"Seasoned" Detransitioner Here to Provide Support, Resources, Advocacy
RESOURCE Submitted Oct. 14, 2021, 7:51 p.m. by ratfunkingHi friends, my name is Laura and it's been a long time since I was in this subreddit. I'm a female detransitioner who's been involved in a lot of detransition awareness and advocacy work. I've returned to share some hopefully helpful resources I've been involved with recently. If anyone is interested, I had a pretty cohesive Youtube interview with RT where I took a deep dive into detrans issue and mental health crisis. You can hear about my detrans story from the perspective of having been several years recovered from the whole experience and the healing and wisdom I've gained so far.
I also wrote an essay for Genspect.org, (an excellent resource for parents and families of gender questioning and trans youth.) The essay is "A Letter to My 15-Year-Old-Gender-Questioning-Self" and is a resource for people of that age and their families you might be able to relate to.
I'm also working lot's of other detrans advocacy projects, including being involved in some legal cases for trans minors, so you might see me around in the media talking about detransition and mental health stuff in the future. I really wanted to come here though and offer support to anyone who'd like to chat with me, since I consider myself a very "seasoned" detransitioner at this point. Lol. Feel free to DM me here, or find me on Twitter posting a lot about all this stuff.
I'm also planning on some media appearances with more major news outlets in the future, writing articles for my Substack on these topics, and I'm producing and co-hosting a podcast about psychology and mental health where I go very very deep into gender, sexuality, mental health and healing, and all that important stuff.
I hope some of these resources will be of value to you and again, feel free to reach out to me. <3 <3 <3
That was an incredible essay. Thank you.
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The problem is that RT is financed by Russia. It's awesome that you're out there telling your story, but advocating for something should come with an appropriate platform, otherwise people will continue to write off detrans issues as nonexistent, a joke, or, in this context, a Russian psyop.
Unfortunately, there are few media outlets willing to cover these issues. I am working closely with GC organizations like Genspect and REIME and there is an understanding that we need to saturate the market so to speak about detrans issues. Lisa Selin Davis was going to actually write an article referencing my story for the New York Times, but this got shut down. That is why we are working to spread the ideas through alternative media.
I thought your essay was well written. Im going to agree with the other commenter on your interview. RT is Russian funded. Also, within the first couple minutes of what I watched you made some pretty sweeping generalizations about all trans people based on your experience which is disappointing.
Not based on my experience alone, based on the collective experiences I've seen and researched as well as analysis from medical and mental health professionals working closely with gender dysphoria. What did you find to be too generalizing?
Sorry for the late response. Here’s a couple of things I picked out of the first 10 minutes. These are direct quotes because I didn’t want to misrepresent you. I do think your story is important and there are probably others who fit these generalizations but I do think it’s overall not a good idea to make assertions about a majority of a group of people based on your individual experience.
• "There’s a lot of reasons why people identify as trans but it almost always comes back to some kind of identity crisis or mental health issue.”
• “I think the reason why I identified as trans and for a lot of people they’re trying to escape from reality. They’re trying to escape from reality. They’re trying to escape from the reality of their pain. And so they wanna turn themselves into someone else.”
•“I consider the majority of transgender identity to be a maladaptive coping mechanism”
I’ll also point out that the title of this interview is: ‘Don’t indulge young people who think they’re trans – many are mentally ill’ which in itself feels like a bit of a generalization.
Side note: This part also bugged me a bit. Mental health issues can have a variety of factors. To claim they’re just situational can be a bit misleading.
• “ A lot of these “mental health disorders” (air quotes) are actually situational problems like ADHD and PTSD and those sorts of things”
For me personally it was disappointing, but I do urge other people to watch it and make their own conclusions.
As for the video title, the interviewer decided that, I didn't have control over it, although I feel it does sum up my perspective well. It is true that young trans people are suffering from mental health concerns.
I see what you are saying, and again I must say that this is not based on mostly my own experience; it is based on the numerous accounts of detrans people I have spoken with, read, watched, etc. as well as analysis from providers and journalists etc. studying detransition and gender issues. I do believe transition is most often a maladaptive coping mechanism, and I have never seen an instance of a detrans or trans person who doesn't have an aspect of mental illness, trauma, and other telling factors like same sex attraction, homophobic upbring, other sexuality issues, or more recently, social contagion such as ROGD. I discuss these things further in the rest of the interview.
