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Telling the Whole Story: A Closer Look at the Detrans Women in When Children Say They’re Transgender

Many articles about detransitioning present an incomplete and misleading view of the detrans community by failing to address the beliefs and politics of its members. An example of this is Jesse Singal’s Atlantic article When Children Say They’re Transgender which features three detrans women, Max Robinson, Carey Callahan, and Cari Stella. Robinson’s and Callahan’s stories are told in much greater depth than Stella’s, who is briefly mentioned and quoted. In the article, they are presented as women who used to think they were trans, transitioned and later came to detransition and believe that they had underlining issues that they wish had been explored. They are cited as a reason for requiring more psychological assessment before allowing people to transition. While the article mentions that there is a growing community of detransitioned women, it doesn’t mention that many in this community believe and promote transphobic radical feminism. All of detrans women featured in the article were at least sympathetic to transphobic feminism if not enthusiastic proponents of it. All of them knew each other, promoted each others’ work and engaged in organizing and activism. Additionally, they all have connections to anti-trans organizations such as FourthWaveNow and some have worked with anti-trans researchers and conversion therapists.Read More »Telling the Whole Story: A Closer Look at the Detrans Women in When Children Say They’re Transgender

WoLF Stacks Signatories to Fabricate Legitimacy at United Nations

Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) announced on March 14th, 2021 that they had submitted a report to the United Nations Independent Expert for the Human Rights Council, in which they “[call] for an end to the international implementation of “gender theory,” specifically in reference to gender identity ideology.”1 They claim to have been joined by “over 40 organizations” in support of this call. There’s just one problem: several of them are operated by the same people.

Read More »WoLF Stacks Signatories to Fabricate Legitimacy at United Nations

Detransition Awareness Day: Inconvenient Truths and Community Building

Apparently today, March 12th is Detransition Awareness Day. Today is supposed to be a day for informing people about detransitioning in the name of creating more and better resources. Well then, here are some things I want people to be aware of concerning resources for people who detransition and why they’re in the state that they are today.

As someone who played an important role in creating one of the first communities and support networks for detransitioned women, who worked in that community for close to seven years, I have a lot of regrets now. I and others in that community made many bad, misguided choices that lead to the formation of a detrans community that is better at radicalizing people into transphobic ideology than it is with helping people access the resources they need to live a good life. We created a community that often encouraged people to use their trauma to attack the trans community and trans healthcare rather than helping people heal and get on with their lives.Read More »Detransition Awareness Day: Inconvenient Truths and Community Building

Gender Ideology? Up Yours!

By Mallory Moore

Originally posted on Medium. Cross-posted with permission.

Editor notes: this post notes an important date correlation in the UK, namely the increase in propaganda material immediately surrounding the proposal to review the Gender Recognition Act in 2016. This pattern is also important in the US, as it overlaps with the election campaign of Donald Trump that relied heavily on rightwing media support. His campaign and eventual presidency served as a petri-dish for more cross-over between the right and left in following years.

Additionally, some links are in the process of being updated and replaced with archive links. This is due to them being broken, a desire to reduce traffic to transphobic sites, or protection against both. Any dead links that couldn’t be located will be noted.

Author note: updated 31st January 2019. Some amendments and typo fixes were made in response to feedback, where possible these have been annotated as such

I’ve been feeling recently a bit like the popular online discourse around transphobia and trans liberation is living in another world and to the extent that social media is very much still a media world that’s the truth. This was prodded most abruptly by yesterday seeing Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (I’ll call them TERFs from now on) visibly annoyed that prominent Queer Theorist, Judith Butler, had written an article for the New Statesman on Gender Ideology and hadn’t condescended to mention them even once!

This gave me some pause for thought about the last several months worth of campaigning in both legacy and social media and the gap from my experiences offline regarding the wider issue of the fight over what is being billed as “Gender Ideology” in general.

Read More »Gender Ideology? Up Yours!

Ideologically-Motivated Detransition as a Conversion Practice – A Personal Account

I am a genderqueer transmasculine butch who went through something akin to conversion therapy combined with ideological radicalization coming from a transphobic radical feminist perspective. According to that ideology, trans identities are false and the product of living in a patriarchal society, so I tried to “de-trans” myself in order to fit the radical feminist ideal of lesbian womanhood.Read More »Ideologically-Motivated Detransition as a Conversion Practice – A Personal Account

Trans in the UK: What the Hell Are We Going To Do?

By Harry Josephine Giles

Originally posted on Medium. Cross-posted with permission.

