A "detransitioner" is someone who accepts his or her born gender only after going through the futile process of becoming more like the opposite sex. Depending on what "affirmative care" was given, sometimes the effects are irreversible.
Martha Shoultz, co-founder of and the attorney for Partners for Ethical Care, says the new York University-led study confirms "what we hear from detransitioners all the time:" no formal healthcare guidelines exist to accommodate detransitioners' needs.
They report receiving inadequate support both from the medical community and the LGBTQ+ proponents when they began to regret their decisions.
Shoultz says once they kind of wake up from feeling their body was wrong and realize maybe something else was the problem, many contact the doctor who helped them transition.
"We only know of one detransitioner who received a call back," she reports. "Doctors don't really have much interest in following up with the detransitioners. Some are even told they'll probably retransition, so why bother going through the detrans process?"
The shame and lack of clinician understanding they encounter results in individuals taking measures like stopping hormone therapy without medical supervision and lacking knowledge about health implications.
Shoultz would like to see more research and more follow-ups with people who have both transitioned and detransitioned, but in her team's experience, medical personnel do not want to know what happens with their patients after the procedures.
"It's not medical care," Shoultz asserts. "It's a one-way conveyor belt to lifelong dependence on drugs and surgeries, regardless of the outcome or the long-term health of the patient."
The cross-sectional survey was administered between December 2023-April 2024 to 957 individuals (aged 16 and older) living in the U.S. or Canada who self-identified with experiences of detransition. Participants were recruited via advertisements across eight major social media platforms.
