This felt inevitable

So, on December 4th, the National Post front page had a story lede that claimed a 16 year old girl transitioned after two quick doctor's appointments and then regretted it.

Turns out, as you read the story, that one had multiple appointments, more than two, and finally received HRT and surgical intervention at the age of 21, after therapy. They were not a child when they made the critical decisions.

The other doesn't even speak, the assertions are made by their mother (who has a clear agenda) and no actual evidence is given. Many detransition from lack of support and social pressure, so we can guess where this one was.

Nevertheless, the unethical lede on the front page feels like an almost inevitable fallout from Bill C-4 to prevent conversion therapy. Most right-wing organizations have accepted that they're not going to win on that with respect to sexual orientation, but they are desperately trying to maintain conversion therapy for trans people.

We've seen this before. Every time a government in Canada works to provide protections for trans and gender nonconforming people, the right-wing media (and often left-wing) descend into a feeding frenzy in an attempt to halt it. They did it in 2016 and 2017 to prevent alterations to the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to prevent discrimination and they're doing it now to try and keep the ability to torture trans people (yes, I used a strong term, "conversion therapy" is torture).

This is what we face. They trot out detransitioners as proof that transgender healthcare doesn't work, but they don't address the reasons behind detransition nor do they address that regret rates on GCS are significantly lower than the regrets of most common surgicial procedures on cis people. Detransitioners deserve love and support in their decision, but that they regret is not a reason to attack a process that has shown to be overwhelmingly good for trans people.

I get that people can't wrap their heads around what it means to be trans. I get it. For the vast majority of people, this is really hard to comprehend because they don't experience it. That doesn't mean that what we experience isn't real and vital to us and we would very much appreciate it if the cis stopped trying to gatekeep us.