De-transitioning is rare. And it’s important to remember that if puberty blockers are stopped and no further hormonal interventions are given, puberty will resume as usual — per sex assigned at birth. All blockers do is put a temporary “pause” on puberty, and of course, pre-pubescent children are not prescribed any hormonal interventions.

But the vast majority of trans kids who use puberty blockers to relieve their gender dysphoria do not change their minds about transitioning further. And even for the very small percentage of those who do, almost all of them have no regrets.

De-transitioning, when it does happen, also isn’t this big, undesired, nightmarish, embarrassing outcome that many conservatives like to portray it as.

I have a friend who’s a trans adult female. She was assigned male at birth, transitioned hormonally in late adolescence, then later de-transitioned back to male during a particularly rough period of time in her life, tried living as a cis male, got married to a cis woman, had a child, and ended up with debilitating depression and became suicidal.

Now in her late 40’s, she transitioned back to female again (a decade or so ago), and has spent the majority of her adulthood as a very happy, satisfied trans woman who is completely at peace and has no regrets. What others might perceive as confusion or back-and-forth, for her, was nothing but an integral, necessary part of her gender journey.

Most recently, there was a very large study of trans adolescents from the Netherlands which found that of all trans youth on puberty blockers, only 1.9% of those youth who began puberty blockers at the earliest stages of puberty ultimately decided to stop treatment, and only 0.5% of those had any regrets surrounding their transitions.