The Trans Kid That Should've Been Protected

My story as the canary in the mineshaft

I am a survivor of a culture war: the ideological battle between gender self-identification and biological sex realities. I was a classic example of a transgender child. I was what is colloquially known as “true trans,” a transexual, a person with a gender dysphoria diagnosis that pursued medical transition as an attempt to heal the dysphoria. Medical transition did not heal me. In truth, I don’t believe it heals anyone. I was only able to heal by diving into the deep origins of my pain, understanding it at both personal and political levels, and subsequently accepting the truth of my material existence. This story contains descriptions of abuse, drug use, self harm, and suicide, followed by joy, triumph, and homecoming.

I do not wish for my story to further polarize, but rather provide nuance to a seldom researched phenomenon. Trans people, trans rights activists, conservatives, gender criticals, and radical feminists, are all guilty of speaking for and over detransitioners and using our stories to support their ideologies, while lacking compassion for our experiences and our humanity. We are not pawns nor narrative devices. We are human beings with complex and varied experiences and beliefs, and no two detransitions are the same. This is my story, my catharsis, in my own words.

I grew up in the early 2000s, in the American South, in a traditional conservative working class family. Fox News droned on in the background of my childhood memories. I was always a tomboy, (not that my parents exactly minded that I enjoyed boys’ hand-me-downs) but I understood that one day I would have to conform to their expectations. As early as I could remember, I knew that being a homosexual was completely unacceptable–my father cheerfully told stories of beating the shit out of “fags” as a young man. Being a lesbian would surely relegate me to a life of poverty, misery, and isolation, as my parents and the media showed me. One of my earliest memories was praying on the bedside floor, begging God to take my life or make me normal. I internalized deep within, that being a lesbian was a fate worse than death. Even worse was being a “Butch” lesbian. I knew that “Butch” was a dirty word that I wasn’t allowed to say, assumed by the tone adults would use. But whenever I saw a masculine lesbian woman in passing, I was magnetized and intrigued. I looked at them in awe and didn’t know what was so wrong. I didn’t see much difference between myself and them. I cast my eyes away before adults could notice.

I don’t think I even knew the difference between boys and girls when I was a young child. I saw myself as a boy, because I knew I wasn’t a girl. I wasn’t like girls, girls never related to me, girls never liked me (though I liked them, and so badly wanted to be liked back). In elementary gym class, when the coach separated the little boys and girls, I went to the boys’ side. I wore the boy’s uniform at school. No one protested–there was an acknowledgement that I was just different. I had short hair, and the only feminine thing my mother could get me to wear were pink cowboy boots with a shiny metal toe. I wore my cowboy boots with basketball shorts and T-shirts (and of course never the training bra). I loved dressing in utilitarian, baggy clothing that was practical and obscuring. I would cut the hair off Barbie and dress her in Ken’s clothing. I got in countless fights with boys, and won, and was a rebel. My father was impressed by my tenacity, calling me “the prisoner of war who would never break” with admiration and endearment. I loved being mistaken as a boy. Adults were especially complimentary of me when they assumed I was a boy, which happened very often (and has continued throughout my life). They called me mature, wise beyond my years, saying that I’d “been here before.” I remember my mother scolding me for how I was perceived.

My home was broken beyond repair, the desert island I was sentenced to inhabit for my first 18 years. I survived sexual abuse at school and at home. Before I really knew it, other kids knew I was a lesbian, poor, unwell, and strange, and treated me accordingly. The bullying was excruciating and came from all sides, so, naturally, I internalized that something was deeply wrong with me. My family told me so, my teachers told me so, my classmates told me so. Every day was hell. I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 7, and was quickly put on stimulants, followed by sleep aids, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. I started self-harming that year. I didn’t even know cutting was a phenomenon. I was quite resourceful in my self-flagellation. I felt worthless and couldn’t see a way out, let alone a future for myself as an adult. I wanted to die, and started thinking of ways I could. I was always wondering how I could become normal, or good enough, so, maybe then, I could finally be loved.

