone and had a double-mastectomy at age 20. She became fixated on gay men, which devolved into a methamphetamine- and crack-fueled relationship with a man she met on the gay dating platform Grindr.
"No one around me knew any better or knew how to help, including the medical professionals who performed the mastectomy and who casually signed-off and administered my medical transition," she said.
Once she was aware of her PTSD she started to detransition, which itself was traumatic, said Laura.
Limpida, aged 24, said he felt pushed into transitioning after seeking help at a Planned Parenthood clinic. He identified as trans at age 15 and spent years attempting to be a woman socially, but every step made him feel more miserable, he said. When he went to the clinic at age 21 to get estrogen, he said he felt like the staff was dismissive of his mental health concerns — including that he was suicidal, had substance abuse, and was severely depressed. He was told he was the "perfect candidate" for transitioning.
A year later, he said he felt worse. The nurse suggested he seek out surgery. After Limpida researched what was involved, he decided to detransition. He has since received an autism diagnosis.
Robin, also aged 24, said the idea of surgery had helped push him into detransitioning, which began in 2020 after 4 years of estrogen. He said he had always been gender-nonconforming and knew he was gay at an early age. He believes that gender-nonconforming people are "gaslighted" into thinking that transitioning is the answer.
Lack of Evidence-Base, Informed Consent
Michelle Alleva, who stopped identifying as transgender in 2020 but had ceased testosterone 4 years earlier because of side effects, cited what she called a lack of evidence base for the effectiveness and safety of medical transitions.
"You need to have a really, really good evidence base in place if you're going straight to an invasive treatment that is going to cause permanent changes to your body," she said.
Access to medical transition used to involve more "gatekeeping," through mental health evaluations and other interventions, she said, but there has been a shift from treating what was considered a psychiatric issue to essentially affirming an identity.
"This shift was activist-driven, not evidence-based," she emphasized.
Most studies showing satisfaction with transition only involve a few years of follow-up, she said, adding that the longest follow-up study of transition, published in 2011, spanning 30 years, showed that the suicide rate 10-15 years post-surgery was 20 times higher than the general population.
Studies of regret were primarily conducted before the rapid increase in the number of trans-identifying individuals, she said, which makes it hard to draw conclusions about pediatric transition. Getting estimates on this population are difficult because so many who detransition do not tell their clinicians, and many studies have short follow-up times or a high loss to follow-up.
Alleva also took issue with the notion that physicians were offering true informed consent, noting that it's not possible to know if someone is psychologically sound if they haven't had a thorough mental health evaluation, and that there are so many unknowns with medical transition, including that many of the therapies are not approved for the uses being employed.
With regret on the rise, "We need professionals that are prepared for detransitioners," said Alleva. "Some of us have lost trust in health care professionals as a result of our experience," she said.
"It's a huge feeling of institutional betrayal," said Grace.
