What desistance means

Desistance: ceasing to identify as transgender, or ceasing to experience gender dysphoria, without having gone through medical transition. The word comes from the clinical follow-up literature on gender-dysphoric children, where a child whose distress about their sex faded by adolescence or adulthood was called a desister and one whose distress continued a persister (Singh, Bradley & Zucker 2021). Today the word is also used by adolescents and adults who identified as trans for months or years, often socially transitioned, and then stopped before hormones or surgery.

On /r/detrans the working definition is simple:

Desist: someone who identified as trans (potentially socially transitioned) but never underwent a medical transition and decided to re-identify with their birth sex would be described as someone who has “desisted” — warpdusted, detrans female

The terms overlap. Many people use desistance to mean the change of identity and detransition to mean the reversal of steps taken, which makes every detransitioner also a desister but not the other way round:

My perception of it is that all detransitioners are desisters but not all desisters are detransitioners. — goodnewsbees, self-described desister

This page goes deeper on desistance specifically: the childhood studies and the fight over them, what the thin adolescent data show, what seems to predict persistence, the strong link with same-sex attraction, and how desisters themselves describe the change. For the wider picture of reasons, rates and life after medical transition, see the detransition overview and transition regret.

Desistance in childhood: the follow-up studies

Between the 1970s and the 2010s, clinics in Toronto and Amsterdam followed children referred for gender identity problems into adolescence or adulthood. These studies were done before early social transition and puberty blockers became routine, so they give the best available picture of what happens when childhood gender dysphoria is left to develop on its own.

(Drummond et al. 2008; Wallien & Cohen-Kettenis 2008; Steensma et al. 2013; Singh et al. 2021)

The Singh study is the largest. Of 139 boys seen between 1975 and 2009, 17 (12.2%) still had gender dysphoria at follow-up and 122 (87.8%) did not. Only one boy in the sample had socially transitioned before puberty; the authors point out that their data come from a period when this was not recommended, and that this limits how far the findings carry to clinics where early social transition is now common (Singh et al. 2021). A narrative review by Christina Butler and Anna Hutchinson summarises reported childhood desistance rates as spanning roughly 73% to 98%, while warning that today's patients differ sharply from those earlier cohorts: more adolescents, more girls, more autism and mental illness, and more who arrive already socially transitioned (Butler & Hutchinson 2020). The DSM-5 (the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) itself gives persistence ranges of 2.2–30% for boys and 12–50% for girls (Zucker 2018).

The methodological fight

These numbers are among the most fought-over in the field. In 2018 Julia Temple Newhook and colleagues published a critique of the four best-known studies, arguing that they (Temple Newhook et al. 2018):

• Mixed gender-non-conforming children with gender-dysphoric ones. Older diagnostic criteria (DSM-III, III-R and IV) could be met largely through cross-sex behaviour and play, and a third or more of children in some samples were "subthreshold", never meeting full criteria.
• Counted people lost to follow-up as desisters, inflating the rate.
• Treated a later non-trans identity as more authentic than the child's earlier statements.

Alongside this critique sits a clinical rule of thumb popularised by the gender-affirmative model: a child who is "insistent, persistent and consistent" about a cross-sex identity is likely to stay trans, and should be supported to socially transition (SF Chronicle 2017). The phrase does not come from any diagnostic manual and has no published threshold for how insistent, for how long, or for which step.

The researchers answered back, and the data do not support all of the critique. Kenneth Zucker showed that some critics' figures came from dividing desisters by everyone eligible rather than everyone assessed — turning Drummond's 88% into 59%, as if every untraced girl had persisted (Zucker 2018). The Amsterdam team did not simply assume non-returners had desisted; they contacted most of them (Singal). Most importantly, in the Singh study children who met full diagnostic criteria persisted at 13.6% and subthreshold children at 9.8% — not a significant difference (Singh et al. 2021). If the high desistance rate were an artefact of including merely "tomboyish" or "girlish" children, the fully diagnosed group should have persisted far more often. It did not.

What predicts persistence?

The same studies tried to tell persisters from desisters early. The most consistent findings:

• Intensity. Children with more extreme cross-sex behaviour and distress were more likely to persist (Wallien & Cohen-Kettenis 2008; Steensma et al. 2013; Singh et al. 2021).
• Being versus wishing. In the Amsterdam data, children who said they were the other sex were more likely to persist than those who said they wished to be; desisters later described themselves as girlish boys or boyish girls who only wished they were the other sex (Steensma et al. 2013).
• Age and sex. Older age at assessment predicted persistence, and girls persisted more often than boys (Steensma et al. 2013). Singh et al. also found lower social class predicted persistence (Singh et al. 2021).
• Social transition. Having made a partial or full social role transition in childhood was associated with persistence in the Amsterdam sample, with the predictors differing between boys and girls (Steensma et al. 2013).

