Transitioning to male had not ended Nele’s feelings of despair. She was still suicidal, and her eating disorder was manifesting itself in extreme calorie-counting, and an obsession with her diet. Nele began to think testosterone was the only good thing in her life – and she still wanted a mastectomy. But she did not feel she could be totally honest with her gender therapist.
“I was very ashamed of my eating disorder. I mentioned it in the beginning, but I didn’t dare talk about it more because of the shame – I think that’s normal with eating disorders.”
Nele was worried her transgender treatment might be halted if there was any doubt about her mental health.
“It’s a very tricky situation in Germany, because the therapist is the one who gives you the prescriptions for hormones and for surgery.”
There are few studies exploring the link between eating disorders and gender dysphoria. One review of the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service in 2012 showed that 16% of all adolescent referrals in that year had some kind of “eating difficulty”. But bear in mind that most referrals are young people assigned female at birth – natal girls, as they are called, who are more vulnerable to eating disorders than their natal male counterparts.
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There is little academic research about detransition. The studies that have been done suggest the rate of detransition is very low – one put the proportion of trans people who return to the gender they were assigned at birth at less than 0.5% . But so far, researchers have not taken a large cohort of transitioning people and followed them over a number of years.
“The longitudinal studies just haven’t been done,” says Dr Catherine Butler, a clinical psychologist at the University of Bath.
“But on social media – for example on Reddit – there’s a detransitioning group that has over 9,000 readers. There will be academics like myself who are part of that, but even so, it is a huge number of people.”
The lack of academic research in this area has an impact for those re-thinking their gender journeys.
“It means there aren’t guidelines or policy that informs how statutory services can support detransitioners. So they’ve had to self-organise, to establish their own networks,” she says.
And that is what Nele and Ellie did. Using Nele’s skills as a professional illustrator, they created post-trans.com – an online space where people like them can get in touch and share their experiences.
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