It happens very occasionally that a transgender person regrets a medical treatment, and that is why it is good we have a word for it. After all, without words you cannot talk about your experiences. However, with the nomination of the word ’transition regret’, dictionary maker Van Dale has lent itself to a political statement.

For there is a worldwide, and also in the Netherlands, lobby from the anti-rights movement going on, which places disproportionate emphasis on ’transition regret’. This uses the less than 1% (!) of people with regret to (further) restrict access to transition care. The appropriation by this movement ensures that the word can no longer be a good representation of the original meaning. As a result, the word is no longer usable for people who struggle with their feelings after medical treatment. And therefore these people no longer have words with which they can express themselves or in which they can recognize their feelings.

External reasons

Important fact: the very small number of people who regret a medical treatment, regret it for the very most part because of social exclusion. It still happens that a transgender person is rejected by their family, friends and/or colleagues. A small number of these people hope, often desperately, that reversing the treatment will lead to rapprochement again. (This is usually not the case, because the social ties are often permanently damaged. The majority of these people again resume their medical treatment later.)

Other trans people are wrongly labeled as ‘regretters’ by health care providers. These people grow after their transition and gain a much more holistic view of their gender. Some of them may decide to have certain medical procedures reversed. This has nothing to do with ‘regret’! But everything to do with a broader view of their own gender identity – something that health care providers seem unable to understand.

There are also trans people who decide to have breast prostheses or ball implants removed for medical reasons. Or who have to stop their hormone treatment for medical reasons. Of course, this has nothing to do with ‘regret’, although practitioners will not always understand it this way.

Five-year waiting period

The anti-rights movement wants us to believe that people with ’transition regret’ impulsively opted for medical treatment. That is utterly impossible in the Netherlands! The waiting times for gender health care are by far the longest in the Netherlands: at the largest gender team in Amsterdam, the waiting time for an intake is at least 4 years and 2 months. In Nijmegen, the waiting time for an intake is approximately 2 years and 11 months. Several smaller gender teams even have a patient stop.
After the intake, you are put on the waiting list for consultations with a psychologist, the so-called gatekeeper. In Amsterdam, this waiting time is at least 1.5 years. (Nijmegen does not specify this additional waiting time.) It is an outrage to talk about ‘impulsiveness’, knowing that people are forced to wait at least 5 years for medically necessary health care!

Imposed meaning

Another consequence of this appropriation is that trans people can no longer express their feelings in their own words. They are now dependent on an imposed meaning, due to the appropriation of this word – and thus the shift in meaning – by the anti-rights movement. The hijacking of this word contributes to the social exclusion of those with regrets. In this way, the word itself becomes a cause of transition regret!

By the way, the term ’transition regret’ originally referred not only to a medical treatment, but also to a social transition and a legal change. People can still go back on that too, for whatever reason. Only those transitions are much easier to reverse, so they are much less talked about outside the trans community. Due to the imposed shift in meaning, there is no longer a word for these situations.

Medical consequences

Finally, all of this also has a nasty medical side effect: the social and political attention for ’transition regret’ scares health care providers. Of course, they stand for careful treatment of trans and non-binary care recipients. But this kind of wrong attention often makes them even more cautious. In practice, this means building in extra check-ups and extra intermediate steps – in short, even longer waiting times.

As a result, the trans community is back to square one: we can no longer tell our own stories to health care providers. We can no longer afford that luxury. We are once again in the situation of telling the stories that we think health care providers want to hear. In order to navigate the medical treatment process as quickly as possible. A situation that actually increases the risk of ’transition regret’, because it encourages black-and-white thinking about medical treatment. An extremely undesirable situation.

Van Dale

In short, the nomination of the word ’transition regret’ by Van Dale contributes to further stigmatization of trans people. Because the word has acquired a political charge due to the anti-rights movement, the nomination became a political act. Van Dale has (unintentionally) lent itself to a political statement.

Interesting detail: in the definition, Van Dale uses the very outdated concept of ’transsexuals’. They also talk about ’the transition process’, as if there were only one type of transition. A very inaccurate and unfortunate description, which contributes to further misunderstandings.