Detrans Community

r/detrans is an English-language forum on the Reddit platform for people who have stopped or reversed a transition. The forum has existed since 2017 and, according to its own description, welcomes detransitioners, desisters, and people who are questioning their transition.

The main article on this subject is Detransition Platforms and Community.

According to an external index of online communities, the forum has several tens of thousands of members, approximately 65,000. That figure says something about the level of interest, not about the number of people who have actually reversed a transition: people who only read along also count as members.

What You Can Find There

Members post personal stories, questions about stopping hormones, physical and psychological effects, and practical matters such as changing their name and documents again. Participants are asked to indicate their own situation with a label next to their username, so it is clear what experience they are writing from.

Origins and Growth

According to descriptions of the forum, it was created in November 2017 and grew from approximately one hundred to more than 21,000 members in four years. The index on which the current membership figure is based reports that around 7,000 members joined over the past year. In a 2019 poll of members, approximately one-third of participants said they were desisters or detransitioners themselves. This confirms that membership numbers are not a measure of how many people have personal experience.

Rules and Organization

Anyone who posts without a label indicating their own situation risks having their contribution removed. Medical and legal professionals can ask the moderators for an exception. Posts are assigned a category, such as a request for advice, an expression of frustration, a timeline of one’s own detransition, a question, or a discussion. In addition to the forum, there is a chat environment on Discord. Most posts concern transition, detransition, gender, and gender dysphoria.

Relationship to Research

The fact that experiences are mainly shared online is consistent with what research shows. A 2023 critical review of the literature states that 76 percent of participants in a survey by Lisa Littman had not informed their original provider about their detransition. Clinics therefore see only part of this group. Filmed personal accounts can be found in this archive under The Detransition Diaries.

Why It Is Included in This Archive

The forum is one of the largest public collections of experiences with detransition. The contributions are anonymous and cannot be verified; they are not a scientific source, but they do provide insight into the questions people may face after a transition.