Rex Kerr
2 min readAug 29, 2022

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This doesn't sound very respectful or supportive of all people who detransition.

Some of them do regret transitioning. Do they not also deserve compassion and support?

(Note--if you're basing your statistics and views on detransitioning on papers who select people who identify as trans, and then ask those people if they have detransitioned, you're seeing a selection effect (which the authors themselves recognize). If you instead select people who identify as having detransitioned and ask about their reasons, it's quite different: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34665380/. Overall, what happens at what frequency? Apparently nobody knows right now. But we can't discount as nonexistent the people who detransition and view their transition with regret, as a mistake, and conceptualize what they've done as a U-turn.)

So shouldn't our goal be to extend understanding and compassion towards everyone, regardless of their life journey? If someone marries, and gets divorced, and says they had to make a U-turn, regretted and will always regret getting married...shouldn't we still do what we can to support them through a difficult time?

So...I think the message you're sending is a good one in concept, but I'm not sure you've managed to convey it in a supportive way. I do think trans people have a vastly better idea of what it is like to be in this kind of situation than does your garden-variety transphobe, so it would seem to me that the people who felt it was all a mistake still would be much better off viewing and being viewed by the trans community as a cousin of sorts than as an enemy.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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