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You're listening to Transmission with Brody. My pronouns are they, them and Bet.

My pronouns are she, they. My microphone seems to be very slowly drifting down on the stand.

It's just drifting down like my awakeness is really.

Your awakeness is bottoming out at the moment.

It is. It's the. It's the morning.

It's 9:00am yeah, it's a bit rough.

It is. I'm used to being here at 9pm usually, so it's a bit different.

I'm. I apologise for calling you out at this ungodly hour.

No worries. It's okay. It's lovely to be here filling in for transmission today. And today on the show, BET and I are going to be discussing some things bet's very passionate about.

Yeah. Well, I thought we could call this show maybe the D Word.

The D word. I like that. I like that a lot.

I'm so goddamn sick of hearing this word detransition. So today I thought we could talk about how to talk about detransition, because I feel like the way that we all talk about it is not all that constructive. And even better, how not to talk about detransition. Does that sound.

That sounds amazing.

Cool. Well, now, Brody, what kind of. Are you in the mood for a big info dump before?

I love a good info dump in the morning.

Okay, well, you do. That sounds unlikely. So. Okay, the first thing I want to say is just the thing I always say whenever I mention the D word on this show, and that is please try and use scare quotes when you mention this word in an advocacy context or a scientific context. Now, I've faced up to the fact that a lot of us just use it kind of as a slang term or just, you know, like the way we use transition. We're not usually citing statistics about transition because transition also doesn't really have a strict definition. But for some reason a lot of us seem to want to cite these exact statistics about so called detransition without actually defining what it means. And that includes people doing scientific studies too. A lot of the studies use different definitions or else they don't even use the term detransition at all. But then folks mostly on the other side of the argument, the anti trans brigade, take them out of context. But to be honest, we often take them out of context too. So I've got a couple of examples of what I'm talking about. One is the infamous study. It's Roberts et al 2022. This one is always quoted by anti trans folks. And it was a study of mostly young people using their parents, military health care to access gender affirming medical hormones. And 30% of these young people or of people in the study stopped accessing care through this system. But the thing is, we don't know anything else about those people. We don't know if they got care elsewhere, we don't know why they stopped accessing care. And also this was entirely based on a secondary analysis of records from the US military healthcare system. So it can only tell us that one thing, that people stopped accessing care. So that doesn't really equate with the transition in my mind. Right. At the other extreme is Bustos et al. 2021, this. We all cite this all the time. It's a systematic review that found a 1% regret rate for gender affirming surgeries for trans folks. You might have heard. Yeah, so a systematic review looks at a lot of studies and kind of weighs them up and averages them out and whatever. Oh my God, someone's just texted me and I've, I've moved away from my notes.

It's okay.

Yeah. So the 1% detransition study, firstly, obviously surgery is not the same thing as transition and regretting surgery is not the same as detransition. So when we cite that statistic as if it's got something to do with transition or with gender affirming medical care in general, I've heard it cited in that way that there's a 1% regret rate for gender affirming care. Now gender affirming care even includes psychological.

Visits, which means so many different things. It's not just that part.

