Hacker News Reader

Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

IIRC, research also shows that those who identify as trans in middle age are much more likely to be happy when they do choose to transition, compared to the younger folks.

View on HN

I don't see anything to support this in the literature. The overwhelming majority (94-98%) of youth who transition maintain their gender identity many years later as adults. [1][2] It's hard to imagine they would continue treatment if it was making them miserable.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/transgender-kids-tend-to...

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...

AIUI, another user ITT has mentioned https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33883438 that this is merely statistics of how many transitioners formally pursue detransition, and that the numbers of those who practically desist from treatment are a lot higher than that.

The number of individuals failing to follow up on a study or even treatment for any disease at the same medical office is high, for example it's approximately 50% for _cancer_. [1] You're welcome to extrapolate to your own taste, but it's still simply an unknown -- unlike the people you _do_ have data for.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29028642/

But the whole question is why people are desisting from treatment that's supposed to help them reaffirm their gender. Everyone knows that cancer treatment has very uncomfortable side effects; it's not surprising that people might neglect that. Gender treatment is literally supposed to make you feel good, by treating disphoria.

Lost to follow up is not necessarily discontinuation of treatment is the issue. The person may have moved out of state or out of country, or simply have moved to be treated by a different physician. Consider also the perspective of the detransitioning person: in trying to reconcile their experience, they project that there must be more people out there like themselves and point to a known unknown to justify it.

Is there any statistical significance to that. Have the emotional baggage and social complexity younger people are dealing with and the share of middle aged people who did or could not transition been accounted for?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com