National Convention to support people who detransition

Lazia, 7 February 2020 — The National Convention of 2019 has announced that it will provide support for transgender people who wish to detransition, following growing international attention to cases of individuals who come to regret a transition and set about reversing it.

Detransitioning describes the process by which someone who had identified as a different gender reverses that identification. It has become a divisive matter of considerable public interest, particularly amid criticism in parts of the Western world of what some regard as flawed treatment of gender dysphoria. A view increasingly heard among certain academics and analysts holds that medical officials may be prescribing hormone-blocking and similar drugs to those diagnosed with gender dysphoria without sufficient clarity about the consequences, permitting changes that current evidence suggests are difficult to reverse.

The question is held to be especially delicate for those under 25, and for those still going through puberty, who may make such decisions before they are fully physically developed; critics point, for instance, to a reported 930 per cent rise in referrals for child gender dysphoria in the United Kingdom.

The rate at which detransition occurs is itself disputed. A 2008 study found that 61 per cent of subjects had desisted from a transgender identity before the age of 29, and a 2013 study that 63 per cent had done so before 20, while a 2019 clinical assessment put at 9.4 per cent the share of patients with adolescent-emerging gender dysphoria who ceased to seek medical intervention. A 2015 United States Transgender Survey, by contrast, found that 8 per cent of respondents who had transitioned reported having ever detransitioned — and that 62 per cent of those had since returned to living in a transgender identity.

Edited for the relaunch of the Courant van Lazia.