Psychological functioning and peer relationships did not predict persistence (Steensma et al. 2013).

The social transition finding is the most contested. Trans-affirming writers argue that social transition is a marker of more intense dysphoria, not a cause of persistence (Jones 2022). Critics argue that living full-time as the other sex, with a new name and pronouns, rehearses an identity until it hardens. Compare the two eras: in the older studies, where almost no child socially transitioned, most desisted. In a modern US cohort of 317 children who socially transitioned at around age 8, only 7.3% had changed identity at least once five years later, and 94% still identified as binary transgender (Olson et al. 2022). The samples differ in too many ways to prove that social transition caused the gap. But the gap itself is large, and it is the reason the Cass Review — the 2024 independent review of NHS gender services for young people in England, led by paediatrician Hilary Cass — recommended that decisions about social transition in pre-pubertal children involve experienced clinicians early, rather than being treated as a neutral, cost-free step.

The puberty window

A qualitative follow-up of 25 Amsterdam adolescents found that both persisters and desisters pointed to ages 10 to 13 as the turning point. Three things moved them one way or the other: changes in their social environment, the anticipated and actual changes of puberty, and the first experiences of falling in love and sexual attraction (Steensma et al. 2011).

That finding matters for puberty blockers. If puberty and emerging sexuality are part of what resolves childhood dysphoria, pausing puberty may also pause the process that leads most children to desist. In the Norwegian national cohort of 1,258 referred young people, 97% of those who started blockers went on to cross-sex hormones (Nyquist et al. 2025, retracted 2026) — consistent with blockers working less as a "pause to think" than as the first step on a track. Some young people do step off that track:

at 13 or 14 I started taking puberty blockers with the intention of transitioning. I was on them for a while, but I eventually quit. Soon after I dropped the whole transitioning idea, and now feel comfortable as a man. — skibididibididoo, desisted male

Desistance and same-sex attraction

The single strongest pattern in the desistance literature is its link with homosexuality. In the Toronto boys' study, nearly two-thirds of participants with fantasy data were attracted to males or to both sexes (Singh et al. 2021); in the Toronto girls' study, rates of bisexual or lesbian orientation were far above population base rates (Drummond et al. 2008); in Amsterdam, half the desisting boys were gay or bisexual (Wallien & Cohen-Kettenis 2008). Among young adults who had stopped identifying as trans, 43% of the women were exclusively homosexual (Littman et al. 2024), and 23% of Littman's detransitioners cited difficulty accepting same-sex attraction as a reason they had transitioned (Littman 2021). Even in a general population sample, wishing to be the other sex in adolescence — whether it faded or grew — was associated with a non-heterosexual orientation by age 22 (Rawee et al. 2024).

Put plainly: for many children, cross-sex identification looks like an early form of being gay. A boy who loves dolls and girls' company, or a girl who refuses dresses and plays rough, often grows up to be a gay man or a lesbian rather than a trans adult — if the identity is allowed to develop. Desisters on /r/detrans describe recognising this, sometimes alongside the internalised homophobia that made a trans identity feel safer:

I think it was a slow realisation that I was so afraid of being a lesbian, that I’d pushed myself into being trans. … After a lot of thought, I realised that I did not want and had never wanted testosterone — alexisntedgytho, desister

I just felt ashamed of being gay so I tried convincing myself that I was trans … it just made it even more clear that I was just a guy who likes guys. — Right_Conversation77, desisted male

No, I had plenty of access and could have absolutely transitioned, but I realized I’m a cis lesbian, not a man. — avow0fsilence, desisted female

This is why many gay and lesbian critics worry about early transition. If many gender-dysphoric children would grow up gay, a pathway that medicalises them before puberty risks turning future gay adults into trans patients. It is also why the finding is politically uncomfortable on all sides: it suggests homophobia, not only transphobia, sits underneath part of the distress. The link is a strong statistical pattern, not a rule — some desisters are heterosexual, and some persisters are gay or bisexual too.