In UK trans social spaces, the emotions I encounter most often are fear, uncertainty and exhaustion. I meet many trans folk stuck stewing over political defeats and obsessive media coverage. I see a physical response: a frantic hand-wave at “everything that’s going on” and a scream. That’s fucked up!

On the one hand, a lot of bad shit has happened and it is right and rational to feel miserable in the face of that, especially in times of pandemic social murder and rising fascism. On the other hand, this doesn’t have to be the only way to react. Trans social spaces and political movements can get trapped in negative reaction to all the bad stuff and then fail to campaign for and celebrate victories. The fixation with every bad thing that’s said about us and that’s done to us is a self-defeating cycle. We’re stuck always reacting, never acting, always miserable and never liberating ourselves. I saw a tweet from an American trans journalist recently that, quoting a news article about Keir Starmer on making Labour “the party of the family”, said only “Trans people in the UK are so fucked.” Believing only that, dwelling on only that, is what fucks us. We’re not fucked, we’re fucked over, and we can fucking fight back, and fight for fucking liberation.

Read More »Trans in the UK: What the Hell Are We Going To Do?

A Cripple’s Defense of Pediatric Transition

Originally posted on Embrace Imperfection.

Occasionally I get questions about my stance on pediatric transition, particularly as someone who experienced medical complications from hormones. It can confuse people when I answer with “it’s complicated.” Some think I should be categorically opposed, citing lack of research and unknown medical risks.

The thing is that I’m no stranger to a lack of research and unknown medical risks, even as a kid. I’ve been navigating that territory for decades at this point. And it’s very possible that having access to pediatric transition as a teen could have helped me, even if for some reason I had stopped identifying as trans.

Read More »A Cripple’s Defense of Pediatric Transition

I’m A Trans Person That Helped Found a “Detransition Advocacy” Organization

Content note: This post and several of its links involve several sensitive topics, including but not limited to transphobia, homophobia, ableism, and childhood sexual abuse. They’ve been added as evidence of the connections between groups. Read with caution and take care of yourself as needed.

On December 1st, the landmark ruling on the British case Bell v. Tavistock sent shock waves throughout the world. After a several year long battle, the new claimant Keira Bell won her case against the only gender clinic in Britain providing care to trans youth, doing so in collaboration with GIDS whistleblowers Susan and Marcus Evans. As a result, all British minors under age 16 must receive a court order before getting puberty blockers or gender affirming hormone therapy, adding to an already arduous process that takes years to dredge through.

For trans people in the UK, especially trans youth, this is obviously bad news. The crux of the argument was that Keira Bell was young and wasn’t given adequate information, therefore being incapable of providing informed consent for gender affirming care. What’s worse, these same supporters are pushing for it to be implemented in other countries, including the United States, and there’s already calls to “moderate” information in schools and online in attempts to counteract social contagion. And, to top it all off, Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend (and, by extension, Bell) is pushing to expand the ruling to ages 18–25, arguing that college education and culture is transing vulnerable young adults.

What people don’t know is that this isn’t a one-off case. Small, international networks of well-connected activists and health professionals are using their credentials, social and economic capital, and personal experience to harm trans and detrans people who lack access to evidence-based supports for our health outcomes and any resulting trauma when that goes awry. They take genuine concerns about medical neglect or malpractice in transgender health care and twist them into claims that we’re “too delusional to know what’s good for [us]” and therefore have to be cleared by shrinks and courts or, worse, subject us to conversion therapy during our most vulnerable points. And I’m sorry to say I had a hand in it.

Read More »I’m A Trans Person That Helped Found a “Detransition Advocacy” Organization

Transforming Systems of Care for Gender Dysphoria: Whose Responsibility Is It, Anyway?

Originally posted on Embrace Imperfection.

One of the critical components to providing effective services or resources for people with gender dysphoria is understanding how they may be impacted by trauma. Trauma from a variety of domains disproportionately impacts members of the LGBT community, including those who experience gender dysphoria. As such, the call to implement trauma-informed care within transgender health care systems has been present for some time. It’s noted in academic research, as well as some standards of care. However, despite communities and resource providers putting a theoretical emphasis on supporting those who seek transgender health care, that theory hasn’t carried over into practice. Why have our systems failed to adopt such a crucial component when attempting to provide care? Subsequently, in light of that failure, whose responsibility is it to ensure that this system is changed? Are there ways that community resources can better support survivors of trauma that are not getting their needs met in other areas? Finally, how can we as a community hold each other accountable for being more considerate of the needs of trauma survivors?

Read More »Transforming Systems of Care for Gender Dysphoria: Whose Responsibility Is It, Anyway?