Tipping Points for Detransition

Here's an excerpt from the chapter Sarah Mittermaier contributes to Rebel Girls. She discusses the factors that push and pull girls toward trans identification and writes about some of the things that help girls drop a trans identity and move forward in life.

The question of what leads girls and young women to detransition is an interesting one. In trans spaces, it's common to hear that almost nobody regrets transition. Simply put, this isn't true. We don't know how many do because there's been very little research and because most research only follows patients for six months or one year after starting hormones or getting top surgery. Based on talking to a lot of people who have changed their minds, it takes anywhere from a year to ten years for someone to realise they made a mistake—even though they often had questions and doubts about being trans and about transition the whole time.

Realisation 1: What transition offers will never be enough. The first element that made young women detransition was the realisation that transition was not "enough," that transition could never make them into a man – or a non-binary androgynous person, for that matter. Hormones and surgeries can make you look more like a man. But appearing isn't the same thing as being—and, over time, the difference between appearing and being starts to matter.