Desistance in adolescents

The modern patient is no longer the young child of the old studies but a teenager, most often a girl, whose distress began around or after puberty (Butler & Hutchinson 2020). For this group there are no long-term desistance studies comparable to the childhood ones, and what exists is indirect.

• Clinic discharges. In the Norwegian cohort, 22% of young people who attended at least one appointment were discharged without any medical treatment, most often because of mental health concerns. The authors could not separate childhood-onset from adolescent-onset cases, and note that people who stop treatment are likely to be lost to follow-up (Nyquist et al. 2025, retracted 2026).
• Changed requests. A 2024 systematic review found that between 0.8% and 7.4% of young people changed their request before any treatment began, while warning that the studies were small, short and used inconsistent definitions (Feigerlova 2025).
• Population data. A Dutch study following 2,772 young people from age 11 to 26 found that 11% said they wished to be the other sex in early adolescence, falling to 4% by about age 26. Most of those who had the wish saw it fade (19% of the whole sample); only 2% showed an increasing trajectory (Rawee et al. 2024). This is a single survey item, not a diagnosis, but it shows that wanting to be the other sex during adolescence usually passes.
• Is teenage dysphoria "highly persistent"? Clinicians often claim that dysphoria which survives into puberty almost never resolves. The philosopher Alex Byrne reviewed the evidence for that claim in 2024 and concluded it is not well supported (Byrne 2024).

The best direct portrait of desisting young people comes from a survey of 78 US adults aged 18–33 who had stopped identifying as transgender for at least six months. They had first identified as trans at an average age of 17.1 and kept the identity for 5.4 years; 83% had taken several social steps but 32% had taken no medical steps. Fewer than 17% met criteria for childhood gender dysphoria, 53% felt rapid-onset gender dysphoria (a contested hypothesis that a trans identity can appear suddenly in adolescence, often amid peer influence) described them, and 95% had at least one psychiatric diagnosis, mostly preceding their trans identity. The most common reasons for leaving the identity were internal — their own thinking changing — and they reported large drops in dysphoria and self-harm afterwards (Littman et al. 2024). The sample was self-selected, 91% female and recruited partly through /r/detrans, so it describes a group, not a rate.

I have realised that at age 15 I knew nothing about me and everything was confusing because of hormones and bad mental health. I am so glad that I didn't do anything that I could have (and now would have) regretted. — neacalathea, desisted female

Desistance in adults who never medicalised

Desistance is not only a childhood or teenage phenomenon. Adults who identified as trans or non-binary through their twenties or later — sometimes living socially transitioned for years — also let the identity go. Nobody counts them. They never enter a gender clinic's records, they don't stop a prescription, and surveys of trans people by design exclude anyone who no longer identifies as trans. As one review puts it, the detransition rate is unknown (Cohn 2023) — and the desistance rate among adults is even less known.

i don’t think anyone is keeping track of all the people who quit hormones and therapy and never go back … like half my trans friend group from college desisted. no one is keeping track of that. — portaux, desisted

That is one person's friend group, not a statistic — but it points to the structural problem. Desisters are the group whose existence most directly tests the claim that a trans identity reveals a fixed inner truth, and they are also the group least able to be studied.

How and why desisters stopped identifying as trans

The accounts on /r/detrans are self-selected and can't say how common any route is, but several recurring themes stand out.

Re-examining the theory, not just the feelings

Many desisters describe the turning point as intellectual: they did not stop feeling distress, they stopped believing that distress proved they were the other sex.

I truly felt that I was trans, I was dysphoric, I read tons of gender theory … No one pressured me to transition. But, I was exposed to the philosophy that dysphoria makes you trans and that you are whatever gender you "feel like" at a young and impressionable age. It wasn't until around age 22-23 that I really examined that and determined it didn't make sense to me. — novaskyd, desisted female

Separating sex from stereotypes

Another common thread is realising that "feeling like a man" or "feeling like a woman" had meant identifying with sex stereotypes — and that one can simply be a masculine woman or a feminine man. This is the core of gender non-conformity without labels and of the critique of gender stereotypes.

