The battle for the meaning of “detransition”

Canadian researchers said they were ready to tackle detransition. Instead, they’ve framed it as just another part of the “gender journey”

At a recent conference in Canada’s York University, part of a state-funded transgender health research project, attendees were presented with some new identities to ponder: “Someone who identifies as a “detrans lesbian” may have a history of being a trans man,” event host Kinnon Ross McKinnon told attendees. Meanwhile, a “detrans male” may have lived as a trans woman, and someone who once had a binary transition but now identifies as detrans is called “detrans non-binary.”

And with that, “detrans trans” identities, a “non-transphobic” spin on detransition, entered the academic lexicon. The event, organised by the researchers behind the Re/DeTrans Canada project, is part of an ongoing attempt to wrest the concept of detransition from the hands of regretters.

Detransition stories have long been a thorn in the side of the affirmative care model, which is based on the idea that no person of any age ever makes a mistake. Reclaiming detransition, and repackaging it as just another trans identity, would de-fang the hated talk-therapy evangelisers for whom detransitioners are casualties in the long march of affirmative care through our medical institutions.

Transactivists have always had difficulty responding to the phenomenon, beyond insisting it doesn’t exist (and if it does exist, it is caused by transphobia). “Some people take exception to the word detransition,” McKinnon, principal investigator of Re/DeTrans Canada, acknowledged to the crowd. “But we use the word detrans because we are community-engaged researchers.” (It’s an improvement at least on Jack Turban’s bizarre “dynamic desires for gender-affirming medical interventions.”)

One attendee told Genspect that what she observed was an attempt to gain control of the narrative. “I think there’s an effort to blame detransition on external factors.”

“They are recrafting the story about detransition in the most positive way possible. They’re trying to frame it as a gender journey,” she said. 

Regret-free transitioners

Another reason it makes sense for the activists to reclaim detrans, of course, is that there are trans people who stop taking hormones (or otherwise pursuing transition) for reasons that have nothing to do with regret. Transition involves lifelong medicalisation, and cross-sex hormones cause health problems and sometimes require painful daily maintenance. Some trans people might get worn down by trying to speak in a higher register all the time, or other tiresome efforts at “passing”. And if the forums online are to be believed, many men are disappointed by the libido-zapping effects that can be an outcome of oestrogen treatment.

It makes sense that such people need a name, but why not choose a new one? Because gender ideology is based on the deconstructionist ideas about words not having any stable meaning, it is entirely predictable that ideologues would simply change the definition, mid-play.

The redefining of detransition as something not inherently negative would be a welcome development, says detransitioner Michelle Alleva, because for many trans people, going detrans is akin to joining enemy ranks. Alleva, who attended the York event said she thinks that anything that gives trans people an off-ramp, without having to publicly denounce the healthcare system or the ideology that got them there, should be welcomed.

“I think what happened to me is medical malpractice, so it’s negative in that sense, but if detransition is considered negative I’m afraid it will stop people from pursuing it, even though it’s probably healthier for them to go off hormones. I identified as trans for ten years and a lot of the reason is the sunk cost fallacy. I spent so much time, put so much effort into it –  but if you see detransition as a negative thing then you might not stop taking hormones.”

The cachet of a new identity?

The researchers may also have realised that a detrans rebrand introduces a new identity into a movement that thrives on cachet. The effort hasn’t gone unnoticed by detransitioner (famously, a regretter) Chloe Cole, who warns against taking the bait. “I think it should remain clear that detransition isn’t a new cool identity. It’s the rejection of self-ID and a return to normalcy. It’s not a fun or appealing process,” Cole told Genspect.

“I’ve totally noticed the detrans rebrand,” she said. “It’s gotten worse this year as detransition has gained political popularity.” But according to Cole, it’s rare to come across a detransitioner that didn’t detransition because of regret. “I haven’t talked to anyone with this experience, personally.”

Regret prevention techniques

Cole and Alleva deeply regret their decisions to transition. But nobody with their kind of “journey” spoke on the panel at the York University event.  In his presentation, McKinnon did acknowledge regret, describing a typical regretful detransitioner as someone who follows “a pathway of discontinuation and socially mediated detransition”. This is “a theme found particularly among AFAB transmasculine spectrum participants” who “began to engage with the detrans community” where “hearing detransitioned women’s stories impacted them and the way they understand themselves” and so they “found alternative explanations to make sense of their feelings.”

This is academia, so bombast is expected, but that’s an incredibly roundabout way of saying “lesbians”. To give him credit, McKinnon increasingly makes overtures to regretful detransitioners on his social media platforms, where he expresses what seems like genuine sympathy and compassion. So this is all kind of confusing. The testimonials from quite a few of the 28 interviews they carried certainly make a pretty strong case for mental health evaluation for people with gender dysphoria. They speak about trauma, abuse, and society’s expectations of strict gender roles. One says “I wonder, if someone in the mental health system had been able to recognize like, yeah, this person has experienced trauma, and maybe they need to work that out before they undergo all these really huge life changes… because the changes… the surgeries and hormones… It’s not like getting a tattoo.”

Rare, temporary, expected

One of the research papers presented during the event and authored by McKinnon and his team paints regret as rare and detransition as often temporary. (It also seeks to reassure practitioners that they probably won’t be sued). Using scare quotes for “regrets” and “detransition” we are introduced to perhaps the most nihilistic and cruel euphemism in a movement filled with nihilistic and cruel euphemisms: the authors dismiss the “regret prevention techniques” that healthcare professionals deploy to stop an individual transitioning if it is thought the patient might later regret it.

