My New York Times Op-Ed

A few reflections about it and a longer, uncut version.

I began studying and writing about detransition once I learned about it, in the context of debates and legal challenges to pediatric gender-affirming healthcare. This would have been in roughly 2019-2020, when I started to read about the judicial review of the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock (Bell v. Tavistock, including detransitioned lesbian Kiera Bell’s testimony). At the time, I was just wrapping up my PhD dissertation on gender-affirming healthcare (for adults) in Canada. Looking back, I initially wrote about detransition with some curiosity, but also a fair bit of defensiveness (and without ever having myself collected and analyzed data on detransition). The experiences, the stories, and the politics challenged me. A lot has changed since then, and I am wrapping up a third project on detransition together with my colleagues and research teammates.

For the last few months I have been writing a guest essay for the New York Times about what I see as dangerous (and limited) rhetoric about detransition and trans regret that has infiltrated the Trump administration. I wrote many many drafts and submitted them to editor Alex Ellerbeck who has been a super helpful editor. My first draft was submitted back in early May. It responded to one of my papers being incorrectly/misinterpreted by the Health and Human Services gender dysphoria treatment report. That one did not make it, due some issues with timing. Then, I wrote a second draft in response to the US vs Skrmetti decision. Also a no-go. In the end, I expanded and styled that one more in the realm of Trans Studies and published it here as a Substack post:

Because the Trump administration’s attacks on gender-affirming care are relentless, it was not too longer before another event happened that I felt an urge to comment on and took to writing about it.

Guest Essay: The Truth About Detransition

After a recent workshop held by the Federal Trade Commission on “the dangers of gender-affirming healthcare for minors,” I wrote a new version that was published (today). The version that made it to print is only a fraction of the arguments I had originally included. The original version was much more critical of the Trump administration and plainly laid out the in-roads that the gender-critical/anti-trans movement has made with the Trump administration (it specifically drew attention to the fact that some of the speakers at the FTC workshop aimed to end all gender medicine, not even focusing their activism squarely on pediatrics). It also included more technical information about the emergence of detransition research, gaps in our understanding, and emphasized why research on detransition is actually important to improve the quality of gender-affirming healthcare services for trans and detransitioned people.

In the end, the editors felt that a more straight forward explanation of what the DARE study found might be more impactful for a general audience (who are not deep in the weeds of this topic).

I have to thank Alex Ellerbeck for her patience with me and helping to turn my many (occasionally rant-y) drafts into something more coherent for a general audience. She provided a ton of editorial support to condense my often excessively niche and academic writing.

Here is a guest link to the essay so you can access it for free!

Other titles for the guest essay that were explored (a few reflections on each below):

• I Had a Good Experience with Trans Health Care. I Spend a Lot of Time Talking to People Who Did Not.

  -Pro: Accurate.

  -Con: I am not a fan of this framing because I think it sort of risks conveying that I am a “true transsexual” while detransitioned folks are not, or were not? In fact, I can relate a lot to the experiences of detransitioners (and trans and nonbinary folks who don’t detransition, AFAB butches, basically most non-hetero people, especially those who were gender nonconforming since childhood etc…)

• Trump Wants More Research Like Mine. He May Not Like the Findings.

  -Pro: I think it signals the complexity of the DARE study results and that politically compelling research into a certain topic may still not reveal research results along party lines.

  -Con: It heightens focus on the political aspects of this research, when I think it is more important to highlight what we can learn about it.

• I Surveyed 1000 People Who Detransitioned. The Results Might Surprise You.

  -Pro: The results could be perhaps surprising to people who only associate detransition with the idea of either regret or medical harm?

  -Con: This is not my favourite and I don’t like the inflation of 957 survey respondents up to 1000.

• I'm a Trans Man. Here's Why I Study Detransition

  -Pro: I guess this is fine?

  -Con: The op-ed includes very little of why I think it’s important to study and openly discuss these experiences. I also barely consider myself to be a trans man; transmasc/nonbinary/butch may be a bit more accurate, but it takes up a lot more real estate in a 1200 word essay that is not supposed to be about me.

