In recent months, there has been a marked increase in the number of both trans-identified and detransitoned people speaking out on social media and YouTube about the harms they say they experienced from a variety of medical-transition procedures. It should be obvious that the testimonies of these regretters don’t somehow cancel out the positive transition experiences others report. In fact, many regretters who speak out do so not to deny others the right to access medical transition, but to provide information about possible unwanted side effects and/or sequelae of surgical and/or hormonal interventions.

Yet the typical response from trans activists can be summarized succinctly:

Regret and detransition are vanishingly rare. You’re an outlier, so don’t fearmonger.

As many detransitioners have pointed out, no one actually knows just how many regretters (some of whom continue to identify as transgender) and detransitioners there are. Regretters are not systematically tracked, and the few studies that have looked at regret rates typically report that many subjects have been lost to followup.

Most importantly, many regretters never return to their gender clinics once they’ve detransitioned (or discontinued further medical intervention). As Carey Callahan remarked in her recent interview with a detransitioner who did return to talk to her former gender doctor,

She’s exceptional for doing so- in my circle only a handful of detransitioners have gone back to inform their doctors about their detransition.

But regardless of how rare regret or detransition may ultimately be, why wouldn’t adult trans people and their supporters want others to learn everything possible about both the positive and negative impacts of medical transition–particularly when it comes to young people? Further, if a young person resolves their dysphoria and thus avoids the rigors of medical transition, how is that not a good outcome?

These questions (which we have posed many times in the past) inspired this recent tweet thread from the 4thWaveNow Twitter account.

You can also read this thread here.

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