This might be my favorite part of that whole Vox article:
One of the most troubling recent trends in legacy media is that of allowing bad actors to weaponize the research around transgender identity. Eric Llaveria Caselles is a sociologist who analyzes neuroscience research about trans brains, and the author of an article examining biases in such research. His work concluded that “the historical oppression of trans people as epistemic agents” — that is, the refusal to listen to trans people as arbiters of their own lived experiences — was an underlying problem. But still — “I see how my article gets thrown around in social media from totally opposite positions in the debate,” Caselles said in an email. He told Vox that as a trans person and a trans studies scholar, he believes trans issues are sociocultural rather than a matter of science — but he sees little room for nuanced arguments in the current cultural conversation surrounding trans identity.
“The problem with this whole debate on the science on trans identity is that it plays into an instrumentalization of trans people’s existences,” Caselles said, “in order to mobilize a conservative anti-liberal sentiment.” He professed ambivalence about engaging with the debate on those terms, “but sadly, there is no other choice, since trans lives are at stake here.”
These sites spread several key tropes that still form the core of the anti-trans movement’s concern over children. First, the “detransition” myth: That trans kids will regret their decision later on and detransition. Research overwhelmingly shows that teens who transition rarely regret their decisions. Multiple large-scale studies have found that trans kids know they’re trans from a young age and nearly 95 percent remain committed to their transition years later; one large, 50-year study conducted in Sweden found that only about 2 percent ever express regret.
read the actual study
The regret rate defined as application for reversal of the legal gender status among those who were sex reassigned was 2.2% for the whole period 1960–2010 with no significant sex difference.
(referring to cases of physical reassignment, not all trans people who had their legal documents changed)
they even define the applications as "regret applications" to add extra oomph behind the claim
they didn't actually ask anyone whether they regretted it, whether they felt like there was no going back from their new body, whether they were tired of the whole thing and didn't want to go through further medical procedures, or if they felt pressure to stay as they are from their community to help normalize it for others
how many trans people decided not to get surgery but continue living as trans anyway, and don't regret
not getting the surgery?
Vox also emphasized the validity of the study because omg it's a
50 YEAR STUDY except it only covered 681 people from 1960 to 2010, because the practice was underground and more medically dubious in those times, and by contrast the entire movement kicked into high gear around 2013
https://journals.lww.com/cur/fulltext/2021/03000/transgender_surgery___knowledge_gap_among.12.aspxThere are about 9000 transgender surgeries being performed annually across the United States (US). The latest statistics indicate that 0.6% of the US population identifies as transgender.[1] About 10.9% of medical encounters of transsexualism result in gender-affirming surgeries.[2] There is a steady rise in the number of sex change surgeries being performed annually, with a total 8304 in 2017 to a total of 9576 in 2018, with 2885 of male to female surgeries and 6691 of female to male surgeries.[3]
maybe we need more recent studies on these thousands upon thousands of people? maybe we can actually ask them how they feel this time?
At minimum, the presence of a small number of kids who detransition is irrelevant to most medical concerns — they shouldn’t prevent affirmative care for the ones who do want to transition.
so when something is dangerous and there's a low chance it could cause serious and permanent harm, what do we usually do under those circumstances
like say what if there was a pandemic that has a really low chance of killing you, like only 1%, how should we deal with something like that
