#reidentified

Detrans woman (or reidentified woman): someone who detransitioned to womanhood.

Not many radfems were welcoming to me, a 15 year old trans-identified female, despite the fact that I wanted to learn more. But the few who were, the few who, despite their beliefs about gender and TRAs, let me into their spaces and educated me (despite my obvious bias and ignorant questions). Those are the women who allowed me to strip myself from the transgender label. Those are the women who taught me how important radical feminism is—especially now.

I'm not saying you need to go out of your way to say that they can identify as men. I'm not saying you have to be ultra-sensitive when speaking to them. I'm just think that it'd pay to be a little bit kind, especially when they ask genuine questions.

my last post, the last one i actually made for myself, talked about how i was terrified i was that nobody would ever see me for what i thought i was. but fuck me i was so so wrong.

turns out i just needed a friendship circle full of people who are gay, who are lesbian, who are bisexual, who are comfortable in who they are, who look at me when i say im a dyke-- with my ugly mustache and sometimes stubble beard, with my weird deep voice, with my surgery-flat chest and hairy back and hairy legs and the gut that testosterone gave me-- and go "yes, you are". who look at me and see me for me and respect my choices and my opinions. who let me call myself a he/she. who let me crawl in beside them and don't complain when my dykey little carabiner digs into their hips.

me three years ago could never have imagined. could never have even dreamed.

Yeah, anon. I have. If you read even a little bit of what I’ve written about my experiences with gender identity, even just my pinned post, you’ll see that I am very open about the fact that I identified as some flavor of trans or nonbinary for nine years.

Gender identity is a coping mechanism that allows women and girls to dissociate themselves from their status under patriarchy—a status that causes suffering on a scale that can’t even begin to be measured. Young girls see and experience that suffering, and they learn that suffering and being disrespected and violated is part of being female in our world.

Gender identity offers an escape. “What if, deep inside, you’re actually somebody who deserves respect? What if you’re an individual with needs and desires and an internal life that has nothing to do with the way women are forced to live?” For many women, that realization is simply that of “Women aren’t all the patriarchy says they are! We’re more!” But for many of those who are exposed to the grooming, petting, sycophantic rhetoric of gender identity, that thought process is interrupted, and molded into “If I’m not what society says a woman is, then I’m not a woman!” And you’re encouraged to never reflect on what that logic might say about how you perceive the women around you. You’re alienated from other women and from yourself, constantly occupied with how others perceive you and the crushing need to be different, bolstered by the doctrine that any woman who stays a woman must like it. You don’t like it.

Gender identity deadens your ability to meaningfully analyze and express your suffering. It takes away your language. It cuts off your connection to the women who came before you and the women who will come after you.

detransition/reidentified transmasc to nonbinary fem person !