The largest-ever survey of trans Americans reaffirms what the trans community has been saying for ages: trans people who go back to living as their sex assigned at birth do so because of transphobia, not because of doubts about gender or transition.
Approximately 92,329 binary and nonbinary trans Americans aged 16 and older — including 84,170 adults — participated in the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey (USTS), which was spearheaded by the trans rights organization Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE). Researchers then used survey findings to compile a trans health report titled “Health and Wellbeing: Findings from the 2022 US Trans Survey.”
Only 9% of respondents said that they had gone back to living as their sex assigned at birth at some point in their lives. Of that 9%, the most common reason for doing so was that it was “just too hard to be trans in my community” (41%). Meanwhile, 37% cited pressure from a parent, 24% cited pressure from other family members, and 33% cited facing too much harassment or discrimination for being trans.
“Social and structural explanations dominated the reasons why respondents reported going back to living in their sex assigned at birth,” the report reads. “[...] Only 4% of people who went back to living in their sex assigned at birth for a while cited that their reason was because they realized that gender transition was not for them. When considering all respondents who had transitioned, this number equates to only 0.36%.”
That could include folks who continued medical transition but chose to boymode or girlmode over a summer holiday or until finding a more inclusive work environment.
That’s often how transphobes define detransition, because they have to juke every stat they can. (Not saying that’s why the authors are doing it, but they are probably having to navigate a scene filled with data based on that) When bigots say X% detransition, they don’t mention the *re-*transition that many go through, or that many detransitioners don’t “return” to their birth sex identity because they never had a binary gender identity to begin with.
By their definition I’ve detransitioned before when I was off hormones and not making an effort at presenting as male, but it was 100% situational and I knew it was a temporary thing while it was happening.
Transphobes intentionally muddy the water by letting people assume that the colloquial definition most people use—deciding you aren’t transgender and that you want to return to your birth sex—is the same one they’re using. But it’s absolutely not.