For anyone curious, my perspective is that transition is maladaptive in numerous ways, and there are most often other methods of coping with gender and sex issues that are healthier. I do not believe any minor child should be allowed any aspect of medical transition, and I believe medical transition is cosmetic and therefore, adults over 21 SHOULD be allowed to pursue if they desire, but due to mental and physical risk, I still don't advise it. Unfortunately there is little to no quality data on these things since it's all pretty novel, so we don't know much about the rates of transition success for these ROGD kids, or adults. But from what we're seeing so far, it isn't looking good. If anyone is curious, look up [Exculansic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1uQDzS1PY&list=PLl0_GM0Py9MuoN3cK2G7a6STD6XjWjs3k&index=27)on Youtube; she does deep analysis of medical transition and follows the money from these surgeries and hormones, and the ideology around it. Quite interesting stuff. It is clear that medical transition such as puberty blockers and SRS are experimental and quite unethical endeavors, which is why I don't promote minors at all having them, and wouldn't advise adults either. As for purely social transition, that's another discussion.
But, it is mostly teens and young adults pursuing this, which is why my main concern is on not transitioning minors and young people, especially due to these mental health and social factors I listed. My main thing, is advocating for better mental health treatment for gender dysphoria and the other mental health and social issues young people are facing today. For many trans people, the source of their pain is being projected into this sex and gender stuff, when it can be a myriad of other factors. As I listed, most commonly across the board trauma, isolation, social contagion, homosexuality, autism, adhd, etc. I don't see any way that this perspective is too generalizing, as I stated, there are numerous factors, not just social, not just mental health. Typically there are some combo of both.
I appreciate your respectful debate here, but you also only watched the first 10 minutes of my interview, if you watch the rest, you'll see more discussion on these points.
I did finish the video. I still did not agree. The rest was moreso your own experience so I dont have any gripe there. I wont debate someone on their feelings or experiences. ROGD is a term that comes from a poorly designed study that has yet to be replicated in a more proper manner so I hesitate to entertain that presently.
I will agree there are other potential causes of dysphoria that should be explored before any medical intervention takes place. Those can include mental health issues and often do. However, to frame this as the majority of trans experiences I think is perhaps irresponsible without further reputable studies to back up these claims. We need further information and I support additonal non biased studies into these areas. I will also agree that transitioning kids so young has big risks that I'm unsure are worth the potential benefit.
My personal belief is that the interview wouldve been better if your experiences were not framed as the majority of other trans experiences.
I appreciate the link and Ill take a look at that. Thank you for the respectful discussion.
I see your points and I also agree we need a lot more research into all of this.
It was not my intention to frame my experience as the only trans or detrans experience, but it's an interview with just me so I'm not sure what I could have done, besides perhaps stating that this is my lived experience and it's only one example of the risk factors, although it does overlap with many other detrans narratives, and so far, no other detrans person has had an issue. In future interviews, I agree it would be best to mention this is only one story, and one example.
Although I didn't pick the title of the video, I rather like how he did phrase it as "many are mentally ill" and didn't just say "trans people are mentally ill" or "all trans people are mentally ill" etc. I think it is accurate to say "many are" and obviously many people will still view this statement as problematic, but I think this title is accurate while still leaving room for more discussion.
I appreciate your thoughts as well.
After looking at the Exulansic channel Im very weirded out and more disappointed. Some of the information might be good but I could'nt get past the condescension from her. I do appreciate the attempt to share info. Maybe I can dive deeper into her stuff at another time.
When you say "weirded out and disappointed" what emotion do you think is there, fear, sadness, anger, disgust? And directed at what, and whom?
For me when I watched her videos and thought about this stuff, I definitely felt all of those. I understand, her videos are quite abrasive. She uses humor and sarcasm to deal with how angry she is at the medical establishment, and can be a little rough on the subjects of the videos, but she ultimately feels angry on their behalf. I think this material could be too harsh for someone in a more raw stage of their detransition. I forget I am a little jaded to this because I've healed for a few years already and don't have the closeness anymore.
I would encourage you to revisit her channel later on because I do think she makes some really important points about the medical industry and gender as a spirituality. Her attitude seems refreshingly blunt to me and I know her main goal is to help the vulnerable (women and trans people) but definitely she is quite intense in how she goes about it.
Wow! I just read that article and it's beautiful! I wish i could hand that over to my younger self as well. Maybe she'd avoid a lot of the heart ache that I've suffered if I was able to do that
Thank you. I also wish I could speak to my younger self back in the day. But I think it can be still helpful now to speak to our inner children about this with compassion.