When I was 8, fighting was one of my absolute favorite activities. And I preferred to be shirtless as much as possible. I remember when my brother told me we couldn’t fight anymore because I was “growing boobs.” At 9, the year of my first suicide attempt, I got my first period. I don't think that is a coincidence. I only knew what periods were because my sister forgot to flush one time, and my 5 year old cousin discovered the bloody toilet bowl. He announced to the entire family that she “peed blood!” I was worried that my sister was bleeding, and I asked my aunt if she was okay. She whispered, “she’s on her period.” I understood then. Girls whispered about periods at school, people on TV made jokes about it. From what I knew, a girl became a woman when she started bleeding, and then became a bloody monster once a month for the rest of her life. It felt like my world came crashing down when I got mine. I hid it, told no one, learned how to use tampons from the little pamphlet in the box that was tucked away under the sink. There were no pads, and I didn’t think to use toilet paper, so tampons it was. I thought if I hid my shame, it wouldn’t be real. I could keep being a tomboy and keep narrowly avoiding shaving and training bras. I didn’t cover the used tampon well enough, however, and my mother ripped into my older sister. Mama called her disgusting. My sister said that she wasn’t on her period. My mother and my sister went silent for a beat, eyes wide, and shot their gaze towards me. I ran outside to cry.

I thought of myself as a boy on the inside, and I was always compared to one anyway. I was substantially hairier and stronger than other girls, and I had a very deep voice. “Look, the gorilla won the push-up contest. She’s basically a boy anyway” a female classmate announced in gym class, and the giggles followed. Othering is the means by which we forget our belonging, or, we never find it in the first place. My only friends were the ones also subjected to ostracization: the other abused girls, the early-blooming girls that projected their difference by the shameful sounds of plastic wrappers in the elementary school girl’s bathroom. “Are you eating candy in there?” I wish!

By 9 years old, I understood the difference between boys and girls. Men and boys showed me that much, as often as they could. I had gone to a neighbor’s house to ride bikes. He introduced me to porn. It didn’t end well for him. He ended up screaming in pain in his front yard, cupping his face. His mother ran out of the house to see me standing over the writhing pervert and the theatrics began. I was villainized for hurting her precious baby boy, and was forbidden from playing with any other neighborhood kids. I’d never seen porn before that, but I’d already unfortunately known the mechanics by then. I had yet to have any sex education. Porn disgusted me. I tried not to think about sex at all, but I was starting to develop the idea that it was all I was good for. When I pictured myself having sex as an adult, I couldn’t imagine my own body. I understood that my vulva had no use for me, men made use of it. And that was that. I imagined a future sexual life where I had a male form instead, dreaming about being a good lover, a good husband. Deep down, I liked girls and wished I could marry a girl. I remember asking another girl if she wanted to get married so we could be best friends forever. She didn’t understand. Girls weren’t allowed to marry other girls. It was illegal then. I felt like an alien in exile from my own people. I fantasized that other people like me had to exist, somehow, somewhere, far beyond the suffocation of southern red states. My biggest fear was that I was the only one like me, the world’s loneliest freak.

Given how unbearably horrific my material world was, I found refuge online. I learned about trans people and their hardship. Finally, a condition that explained all of my anguish perfectly! I was messaged that I had gender dysphoria by anonymous trans adults online. And I checked all the boxes: I felt that if I had just been born male, then all my problems would be solved. I hated my early puberty, how my body was betraying and humiliating myself, ruining me, turning me into a sexual object against my will. So, I was convinced I was trans, but felt I had to keep it a precious, deeply-held secret. I held a very real fear that my parents would kill me if they knew I was really a boy on the inside.

During summer break when I was 13, I stopped eating, or bathing, and spent all my time in my tiny oasis of peace on the trans corners of the internet. One day during that period, my father dragged me out to the living room floor to demand what was wrong with me. He’d asked me that question countless times, but now I knew the answer. I had already been struggling greatly with my mental health, my grades had tanked and I was getting in more fights, more and more disciplinary infractions at school. So, what could I say? He was screaming at me.

“I’m trans.” I blurted out, hot tears streaming down my face. Time stood still and I couldn’t meet my parents’ eyes; I hung my head in shame of my admittance. I awaited annihilation, but I was met with speechlessness. My parents had no idea what trans meant, because Bill O’Reilly never mentioned it. My father’s tethers to his worldview loosened, and he asked, gently, for me to unearth an explanation. My father had never been a gentle person, but he had been catapulted into an ideology he had no understanding of. So, I explained. I liked girls, I was like a boy, and I was struggling mentally because I had dysphoria.

My therapist, who I’d already been seeing for some time, was consulted. She was a lesbian herself, but didn’t really talk about it. She was a respectable lesbian, not too butch. Lesbianism was still a very dangerous topic I ought not to reach for, it was forbidden. She sent me to a therapist specializing in transgender patients. The therapist was outside of our low-income government insurance network, so my father paid $100 for each appointment (if I remember correctly, they were monthly). This therapist was an FTM transgender man. (S)he was an older man who passed completely, beard and belly and all. (S)he’d lived an adventurous life, had a successful private practice and a loving wife of many years, and had a calming and comforting energy. To see a transman elder gave me hope, a picture of a faraway future that had yet to take shape.

