77 — Desistance Pt 1 — Accepting Reality: Now vs Then

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.6 • 961 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series on desistance. The difference between desistance and detransition is quite stark and in this episode, Sasha and Stella focus on the complex experience of desistance. How might a child come to desist? What facilitates or hinders this process, and what complicated feelings go along with this experience? Sasha and Stella also discuss the changes that have arisen in recent years and how compared to previous generations, society today responds very differently to children with gender dysphoria. In the next episode on desistance, EP 80, Sasha and Stella will help answer the question: How can I tell if my ROGD child may be desisting?

Links:

Cantor’s analysis of the desistance literature:

http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

Follow-up study of boys with Gender Identity Disorder:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784/full

Extended Notes

The word desistance means a person no longer wants to transition.
Stella shares her journey of feeling as if she was a girl and also a boy.
It can be horrifying when people don’t understand how one feels about their gender.
Attempting to will yourself into a new reality.
With puberty comes consciousness of reality.
For thousands of years, people repressed their sexuality and gender and lived a lie.
Growing up in today’s technology-driven world is vastly different from being a teen in the past.
There is a correlation between gender non-conforming children and being gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual.
A 2021 study showed that 80% of dysphoric boys desisted and 64% were gay.
Stella shares her thoughts on This Is How It Always Is: A Novel by Laurie Frankel.
Desistance does happen and often teens are grateful they didn’t make permanent changes.
Desistance requires a reckoning.
Gender issues have been polarized in political realms.
Stella wanted to be powerful and feminine when she was 17.
A person’s peer group can make it easier or harder for them to desist.
People flip-flop their identities all the time.
Taking a deeper look into fluidity between identities.
Navigating the shame that can accompany questioning gender identity.
Desistance can be a coming-of-age process.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to gender, a wider lens.
0:04.0	I'm Stella O'Malley, a psychotherapist in Ireland.
0:06.5	And I'm Sasha Ayad, an adolescent therapist in the United States.
0:10.6	Since 2016, my practice has been exclusively dedicated to gender questioning teens
0:16.1	and families impacted by gender dysphoria.
0:19.0	I also work with gender questioning teenagers and I facilitated support meetings for families and
0:24.2	individuals who have been impacted by gender issues. We're curious about the
0:28.0	concept of gender and how it's unfolding in the wider culture. Join us as we look at gender through a wider lens.
0:35.0	Hi Stella, how you Sasha, how's it going?
0:40.0	Things are going okay. How are you? good not a brother we're gonna talk
0:46.9	about you a lot today I think in this episode because we're we're gonna talk
0:51.6	about desistance you know we've been covering detransition in a couple of recent episodes,
0:57.2	and we wanted to give some space to the desistance experience because I think there are a lot of differences.
1:05.0	I think there's a big debate about whether or not kids do desist and the landscape has changed a lot.
1:12.0	So we have research, we a lot so we have research we have papers we have anecdotal evidence and we have a lot of personal stories including your story of desistance before anyone was even talking about trans kids.
1:25.0	But before it was even a word, because I remember when I came across the word
1:29.4	desistance, I was like, what's desistance? And then they explained, oh it was like oh oh that's what happened to me because I didn't actually know the word this is like 2017 I didn't know what desistance meant so it means effectively that you no longer want to transition or you no longer want to be the
1:47.6	opposite sex or you no longer want to be and it can it can emerge in many different ways and it's very hard for me to like remember exactly
1:59.2	how it emerged for me but yes some people would be like oh my God she's going to repeat this story
2:04.6	again. Has she no shame? The answer is no she hasn't. It turns out I have no shame. But it does give me it does I do remember it I do remember it I do remember it
2:17.0	I do remember feeling like I was all sorted in life I should be a boy and it was quite clear that's the way it should be and you know God was in his
2:26.4	Heaven and I should be a boy and then life rolled on and it was easy and I think people forget how easy it is when you're three, four, five and six.
	...

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