Detransition is when a person who has transitioned returns to live as the gender assigned by birth sex. Transition describes the social, physiological, and medical process by which transgender person realigns themselves toward the gender they identify.
Those are the distinctions, but the facts behind detranstioning and the unsatisfactory or regrettable results are often misrepresented, and often, the focus is on those smaller groups of people who transition and then go back within the US, which is only around 8%.
How Many Trans People Regret Transitioning?
On average, 97% of people who are transgender are happy with their decision to transition. Only 3% of trans people experience some form of regret but are not likely to detransition.
Why Do People Detransition?
The main reason cited after research for detransition is social pressure. For example, recent research by Dr. jack Turban has found that 90% of people who return to their birth gender in the US don’t do so because of regret or dissatisfaction but due to pressure from family, school, work, or society.
Other contributors included harassment, discrimination, widespread fear for one’s safety, exploration of gender identities, unrelated health issues, and financial complications.
All evidence suggests that medical transition is the right decision for the overwhelming majority of trans people, and those that do detransition do so because of the specifics cited earlier. While there seems to be a more focused approach on those who decide to detransition, they are of the minority.