Yeah. So I guess, you know, we can cite that study, but we need to be specific about what it was really about. Right. And it was not in any form about so called detransition. And there's one other caveat with that study, which is that most of the studies that it looked at were looking at patients returning to their surgeons to express dissatisfaction. But we don't always go and tell our surgeons if we're unsatisfied, mostly because they're probably going to charge us to go and get.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So there is another study I think is more relevant than both of them and then I'll stop citing studies at you. This one, I'm not sure how to pronounce this person's name. Carve et al. I'm gonna say 20, 24. It's more well known as the West Australian Paediatric Gender Clinic study. So it's called re identification with birth registered sex in a Western Australian Paediatric Gender Clinic cohort. Try saying that with a mouthful of spaghetti, honestly. So I for a start, I prefer re identification with presumed gender at birth or just presumed gender. So I'm going to talk about that from now on. But I do think this is a relevant statistic to cite though. Right. Like most of us, I think on the advocacy side generally think of that when we think of so called detransition, I think if we're citing it in this context. So this study found that of a cohort of 548 young people, 5.3% of them re identified as their presumed gender before or during assessment. But that included some young people who had not yet started hormones. So they would be called by the, even by the anti trans side they would generally be referred to as so called desistors, not detransitioners. There's a distinction there. So a desista is generally someone who hasn't yet started medication, but they, they have identified as trans but then they change their mind. So again another word that you should never use. But only two of these young people re identified as their presumed gender during or following medical treatment. So those are the ones that we could maybe call quote unquote detransitioners. And that equates to 1% of all patients. There is a caveat. We don't know how long any of these patients accessed hormones before they left the clinic. So they may well have stopped hormones later on. We have no idea. And I do think it's fair that if we are gonna get into this argument it makes a difference whether someone, whether we're looking at these young people for a year or 10 years. Do you know what I mean? So there is that caveat. I still think it's a great study, but even the study itself says that, and I'm quoting now, longitudinal follow up, follow up studies, including qualitative self report are needed to understand different pathways of the gender identity experience.

Okay, so that's, there's, I have many, many thoughts and trying to process them into words and it's difficult Because I have, I have many thoughts about those kind of studies and how like the data of it and like the specifics of who are these people? What. You know, there's so many questions that I have.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think just to mention the CAS review again, the CAS review was infamous for mostly ignoring qualitative data rather than quantitative data. And I think that what you're yearning for is probably more qualitative data, data that actually interviews patients or gets them to fill out some sort of questionnaire and we find out how they're feeling about the process.

Can you tell? I'm coming from like my histories in like social work, peer work, that kind of stuff because that's where my brain instantly goes because it's like have the conversations and talk, you know.

Yeah, totally.

That's where my background's coming from.

Well, and all three studies that are, that I just cited were based on analysing the records at a certain medical facility. Right. Or sorry, the, the systematic review was based on analysing other studies, many of which were based on analysing the records.

Yeah.

At a, at a medical clinic. So yeah, it's very removed from the human being. So I said that usually people on the advocacy side when they're, when we're defining detransition, quote, unquote.

Yeah.

That we usually will equate it with re. Identification with presumed gender. And that's what I used to do until very recently, until the last time I was on air. And then I've been thinking about it recently and I've been like, hang on, if we're going to discuss this word, is this the best definition to use? I thought so, but now I'm not sure. Yeah, so there's a study that I've mentioned before, it's like a systematic review, it's a retrospective study of other studies and it's by a trans woman. Her name is Lexi Henney. Now she's posted this as a medium blog, like a medium post. It's not peer reviewed so we can't really cite it, but it's very convincing. She works for NASA. Actually she's not interesting, she's not a physician and she comes up with a roughly 2 to 3% rate of so called detransition. And her definition is the intentional cessation of gender affirming medical care or reversal of social transition. And then she adds, where possible this will be restricted to cases motivated by gender identity, meaning that they re identified with their presumed gender. So lately I've decided, I think I Like the first part of that definition, but not the second. And the reason why is because I think detransition should mean the opposite of transition. Right. And when we transition, we don't change. We don't start out in our presumed gender and go, oh, but I want to transition even though I'm cisgender. You know what I mean?

Exactly.

We actually, we have a realisation about our gender first. And many would say that our gender was the same since we were born.

Right.

And then we transition in order to affirm that gender. So if we're going to de transition, I think we should be unaffirming that gender, changing back the chain, whatever changes we made, or attempting to reversing our social transition, but not going back to our gender presumed at birth, because that is not the reverse of transition. But having said that, that's not a statistic, that's not a definition I'm going to be talking about in advocacy space because I don't actually think it's very helpful. And that's why I don't think the word's very helpful.

Yeah.

