Fact check: Are most detransitions due to external pressure?

[Houseman]

The claim: "Most people who detransition do so because of external pressure!"

My verdict: unsupported.
The data comes from currently-transgender people who were surveyed, meaning they detransitioned at one point in their life, but still identify as trans. The survey does include results from people who fully detransitioned, who now happily identify as cisgender, and who have no desire to ever change that.


The claim is based on this study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8213007/.
The conclusion states: "Among TGD adults with a reported history of detransition, the vast majority reported that their detransition was driven by external pressures. "

This study is based on a survey from 2015.

Here is the report of that survey: https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS Full Report - FINAL 1.6.17.pdf

If you scroll down to the bottom of that (page 256 using a pdf viewer, page 252 otherwise), it includes the original questions that make up the survey. Notice that it has the following disqualifying questions:

[Respondents who answered “No” to 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.14, 1.16, 1.17,
and 1.18 were sent to disqualification page #1.]

Here are those questions:

1.10 Do you think of yourself as transgender?

1.11 Do you identify as more than one gender or as no gender
(such as genderqueer or non-binary)?

1.12 Do you currently live full-time in a gender that is different
from the one assigned to you at birth

1.14 Someday do you want to live full-time in a gender that is
different from the one assigned to you at birth?

1.16 Have you seriously thought about living in a gender that
is different from the one assigned to you at birth (transitioning
gender)?

1.17 Do you consider yourself to be a cross-dresser?

1.18 Do you live part of the time in one gender and part of the
time in another gender?

If you answer "No" to all of these questions, you are excluded from the survey.

Someone who is happily detransitioned and who now identifies as cisgender with no plans on going back would answer no to these questions.

1.16 is the only ambiguous question that a happy detransitioner might answer "yes" to, based on how they interpret the question. However, if we look at the study linked above, it recognizes this in the Strengths and limitations section:

Because the USTS only surveyed currently TGD-identified people, our study does not offer insights into reasons for detransition in previously TGD-identified people who currently identify as cisgender.

This is clear and unambiguous. Both the survey and the study exclude people who currently identify as cisgender.

So no data was collected from people who detransitioned. The data collected only comes from people who detransitioned at one point in the past, but since then they have re-transitioned and now currently identify as transgender.

This supports my verdict. The data does not support the claim that most who detransition do so because of external pressure. We don't know why many people detransitioned because we excluded them from the survey.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

This should become a thing on this site. Fact-checking.

 

[Arnox]

Fair enough. One thing I do want surveyed though is, among those who detransitioned, how many started their transition at, say... ages 10-18, including at 18, as opposed to all later ages? I honestly think that the vast majority of detransitioners were those who thought transitioning would fix their issues that weren't actually gender dysphoria while they were in high school/middle school.

 

[Houseman]

Many others have used this survey and study to make similar claims about the (non-) efficacy of certain treatments too, such as talk-based "conversion therapy", such as the following:

An assessment of the evidence on conversion therapy for sexual orientation and gender identity

www.gov.uk

They use this survey to say that "conversion therapy", when it is talk therapy, doesn't work to change one's gender identity, using the results of this same USTS 2015 survey. These studies have the same limitation as above. You cannot conclude that a treatment doesn't work by excluding all cases where it did work from the results.