Recently, I wrote a post for my university’s queer club — Clube Rainbow — about gender transition. You can read it here (in Portuguese): https://www.instagram.com/p/DB_0ASXOQUj/

One of the myths I debunk in the post is about the alleged regret rates for gender transition. If you know anything about this topic, you might have read or heard about high regret rates for transitioning, specifically the “infamous” 41% statistic that many transphobes love to throw around, which I didn’t mention in the Instagram post, mainly for lack of space, but is still worth mentioning here.

I’m not going to dedicate this whole blog post to that statistic. All you need to know is that a very flawed study was published by the Williams Institute in 2014. It claims that around 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide. Many people have already debunked this study, like the writer of this article: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225210149/https://4thwavenow.com/2015/08/03/the-41-trans-suicide-rate-a-tale-of-flawed-data-and-lazy-journalists/#expand. The gist of it is that the study didn’t take into account other factors in addition to “gender dysphoria”, like mental health disorders or past traumatic experiences, and it didn’t provide any information about when the survey was taken in relation to the respondents’ transition, i.e., if these attempts occurred before or after receiving gender affirming care, in addition to many other factors.

Now, I could spend the rest of the day going over every talking point of the far right and telling you why it’s stupid, but I won’t waste your time. I’m going to assume that you are at least a little bit smart and that you understand that most of what they say is bullshit.

No, I want to talk about one of the only things that they say that is true… well, kinda. Some people do regret their transition, and while in most cases it’s due to factors outside of the person’s control, like a non-supportive family or lack of money, there are a few cases where a person really did make the wrong choice in transitioning. What then?

How to prevent transition regret

Well, you can’t, at least not completely. Sorry to break it to you like this, but like with most other life decisions, you might not really know if it’s right for you until you try it.

The good news is: “trying” to transition is surprisingly easy. If you have a good support network, you can start by asking them to use different pronouns to refer to you, or try out different clothes while with them. For most people, this will already let them know if transitioning is right for them or not. Unlike what some claim, you don’t need to experience gender dysphoria to be trans, but a nearly universal trans experience is feeling euphoric (or just happier in general) when presenting in a way that aligns with our gender identity.

For some though, this might not be enough, or they might not care about the social aspects of transitioning. In other cases, trying to present as a specific gender while physically looking like another gender might be a very dysphoric experience and won’t represent what transitioning would be like for them. That’s completely valid! For those people, medical transition might be the only way to be sure if they are actually trans or not.

However, as I mention in the Instagram post, this isn’t the end of the world either. Most changes from hormone therapy are reversible, with the biggest notable exceptions being breast growth for transfeminine people and a lower voice for transmasculine people. “Okay”, I hear you say, “so now if a ‘trans man’ regrets transitioning, they’ll be stuck with a deep ‘manly’ voice, and you don’t see a problem with that?”. No, I don’t, not really, for 3 main reasons:

1. When one starts hormone therapy, they are given a list of every possible physical change that might occur, and they must consent to it before being given a prescription. Moreover, every time you undergo a medical treatment of any kind, like surgery, you are told that there might be side effects, complications, or that your problem might not be entirely solved. For example, if you have cancer and your doctor recommends chemotherapy, it might not work, or it may work, but leave you with lifelong complications. Nevertheless, millions of people undergo chemotherapy, because while they are aware of the risks, they decide that the possible benefit outweighs any risk. The same is true for medical transition.

2. These “irreversible” changes aren’t completely irreversible. Sure, you can’t un-grow breasts, or un-deepen your voice (through hormones), but you can remove breast tissue (trans men do it all the time) and you can train your voice to sound more feminine (trans women do it all the time). Additionally, having undesirable body features isn’t a death sentence. While it can be a horrible experience, most trans people have one or more features of their body that they unable to change. Many trans women wish that they could get pregnant, and many trans men wish that they could impregnate others, in addition to other aspects of their body that hormone therapy and surgeries can’t yet achieve, not to mention disabled people, who have to live every day in a society that’s not made for them and that tells them that their body or brain is inferior to a “normal” person’s.

3. Specifically for surgeries, the process of actually undergoing a surgery is so long and filled with so many roadblocks that it’s virtually impossible for a person to reach that stage of their transition without having thought deeply about what they want. Moreover, as I touched on in reason 1, you are accompanied by medical professional throughout this whole process, who guide you and decide if they are willing to perform a specific surgery on you or not.

For these reasons alone, I can’t say that transition regret is a big problem. While it is very unfortunate, and I believe that anyone who decides to detransition for personal reasons should get all the support that they need, it should not, and cannot be an excuse to deny gender affirming treatment to trans people, which is what I see many far right people claim. In that case, we should also ban people from having children, getting tattoos or even from undergoing chemotherapy, since all of these also have regret rates and “irreversible” effects.

If you go online, you may see “detrans” people, as some might call it, talk about their “traumatic” experience, how they were “forced” by medical professionals to “mutilate” their own bodies, stuff like that. This is nothing more than a fraud, perpetrated by alt-right grifters looking for attention and validation from their fellow fascists. No doctor is forcing people to medically transition. Hell, most doctors don’t even want people to transition in the first place! If you really want to hear from people who actually detransitioned and aren’t just trying to spread propaganda, check out places like reddit’s /r/actual_detrans/, where people talk about their journey without trying to blame anyone or throw trans people under the bus.

You may have noticed my usage of the word “journey”, and that was a deliberate choice. Transitioning is a journey. Sometimes you can end up exactly at your destination without a hitch. Sometimes you may end up right where you started. Sometimes you might not even stop anywhere in specific and keep trying new paths as you go. None of these are “better” or “worse”. As long as you remain true to yourself and feel at home in your body, your transition can take any form you want it to. 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