Meet the author: Dr Az Hakeem on Detrans: When transition is not the solution

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Increasing numbers of people are identifying as belonging to a gender different to that of their biological sex. There’s a commonly held assumption that some people are ‘trans’ and ‘born into the wrong body’. Until the Cass Review at least, the presumption seemed to be for healthcare interventions to ‘affirm’ the person’s preferred gender and help them to transition, often in a physically irreversible way. But what if someone who makes a gender transition later changes their mind? What if they regret making irreversible physical changes to their body?

Dr Az Hakeem is one of the first clinicians to write about the modern explosion in trans identification from outside the ‘gender affirmative’ paradigm. In his new book, DETRANS: When transition is not the solution, he uses his background in providing psychiatry and psychotherapy services to adults who experience gender dysphoria to explore and give voice to the first-hand experiences of those detransitioners and desisters for whom gender transition was not the hoped-for solution or panacea.

A recent wave of high-profile detransitioners has given some public exposure to the fallibility of institutionally approved pathways to transition. The reality is that many can and do regret hormones and surgery. But this is still a largely hidden story, with too little public attention paid to those living with the consequences of irreversible medical interventions – including infertility, bone damage and loss of sexual sensation. Too often, such regrets and detransitioning itself are not even officially acknowledged. A reluctance to provide and collect post-operative statistics, and a lack of follow-up by the gender clinics that facilitate gender transition, has created a black hole in research and a lack of public understanding about any negative effects of gender medicine. Additionally, abuse and hostility aimed at those detransitioners brave enough to ‘come out’ has added to a silencing of these stories.

Critics of Dr Hakeem have accused him of everything from transphobic conversion therapy to exploiting a small number of harrowing stories for partisan ideological reasons. Others suggest such bleak stories are designed to create a climate of fear that will put off those seeking positive medical support for their dysphoria. In his defence, the book has been welcomed as bringing solace to anyone who has been harmed by medical transition.

Can offering such positive and practical approaches give patients, indeed their families, hope? More broadly, can public discussion of such taboo issues herald a more rational and less toxic climate in which to assess the pros and cons of medical gender controversies?

SPEAKERS
Dr Az Hakeem
consulting psychiatrist; author, Trans and Detrans

Ritchie Herron
writer, activist and advocate

Jennifer Lahl
founder, Center for Bioethics and Culture; program director, Genspect USA

CHAIR
Ceri Dingle
director, WORLDwrite and WORLDbytes