Female detransition and reidentification: Survey...

Female detransition and reidentification: Survey results and interpretation

This survey was created for anyone female/AFAB who formerly self-described as transgender. This includes women who transitioned, whether socially and/or medically, and subsequently detransitioned, as well as individuals who still identify as nonbinary or genderfluid, but have desisted from medical or social transition.

The survey ran from August 16 to August 30, 2016 and was shared through Tumblr, Facebook groups, and on the Wordpress blog 4thWaveNow. Edited to add some clarification on the collection methods: The survey was posted on my Tumblr blog, with the tags “Detransition”, “FTM”, “Trans Man”, “Transgender”, and “Radical Feminism”. By using this method, the post was made available to any of Tumblr’s 550 million monthly users who browsed any one of those tags. While this does not remove bias from the following of this Tumblr blog, it mitigates it significantly. After removing several obviously fake responses and responses from individuals who had not stopped transition, the total response count was 203. Leaving aside all the other data this provides, the sheer number of responses is pretty amazing. Given that the survey was open for 2 weeks and was shared through a couple of Facebook groups, most of which were private, and Tumblr, I think we can safely say that detransitioners are not quite as rare as some would like to have us think. Other than that, there are a couple of points I’d like to elaborate on along with presenting the data.

Although this survey was purposely left open-ended to include those who might describe their detransition differently, or might not describe themselves as detransitioned, the majority of respondents identified their gender as female. This is significant because it means that the volume of responses is not due to individuals who are still trans-identified but have stopped medical transition. It should be noted that quite a few of the respondents specified that they did not “identify” as female but rather are female, that they were female but did not identify with gender for political reasons, or something along those lines, and these respondents have been included under the “female” category for simplicity.

Of those individuals in the “other” category who were not reassigned to the female category, 12 identified as nonbinary or agender, 3 said they did not identify with gender (but did not specify a reason and therefore were kept in this category), 1 identified as FTM, and 3 were unsure or questioning.

Although some individuals stopped transition within a year or two of transition, 4 years was the average length of transition, and several individuals detransitioned 10 years or more after beginning transition (one woman had been transitioning 17 years!)

Although in certain circles detransitioners are thought to be individuals who transitioned despite not experiencing sex dysphoria, only 24 out of the 203 respondents reported experiencing only social dysphoria, with 28 reporting primarily sex dysphoria, and 151 reporting both. This means that cumulatively, 88% of the individuals surveyed experienced physical sex dysphoria. Individuals who experienced only social dysphoria were more likely to report that their dysphoria was improved by detransition (91%, versus 73% for individuals with sex dysphoria), and none of these individuals indicated a worsening of dysphoria, however even among those with sex dysphoria, only 9% reported that their dysphoria had increased since detransitioning.

117 of the individuals surveyed had medically transitioned. Of these, only 41 received therapy beforehand. The average length of counseling for those who did attend was 9 months, with a median and mode of 3, minimum of 1, and a maximum of 60. I’d like to have something cool to say here, but I’m honestly just stunned at the fact that 65% of these women had no therapy at all before transition.

I’d show you a distribution with the zero values included, but there are so many of them it broke the graph.

By far, the two most common reasons for detransition were shifting political/ideological beliefs, at almost 63%, and finding alternative coping mechanisms for dysphoria, at 59%. The three most commonly cited reasons for detransition among trans activists–financial concerns, lack of social support, and institutional discrimination were among the lowest, at 18%, 17%, and 7%–in fact, institutional discrimination was the lowest scoring category. Interestingly, respondents were more likely to identify that transition would change toolittle about their bodies (26%), rather than too much (16%). 35 respondents included comments in this section:

Only 12 respondents identified that they felt they were given adequate counseling and information about transitioning. 59 individuals left comments, although several were along the lines of “I didn’t go to therapy” with no other information given, and these are not included.

The majority of individuals had negative feelings towards both their own transition and towards transition in general, although completely negative feelings were more commonly felt towards the individual’s own transition, whereas somewhat negative feelings were reported more towards transition in general.

Comments on own transition: