No one knows exactly how many people are affected. Few are willing to speak openly, for fear of stigma or rejection. In practice, it is not easy to leave one minority community to join an even smaller group of people, especially in a society that celebrates and “affirms” the former while rendering the latter invisible. Nor is it easy to openly admit to a mistake that often has major consequences and to plunge into the unknown, into a realm where no one knows what life has in store.
What is certain is that these people exist and their numbers are growing. What they have in common is that they have undergone medical or surgical gender transition and, at one point or another, decided to abandon that path. They have stopped hormone treatments and reconciled with themselves. As far as possible, they have also allowed their birth physiology to take over again. The surgical procedures are, of course, permanent.
Then begins a long journey. No turning back, no de-transition, only a path of sometimes extreme loneliness, punctuated by questions about a reality that no one knows and whose ins and outs will only be understood in several years, perhaps decades. What happens to an organism that has taken sex hormones from the opposite sex for years? How can one rebuild oneself psychologically when parts of the body dedicated to fertility, pleasure and self-esteem have been surgically removed? How can one reconcile oneself with one's image when society perceives you as a person you are not? How can one envisage the future when one does not even know whether the treatments undertaken will have a decisive impact on one's life expectancy in the short or medium term?
All these questions remain unanswered. They will remain so for a long time to come. But given the extent of the possible doubts, the somatic or psychological damage, and the solutions presented as simple, which have proved harmful, all the people who testified for this work propose an approach rooted in their experiences: think, think very carefully before undertaking a gender transition.