The Conservative Fixation On Detransition

What their obsession with the 1% of the 1% tells us

“Detrans Awareness Day.” That’s what the Trump Administration proclaimed March 12th to be. For the past few years, conservatives have been using detransitioners to further their own anti-trans agenda, and every year, the voices they amplify get louder and louder. But it’s not about the detransitioners at all.

To those on the right, detransitioners represent hope. Hope that trans people can go away without them ever having to even attempt understanding us. And they’ve latched onto that hard. After all, if one person can stop being trans, can’t they all?

I believe my paradoxically self-aware transphobic and conservative uncle said it best: ‘conservatism is nostalgia for a past we tend to romanticise.’ And that’s exactly what’s happening here. They remember a ‘simpler’ time, a time when they didn’t have to pay attention as the trans community suffered in silence. And because of detransitioners, they believe they can have that back.

This logical fallacy is actually quite common when it comes to trans people. When I first came out, my mom latched onto that idea, and it wasn’t exactly easy for her to break out of that cycle. The fear that I maybe could potentially regret transitioning made her attempt to convince me it wasn’t worth going through, and I’ll admit, it did make me question if I would for a moment. However, I quickly arrived at a conclusion that shut down all my doubts.

Detransitioners are a statistical guarantee.

When someone questions to themselves whether they are trans or not, there is a chance the conclusion they come to could be wrong. For most of us trans people, we told ourselves we weren’t trans. That’s a type II error(false negative). For detransitioners, it was the opposite. They decided they were trans when they weren’t, a type I error(false positive). In medicine, the possibility of a type II error is considered to be more risky, and thus, doctors prioritise reducing false negatives at the cost of increasing the rate at which false positives occur. Thus, as the number of people who transition increases, the number of people who detransition will also increase.

The fact that the regret rate for transitioning is around 1% doesn’t matter to conservatives. All that matters is that a false positive can happen, because that makes it so that every trans person could potentially be a false positive. That’s what they’re latching onto. And the detransitioners that want to ban gender-affirming care(which is very few, most detransitioners are kind people) are latching onto this too. Because it wasn’t right for them, their assumption is that there’s always the possibility it isn’t right for anyone. After all, if it isn’t an option, nobody can be harmed by transitioning. While that’s true, it ignores the long term consequences not transitioning can bring.

So, what’s behind the conservative fixation with detransitioners? Transphobia. Because if they believe it’s even remotely possible for us to go away, they will fight tooth and nail for us to do that. Eventually, they’ll be forced to accept that we will never do that. We just have to make it through the storm.