Comment by neartheplain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neartheplain | Hacker News Reader

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Studies have consistently shown that most trans children revert to their original gender identity post-puberty [0]:

>The exact rate of desistance varied by study, but overall, they concluded that about 80 percent trans kids eventually identified as their sex at birth. Some trans activists and academics, however, argue that these studies are flawed, the patients surveyed weren't really transgender, and that mass desistance doesn't exist.

>Indeed, some of the studies cited by Cantor had sample sizes as low as 16 people and were more than 40 years old, and one was an unpublished doctoral dissertation. But the most recent study, published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, followed up with 127 adolescent patients at a gender identity clinic in Amsterdam and found that two-thirds ultimately identified as the gender they were assigned at birth.

This does not imply any percentage of patients who underwent surgery to "restore" their original sex. Orchiectomies, mastectomies, and histerectomies are irreversible in any case, not to mention bottom surgery.

[0] https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/06/28/25252342/the...

From your article

> By all accounts, detransitioners make up a tiny percentage of that already small population: A 50-year study out of Sweden found that only 2.2 percent of people who medically transitioned later experienced "transition regret."

I was speaking specifically to GP's point about gender affirming surgery being reversed. If only 2.2% of people who have had this surgery experience regret, the proportion which reverses the surgery must be even smaller.

"Huge number who [...] have to undergo further surgery to try and restore their original sex" is not supported by the data.

It is not easy for trans people to get gender affirming surgery, so I think the conservative "concern" that "children are going to get surgery and regret it" is vastly overblown: children receiving gender affirming surgery is so rare today, and involves jumping through so many hoops, that a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of people seems like a silly subject for policy debate.

Teenagers are dumb and fickle (I know I was!), so I think there should be a non-zero number of hoops for teens jump through to filter out the "just a phase" cases for any surgery (or even just tattoos) that will have permanent impact on their bodies. But 'concerns' about surgical detransitioning is primarily just scaremongering.

The study they cited included both gender non conforming and gender dysphoric children. Non conforming doesn't mean trans.

They cited a wide body of studies, including studies which included only trans kids. All studies produced consistent results. For those who didn't read the full article, here's the preamble to the 80% figure quoted above:

>There have, however, been almost a dozen studies of looking at the rate of "desistance," among trans-identified kids—which, in this context, refers to cases in which trans kids eventually identify as their sex at birth. Canadian sex researcher James Cantor summarized those studies' findings in a blog post: "Despite the differences in country, culture, decade, and follow-up length and method, all the studies have come to a remarkably similar conclusion: Only very few trans-kids still want to transition by the time they are adults. Instead, they generally turn out to be regular gay or lesbian folks." The exact rate of desistance varied by study, but overall, they concluded that about 80 percent trans kids eventually identified as their sex at birth.

They cited various problems with the other studies.

All of Cantor's sources included non conforming behavior or "sub threshold" gender identity disorder.[1] He just ignored the numbers lost to follow up. And several studies found predictors of persistence. Like meeting the criteria for gender identity disorder.[2]

[1] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-tran...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18981931/

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