”Instead Of Worrying About What You Cannot Control, Shift Your Energy To What You Can Create.” ~

Framing Lesbian Fashion (1992), dir. Karen Everett

This seal relaxing halfway under water 

(via)

I think shifting my understanding of dysphoria from something I “have” to a set of feelings that I experience has been really fundamental and important for managing that dysphoria. This for me has meant that I no longer see myself as a person suffering from a condition, but I experience flare ups in dysphoria the same way I experience any other negative emotion, which is that I sit in it and it is uncomfortable and maybe it causes me some pain but that’s fine, and I note the feeling and ask myself what brought that feeling on and then I move on and do my best not to focus unduly on it. I think many dysphoric women especially have traded the constant self watching that is so central to how women are forced to do femininity, for the constant self watching that dysphoria can encourage, and in both cases it is not healthy to be constantly concerned with and trying to actively alter how you are perceived.

It perturbs me when I see people write that detransitioners “were just confused cis women”. At best, it’s a stunning lack of empathy or understanding of our experiences. But often than not, it’s an attempt to neutralize and silence women who are getting too loud or causing trouble.

At no point during my transition or detransition was I “confused”. I was many things, but confusion wasn’t part of the equation. If I had to only one word, it would probably be something like, “deliberate”, “driven”, or “ambitious”.

The insistence that detransitioners are helpless or confused is a two-pronged attack, both a shutdown and a theft. If a detransitioned woman is painted as confused, it implies that she is unable to make a sound choice, and/or can be easily manipulated by an outside force as a result of her confusion. It removes her agency from her story, and casts her in a secondary, inactive role in her own experiences. It renders her story open to reinterpretation by ideologically motivated parties of all kinds (be it conservatives, ROGD moms, doctors/surgeons/psychiatrists, trans activists, people across all parts of the political and moral compass). It’s an old trick; it has been used against women for ages.

Every step of the way, I was doing my best to make careful decisions that were in my best interest. I had a boatload of problems, and when presented with my options, I used what I knew at the time to address those problems as best I could.

I made lifechanging decisions at a young age, with limited information, incomplete knowledge, like all people do. Many of those decisions are not ones that I’d repeat or recommend to anyone else. Many of those decisions led to outcomes that I am not satisfied with, even if other people are satisfied with similar results. I’m especially dissatisfied by the parts of these experiences where I enlisted the aid of outside experts, who ended up causing me more harm than help – real harm, real physical and mental and financial harm. I’m especially dissatisfied by the broader social context I made these decisions in – I’m dissatisfied by things that were outside of my control, and sometimes beyond of my awareness. None of this means that I was “confused” or unable to think critically.

Both then and now, I’ve wanted the very best for myself and those on similar paths. I yelled back then, and I yell now, because we deserve better!

We aren’t confused. We have demands. We want freedom, agency, safety, respect. We want quality medical care. We want improved, honest information made available to people. We want people to listen and actually incorporate our experiences into their workflows, learn from the things that have harmed us, so that they don’t keep happening. We want apologies from those who have caused us harm. We want peer support, actual allies, not just people looking to indoctrinate and use us. We want to be taken seriously. We want these things and more. We want so many things. We wanted these things then, and we still want them now. We haven’t stoped wanting, and therein lies the problem. Nobody likes an unsatisfied woman.

Enduring a trip to hell and back doesn’t make a woman confused, it makes her resilient and pissed off.

Gender Troubles: The Butches

If you aren’t detransitioned yourself, you don’t get to tell people the “reasons” for detransition with any kind of authority on the matter. You don’t get to tell detransitioned people how they must have experienced dysphoria or say that it wasn’t “severe” enough if they were able to find other means of coping than continuing to transition their bodies. 

I’m tired of watching non-detransitioned people try and speak over us, try and erase the variance in stories because some of them don’t fit a narrative they like, and consistently belittling our experiences. 

People who transition are only helped by having information on the varying outcomes that may come from it, no matter how small of a chance it may be. My doctor didn’t have me ignore the fact that my nipples could fall off after having surgery just because it was a less than 1% chance, they certainly shouldn’t have been telling me not to research about detransition for the same fucking reason.

Ive spent the past few months reading some radfem and detrans related stuff, just curious and trying to educate myself. Then quite recently Ive basically started to feel like "oh shit maybe i actually should detransition" and its freaking me out. Im not sure if im just going crazy being in quarantine and making rash decisions, or if all the time as home gave me time for introspection to come to this conclusion. i feel so lost lol

tbh, this is how i found myself on a path to full detransition, not just stopping hormones. i just wanted some perspective—what i found was a full paradigm shift.

you didn’t ask for advice, so take or leave this: you don’t have to figure it all out right now. give yourself permission, space, and—importantly—time to see how you’re feeling, to understand what you believe about gender and sex and all of this messy shit. and if you get a handle on how you feel about that, then see what you want to do. you don’t even have to DO it yet, just see what you want. and if you continue wanting it, take small steps toward that thing, then pause and ask yourself how it feels. do you feel more authentic? do you feel less confused? are you afraid, and if so, what of? are these fears realistic? are they worth confronting anyway?

the time in quarantine has absolutely given you time for introspection, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to reach a conclusion just yet. there are actually no rules to how your life must go. that’s entirely up to you. all i can suggest is, spend the time asking the questions that come up for you, and try to answer them. try to figure out what YOU believe and why you believe it; am i living a life that satisfies me? am i living in a way that excites me? don’t worry about anyone else, what they might think of you, how they might react to your questioning or any conclusions you draw—the only person for whom those questions and answers matter is you. ultimately, you’re the person who is guaranteed to be with you your whole life—so that’s the person whose opinion matters most.

meadow whispers

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I often see more gatekeeping presented as a way to prevent detransition. And while this wouldn’t necessarily be useless, it’s a bandaid solution. Working harder to root out the “right” people to transition from the “wrong” people to transition isn’t going to eliminate transition regret. To get at why we have to ask, who are the “right” people? Are they the ones are suffering the most or who have been suffering the longest? Are they the most gender non-conforming ones? Are they the ones persistent enough to pass through checkpoint after checkpoint? None of these things insure that transitioning is going to work for someone: that it’s going to improve their quality of life.

When I walked into gender therapy I was suicidal and had been off and on since I was old enough to understand what death was. I was already being regularly mistaken for a boy. I was adamant that I needed this. My therapist called me a “classic case” and still we talked for almost a year before I socially transitioned. I then spent another year living “full time” before starting testosterone and spent my first six months of testosterone on a low dose prescribed by a fairly paranoid pediatric endocrinologist. I met every requirement. I passed every checkpoint. I didn’t take any shortcuts. And still, here I am: a woman, a butch dyke, further from normality than ever, bitter about what happened to me. Because none of those measures addressed my underlying problem.

What we really need if we want potential regretters to not be certain that they need this is a shift in culture. We need environments without misogyny that are affirming of lesbianism and gender non-conformity. We need girls to grow up free from abuse, supported in their mental health and knowing that they can be anything they want to be and anything they are. We need to encourage them to love and live in their bodies and provide immediate solutions if they find that they can’t. Because by the time that many girls step into a gender therapist’s office they’ve already made up their minds, for good reason, that they can’t live this way.