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There are a few issues with convenience-sampling transfolk in trans-friendly spaces and claiming this to demonstrate effectiveness of the treatment.
Oh, woah, I hadn't realized that you were ex-trans. Have you given a description of what things were like for you somewhere? Your life history? (If so, where? If not, I'd be interested.)
Fairly-boring story TBH (which I have told elsewhere, but not IIRC anywhere that's not login-gated).
My mum's a misandrist (as in, she literally taught me the Y chromosome is a defect), she divorced my dad when I was 3 and got custody, and I'm effeminate in some ways. Fast-forward to puberty and she's accusing me of sexist abuse every time I turn around because now I start registering to her as "man" rather than "child". I developed dysphoria, wanted to transition.
Around this point, I ran away from Mum (who was not supportive of me transitioning; she was at the time a TERF although she's objected to transphobia since so I don't think she still is), because she confiscated my computer for a month and semi-starved me for a week, I ran amok and manhandled her (for the first and only time), and she called the police on me. Went on finasteride, got permission from a psychiatrist for cross-sex hormones, but procrastinated over the fertility problem long enough for the dysphoria to dissipate (and stopped taking the finasteride). Still probably qualify as "genderqueer" - I'm not exactly upset at having moobs from the finasteride - but the intense dysphoria, with phantom-limb and disgust at my penis, is gone. Hence, I qualify as ex-trans although not really a detransitioner.
Thank you!
Given that you have more experience than most, then, what do your opinions look like on trans-related issues?
As I said to @TokenTransGirl, this isn't really my cause area and I don't have sufficient trustworthy information to be able to opine on the big Ought questions of proper treatment. There certainly exists a population that will desist if not "supported", and there almost certainly exists a population that won't; trustworthy data on how big these two populations are and whether it's possible to distinguish between them is the key determinant of the correct answer, but it would seem extremely difficult to acquire and I certainly don't have it. Some of the experiments you'd want to run don't even seem like the experimental protocol could successfully be followed (e.g. the obvious and central "what percentage of people who want transition in current Western society will resolve positively if transition is denied long-term"; in current Western society, how are you going to stop them?), and the studies that can be (and are) done frequently have huge bias issues (in both directions, depending on the allegiance of the researchers).
On the smaller questions, I oppose pro-trans censorship (both in the academic publishing system and more generally in social spaces) and I oppose people who try to portray the anti-trans movement as being inherently senseless and hateful. No surprises there. My personal stance on pronouns is "I won't use a pronoun someone doesn't like in front of that person, but I won't intentionally use neopronouns or singular "they" under any circumstances and I occasionally won't use a he/she/it pronoun if I think it's inappropriate (e.g. if the person is clearly insane in other ways and I suspect it's just a phase/delusion); I am prepared to spam names if necessary to thread that needle" (as noted above, my position on other people using pronouns is "free speech lol"), and my stance on deadname-erasure (on e.g. Wikipedia) is "fuck off with this Orwellian shit" although I'm willing to use the new one going forward.
If you want something else, ask.
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I mean, you can say #1 about everything. We can never know the counterfactual of any decision we make. We still have to make decisions. And it's not like there aren't TONS of decisions out there that people DO regret.
#2 doesn't explain the general absence of ex-trans spaces. Keep in mind I'm the sort of person who does look in places like this.
#3: If the suicide rate goes down post-transition, then we have clear evidence that transition helps even if it isn't a perfect cure-all. We have no evidence that "alternate" treatments work. From my own biased standpoint, I'd say we actually have plenty of evidence against alternate treatments. Can you pull up a study from any sort of vaguely-neutral (or positive) organization that suggests a specific alternate treatment actually has anywhere near the success rate in reducing suicide rates?
I'll throw out #4: There are scientific studies on regret rates, and they suggest remarkably low numbers: https://theconversation.com/transgender-regret-research-challenges-narratives-about-gender-affirming-surgeries-220642
I will admit, I have not checked the methodology, but I also haven't seen any studies that suggest a concern here. I'll also say that number is low enough to make me a bit suspicious. I think the real number is probably higher than 1%. But I do think this is pretty solid evidence that, in general, transition results in good outcomes and that if anything, we're being overly cautious.
Everyone who brings up the suicide discourse to score a point is contributing to the problem. We know that suicide, like many other things, spreads socially; that's why newspapers try not to cover suicides too much. But for some reason, we decide to convince teenagers that the proper way to spite people who won't give them the gender treatment that they want is by suicide. No wonder suicide rates are astronomical.
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The issue here is that one side of the trans debate controls the education system, which means that if they're right there's no systematic error here but if they're partially or wholly wrong there's a systematic error of kids underestimating desistance rates.
I'm not going to engage you on the studies; that's not really my area of expertise. I think @ArjinFerman and maybe @gattsuru might be more interesting to talk to on that one.
The study referred to in the article is relatively fresh, so didn't make it to any of the systematic reviews published in the last years, and I can't even access it on sci-hub.
Studying desistence and detransition is a tricky subject. Clinics don't necessarily want to hear from detransitioners (who wants to parade an unsatisfied customer in front of potential ones?), and for that matter detransitions don't necessarily want to talk to people who feel they wronged them either. Criticism of the older studies on regret rates has reflected this - typically they're criticized for low follow-up rates (there was one popular study going around citing a 94+% satisfaction rate, but had a 63% dropout rate), another issue typically cited is short follow-up periods.
On the flip side there's a recent German study showing a >50% rate of desistence of medical treatment over a 5 year period, but this also needs to be studied further before it's declared a slam-dunk for the anti side.
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