As soon as I got away from all that—took a break from trans social groups, social media, and social norms in general—I realized all of my “dysphoria” was coming from my lack of adherence to those strict gender roles. — apocaIypseArisen, desisted female

For me being GNC is just how I am and how I've always felt most comfortable. The reason I'm no longer trans is because I realized that being the way I am doesn't mean being a woman. — HeForeverBleeds, desisted male

Desisters also question the "signs from childhood" that are often used to confirm a trans identity in hindsight:

i really did wish i was a boy sometimes when i was a child. but so what? i also wished i was naruto. does that make me naruto? i was a kid. — portaux, desisted

Finding the other causes

As in detransition, many desisters trace their distress to something else: puberty itself, sexualisation, trauma, internalised misogyny, OCD, or autism.

the realization that my nonbinary identity was a combination of 1. being autistic and not understanding gender, and 2. trying to escape being sexualized by men. I finally came to understand that there are other woman who feel like me, it doesn’t make me special or a secret third thing. — Alienthrowaway1320, desisted female

Living with dysphoria that doesn't vanish

Desistance does not always mean the dysphoria goes away. Some desisters, especially men, describe deciding that transition is not a healthy way to manage a distress that remains:

If there's anyone transitioning would be healthy for, it would be me. I've got dysphoria pouring out my ears. … It's just not a healthy way of handling dysphoria. I firmly believe that. … Desisting is hard, especially with people constantly pushing the idea of transitioning on you, but it gets easier over time. — SuperIsaiah, desisted male

Others found that dysphoria rose and fell, and eased once the plans to transition were dropped and the feelings were reframed in therapy:

My sex dysphoria was at times very intense and almost debilitating, but the intensity would go up and down on its own. … It went away after I desisted, started reframing things in my head, and did CBT therapy. — CheneMoyen, desister

Getting that kind of help is not easy. Some desisters report that therapists trained in affirmation read desistance as denial — a reason many look for gender-exploratory therapy instead:

i can't really imagine anything more mortifying than trying to convince somebody that i'm not a transwoman in denial or whatever. — NeverCrumbling, desisted male

What desisters end up with

What desisters describe at the end is mostly acceptance, not conversion to the opposite set of stereotypes. Many reject "cis" as a label as firmly as they now reject "trans":

The "purpose" of desisting for me was twofold: firstly, to accept myself as the female person I will be until the day that I die, and secondly, to free myself from the arbitrary and harmful notion that being female means I need to be a certain way. — butchcomm, desisted female

Physically, desisting is far easier than detransitioning — there is no voice, chest or fertility to grieve. But it is not weightless. Desisters still face a second coming-out, the loss of friends made in trans communities, and sometimes shame at having "only" socially transitioned. Some take a long time to settle:

It took me another year to be ok with that decision and work on accepting ALL of myself and not being forced to choose ‘mind’ or ‘body’ but be able to get all aspects of myself integrated. That was work. — Luck_Unlucky, desisted

Trans perspectives on desistance

Many trans-identified commenters treat the high childhood desistance figures as a myth spread by anti-trans groups. The common argument repeats the Temple Newhook critique: the old studies counted gender-non-conforming children, not children who actually identified as the other sex.

I’m pretty sure that is a common misinterpretation of old studies that said that kids who exhibit gender non-conforming behavior … don’t all end up trans—which may be true, but that’s not the same as actually studying kids who identify as a non-assigned gender — Castrato-LARP-374, trans man (FTM)

A second line of argument questions whether desisters were ever really trans, or whether a short social experiment deserves to be called detransition at all:

A lot of the people who claim to be detrans are the people who changed their screen name for a few weeks during lockdown, not people who ever put any thought or time into socially transitioning in any way. — L1Z4RDM1LK, trans man (FTM)

There is a third, quieter view. Some trans commenters accept that their own dysphoria rose and fell, yet still see themselves as trans. Others openly acknowledge that some people really are not:

some people eventually realize they aren't trans like they thought, and they detransition. there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, so long as you are still respectful of those who are trans. — Candid_Awareness_522, trans man (FTM)

Where the evidence stands

The trans critique has a real point: the old studies cannot be mapped directly onto today's patients, and a child who merely plays with the "wrong" toys is not the same as one in deep distress about their body. But the strongest version of the critique — that desistance is an artefact of counting non-conforming kids — is weakened by the Singh finding that fully diagnosed boys desisted at about the same rate as subthreshold ones. The "never really trans" argument also runs into a problem. If people who later desist could not be told apart in advance from those who persist, then "insistent, persistent and consistent" is not a reliable test — and calling them "never trans" afterwards only describes the outcome, it doesn't predict it. Desisters notice this circularity:

The existence of detransitioners and desisters who got over their gender dysphoria naturally invalidates the whole concept of "born in the wrong body", so of course we're shouted down or ignored. — MeninAeido, desisted female

The common ground is narrower than either side admits, but it exists. Both sides agree that identity can change, that a child who desists should not be pathologised, and that a young person who persists deserves real care. The disagreement is about what to do before anyone can know. Desisters' answer is consistent: keep the body intact and the options open, explore the distress without assuming its meaning (see gender-exploratory therapy), and let puberty, sexuality and time do the work they did for most children in every study we have.

