Ky Schevers

There are a handful of case studies of people with gender dysphoria being treated with therapy instead of transition but most of these people were judged be different from " true transsexuals" and there was almost never long-term follow-up.

Even shrinks who were convinced trans people were mentally ill and wanted to "cure" us all with therapy had to admit therapy rarely worked and that medical transition was the only thing that helped some of their patients. They blamed us for being "too crazy" to be "cured".

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.

I find the conflation that goes on between social and medical transition a pretty weird thing in all of this. E.g. the references you made to pronouns - trans people were using alternate gender pronouns and appearance and living cross gender lives in the middle ages.