And I guess one other thing I just wanted to say on that, and then maybe we can play some music, is if you don't agree with me at first, listen, consider this. It's common for people on our side in the advocacy space to claim that because of bans on gender affirming medical care, say in the United States or the uk, that trans young people are being forcibly detransitioned.

Yeah.

So if you think about that and you unpack that, and how could denying a young person HRT cause them to re identify with their presumed gender? Like that's. If you think that the definition of detransition is re identification with birth gender. And yet, yet on the other hand, you think that kids are being forcibly detransitioned if you take their medication. What you're basically saying is that you can de trans a kid by taking away their medication, you can make them re identify with their presumed gender at birth. And that is basically what the other side wants everyone to believe. That's not, that's a slippery slope argument we should not go down. The thing is that the same advocate will use these different definitions in different conversations. So the same advocate will insist that no, no, this statistic is the right one, this 1% statistic, because that involves re identification with presumed gender. But on the other hand, you're forcibly detransitioning kids by taking away their medication. So I just think all of that is totally confusing.

Yep. It really is.

We don't want to confuse people because if we confuse people on this issue, we're basically doing the other side's job for them because all they need to do is generate a significant amount of doubt and it's all over for trans kids.

Exactly.

So let's play some music. That's my info dump for now.

I love a good info dump from Beth amplifying the voices of the trans and gender non conforming community of Meanjin, Brisbane and beyond.

Transmission on 4ZZZ brings you the latest in trans community news, music and events.

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Our team of hosts for an hour of celebrating the unique perspectives of the trans community.

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My name is is bet pronouns she, they and you're listening to transmission and.

My name is Brody and my pronouns are they them.

I'm going to jump back into the info dump if you don't mind.

Please do.

It's one of those episodes people. So we're talking about the D word, so called detransition. It's chaotic in here today.

Chaos. Chaos.

Now, as I said before, I'm generally not going to advocate for trans young people by discussing how many of them cease gender affirming medical care or reverse their social transitions, even though I think that that's probably the most sensible definition of the word detransition. And the reason why I'm not going to do that is because most young people who do reverse their social transitions or cease gender affirming medical care seem to do that for reasons of minority stress because they can't get a job or their parents don't approve or their friends bully them or they get harassed in the street. So for the same reason, I'm not usually going to talk about regret, because after all, you could regret your transition for all of those reasons too. You could regret your transition because of minority stress. It doesn't mean you're quote unquote, not really trans if you regret transitioning. Maybe it just means that society is cruel to trans people, right? And in which case the answer would not be to deny trans people care, it would be to fix society. So while I don't think that the other metric, reidentification with presumed gender is a good definition of detransition, I think it might be the most meaningful metric to cite when anti trans campaigners start discussing detransition. So I guess my advice would be if you get into an argument with someone about so called detransition the first thing you should do is ask them what definition they're using, then ask them to cite what study that they're thinking of. When they're citing statistics of you, chances are they won't be able to cite a study at all. And if they do, the definition used in the study won't match the definition that they're using. But meanwhile, I suggest don't get drawn into discussing what you think the detransition rates are. What you could do is cite the Western Australian study, emphasise that it deals with a more meaningful metric than so called detransition and that is re identification with presumed gender, AKA birth, registered sex. But one thing I wanted to say is the way that we, even as advocates often cite these studies kind of troubles me because we act as though they're ironclad. So I noticed that even so. So I mean, my advice would be don't say that the rate of re identification with birth, with presumed gender among young people accessing gender affirming medical care is 1%. Because there's only one study that's telling us that.

Exactly. Yeah.

And definitely don't say the so called detransition rate is 1%. You have to spell it all out and say that this particular study led to this particular outcome. Put it in context. There's a lot more words in that claim, but it's more accurate. And like I said, we don't really want to generate confusion.

Exactly.

Which relates to something that frustrates me, which I'm calling the memeification of science.

Please tell me about the memeification of science.

