In October 2023, Italian trans activist Francesco Cicconetti published a YouTube video with the title Persone transgender e la detransizione, transgender people and detransition.

In his video, Cicconetti points out that one often hears about detransition from anti-trans propaganda which presents the topic as either a warning for an “epidemic” among the trans community, where they make it seem like thousands of people regret their transition, or they use the topic to justify limitations to gender-affirming care. “Advocates say that media coverage around transgender issues, and the public discourse it generates, can have a real-life impact on the lives of transgender people” (Knox, 2019).

In this essay, I will use Cicconetti’s YouTube video as the starting point of a discussion on the topic of detransition and retransition. The research question that I pose in this work is What are current practices, discourses and experiences around the meaning of retransitioning and detransitioning? To start, I will talk about the different definitions of detransition, and I will explain why I am using both the terms retransition and detransition in my essay.

In addition, I will look at the causes of de and re-transition to investigate if regret is the main and only reason why people de- or retransition, as anti-trans politics wants us to believe. Finally, I will look at how the binary system of gender has affected and is affecting trans individuals and the process of transitioning.