Permutational

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Nov 2017

If there were anything I could change about the transition process, it would be in making abundant reliable information made available to everyone, so they can make the best possible choices for themselves.

May 2018

If you ask me, anyone who decides to transition should be aware that, as their life progresses and they learn more about themselves, they might decide to detransition for any number of reasons. I think a fully informed decision to transition includes acknowledgement of detransition as a possible future path.

Detransitioning a real possibility that is inherent in the decision to transition. It’s a package deal. Any decision comes with the possibility that it’ll go south. We’re human and we can’t get around that. It’s more important to make a decision fully aware and accepting of the potential consequences of your actions, than it is to delude yourself into thinking that you’re 100% right and can’t go wrong with your decisions.

The important thing to know is that detransitioning is hard, but it’s not the end. And the more that people collectively acknowledge it as a reality that can happen, not just a myth or an ironic cosmic punishment for fakers/liars/attention-seekers, the more we can prepare people for it and provide detransitioners with the resources and support they need to make it through a really difficult part of their lives. I don’t think detransitioning has to be as hard, scary, or lonely as it currently is.

July 2020

There is a message in my inbox that is asking if there are important things that a detransitioner should pay attention to, especially early on. My primary tip is this: beware the media.

Don’t do your bleeding in public, if you can help it. When the buzzards spot you and circle in, they aren’t coming to help you lick your wounds -- they’re coming to pick you clean.

You deserve private space to think and heal and recover and grow. You don’t need to be a martyr. You are more valuable than that. You are needed, your whole self, your complicated messy self, your thriving self.

Oct 2020

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 compasses). Each does it in order to push their own take on our experience. They proclaim, “These people are just confused! The REAL reason they did X is because [[insert ideological opinion here]].” Few of these people seem to care what we actually have to say, unless they can take a few context-free snippets to bolster their own narrative.

Meanwhile, in reality: Every step of the way, I was doing my best to make careful decisions that were in my best interest, with limited time and resources. 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.

Jan 2021

Even though I’ve detransitioned, my experiences at the doctors are very much trans experiences. I’m still seen as another flavor of gender-weird, and still get all the same confusion and fear (at best) and hostility (at worst). It’s no less difficult than before. I’m just as scared of my doctors as I was before.

We all deserve so much better than this. We deserve access to healthcare. We deserve to be seen as humans by our doctors. We deserve care, dignity, and respect. We deserve to live.

Jan 2021

Folks often ask why I detransitioned. It’s a little challenging, because there is no single reason why. It’s complicated.

If you insist on a short and sweet answer, the only thing I know to tell you is: “Because my transition wasn’t working for me anymore. It worked until it didn’t.”

Several years ago, someone wrote in to ask what the difference was between me and trans men who were satisfied with their transition. My final answer was: Because it kept working for them, and it stopped working for me. “I gave it my best, until I realized I was giving more than I was getting.”

Jan 2021

“Trans men are self-hating women!” “Detransitioned women are self-hating trans men!”

It gets old quickly, and it comes from all directions.

At no point have I hated myself. Even when I was at my deepest lows, I did not hate myself. Every step of the way, I acted out of a drive for survival. I acted with the aim of living authentically. I acted out of self-love.

At no point was “self-hate” part of the equation for me. But I hear the term thrown around a lot; it gets injected into the equation by others.

Feb 2021

I know plenty of trans people who are content in their lives and choices; transition is viable for many people. To me, there’s no question about it. There are trans people living happy lives; it’s not debatable to me when I see and talk to those people on a regular basis. When they say that transitioning helped them and is important to them, I believe them, even if it’s hard for me to believe as someone who was harmed by transitioning, and even when they don’t believe me in return.

As a result, I imagine that yes, transition would be a thing in an “ideal future”, whatever that is. Imagining the trans people I actually know, living a happy and fulfilling life in the future as trans people, is straightforward and meaningful to me. Transitioning as a phenomenon is here to stay, part of reality, a possible path, part of the human experience for better or worse; it’s up to the collective to allow it to be better.

I’m on the flip side of the coin that remains controversial to admit and address: transition isn’t viable for everyone, it’s possible to get in really deep and realize that you aren’t content, and it’s possible to be harmed by medical transition. There is a lot to criticize, because things can and should be better.

Detransition is still an elephant in the room that people try to discredit as a “myth” because they feel threatened by it, because addressing it means changing the status quo in some way... and, more and more, because right-wingers latch onto it to beat all of us over the head, when we all need to be working together.

