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If a person begins socially and medically transitioning, as a consequence of which they begin to face harassment, abuse, violence and so on, and hence decide that it's not worth the hassle and resume their original gender presentation (even though doing so makes them unhappy) – then that's a travesty the trans community has every right to be outraged by. Whether they're trans women, cross-dressers or drag queens, I don't want any male people getting bullied or assaulted just because they're wearing clothes cut for women. A male person should not get harassed or beaten up for wearing women's clothes, even if by his own admission he's doing it to fulfil a sexual urge.
But if a person begins socially and medically transitioning, as a consequence of which they attract a few funny looks, and hence they decide that it's not worth the hassle and resume their original gender presentation – I have to be honest, I'm nowhere near as sympathetic. To me, the fact that they were so easily swayed by minor social influences like this suggests to me that their gender identity wasn't a particularly stable one in the first place. It's grist for the social contagion model of trans identification. If getting someone to change their mind and revert back to being cis is as easy as getting a fence-sitting goth to remove their piercings, then I have a hard time believing that their gender identity is anywhere near as fixed, deep-seated and innate a characteristic as trans activists would have us believe. And if ten strangers giving you funny looks is sufficient to trigger a change in one's gender identity (or at least sufficient to make you change your mind on socially and medically transitioning), it stands to reason that medical transition on the basis of something so flighty is an even worse idea than it sounds at first brush. Like it or not, if you do anything a bit unconventional, there will be some amount of people who will laugh at you or give you funny looks. Imagine you heard someone say "I tried being a musician, but some people laughed at me and told me not to quit my day job, so I gave it up". A determined musician will keep at it in spite of people laughing at them and telling them not to quit their day job.
Maybe I'd be a bit more sympathetic if the study found that this was a common story: "I started socially and medically transitioning, but some people started looking at me funny or giving me dirty looks, so I decided not to bother – as a consequence of which my anxiety and depression have returned tenfold". But somehow I suspect that this isn't the case.
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