LA&PS Professor Kinnon MacKinnon and team launches a research website outlining resources and support to provide up-to-date, data-driven information about gender detransition/retransition. This website was developed through on-going consultation with transgender/nonbinary and detransitioned people, their care providers, and by compiling the results from two research studies—The Detrans Discourses Study, led by Professor Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, and The Re/DeTrans Canada Study, led by Professor MacKinnon. Both of these studies were funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and were designed to qualitatively examine experiences of detransition/retransition.  

Professor MacKinnon shares that the “process of developing content for this website was explorative, multi-staged, and involved significant stakeholder engagement.” It began with a Detransition Symposium and community event held in November 2022 at York University. At this symposium, results from the two research studies were presented and discussed with stakeholders such as detrans, nonbinary, trans, and queer people, their friends and families, gender care providers, and 2SLGBTQ+ program developers and educators.” The content for the website was iteratively produced by analyzing feedback and discussion notes collected at the symposium, through conversations had with an advisory committee, and by soliciting feedback from several detransitioners, and a parent.

Furthermore, in an article for The BMJ, Professor MacKinnon and colleagues discuss how research and care services have overlooked people who detransition—those who discontinue or reverse gender care treatment, and how unmet physical and mental healthcare needs and stigma are commonly reported among this population. Professor MacKinnon also identifies how short-term studies into transitioning may have unintentionally excluded and erased detransition and identity shifts. Ultimately, Professor MacKinnon discusses how robust research is needed to inform the development of comprehensive knowledge, practice guidelines, and care services inclusive of detransition/retransition and gender-diverse identity evolution.