Right now, the kindest sentiment about detransitioners tends to be, “some of those people are maybe real (and they deserve nothing more than pity), but it’s largely a fake psy-op cult and they’re out to get us”. Efforts made at bridging the rift get swept away in the flood of people using us and engaging in bad faith. Changing the overarching attitude could possibly turn the tide for the better, but I don’t know if any party will extend the courtesy that allows for change.

I don’t know whether we’ll ever get there. The noise and antagonism makes it difficult. Deliberate, good-faith outreach and collaboration must be made (especially by trans organizations and healthcare providers, in my opinion), or we may never get there.

Feb 2021

[An 18yo wrote to me asking for advice about how to navigate their parent's reticence about them starting HRT. When they came out to their mom, she sent them to my blog.]

I'm guessing it's unlikely that you'll get an apology from her anytime soon, but I'm sorry that that's how you ended up on my blog. Definitely not how I want to be introduced to people. "Think twice or you'll end up like this weirdo!" Doesn't feel good.

Something to clear up right off the bat: There is only one person who can decide whether you're making the "right" choice, and that's you. Not your mom. Not me. Not any internet rando with a blog. Not your best friend. Not someone you're dating. Not a therapist. Not a support group. Not a doctor (you're paying them for expert medical advice, not ultimatums about your life choices). Not a pastor or priest. Not a church or religious group. You, and only you.

You can seek information and advice from others, and it's good to lean on trustworthy social supports during big decisions and life changes. But when it comes to what's "right" or "best" for you, that's your call alone. Nobody else has that right.

...

I’m still okay, all things considered. I’m still alive, still thriving. I’m changed, but not broken. There is no going back, but there is going forward.

I didn’t anticipate the things I’d regret, and there are decisions I wish I hadn’t made, especially surgeries. My health would probably be in a better state had I not transitioned at all and quit while I was ahead. I’m honest about it because I think the conversation needs more honesty. Detransition and regret are possible. Our decisions don’t always have the consequences we hoped for. Things change. People change. We can’t anticipate everything.

It’s not possible to know whether you’ll be happy with your choice forever. You can do your best to make an informed decision, and you still might be “wrong” down the line, even if it was “right” for years. That’s how it was for me.

But I can tell you that, even if you end up detransitioning, you can still be okay. This isn’t some failed end state. Life has only just begun for me.

Transition is hard. Detransition is hard. No matter what, if you start down the path of transition, you’re gonna face some hard times. You’ll have to develop an especially thick skin, and learn how to be your own advocate. This path is rough on all of us.

But no matter how it goes, you won’t be alone. I promise you, you’re not alone.

Mar 2021

What concrete steps can be taken to make things better? Truthfully, I have no freakin’ idea. It’s hard to conceptualize what Better will even look like, much less how to get there.

But I do have one concern in mind: If trans organizations & advocates want to take steps to make things better... they could start by taking care of their own. By that I mean, their first step could be finding concrete ways to acknowledge and support trans people who regret some specific medical step(s) they’ve taken. They’re still trans, they’re not detransitioning, but some treatment has caused them harm and they regret having done it. Say, a surgery with a permanently bad outcome (more crudely referred to as “botched”), or serious complications from HRT.

If trans people can’t even acknowledge the reality of other trans people who are hurting and regretting just one part of their transition, then I really doubt they have anything to offer a detransitioner who regrets the whole kit and caboodle.

I say this as someone who regretted my top surgery long before detransitioning ever crossed my mind. In some ways, socially navigating the pain of top surgery regret was harder than detransitioning was. By the time I detransitioned, I was so jaded that I didn’t expect much from others; I was already aware that there was nobody on my side. But when I was trans and seeking support after surgery gone wrong? It wrecked me when I learned that not only did nobody seem to understand or care, they absolutely didn’t want to hear about it, because my existence threatened their preconceived ideas. My regret frightened them.

Surgical regret is a taboo, and that needs to stop. I think the reason we don’t hear about it much is because there is so much pressure to keep it to ourselves. It’s such a taboo that it’s hard to even admit to yourself that you regret it. It’s as if the big R-word is a forbidden part of the vocabulary. I’m willing to bet there are lots of trans people actively struggling with shoddy medical care and surgical complications, and have no place to talk about it or seek solidarity/advice/legal counsel/frickin’ anything. Once you regret anything, you’re on your own, and you have to claw your way through the stages of grief alone. It’s messed up beyond words.