Well, look, it's not a, it's not a full blown theory or anything yet, but I've just noticed, I mean recently, earlier this year I think it was, I noticed everyone reposting, and this includes trans advocacy groups reposting a little meme, like graphic that said that the detransition rate was 1%, didn't say anything else, didn't have a footnote, didn't cite any studies, was just that. And I noticed that after that everyone was citing this all the time.

And I'm like, get, where's the research? Where's the, like you know, appropriate reflection upon what you're reposting, what you're sharing with Ms. Like.

And how are you going to operate? Like if you go into a debate with someone and that's all you've got, Like a meme, A meme.

Be like, here, this is my, this is my information, these are my resources. Yeah. It's not Helpful and it's. It's detrimental, really.

Like, I think so.

Yeah.

And I think that debate's going to be over pretty quickly. It's just going to degenerate into a shouting match where you're going, it's 1% and they're going it's 30%. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So, but having said that, I did just want to cite one example of this. I guess I'm going to mention who it was. It's a prominently prominent Australian trans advocacy org Transcend, we all know them now. They have a very helpful document called the Detransition Evidence Brief and it says all the right things, all the things that I've been saying. It says that detransition unquote and desistance are poorly and inconsistently defined. Tick. It says that regret doesn't equal reidentification with presumed gender. Although they use the term birth registered sex that I don't like quite so much. They reference the so called 80% desistance myth. So I did a whole podcast on that if you want to look it up. That is the basis of a lot of our troubles. They cite the same Western Australian study and they pull apart the CAS review and I'm like totally on board for all that. But then at the end they summarise their conclusions with four bullet points under the heading summary, I think it is. And you just know that a lot of people are going to skim the body of the text and just look at the bullet points and the first bullet point says re identification. With birth registered sex is uncommon. Approximately 5% of adolescents who seek specialist gender affirming health care ever re identify. And. And 1% of people who begin medical treatments, for example puberty suppression and hormone therapy, ever re identify. And I feel like that ever in their ever re identify is quite a leap. They're basing that on one study.

One study, yeah.

And I see this so much. And you see it. I mean, I'm sure we've all noticed it. When people on the right post their wacky newspaper articles, anti trans blogs or whatever, the headline will always say something completely outrageous. But then when you read the body of the actual text, it usually doesn't actually say what's in the headline. And I feel like this is exactly the same things that we're doing.

Exactly. Yeah. It's using the headlines, using the dot points, I guess, to summarise it. But those points aren't the most powerful and they're not.

Not even accurate.

Exactly. And providing inaccurate information and that's harmful in itself because yeah, like we know the world we live in and people aren't going to go through like, unless you're like me and Bet and we'll go through and read the whole review and pick it apart. But people aren't going to read the whole review and they're just going to skim over it and read the, like, the, the points at the top, the introduction, the summary, whatever. So yeah, we need to be able to focus on those kind of things.

And there was one other example of that. And then I, I might stop info dumping quite soon so much where. So you probably saw this. It just cropped up all over my social media. So trans journalist Erin Reed, American trans journalist, I love her. She makes a kind of a similar leap in her recent article on the 2022 US Transgender Survey. And I know, and this popped up. Advocacy orgs on Facebook were citing it. We even cited it here on transmission last week. The article is called Largest Trans Survey Ever, Top Reason Trans People Stop Transitioning is Transphobia and read quotes from a report that was written based on the survey and it says that only 4% of people who went back to living in their sex assigned at birth for a while because a lot of them retransitioned a few times. Only 4% cited that their reason was because they realised that gender transition was not for them. When considering all the respondents who had transitioned, this number equates to only 0.36%.

Right.

So really that's a 0.36% rate of people re identification re identifying with their presumed gender.

Yeah. And there can be so many contributing factors to that one that little like, you know what I mean? Like there's so many things.

Well, the problem that I'm picking up and I don't know how many other people picked it up, but I saw some people on Reddit did. I'm going to read something I found on the survey website and see if you can guess what the problem is. It says the 2022 U.S. transgender survey was an anonymous online survey for binary and non binary trans People aged 16 and older in the United States.