Further resources

• Detransition overview — definitions, reasons, rates, life after medical transition
• Social transition and puberty blockers — the interventions most debated in relation to desistance
• Gender dysphoria and egg cracking — how distress gets read as identity
• Support directory for gender-exploratory therapists and detrans/desister peer groups; personal accounts in the video archive; full papers in the study archive

Show details: why desistance numbers are so hard to pin down

Every desistance figure depends on four choices: who enters the sample (clinic-referred children, all referred youth, a community survey), how dysphoria is defined at the start (older DSM-III/IV criteria allowed behaviour-based diagnoses; DSM-5 made a stated desire to be the other gender mandatory), how outcome is measured (questionnaire cut-offs, interview, parent report), and what happens to people who cannot be traced. The Singh study used three different outcome methods and excluded 162 eligible people for lack of resources (Singh et al. 2021); the Norwegian cohort could only record outside treatment if clinicians were told (Nyquist et al. 2025, retracted 2026); the Dutch population study relied on one questionnaire item (Rawee et al. 2024); the Littman et al. (2024) survey was self-selected and mostly female (Littman et al. 2024). And the context has changed: early social transition, puberty blockers and online communities now shape trajectories in ways the older cohorts never saw (Butler & Hutchinson 2020). The safest conclusion is the one the literature supports from every direction: gender identity in childhood and adolescence is not fixed, and no one has a validated way to predict which young person will persist.

References

• Singh, D., Bradley, S. J., & Zucker, K. J. (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. study page, source.
• Drummond, K. D., Bradley, S. J., Peterson-Badali, M., & Zucker, K. J. (2008). A follow-up study of girls with gender identity disorder. Developmental Psychology. source.
• Wallien, M. S. C., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2008). Psychosexual outcome of gender-dysphoric children. JAACAP. source.
• Steensma, T. D., Biemond, R., de Boer, F., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2011). Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood: A qualitative follow-up study. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. source.
• Steensma, T. D., McGuire, J. K., Kreukels, B. P. C., Beekman, A. J., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2013). Factors associated with desistence and persistence of childhood gender dysphoria: A quantitative follow-up study. JAACAP. source, full text.
• Temple Newhook, J., Pyne, J., Winters, K., et al. (2018). A critical commentary on follow-up studies and "desistance" theories about transgender and gender non-conforming children. International Journal of Transgenderism. source.
• Zucker, K. J. (2018). The myth of persistence: Response to Temple Newhook et al. (2018). International Journal of Transgenderism. source.
• Singal, J. (Medium essay). A lot of people, myself included, have been misreading the single biggest published study on childhood gender dysphoria desistance and persistence. source.
• Jones, Z. (2022). Dr. Stephen Levine and the plot to police America's gender (part 2). source.
• San Francisco Chronicle (2017). Research on transgender children still in its infancy. source.
• Olson, K. R., Durwood, L., Horton, R., Gallagher, N. M., & Devor, A. (2022). Gender Identity 5 Years After Social Transition. Pediatrics. source.
• Rawee, P., Rosmalen, J. G. M., Kalverdijk, L., & Burke, S. M. (2024). Development of Gender Non-Contentedness During Adolescence and Early Adulthood. Archives of Sexual Behavior. source.
• Byrne, A. (2024). Another Myth of Persistence? Archives of Sexual Behavior. source.
• Butler, C., & Hutchinson, A. (2020). The pressing need for research and services for gender desisters/detransitioners. study page, source.
• Cass, H. (2024). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: Final report. study page.
• Nyquist, C. B., et al. (2025). Treatment trajectories among children and adolescents referred to the Norwegian National Center for Gender Incongruence. study page, source.
• Feigerlova, E. (2025). Prevalence of detransition in persons seeking gender-affirming hormonal treatments: a systematic review. study page, source.
• Littman, L., O'Malley, S., Kerschner, H. & Bailey, J. M. (2024). Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults. study page, source.
• Littman, L. (2021). Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. study page, source.
• Cohn, J. (2023). The Detransition Rate Is Unknown. study page, source.