Trans/nonbinary advocacy and the Times

Many trans/nonbinary people have grown mistrustful and angry with the New York Times for some of their articles about trans care. Fair. I understand these feelings and I can sympathize. I have myself been critical of, or frustrated by, some their coverage of trans and LGBTQ+ issues, even if I don’t agree with the approach of writing off a major news publication. (This is probably because I am familiar with the varied perspectives of trans, detrans, and LGBTQ+ people who do not feel mainstream LGBTQ+ advocacy and legacy media has ever fully represented their realities).

Still, my reason for deciding to write the op-ed was pretty straight forward: I think it’s better to explain the issue and the research findings myself rather than have it described by journalists likelier to mischaracterize it. My team also just had two papers accepted for publication recently, so I saw it as an opportunity to do a quick explainer.

I also saw the essay as an opportunity to unpack what I thought we could reasonably take from the DARE study (and other research finding showing significant gender identity fluidity among young LGBTQ+ folks).

Most importantly, I wanted to spell out, in my own words, on the record, that research on detransition should not be used to represent all of trans people, for conversion therapy efforts, or to support blanket bans on gender-affirming care or Trumpian politics.

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Below is a mash-up of several of those much longer versions that ended up not making the cut. I actually tried putting several versions through chatGPT to see what it came up with, as an experiment.

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The Ethical Imperative in Trans Medicine: Learning from Transition and Detransition

When promising medical interventions seem to make life better for many young people, yet unexpectedly worse for others, what is the decent way to respond?

Since 2020, the medical community has been grappling with this question in the context of gender-affirming care for youth. While substantial evidence shows that transition-related treatments significantly improve mental health and quality of life for many transgender individuals, a growing number of young people have also reported regret or detransition—stopping or reversing treatment after their gender identity changed.

In response, several countries have restricted access to medical transition for minors or introduced more cautious guidelines. Others continue to support gender-affirming care but are developing protocols to better support those who detransition. These divergent paths reflect an urgent need for more nuanced, inclusive, and responsive research.

As a Canadian researcher who has studied detransition for the last four years—and as a transgender man who began medical transition 15 years ago—I believe we must take both realities seriously: that gender-affirming care is life-saving for many, and that some individuals experience profound regret, grief, or harm.

Unfortunately, the current U.S. political climate is undermining efforts to understand and address these complexities.

Politicizing Medicine: The FTC Workshop

A recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) event titled “The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care for Minors” illustrates how politicized this issue has become. While billed as a neutral gathering, the workshop featured over 30 speakers—politicians, parents, detransitioners, and critics of trans medicine—but included no openly transgender individuals or researchers who study detransition. It claimed to unite people across the political spectrum, but it was made fairly clear from the 7-hours of panels that what united many of the attendees was gender-critical ideology and to end gender medicine.

Chairman Andrew Ferguson stated the event wasn’t about politics but about protecting the vulnerable. Yet many speakers advocated for sweeping rollbacks to gender-affirming care, including for adults. Some used misgendering of trans people, aiming to erode recognition of trans identities altogether. Other speakers called to “decimate the deceitful gender industry.”

Notably, several detransitioners spoke at the event. What they shared about their care and their let-downs with gender-affirming care, deep regret, and medical complications from treatment sought as minors resonated with many of the folks I have interviewed over the years. But these stories also represent a specific experience within what researchers study in the realm of detransition (roughly about a third or so, thinking about the two different studies I’ve led).

These stories matter—and should be taken seriously. There are many researchers in the field of trans care currently working to understand how care can be improved, even starting to develop formal protocols to care for people who are seeking to detransition.

But it is deeply misleading to portray detransition as justification for dismantling trans healthcare altogether. Or that all of gender care is “deceitful.”

What the Research Really Shows

Early studies on transition regret found rates of 1–6%, mostly among adult transgender women who had a full surgical transition. But over the past decade, the majority of youth seeking transition-related care are trans boys or nonbinary individuals assigned female at birth. Newer studies from countries like Norway and the UK have found that 5-10% of young patients stopped or reversed treatment. A Finnish study of trans adolescents noted a rise in detransition cases between 2018–2020, with numbers peaking at 10% (100% of whom were AFAB).