“We conclude that regret and detransitioning are unpredictable and unavoidable clinical phenomena, rarely appearing in “life-ending” forms.” The irreversibility of transgender medicine has been documented elsewhere, but you only have to watch a few seconds of the clip of KC Miller talking about it in her car to see why “regret prevention techniques” is a devastatingly malicious spin.

The paper cites a publication by Rowan Hildebrand Chupp in which she urges public policy makers to prioritise supporting detrans people over the “clinical zero-sum game” of preventing detransition. The paper seems to be the first attempt to pitch detransition as a kind of gender identity unto itself. Hildebrand-Chupp argues that we shouldn’t waste time or money figuring out how to prevent detransition, or how common it is, but resign ourselves to studying and helping those who have been through it.

Of course detransitioners should be supported. And of course they shouldn’t be scorned for their mistakes. A lot of people, including some of those quoted at the York University event, say that they are afraid to go back to their doctors in case they get a “told-you-so” attitude. This should never be the case. But demonising talk therapy while simultaneously telling regretters to suck it up when it all goes horribly wrong? That’s just bizarre.

How we got here

Before its meaning is subsumed, let it be noted that detransition has always been heavily associated with regret. The r/detrans subreddit, set up in 2017 and which now has about 43k members, is heavily suffused with it. Detransitioners have, until now, been vilified as a particularly nasty type of transphobe. Here’s VICE reporting on detransitioners in 2015, dismissing the idea that there is ever any regret involved, while the rest of the left-wing press only really broached detransition around 2021 and that was only to draw attention to those who regretted detransitioning.

The concept of retransition is another important part of the makeover. Andrea James, famous for the hounding of sexologist Michael Bailey, seemed to be using it in the current sense as early as 2019. But until about mid-2020, most people were using retransition to mean detransition, as demonstrated in this paper about the detransition “moral panic” or this blog post calling it a conjured phenomenon.

The more current use of retransition in the flip-flop sense of stopping being trans and then going back to being trans can be seen in this Redditor’s post from July 2020. A month later, Mermaids were talking about retransition in an open call to JK Rowling and by April 2021, retransition was in the academic literature.

In October 2022, singer Oli London detransitioned to genderfluid, to great tabloid fanfare, which is probably the most high-profile detransition in that sense of the term. A subreddit called r/retransition was created in early November 2022 however the forum has yet to garner much engagement.

Don’t play the language games

Ritchie Herron, a detransitioned man, says the healthiest thing for someone who no longer identifies as trans is to reject the labels entirely. “I’m a male who took oestrogen, and I had my testicles removed. I have to take testosterone for the rest of my life, and I have to get regular blood checks. I have taken my detransition as far as I can and I will forever be on the medical leash.” 

“But,” he says, “I have disengaged from the identity. I’ve left it all behind, pronouns, all that shit is out the window now. I’m not detrans. I was never trans. I was never cis. They would say that because I’m on hormones that I’m a type of retransitioner because they know there’s no going back for me.”

“But the idea that you’ve got to label yourself is a load of bullshit. Disengage.”

A battle to convince his own ranks

McKinnon’s own evolving trans “journey” might be influencing his research, as evidenced by his TikTok account. Videos posted there revealed that he was forced to stop taking testosterone some time around late 2021 or early 2022, apparently for health reasons. It’s not clear by what mechanism, but at some point, he had a child. In one TikTok video he said that he is happy he never removed his womb, even though it was the cause of his health issues, because otherwise his baby never would have been born.

Is it possible that McKinnon, who seems to now identify as detrans non-binary, has been putting himself in the shoes of other young women who might be signing away their chance to be mothers themselves? Another video on TikTok showed him carrying his baby on his hip in a way only a woman can, something he claimed to be proud to be able to do. He has mentioned a number of times that he has friends who deeply regret their transition. Could his insistence that his fellow trans academics and activists recognise and have compassion for regretters be a sign that he thinks transition might not be for everyone?

Because otherwise, it’s all a bit rich. It’s like Rachel Levine, the transgender US assistant secretary for health in the Biden administration, who claimed last week to be glad to have transitioned later in life so that she could have children. “I can’t imagine a life without my children,” she said. What about all of the young people who won’t have that option, thanks to the affirmative model of trans care that Levine, and McKinnon, promote?

Michelle Alleva, the detransitioner who attended the conference, said: “I think what McKinnon is trying to do is to build a bridge between us and the trans activists that go really hard. I think he’s trying to take a middle ground.” But, she said, “The three people on the panel – none of them had regrets. And I told them I was frustrated that there was no representation of regret, and not only that, but the panellists were saying affirmation was very important. If I was up there I would have said you should be exploring, asking questions.”

“They (the organisers) said that if they did it again, they would invite people with regret to participate.”

The sane, affirming middle ground

McKinnon has also asked his fellow affirmative-care advocates to stop saying that detrans people were never really trans, a popular claim in the community. Does this mean regretters are also still trans? It’s all very fuzzy. There is a sense that he, along with a few notable others in the affirmative care advocacy universe, are trying to represent the “sane” affirming middle: reasonable and compassionate, positioned somewhere on the spectrum between “Eunuch-PATH” and Kellie-Jay Keen.

Ultimately, they can’t escape the same conclusion reached by advocates of the talk therapy approach to gender distress: the highly medicalised life is very difficult to maintain, there are painful complications and health problems that come with it, and body modification is a pretty bad solution for a problem that resides in the mind. But these are just clinical gaps, and the regretters just collateral damage in a system that otherwise works well.

Maybe the detrans/retrans research project will reveal some inescapable truths for transactivists. Whether these truths will be revealed to the world, or if they will simply be rebranded, is another question. With a bit of luck, the data and the testimonies could even peak some of the investigators along the way.