Spotting Anti-Trans Media Bias on Detransition



While most people who transition are happy with the outcome, a small percentage (likely in the 1 to 3 percent range; detailed below) may later choose to stop their transitions or take steps to retransition back to their birth-assigned gender. These individuals are often referred to as “detransitioners” or “detrans” people, although not everyone identifies with those labels. Their experiences are quite diverse: some detransition for more visceral or personal reasons, while others do so as a result of pressure from family members or societal transphobia; some regret their decisions to transition while others do not; some stop identifying as trans altogether, while others adopt different identities (e.g., nonbinary) and/or continue to participate in trans communities; some detransition permanently, while others may retransition at a later date (Turban et al., 2021; MacKinnon et al., 2022).

Despite this diversity, mainstream media outlets only seem to tell one particular detransition story: The individual in question is framed as someone who is actually cisgender, but who briefly thought they were transgender, and after transitioning they realized they had made a horrible mistake. Often, an emphasis is placed on the “irreversible changes” that accompanied their transitions, which audiences are likely to interpret as “disfiguring” or “life ending” (MacKinnon et al., 2021). While the vast majority of actual detransition stories do not fit this “mistaken and regretted transition” narrative, it seems to be the story that journalists most want to tell and that audiences most want to hear.So why is the “mistaken and regretted transition” narrative so popular with journalists and audiences alike? Well, there are several interrelated reasons. First, as I discuss in my book Whipping Girl (pp.77–89), cisgender people tend to have a difficult time relating to transgender people’s experiences with gender identity and gender dysphoria, so they instead presume that we must be merely “confused” or “deluded” cisgender people.