1. Fear of career damage keeps scientists quiet
Several people who tried to study detransition say they were warned that even asking the question could end their jobs. A therapist who lives the experience every day writes: “It would be a career ender for me to be truly open… I have heard how difficult it has been for others to publish their findings because people don’t want to hear it.” – TeaLadyGreyHot source [citation:5ee1935d-7e0b-4673-b0e9-40d45834613b] When universities and journals believe the topic is “politically incorrect,” the work is simply blocked, so the public never sees the data.

2. Detransitioners are dropped from the very studies that should count them
People who change their minds often find that the clinic or researcher who was eager to track them during transition suddenly loses interest. One woman recounts: “When I told my gender ‘therapist’… that I am probably just a woman… the ‘treatment’ ended immediately and I was never contacted for the follow-up of the study I was in.” – Crocheted-tiger source [citation:8b0a2df6-17c9-4112-8633-6a5456af7b84] If everyone who stops identifying as trans is removed from the dataset, the published satisfaction rates can’t help but look artificially high.

3. Narrow definitions hide most cases of regret
Current papers usually count only people who undo a legal name change or have “reverse surgery.” As one detrans man points out: “How many people here fall into any of these categories? I would say damn few… The truth is we don’t know the number who detransition because the activists don’t want people to know.” – tole_chandelier source [citation:05a99183-d8b8-4c22-a703-779304a0382b] By ignoring the far larger group who simply stop hormones, change clothes, and quietly return to living as their birth sex, the research erases the very population it claims to study.

4. Self-censorship finishes the job that outside pressure starts
Even when data are collected, some investigators admit they are afraid to publish anything that contradicts the idea that transition always helps. The same therapist quoted earlier notes that a well-known U.S. doctor “is withholding results from a federally funded study” because the numbers might not fit expectations. When scientists bury their own findings, the gap in the medical literature grows wider.

Taken together, these stories show that the apparent “lack of evidence” for widespread regret is not a neutral scientific discovery; it is the product of silencing, selective counting, and institutional fear. Real people—many of them gender-non-conforming women and men—are learning that they can live comfortably without hormones or surgery, yet their voices are missing from the official record. Honest research, long-term follow-up, and open conversation are the only ways to give future patients the full picture and to affirm that self-understanding, therapy, and community support can resolve distress without lifelong medicalization.