In the NYT, Trantifa Finally Admit Detransitioners Exist
But they're still spreading misinformation
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On August 10, 2025, the New York Times published an op-ed from a trans-identifying female (TIF) called “Kinnon R MacKinnon,” an assistant professor at York University in Toronto, who studies “transgender care.”
In her op-ed, Dr MacKinnon writes that she wants to ”… encourage medical providers to take detransition seriously, to learn more about how to support people with these experiences.” She admits that the number of detransitioners “… among young people have suggested it could now be higher, 5 percent to 10 percent — an increase that has come amid a sharp rise in the number of young people seeking care at gender clinics.” She then proceeds to categorize detransitioners into four arbitrary categories that not only intentionally obfuscate the reasons why people detransition, but also rationalize why “gender-affirming care” (“GAC”) and self-ID must remain standard the medical and behavioral practice for both adults and children.
An op-ed is opinion, not fact. Neither the New York Times, nor any publication of which I’m aware, fact-checks op-eds. They all need to start.
You can read Dr MacKinnon’s opinion piece at the link above.
On August 11, 2025, The Distance Magazine posted a critical review of Dr MacKinnon, opening with a provocative self-photo of Etsy-banned artist and detransitioner Laura Becker. Matt Osborne, the author of The Distance review, writes that even “GAC” proponents can see the writing on the wall:
MacKinnon and the New York Times might as well just admit that the trendyness [sic] of ‘trans’ is gone, that people are sad at their lost investment of life and health to a cult of patent medical fraud.
But they cannot admit this, for they are still too invested in the idea that chasing the gender dragon is inherently good. Inscribing politics on the human body, even a child’s body, is assumed in advance to be a morally virtuous pursuit.
Mr Osborne proceeds to demolish Dr MacKinnon’s claims. She invents a category consisting of people who “… detransitioned because of an identity change, mental health-related factors[,] and dissatisfaction with treatment.” Why does she group this very different reasons into a single — again arbitrary — category?
Mr Osborne correctly answers:
MacKinnon’s true purpose becomes starkly clear in [her] fourth category. This group “were much more likely to express strong regret with the decision to transition,” MacKinnon says. It is the category of the politically-inconvenient. The ‘spectrum’ of detransition being constructed here is entirely political. Indeed, MacKinnon acknowledges just how inconvenient this cohort of detransitioners is to the politics of genderwoo.
…
Imagine a car that has 10 percent regret rates among buyers. How long would this brand of automobile last? The basic problem for ‘gender medicine’ is that it creates new detransitioners, some number of whom will be angry about their experience, which includes being extensively gaslit about their own existence.
On August 14, 2025, LGB Courage Coalition with Roxxanne Reed posted their own response to Dr MacKinnon. Ms Roxxanne Reed provides a heartbreaking account of her own detransition as well as her own bad experiences with the New York Times, beginning with:
I’m standing here crying uncontrollably on a Sunday after work.
…
I, along with other prominent detransitioners, have expressed our disapproval of [Dr MacKinnon’s] piece. I found the remark that she is the “proud father of a 5-year-old” to be a particularly manipulative tactic, as her role as a parent has nothing to do with the op-ed she wrote.
The essay seems to want to find a middle ground for the transgender community to backpedal by actually acknowledging that detransitioners exist and that young people can change their minds regarding transition and have a different perception of expressing themselves. Yet MacKinnon still doubles down to stay in lock step with the ideology — she misses the point that this isn’t about civil liberties or trans “rights[;]” this is a healthcare issue firmly rooted in questionable medical ethics.
On August 15, 2025, LGB Courage Coalition with Jamie Reed posted a second response to Dr MacKinnon’s op-ed. A lesbian and mother of five children, Ms Jamie Reed writes:
Activists will tell you it’s simple — a trans woman just wants her morning coffee, so why not give it to her with the name and pronouns demanded and move on? But the lie was a cancer cell. And like cancer, once the brakes are cut and the gas pedal is floored, it grows.
Ms Jamie Reed then describes her own anguish as her ex-spouse detransitioned and the edifice of gender-ideology lies collapsed on their family:
But [ex-spouse’s] change wasn’t a glitter-bomb detransition moment.
With cancer, you cut out the tumor, check for clear margins, and use chemo to chase every stray cell. With children, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t chase down every “he” and replace it with “she.” They don’t understand.
…
I also know, as my former spouse has detransitioned, that children cannot continue to be collateral damage in these debates. We live the fallout.
Children should never be medically transitioned, and they should never be lied to about reality.
We owe them the truth.
At this writing, the New York Times has never published an article by a detransitioner. Instead, the “newspaper of record” published an opinion from a TIF — in other words, an active gender cult member — who claims to speak for the survivors who escaped this same cult. As Mr Osborne writes:
Imagine someone who is still in the cult of Scientology being platformed to say what people who leave Scientology think about it. The New York Times should try publishing the views of detransitioners themselves instead of giving trans ‘rights’ activists with soft science degrees a platform to speak on their behalf.
Regarding Dr MacKinnon’s op-ed, I strongly suspect that her 5-10% detransition claim deliberately and substantially underestimates the real percentage. More importantly, her op-ed is entirely devoid of understanding or compassion towards detransitioners. To me, she writes about them casually, as though they are a minor problem for “GAC” that she and other trantifa can easily solve given sufficient time. We need to study “how to support people with these experiences,” Dr MacKinnon writes. She means that we need to return detransitioners to the gender cult so that they will not reveal the cult’s lies.
Dr MacKinnon politicizes detransitioners’ pain and loss in service to her cult. The New York Times should be ashamed to publish articles like this.
I strongly encourage you to read all three responses to Dr MacKinnon. The New York Times will probably not publish op-eds like theirs anytime soon. Despite allegedly softening on gender ideology, the Times remains thoroughly captured.
No lagniappes today. They seem disrespectful after the tragedies recounted in the responses to Dr MacKinnon.