They deserve it. It seems like so many transphobes only want to recognize the existence of detransitioners to use them as a transphobic tool to support their close-minded worldview.
It honestly must be very scary for pro-trans detransitioners to speak on their experiences. They’ll get right-wing asshats pulling a “told you so” on them and also those same righties attempting to use them to push an agenda.
Not only that, but we need to support them. Going through detransition, even not considering the social issues that one might have in doing that, is a really tough thing, and I think we should acknowledge it.
It really strikes me as odd that some people think “transition wasn’t right for me, so therefore, it’s right for nobody!” is a valid argument.
I’d go as far to say that I find it so hard to believe that this argument is upheld in good faith to a point where I think most people who assert it know it makes no sense but feel the need to grasp at any straws they can to be transphobic.
It’s almost as if something called a “case-by-case basis” exists, but these people refuse to acknowledge it.
I even brought up the amount of satisfied post-transition trans people with my grandfather who has an obsession with sending me articles by transphobic detransitioners (so he can use the whole “take it from someone who actually did it: transition is wrong!” argument), to which he responds:
What gets me the most about people like my grandparents is that he simultaneously believes that transphobes like him are a silent majority to a point where he argues that everyone “secretly” agrees with his views on trans people, but he also wants to showcase a victim complex saying that people with his views are massively shunned by society when he expresses said views.
Make it make sense.
If you look at the data, the main reason why people detransition is not because “transition wasn’t right” for them.
Turban et al. found in 2021 that among the people who have detransitioned, the vast majority of them (82.5 %) cited external factors for detransitioning such as pressure from parents (35.6 %), other family members (25.9 %), partners (20.2 %) or friends (14.2 %), societal stigma (32.5 %), difficulty to get a job as a trans person (26.9 %) or pressure from employers (17.5 %) as opposed to 15.9 % citing internal factors with only 1 % citing not being able to identify with the gender they had transitioned to, 2.4 % having doubts about their gender and 10.5 % citing having fluctuations about their gender.
And I would even say that only that 1 % could fit in that definition of people who detransitioned because “transition wasn’t right for them”, as having doubts or fluctuations about their gender can mean something else (like transitioning to something else like non-binary or gender-fluid).
So the vast majority of people who have detransitioned did it because of how hard it was made by transphobes to live their lives as trans people, not because the transition wasn’t right for them.
It’s kind of a self-fulfilled prophecy where transphobes make trans people’s lives so hard that some of them are not able to bear with it anymore so they have to detransition and then transphobes say “see, they had to detransition because they regret having transitioned, hence transitioning is wrong”.
It’s the same kind of self-fulfilled prophecy as those LGBT±phobic people who say they wouldn’t want to have LGBT+ kids because they would be less happy, but the only ones trying to make LGBT+ people’s lives miserable are those phobes themselves.
Simple. The people making those types of arguments aren’t doing so in good faith. All they’re trying to do is twist any “evidence” to support their unsupportable opinion.