In a paper published May 2025 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Finnish researchers made an observation that the “number of detransitioners appears to be growing. Compared to a Swedish study in 2015 (Dhejne et al., 2011) where 15 people wanted to detransition during a 50-year period, in this study there were nine detransitioners in two years (2018-2019). The following year the number of detransitioners was even higher: nine in one year (2020).”

Rather than using this data to argue for bans, researchers stress it should be used to improve informed consent and patient support—not eliminate care. Most gender clinicians welcome research into detransition precisely because they want to better counsel and support trans and gender-diverse patients and avoid unnessary harm, or have people feel they were uninformed about all the possible realities of treatment.

Why People Detransition

Across my two recent studies involving around 950 people in Canada and the U.S. who detransitioned, most (~79%) were assigned female at birth and identified as lesbian, bisexual, queer, or nonbinary. (Some were currently trans with a history of temporary detransition and later retransition.) A small minority were born male, lived as trans women for many years, and now are gay or bisexual men. Many described changing feelings about gender, sexuality, or their bodies, negative side effects from hormones, or worsening mental health as reasons they stopped treatment. Some reconceptualized their gender dysphoria and transness as a temporary response to contextual distress, or reported that their ideas and values about gender changed over time. Others worried about health risks.

But crucially, many also cited external pressures: lack of family support, workplace discrimination, or the financial burden of continuing care or inability to access treatments they felt might help them to pass better. A few detransitioned due to laws restricting access to treatment, or fears of further restrictions. Some said their gender identity changed, but they still believed transitioning had helped them and they opposed bans on gender-affirming care.

This complexity is routinely erased in public debate. The Trump administration’s claim to want “more research” is contradicted by its actions—cutting $800 million in grant funding for LGBTQ+ health research, issuing subpoenas to gender clinicians, and elevating only one side of the conversation. Its politicization of detransition/regret through a narrow lens makes real research into those who have been hurt by this care harder, not easier. It adds to the stigma that detransitioners already face, and a feeling of a need to hide their experiences within LGBTQ+ communities out of fears of being in support of a right-wing agenda. This is what many people in my own research studies have told me.

The Double-Bind

This creates a troubling double-bind for researchers and providers. The same (often gender-critical/anti-trans) voices demanding data on treatment risks are using that data to attack providers and defund, restrict, or to criminalize care. On the other hand, ignoring or downplaying detransition or feelings of treatment harm out of fear of weaponization is ethically dubious. In medicine, a bioethical principal of “truth-telling” is essential—it fosters trust and supports informed decision-making in a field marked by some uncertainty in the evidence. Being upfront and honest is also essential for the public’s trust in gender-affirming healthcare and academic research.

But today, holding space for the full truth of trans medicine is no easy task.

One side celebrates the life-saving benefits of hormones and surgeries while rarely acknowledging that these treatments do not work for everyone. The other side denies that they help anyone at all (sometimes even asserting that trans people, or gender dysphoria, are simply not real). I know from reading research on trans care published over several decades (employing a range of different methods), and from simply looking at my own social network, that many trans people benefit from medical transition. But, some, indeed a minority, do not. I know people from my research and friends who I started my transition with back in the late 2000s who experienced regret, confusion, and even serious surgical complications before they decided to detransition. We cannot deny real experiences.

Moving Forward with Transparency and Integrity

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of researchers and healthcare providers to develop knowledge that maximizes benefit, minimizes harm, and supports long-term well-being of all LGBTQ+ people. That includes listening to those who thrive post-transition, and those who struggle.

It’s time to stop using individual stories as weapons in a culture war and instead treat them as what they are: data points in a complex, evolving medical field that must remain patient-centered, respectful of patient values in decision-making, and ethically grounded.

Detransition research is not a threat to trans healthcare—it is essential to remaining ethical and practiced with integrity.

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The One Percent newsletter I co-write with Pablo is the best place to learn more about the DARE study and related research.

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