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2. The risk to LGB* youth is evident from the stories of detransitioners

To create safe policy, it will be necessary for the APS working group to review studies and accounts of detransitioners. Amongst them are young people who came to realise they were lesbian, gay or bisexual. For LGB* youth, their experience of gender non-conformance and dysphoria was seen, at the time of their transition, by themselves and by health professionals through a single lens of transgender identity. A common theme is that clinicians showed little or insufficient interest in complex issues.

 

Given current APS policy and dominant one-size-fits-all narrative, it is hard for us to have confidence that LGB people will be safe exploring gender issues with APS psychologists. We urge your taskforce to commit to learning how LGB people experience gender incongruence and dysphoria.

 

We ask APS to examine:

  • The account of Kiera Bell, a gender nonconforming, same sex attracted teenager who regrets mastectomy and changes to her body.  Note how adults around her interpreted her gender nonconformity as being a sign that she could be trans. 
     

  • Please watch this video in which a detransitioned woman shares her story: “When I was a kid, I never saw a butch woman...a woman I could ever imagine myself being. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have gone down the path I did. Maybe being female wouldn’t have been a source of so much pain for me”.
     

  • Lisa Marchiano’s article The Ranks of Gender Detransitioners are growing. We need to understand why. Note the issues for lesbians.
     

  • A conversation with Carol will help you understand how the straitjacket of gender stereotypes contributes to dysphoria for butch lesbians of any age.
     

  • Meet Lauren Black “I am a butch lesbian. I live with gender dysphoria. I do not believe my deep discomfort with my female body means that I should take steps to change it”- one of the stories in Gender Dysphoria Alliance. 
     

  • Transman Aaron Kimberley’s reflections in ‘When we were butch’
     

  • “what have we done? Have we eliminated all of the conditions for why a butch girl would find their innate masculinity hard to live with? Have we made the lives of butch women better and safer?”
     

  • Dysphoria is so GAY! With Arty and Robbie  Two transmen explore gender dysphoria with two gay men who believe they would be on a transition track if growing up today. One of the excellent episodes on Transparency Podcast
     

  • Feminine Boy to Gay Man Two therapists interview Arty Morty about growing up on as a very feminine boy. From Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast

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