Right. Okay. So many thoughts.

Well, my first thought is the survey is for trans people, but we're using it to cite how many people don't identify as trans anymore.

Well, that's not helpful. Like that is. Oh my gosh.

Now the thing is, before I. Before someone rings in and they're angry or they text and they're angry or something, I'm not saying that those people were excluded from the survey because they weren't. And that 0.43% reflects that they weren't actually excluded. I looked at the survey and I think it was question five or six said something like, have you ever identified as a gender that did not align with your sexual assigned at birth? So mean. So that could cover someone who had re identified because it's only asking if they'd ever felt that they were trans. Right. But the thing is that firstly they had to get through the other opening questions to get there and the first question is, are you trans or non binary or something like that. But also the website says, the website for the survey says that the survey was promoted via LGBTQIA centres and advocacy groups and online in LGBTQIA plus spaces. So there's a good chance that if someone had re identified as their presumed gender and they didn't want anything to do with the queer community anymore, they didn't even know the survey was. Exactly. And I also watched some videos that were put out at the time advertising the survey to try and get people to answer it and they did a great job because they. It's the biggest survey ever on this topic with something like 80,000 respondents, but none of those videos mentioned that it was open to people who identified as D transitioners or who didn't identify as trans anymore. So yeah, in my mind that's a pretty serious risk of bias.

It is.

And the thing is, I'm not saying the whole survey has a high risk of bias because there's plenty of other great metrics that the survey covers and I wish that we were focusing more on them. Like the survey shows that the difference in mental health between people pre medicalized transition and post is dramatic. You know, we could have just cited that, but instead we're all focusing on the. The very thing that the survey is least able to answer. So that frustrated the hell out of me.

It frustrates me too. Don't worry, it's coming from. Yeah, it's. There's so many contributing factors to these kind of things and if they focus on. On that one thing, as I said before, it is going to take it out of context. It's not going to provide an accurate Description of what 1. What the study is and the results from the study. And that frustrates me.

Yeah. And when they frame it that way, it makes it seem like the study was set up to. To discover that.

Yep.

But it wasn't. That was just one of many.

Exactly.

Many, many questions. Like hundreds of questions that were in there.

Oh, we love It.

Oh yeah. And I'm. And the thing is, I'm not even saying that the statistic is wrong. I mean like I'm guessing maybe in line with Lexi Henney that the real statistic might have been 2 to 3% of people who re identify. But the thing is, if we're going around citing that statistic as if it's ironclad, as if it's legitimate even. I'm not even sure how legitimate it is. Yeah, the other side is just gonna completely again immediately generate confusion from that. And it's completely to be counterproductive. So that's my info dump. And as I thought, we're very near the end of this one.

More info dump done.

I did want to mention two people who might be worth looking into if you're interested in this topic. The first is quite controversial. His name is Kenan McKinnon. He's a trans man. I think he's quite hated by some members of the trans community. And then. But I saw that Julia Serrano cited him without criticism. So I'm like, well, Julius Serrano is pretty credible. So I think he might be worth looking more closely at. He does studies on the causes of so called detransition. So he gets in touch with so called detransitioners, most of whom maybe all of whom identify as detransitioners. So it's the correct word in that context. If you're interested in that topic. I think it's worth looking at. I wouldn't be saying citing him in advocacy spaces probably again because I'm. I think there is, there are some problems with Kin and MacKinnon, but anyway. And the other one who I find more interesting is Kai Chevers. I don't know if I'm saying that. Right. She identifies as transmasc but uses she her pronouns for now. Although she says that she may change. Right. Yeah. So Kai used to be. Okay, so. And this is the same Kai who was a famous detransitioner or infamous D transitioner.

It's a very interesting context and I'm very. Yeah, I think it's the same person. Yeah.