Jun 2021

It’s tiresome that so much discussion around detransition is all about “how easy/difficult it is to access trans healthcare”, and “whether or not therapy should be required first”. I wish the conversation would evolve beyond this. Don’t know if it ever will.

People seem quick to assume that the only perspective a detransitioner could offer is, “It was too easy and I shouldn’t have been allowed to do it,” when in reality, we’re equal participants in this realm of healthcare, and might have more nuanced criticisms and contributions were people to seriously engage with us.

Despite having started HRT through an informed consent clinic, I disagree that it was “too easy” for me to transition, and also assert that no amount of bureaucratic hurdles or ~therapy~ would have stopped me from doing what I did. My criticisms of my healthcare have nothing to do about how “easy” it was to access, and everything to do with the lack of engagement, information, or support I received over the years from the healthcare providers who were purportedly there to help me, especially the radio silence in between the “milestone” events along my transition.

Some steps in my transition were quick and easy to access, others were extremely difficult and costly; my problem is that no matter how I accessed it, it was of questionable quality and had no fallback for when things didn’t go according to plan. During my entire transition, I mostly felt... very alone and on my own. Same goes double for when I detransitioned.

I don’t want people to put up more bullshit barriers for others in response to what I’ve been through; I want people to make healthcare and the world better as a whole.

I’m frustrated that what few standards of care there are, are flimsy and mostly there for appearances, and trans healthcare organizations are so busy fighting increases in stigma and red tape that they apparently don’t have the bandwidth to make the practice better in any other ways.

For instance, my surgery referral technically follow the WPATH standards of care, just enough that people can’t be sued, while also not actually doing anything to better my health or self-awareness. It’s just performative. It’s red tape for the sake of red tape. Adding more legislative red tape isn’t going to make people care about my well-being, it’s just going to give them one more performative barrier to juggle instead of working to make my healthcare better.

I don’t have any answers for anyone. All I know is where I’ve been.

In some ways, I don’t even know how to criticize things beyond screaming, “Why was I so alone this whole time? Why was I spinning my wheels for years? Why do I have to keep spinning them even now? Why do I still not have a doctor that can answer my questions or help me build a plan for my long-term health after detransitioning? How did it get to this point?”

But it’s like screaming into an empty hallway. Nobody’s home, and nobody wants to hear it.

July 2021

Something most onlookers don’t seem to get about being a hairy, scarred, detransitioned dyke: I’m not traumatized by supposedly freakish and “damaged” body. What’s traumatizing and de-spiriting is how I’ve been treated by people through it all.

My body isn’t the problem here. People are.

My body, mind, and spirit are whole, always have been. But others have looked onto me as broken and in need of fixing -- before, during, and after transition.

Doctors, nurses, surgeons, and therapists have found so many uniquely messed up ways to interact with people they see as Other. I have memory after memory of someone saying something insulting, calling me by names and pronouns I don't go by, touching me in callous or demeaning ways, refusing treatment out of their own discomfort, making decisions on my behalf based upon my appearance and what they think a "normal person" is supposed to look like, or think & feel like. There are so many touches and glances from years past that I wish I could wash off my skin, off the places they landed, but I can’t.

I’ve walked out of this experience completely jaded about the medical profession as a whole. I’m unable to trust or have faith in these people in the way I did before. I’ve noticed similar patterns of behavior in non-transition-related care, while trying to find help with chronic conditions (especially chronic pain).

Nov 2021

I've received many messages over the years, from "Gender Criticals"/radfems/etc whose feathers I ruffled: "What is your issue with protecting vulnerable children?"

"Think of the Children!" is the fallacy of our time; it's been in use for ages, but seems especially rampant nowadays. It fuels entire movements. "Think of the Children" is an appeal to emotion and attempt at exerting moral authority, completely shutting down the ability to have a rational discussion about anything. It's a rhetorical tactic with a long history of use in campaigns for censorship, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, etc. Aside from just steering away from discussion, fallacies that make appeals to emotion also have the habit of leading to mob mentality and vigilantism; it gets nasty quickly. "Think of the Children" is a thought-terminating cliche, used to shut down critical thought by insinuating that any disagreement is immoral, callous, in support of child abuse.

There is no arguing with someone using a rhetorical fallacy to support their claims, and I'm not going to try. But what I CAN say is that I'm not a fan of the resulting politics they're using it to bolster.

Mar 2022

There’s a lot of fearmongering online around hysterectomies, “children becoming lifetime patients, chained to the poisonous hormones from Big Pharma”, etc. It’s really irksome and weird, a massive oversimplification, primarily from people who haven’t been through this at all.