A few years ago, I wrote a Medium post which tried to discuss desistance and detransition in a more “balanced”, “nuanced” way by focusing on my own story. I was traumatized, I said, and that trauma and internalized misogyny made me believe I would be better off as a man. If I worked through that trauma, I’d become more and more comfortable as a woman. Moreover, I was frustrated at the trans community for shutting down detransitioners’ voices and equally frustrated at transphobes for trying to co-opt detransitioners’ stories.
Fast-forward to 2021, and I’ve gotten farther into transition than I ever did before I desisted the first time. I’m almost a month into taking testosterone, and I’m out to my boyfriend, my political comrades, and my mother. What happened between 2017 to now that made me do another 180?
The first major step in all this was slowly realizing that the “detransitioned community”, as it existed, was unacceptably transphobic. For a long time, I had surrounded myself with friends and acquaintances that were either from that milieu or sympathetic to it; when you’re heavily involved in a community it can be difficult to see any cracks in its foundation. As I branched out socially and gained more friends and political comrades with varying viewpoints and a strong stance against transphobia, I was better able to see how the most outspoken detransitioners were using their stories (or allowing others to use their stories) to encourage political transphobia (the most blatant example of this being the Bell v. Tavistock case in the UK and the ramping up of transphobic bills in various states in the US, like banning trans kids from sports or making it difficult-to-impossible to get trans healthcare). I was also able to see, from gradual experience, how crypto-terfs slowly ramped up their rhetoric in accordance to how they believed they were being seen by their audience. I saw various people I used to respect suddenly shed their “concerned radical feminist” shell in order to be openly, unabashedly reactionary. Eventually, I came across former detransitioners that had started to speak out against the political activities they had participated in. I related so much to what I read, and was heartened by the realization that I wasn’t alone in reckoning with these things.
All of these more macro realizations coincided with a great deal of personal exploration and emotional processing. I learned, for example, that a therapist I had put a great deal of trust in had been instrumental in my path down crypto-terf-dom. I don’t want to say it was all her fault — it wasn’t, and I hold myself responsible for my words, beliefs, and actions — but her relationship with me fit the crypto-terf “slowly ramping up rhetoric in accordance to how open their audience was becoming” pattern to a tee. When I first started seeing her, she recognized my interest in radical politics and feminism and honed in on it. When I started questioning my transition, she cited, off-hand, a 60 Minutes segment that claimed that ~80% of teenagers detransition anyway. As I identified more and more with detransitioners, she became more and more open about how frustrated she was at the psychological consensus that encouraged transition and “ignored” “complications” like trauma or the impact of internalized misogyny. And I began to echo those talking points to others. I’m not sure how purposeful it all was, but in the end, it was clear that our therapeutic relationship had unhealthy boundaries, and that she was in many ways trying to mold me into what she thought was the right outcome for me (cis, lesbian, new agey, and anti-birth control — the latter of which became the straw that broke the camel’s back and made me realize how weird this was all becoming).
Moving out of my mother’s house, firing my therapist, and surrounding myself with people who were accepting of me yet comfortable debating with me or analyzing various points of view in a gentle, patient way were all decisions that basically saved my life. They gave me the space I needed to go back to square one and look at my beliefs on gender with fresh eyes. Doing a good amount of trauma work and exploration during the most lock-down portion of the covid pandemic helped me learn and accept that even if trauma played a role in forming my identity, it’s not the only thing that formed my identity. It is one part of many facets of myself, and not a valid reason to not transition: my gender is not a trauma “response” or “coping mechanism”. Every part of me is affected by trauma, and none of those non-gender parts invalidate my experiences either. Trying to be a woman was in itself also a traumatizing experience. Learning how to observe myself and my reactions to various things helped me see how detached I was from myself. I was avoiding my feelings as much as I used avoidance as a coping mechanism in other parts of my life. It had become truly unhealthy.
I also realized that my first attempt at transition was marred by unrealistic, unhealthy expectations. I was still living with my mother, and I believed that if I transitioned but only dated women, my mother would eventually come around to accepting me as a “straight man”. When I desisted, I believed that I’d simply be able to hide being a lesbian easier than I’d be able to hide being trans. Falling in love with a man threw a wrench in both of those plans. It made me figure out, gradually, how uncomfortable I was dating a man when I was being perceived as a woman; that the reasons “straight man” and “lesbian” never fit well were because I was repressing large parts of myself in order to rock the boat as minimally as possible. Being able to fully embrace myself as a bisexual trans masc person (Sort-of-man? Fully man? I’m not sure yet; being on T even at an early stage has made me orient towards myself and others differently and who knows how much that’ll keep changing) made everything finally start to make sense. It didn’t only make sense, it was surprisingly satisfying; it made me happier than I’d been in years.
So, to put a cap on this: desistance might not be a myth, but retransition isn’t either. I used to scoff at talking points like “the most common reason for detransitioning is actually being in an unaccepting and/or dangerous environment”. I thought it was invalidating other detrans experiences. Ironically enough, though, it was my detrans experience. I just had to leave those unaccepting environments for long enough to actually see them for what they were. While I wasn’t nearly as active in the detrans community as some ex-detrans people were, I still played my part as a useful idiot and I take responsibility for it. I think a lot of people have written better things about their experiences in this regard than I have, but I also think it’s only right to set the record straight and let people see where I ended up. Here I am.
