You've heard people say: What if someone believes they're trans but later discovers they aren't and they regret their transition? They dress this up as a "reasonable concern." But the "reasonableness" is only the tone or phrasing of the question; there's never any good reason behind it. The more you repeat it — what if you regret it? what if you regret it? — the more it sounds like a threat.
I have written:
- Why Transphobia Teaches Us to Be Terrified of Regret: What if you start to change your gender and regret it? (8 min read) Oct 12, 2022
- On Respair, Regret, Reality, and Relapse: Four reflections (4 min read) Jul 22, 2023
- Let Me Tell You Something Gorgeous About Regret: We will begin but this path cannot end yet (4 min read) Mar 11, 2025
Anti-trans people don't have evidence that lots of trans people regret our choices, nor that regret is a problem to be solved (either in oneself or in someone else), nor that the proper solution would be for authorities to take away everyone's body autonomy so that no one can live a trans life.
If trans people are sad about anything, it's transphobia. Trans people overall are very happy with our transitions.
The anti-trans people therefore resort to asserting that all trans people are sad.
And (for those who are right-wing in other respects) that everyone to the left of them is sad.
And — as Donald Trump now has it — that anyone who doesn't kiss his ass is sad.
In the wee hours of this morning, Donald Trump posted to his own social media site:
(Yes, that's real.)
Speaking of happiness, this is a man who didn't like social media, a man who, discontent with the PR opportunities available to him as a U.S. president and as a billionaire days shy of his 80th birthday who's been world-famous his whole life, had to create his own tech platform to put out his press releases and claim that it is "social media." It isn't social at all. It's really sad. He is a sad person, and that's an understated way of describing the void within him.
I believe this is a big part of what anti-trans people mean when they say What if trans people regret their transitions? They are likely basing their knowledge in their own experience of being huma, and what they very likely mean is a reflection of their own feelings: I feel sad about my life, I have made some choices I'd like to reevaluate and wish I could redo, and I don't know where to go from here.
