Trans and detransition drifts

In today's article, we introduce you to Nicolás Raveau, who is a Chilean detransitioner and a researcher at Detrans Chile

Nicolás Raveau is Chilean. He lives in Ancud, Los Lagos. He is a researcher at Detrans Chile, the only entity currently providing first-person testimonies about detransition in Chile. He has published research, articles, and has given interviews about detransition and trans healthcare approaches.

Between 2015 and 2018, he co-directed Fundación Transitar for families of children and young people who identify as trans, which had a social and community perspective that discouraged hormonal treatments for minors. From 2017 to 2021, he led Acción Travesti en Calle, a movement that supported homeless trans people and women, creating a work initiative and a public policy to facilitate shelter access for LGBT individuals.

Nicolás studied Visual Arts. As a specialist in Chilean avant-garde art, he published the book «Revista cal, una historia» and has curated and conducted research for the Sao Paulo Biennial, Chile Triennial, MAVI, and Casa de la Cultura-Ancud.

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Not too long ago, I co-organized one of the first groups supporting families of trans-identified children and adolescents in Chile, Fundación Transitar (2015-2018). We were the first group internationally to present ourselves publicly through audiovisual recordings and photographs of meetings and activities. I remember Chrysallis from Spain and Mermaids from England writing to us to learn more about our experience; the Europeans were unfamiliar with trans child family support groups with our level of openness.

Transitar aimed to support these families in school and everyday settings. We regularly held community meetings, museum visits, outdoor excursions, and a theater workshop, bringing to light a reality that wasn’t spoken about. We also worked on creating educational materials and legislation. Looking back, leaving aside the use of the trans adjective during childhood and adolescence (which over time I find entirely misguided), I think the underlying issue remains relevant: how to mitigate family conflicts, pains, and societal misunderstanding; how to maintain school attendance and enable the development of talents and abilities in minors who, either due to internal conflicts or a natural difference in being, stray from traditionally assigned social roles based on their sex.

Back then, consulted by the parents of Transitar, I made decisions regarding imagery (photos, press articles, and public presentation in general), and I also advised against the use of hormonal treatments. At that time, surgeries were unthinkable, although over the years they have become more and more desired by parents and minors, in my view, due to the imposition of affirmative clinical hegemony.¹

Generally speaking, according to my theoretical evolution and ten years of social experience, those of us seeking alternatives to the affirmative clinical approach for children and adolescents agree in defining it more or less as follows:

Confirmatory action by the health program executors and accompanying team (psychosocial duo: psychologist and social worker; with referrals to psychiatrists, endocrinologists, urologists, gynecologists, etc.) regarding the identification declared by the child or adolescent (being “trans,” “gender nonconforming,” “nonbinary,” etc.) without sufficiently exploring the multiple underlying factors behind that declaration: distancing oneself from the stereotypes and roles traditionally assigned to the male or female sex (but which the affirmative clinic insists on describing within the trans spectrum), comorbidities, or peer or social influence.

One might also wonder: are such identifications genuinely explicitly declared by the minors themselves? What happens at very young ages? It is in this context that I introduce the term “trans identified minors”: identified by whom? By themselves? By their parents? By a clinical system? By activists?

Back to Transitar. My decisions regarding the visual concept and the non-recommendation of hormonal treatments was based on the need to publicly present ourselves as just another societal group, without stigmas: neither taking hormones nor self-concealing due to social pressure. We were always self-managed and our group consisted of people with limited financial resources. Yet, despite everything, we became a pioneering and recognized organization, perhaps because we proposed an open path to research without conflicts of interest, based on a real community experience and practice.

Regarding hormonal therapy and puberty blockers, my decision included an analysis of the few studies available in 2015: from the so-called Dutch protocol, the Boston Children’s Hospital, the Endocrine Society, and not much else. It seemed to me that the risks and side effects were evident within the mentioned studies themselves: issues in brain development, infertility, loss of sexual desire, liver failure, uterine or breast cancer, or cerebrovascular disease, among others.

Transitar never cultivated a close relationship with the field of psychology in Chile. There was a lot of ignorance (the landscape hasn’t changed much), although slowly, within this process where the most politically and financially connected gained ground, our desire for independence faded. The relentless affirmative clinical model that medicalizes children and adolescents eventually prevailed.

In the years of Transitar, there wasn’t the high number of minors currently seeking to transition and subsequently, in not a few cases, detransitioning or desisting. The current range of comorbidities was not apparent, and the trans context was not yet besieged by the overabundance of third-party interests observable today, such as an excessive commercialization and politicization² or a series of public and private links among those providing clinical care.³

I closed Transitar in 2018, assuming that trans-identified children and youth would follow a more or less regular course within societal openness to differences and inclusion.

A year earlier, I had started a new project with trans homeless people. In that context, I managed to set up a work initiative for a time, regularly publish a fanzine, and manage the only public policy for homeless LGBT people in our country: a protocol for shelter access in the public system. Acción Travesti en Calle (Travesti Action on the Street), this movement that I led between 2017 and 2021, ended its journey when once again it collided with bureaucracy and lack of institutional creativity. We gave all we could, but it’s never enough.

In 2023, I published a report on trans health on the street, which does not reflect the needs of the clinical affirmative model, nor do dysphoric experiences appear with the threatening relevance suggested in manuals. Flexibility in the use of pronouns, humor, and streetwise cunning taught me a different vocabulary. Problematic was the use of crack, alcohol, untreated mental health issues and, mainly, the nearly dissolved link between health and personal development, that is, using precious talents sometimes stifled by the reality of marginal survival in terms of work, self-sustenance, satisfaction, and personal occupation.

Despite being two very different realities, for me it is inevitable to associate the histories of Transitar and Travesti Action on the Street. Although looking back I see that in Transitar we practiced a kind of “affirmation without hormones,” it’s the social mapping that grants meaning. Today, I think the trans adjective at a young age ends up being a simplification that doesn’t do justice to an entire history. The same happens with detransition and the street transvestites that institutionalism omits, denies, or cannot address. This retrospective view is an open opportunity to rethink other paths. When discussing trans concepts, it seems to me they have reached a peak in development, and it’s legitimate for them to change. People and concepts can change, and they do not cease to exist because of it.

Finally, although in the same sequence, detransition is a phenomenon that is starting to show meanings. It took me four years to permanently detransition. I started in mid-2019, in full work on the streets, which was never a problem for the travesti group in the area. And it’s because the street travesti journey never goes away. It’s a kind of rite of initiation, of trust among peers. These trans people welcomed me as Niki and Nicolás. To them, there was no difference, although the sequence was indeed incomprehensible and censurable for activism in hegemonic spaces.

Just as with detransition, I believe that trans and its approaches are not absolute and definitive concepts, but depend more on actions within a specific social context, rather than a network of institutions (this includes the Cass Report). Therapeutic possibilities beyond the clinical realm, like education and sports, science and the arts, and the memory of trans social movements that didn’t fully submit to official apparatuses could still offer new clues or, at least, generate other questions.

1. In Chile, when talking about trans-related issues, “affirmativity” and “affirmative approach” exclusively refer to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) clinical model and its derivatives.

2. Organizations like MOVILH, OTD Chile, and Fundación Iguales receive hundreds of millions of pesos in funding, dominate political lobbying, fill public service positions, and are responsible for sabotaging other local initiatives.

3. One notable example is Diversalud, the company of the powerful activist, WPATH member, and urologist Melissa Cifuentes, who has no qualms in promoting her company along with the services she provides in public hospitals. Another example is gynecologist Arlette Adauy, who has made public statements acknowledging the severe side effects of hormonal treatments, yet continues to prescribe them.

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