Ky Schevers

In detrans communities, you have people giving testimonials about "alternative treatments" for dysphoria but a lot of these detrans people are very ideological. Some online groups for detrans people don't allow people to recommend or support anything "trans affirming".

In some of the forums for detrans women I used to belong to, you had to use female pronouns for anyone, you couldn't say anything supportive of identifying as trans or transitioning and "reconciling with being female" was the only accepted way to deal with dysphoria.

These spaces framed being trans and transitioning as forms of self-destruction and something like an addiction. Supporting someone's trans identity would be seen as encouraging self-harm.

When I started having doubts about my detransition, I didn't feel safe discussing them with other detrans women because of such community norms. I didn't feel like people ever considered that these "alternative treatments" could not work or even be harmful.

I don't think all "alternative treatments for gender dysphoria" are necessarily bullshit or harmful. Some seem to work for some people but there's no research into how effective they are, how they compare to medical transition, what the long term effects are, possible risks, etc.

Some of what I tried when I was detrans did help but it didn't make me not trans. Different treatments are going to work with different kinds of dysphoria. Sometimes medical transition is the best option, sometimes psychological treatments work better, sometimes both work best.

Having a range of treatments for gender dysphoria makes sense because people are different and what works for one person is not going to work for another. Detrans people probably have found ways to treat some kinds of dysphoria but they're not going to work for everyone.

And it would be good to actually study this, learn more about different kinds of dysphoria and what works best to alleviate them, rather than going on testimonials and other anecdotal information. Right now, "alternative treatments" are more experimental than transition.