I'd never heard the term "detrans" until this morning
I've thought of myself as an ally of the transgender community since the 1980s, but I haven't studied transgender issues in depth much until more recently, now that we have this powerful conservative backlash happening all over the US.
This morning the NYT clued me in to the phenomenon of detransitioning, which includes people who transition back to their birth gender after a period of transitioning away from their birth gender.
I think it should be absolutely fine to detransition, or retransition, or to move back and forth along whatever gender dimensions a person needs or prefers. [Even though I identify as nonbinary, so I believe treating gender as a binary from which you may only choose "male" or "female" is unnecessarily limiting; even though I've repeatedly claimed that "Gender is Fake!"]
Similarly, I think it should be absolutely fine for somebody to change their religious or political beliefs back and forth. People's beliefs and identities change over time. If a person decides to go back to being straight after being gay for a while, fine by me. But I expect some trans people may take offense at comparing their deep-seated motivations for transitioning to a mere political belief, or to something that can flip back and forth. As though people were telling them, "It's just a stage, you'll grow out of it."
But, some people do grow out of it! These are the detrans people. And some of these detrans people feel regret at having transitioned at all. And for some of them, they regret having surgically removed gender-related body parts, parts that are now gone forever. You cannot grow back breasts or testicles that have been removed!
And, because populations of humans are fractal, there are even people who transitioned, who then detransitioned, and then transitioned again!
[As a nonbinary, I think this would be a lot simpler if we accepted the fluidity of gender rather than a gender binary.]
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To me it seems that on one side we have transgender people and their allies, who believe that people of all ages should have access to gender-affirming care, even if this means irreversible treatments applied to minors -- on the other side we have those who reject even the possibility that gender might be culturally constructed such that some people simply can't fit the gender roles applied to them.
I don't know how to mediate a compromise between these two sides. To me it feels a bit like all those European wars between the Catholics and the Protestants, meanwhile I'm an atheist.
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As a culture we often pick ages at which children may begin making major decisions, and we try to keep children from making these major decisions until they reach that age.
Voting -- not until 18
Driving -- not until 15 years & 9 months (in Maryland, it differs by state)
Drinking alcohol -- not until 21
Sex -- not until 16 (in Maryland, it differs by state)
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We know from developmental psychology that children have stages of cognitive development, and that children aren't born fully responsible for their own actions. Kids learn stuff over time as their brains develop and they are exposed to new situations.
So, I think it would be entirely rational for a culture to have age-appropriate levels of gender-affirming care. As for what kinds of care should be available at what ages ... I wish I could leave that to a panel of medical experts ... but conservatives are freaking out and want to impose their own non-expert views on everybody else.
We've got to come up with some sort of political compromise, but I don't know where it will come from. Roe v. Wade was a political compromise imposed by the Supreme Court for 50 years, but it was so unpopular among a group of conservatives that they kept working on blowing it up until they finally succeeded -- so now every state is battling over where it should stand on abortion -- while the US Senate is frozen by its filibuster rule and does nothing. I don't think the current Supreme Court would impose a political compromise on gender-affirming care provided to minors.
For those minors caught in the crossfire, you have my deepest sympathies. I wish we had technologies that allowed seamless transitioning and detransitioning without permanent effects. I once wrote a story in which anybody could take a pill that would transition them to the other gender without permanent effects -- then take a different pill to detransition -- I wrote of characters who flipped back and forth for various reasons over the years of their lives.
Science fiction, for now.
But for now, I support detransitioners also. I think we should all be as welcoming toward a detrans person as we should be toward a trans person. And detrans people who feel the need to become activists against gender-affirming care for minors -- I respect your right to free speech and your right to your own opinion. Detrans may be rare, but detrans persons should not be "erased" as they say. Not every child who chooses to transition will be happy with the result. And why should they? Each side of the gender binary confines those within it.
This morning the NYT clued me in to the phenomenon of detransitioning, which includes people who transition back to their birth gender after a period of transitioning away from their birth gender.
I think it should be absolutely fine to detransition, or retransition, or to move back and forth along whatever gender dimensions a person needs or prefers. [Even though I identify as nonbinary, so I believe treating gender as a binary from which you may only choose "male" or "female" is unnecessarily limiting; even though I've repeatedly claimed that "Gender is Fake!"]
Similarly, I think it should be absolutely fine for somebody to change their religious or political beliefs back and forth. People's beliefs and identities change over time. If a person decides to go back to being straight after being gay for a while, fine by me. But I expect some trans people may take offense at comparing their deep-seated motivations for transitioning to a mere political belief, or to something that can flip back and forth. As though people were telling them, "It's just a stage, you'll grow out of it."
But, some people do grow out of it! These are the detrans people. And some of these detrans people feel regret at having transitioned at all. And for some of them, they regret having surgically removed gender-related body parts, parts that are now gone forever. You cannot grow back breasts or testicles that have been removed!
And, because populations of humans are fractal, there are even people who transitioned, who then detransitioned, and then transitioned again!
[As a nonbinary, I think this would be a lot simpler if we accepted the fluidity of gender rather than a gender binary.]
-----
To me it seems that on one side we have transgender people and their allies, who believe that people of all ages should have access to gender-affirming care, even if this means irreversible treatments applied to minors -- on the other side we have those who reject even the possibility that gender might be culturally constructed such that some people simply can't fit the gender roles applied to them.
I don't know how to mediate a compromise between these two sides. To me it feels a bit like all those European wars between the Catholics and the Protestants, meanwhile I'm an atheist.
-----
As a culture we often pick ages at which children may begin making major decisions, and we try to keep children from making these major decisions until they reach that age.
Voting -- not until 18
Driving -- not until 15 years & 9 months (in Maryland, it differs by state)
Drinking alcohol -- not until 21
Sex -- not until 16 (in Maryland, it differs by state)
-----
We know from developmental psychology that children have stages of cognitive development, and that children aren't born fully responsible for their own actions. Kids learn stuff over time as their brains develop and they are exposed to new situations.
So, I think it would be entirely rational for a culture to have age-appropriate levels of gender-affirming care. As for what kinds of care should be available at what ages ... I wish I could leave that to a panel of medical experts ... but conservatives are freaking out and want to impose their own non-expert views on everybody else.
We've got to come up with some sort of political compromise, but I don't know where it will come from. Roe v. Wade was a political compromise imposed by the Supreme Court for 50 years, but it was so unpopular among a group of conservatives that they kept working on blowing it up until they finally succeeded -- so now every state is battling over where it should stand on abortion -- while the US Senate is frozen by its filibuster rule and does nothing. I don't think the current Supreme Court would impose a political compromise on gender-affirming care provided to minors.
For those minors caught in the crossfire, you have my deepest sympathies. I wish we had technologies that allowed seamless transitioning and detransitioning without permanent effects. I once wrote a story in which anybody could take a pill that would transition them to the other gender without permanent effects -- then take a different pill to detransition -- I wrote of characters who flipped back and forth for various reasons over the years of their lives.
Science fiction, for now.
But for now, I support detransitioners also. I think we should all be as welcoming toward a detrans person as we should be toward a trans person. And detrans people who feel the need to become activists against gender-affirming care for minors -- I respect your right to free speech and your right to your own opinion. Detrans may be rare, but detrans persons should not be "erased" as they say. Not every child who chooses to transition will be happy with the result. And why should they? Each side of the gender binary confines those within it.