So I read a couple of Kai's articles and they're interesting. I think that they're worth looking at. She writes about so called D trans communities which are usually led by so called radical or second wave feminists and they're super anti trans. They treat transition like a drug addiction. They use language taken from Alcoholics Anonymous in the 12 step programme. Kind of like one day at a time, you're Resisting being trained. You know what I mean? And Chevrez compares it to the ex gay movement of the 1980s and 90s and she points out that like there's not really any welcoming spaces for so called detransition to go to. Once once they cease gender affirming medical care and cease identifying as queer, there's not much support for them and they end up in these transphobic communities. But the problem is that the people invested in these transphobic ideologies have no interest in helping them because it's better if they keep them angry about what happened to them because then they can use them in the media and.

Yeah.

You know, to, to further their anti trans.

Is this the same narrative?

No.

Okay. No, I was mistaken.

Sorry, it's Kai K Y Chevres S C H E V E R S.

Okay, I was mistaken. My apologies.

You're right, it would have been interesting if you did know her.

Yeah. I was gonna say doesn't sound like the one I know.

No. And she calls all of this ideologically motivated. Dude. Detransition.

That's an interesting. Yeah.

And, and the reason why I bring it up is it's not strictly relevant to what I've been talking about but again I think when we use this word D transition, we're inadvertently feeding into things like this, feeding into an actual ideology that equates being trans with a addiction and that uses a 12 step programme like framework to try and convince people that they aren't trans anymore.

And that's harmful. That's like so deeply so harmful. Oh my God.

And then this is weaponized by these groups who, who like Kai Chevers, became a prominent anti trans campaigner by getting involved in one of these groups, getting trained up by these second wave feminists and then being sent out in the world to tell her story. And she's only. It was the Kira Bell case in the UK that had ended up where we are now with the cast review and the ban on hormones in the UK that convinced Kai Chevers that actually she didn't want anything to do with this anymore, she didn't want to harm trans people's lives. And now she's kind of in this in between state with her gender, not quite sure where she stands, but she doesn't want anything to do with those people anymore.

It's very interesting the like. Yeah. How people use it as framing is an addiction, that kind of stuff when.

It'S not, it's, it's amazing.

It's, it's honestly beyond messed up and it's I have no words.

You can imagine them all like in their camp like sitting around in this circle talking about oh I, I thought about wanting to be a man again today or something like that. And the, and the lead turf would be saying it's okay one day at.

A time, you know, with styrofoam cups in hand as well. So it's. Yeah, there's so many. Yeah. It's such an interesting concept and thinking about it from like a lived experience perspective that I'm sure if you spoke to. If there was more discussions with folks who had lived experience of going through these kind of things, there would be a different outlook. Like.

Yeah, well that's what is. Chevrez wants to make a more welcoming kind of a. A space, an advocacy space I guess where so called detransitions or people who have re identified can, can go and they can talk with each other without this harmful ideology all around it. But she also wants them to be able to say the stuff that we get angry about when they say it.

Yeah.

That it was patriarchy that made a young girl think that they were a trans man. Now that. And, and I think that's. Yeah. If you think that, if you think that's your narrative, you need to be able to say it.

Yeah.

It's just when it's weaponized.

Exactly. And it shouldn't be weaponized the way it is. So. And that's all we really have time for today. So thank you so much BET for I love a good info dump from BET and I really appreciative of your knowledge and your passion for these kind of things. It's honestly amazing and I think. Yeah, I think you're an incredible advocate and keep on going. I'm looking forward to working with you on here again soon hopefully.

Yeah.

And so I'm gonna end the show with a song about.

About trans kids.

About trans kids. That the incredible Bette Ennois. Is that correct?

Bette Noir. One word. Bete Noir.

My letters got confused. Bet Noir. I can't even say that you take it away from me.

BET this is Kids Are All Right by Bete Noir. Here to talk about trans kids. So we all know that kids are alright. Am I right? Thank you so much for listening to Transmission. See you next Tuesday 9 to 10am on 4ZZZ.