Why detransitioners are crucial to the science of gender care

Reuters ^ | December 22, 2022 | ROBIN RESPAUT, CHAD TERHUNE and MICHELLE CONLIN

[grundle]

For years, Dr Kinnon MacKinnon, like many people in the transgender community, considered the word “regret” to be taboo.

MacKinnon, a 37-year-old transgender man and assistant professor of social work at York University here, thought it was offensive to talk about people who transitioned, later regretted their decision, and detransitioned. They were too few in number, he figured, and any attention they got reinforced to the public the false impression that transgender people were incapable of making sound decisions about their treatment.

“This doesn’t even really happen,” MacKinnon recalled thinking as he listened to an academic presentation on detransitioners in 2017. “We’re not supposed to be talking about this.”

MacKinnon, whose academic career has focused on sexual and gender minority health, assumed that nearly everyone who detransitioned did so because they lacked family support or couldn’t bear the discrimination and hostility they encountered – nothing to do with their own regret. To learn more about this group for a new study, he started interviewing people.

In the past year, MacKinnon and his team of researchers have talked to 40 detransitioners in the United States, Canada and Europe, many of them having first received gender-affirming medical treatment in their 20s or younger. Their stories have upended his assumptions.

In his continuing search for detransitioners, MacKinnon spent hours scrolling through TikTok and sifting through online forums where people shared their experiences and found comfort from each other. These forays opened his eyes to the online abuse detransitioners receive – not just the usual anti-transgender attacks, but members of the transgender community telling them to “shut up” and even sending death threats.

“I can’t think of any other examples where you’re not allowed to speak about your own healthcare experiences if you didn’t have a good outcome,” MacKinnon told Reuters.

[Alberta's Child]

This dude should be having these conversations inside an insane asylum.

[toddausauras]

This doesn’t even really happen,” MacKinnon recalled thinking as he listened to an academic presentation on detransitioners in 2017. “We’re not supposed to be talking about this.”

...............

Kind of sums up the left. “We’re not supposed to be talking about this.” Dummies.

[sopo]

oops!

[PeterPrinciple]

“I can’t think of any other examples where you’re not allowed to speak about your own healthcare experiences if you didn’t have a good outcome,” MacKinnon told Reuters.

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thoughts?

[Steely Tom]

Be interesting to ask ChatGPT that question.

[bigbob]

If there were enough mental health professionals we would not know what the word “detransitioner” even means.

[Bubba_Leroy]

Wait, are you telling me that some men regret being castrated, having their penis cut off, and a non-functioning facsimile of a vagina constructed with left over skin?

GASP! Who could have ever guessed?

[catnipman]

““I can’t think of any other examples where you’re not allowed to speak about your own healthcare experiences if you didn’t have a good outcome,” MacKinnon told Reuters.”

uh, how about the non-FDA-approved gene therapy jabs being passed off as “safe and effective” covid vaccines that have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people ...

[LizzieD]

Transgenderism is a cult, and like cults, they “love bomb” the vulnerable to convince them that they “were born in the wrong body”, and shame them if they even think about changing their minds.

[Wuli]

The best “gender affirming care” to anyone with gender based identity dysphoria is professional mental health care to help the individual affirm their biological gender. When that is done well, along with sympathy and compassion for the affected individual, “detransitioning” becomes a non-sequiter because “transitioning” is avoided.