(S)he asked me three questions in the first appointment:

1. Would you rather be a husband or a wife?

I obviously had a limited worldview with my young age, and thought of the relationship I knew best: my parents. And wives, well, their fate was not one I pined for. Wives had to cook and clean, get yelled at, trapped, beaten, raped, tortured, and take it. Wives were confined to a life of silent surrender to their captor: their husband. The husband was to lead, inflict pain, manage finances, but he had the freedom of leaving the home when he pleased, had friends, and had work. I liked the idea of having freedom, friends, and a career.

I also thought of the movies I’d seen, namely Titanic, where I often thought about Jack and Rose. I wanted to inspire adventure in a woman, I wanted to draw her like a French girl, I wanted to enjoy the soft expanse of her chest, and I would happily and devotedly give up my life so that another woman could live, or that I could taste even a drop of her love. These were the things I knew. I answered, “husband.”

2. Would you rather be a father or a mother?

I thought back to my childhood of playing house with other little girls. I was almost always the husband and father, and sometimes, the dog. And again, my desire was shaped by what I knew: fathers had to be disciplinarians, but they got to do the fun stuff too. Mothers worked the day away, mothers had to deal with piss and shit and tears and vomit and blood and nightmares, and fathers got to take the kids to the zoo. I answered, “father.”

3. Would you rather have a penis or a vagina?

This one was easy. So easy. Based on my experience, a vagina was built to be violated–it was a living, walking vulnerability. It was the source of all the problems in my life. It was the hole inside me that I wished I could seal up and hide forever. I hated it so much I’d even intentionally cut my vulva (and breasts) with razors, many times. I had never had any consensual sex, save for the few light experiments at sleepovers with the other weird girls. I had never had an orgasm. I couldn’t even imagine touching myself. I could, however, imagine having a penis quite vividly, and I so badly wanted it. I wanted to give a woman what she wanted to receive. Of course, I said, “penis.”

That was it. I was trans, right? Not at all a little lesbian tomboy who was suffering mental health issues caused by abuse…

My parents came back into the therapist’s office. (S)he told them that (s)he was diagnosing me with Gender Dysphoria Disorder. My father didn’t understand, and (s)he again explained. I watched in awe of the exchange. That (wo)man, the therapist, who was born a girl, was the first female to ever gain the full attention and respect of my chauvinist father. I was excited, on the edge of my seat. “So,” after the therapist explained what dysphoria was, “how do we fix her?” my father asked. The therapist said that the only way to heal gender dysphoria was through medical transition. I pretended I didn’t already know what all it entailed while my father asked further questions. He still couldn’t wrap his head around why I would ever want to be a boy (are you kidding me?), or what quantified gender dysphoria. The therapist brought up a study (now disproved, by the way) from 1995 in Sweden. It explored the sex difference in brains of transgender people. Simply, he shared the premise that transgender people had the body of their birth sex, but the brain of the opposite sex, so to align the polar opposites, hormone replacement therapy and surgery (medical transition) was the solution. It was simply a neurological miswiring. I recoiled in disgust when my father said “so she has the body of a girl,” but felt relieved when he said “but the brain of a boy.” It finally made sense to my parents, and I think there were motivations to make me into a straight “boy” rather than accept and support an ugly duckling of a butch lesbian daughter. Hello, sweet normalcy, conversion therapy here I come! And so, over the years, I became a man, and we all rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after!

Hah.

My parents believed in the solution of hormone replacement therapy, for the most part. However, my biological mother wanted to kidnap me and send me to a wilderness conversion camp, but thankfully (and somewhat to my surprise,) my father stopped the plot. I got her flowers, lied about the paperwork she was signing, (and she was probably high) so she signed and I went on with my HRT field trip permission slip. I was referred to a pediatric endocrinologist and swiftly got my labs done, thankful for the free or low-cost due to Medicaid. I remember the ecstasy of affirmation, being referred to with male pronouns at the doctor’s office.

“You have PCOS,” the endocrinologist read casually from my chart, taking in the results. I had no earthly idea what Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome was. I asked. “It means you can’t have kids, but don’t worry,” she cheered. That was all she said. The reality of chronic illness was yet to bless my understanding. She said that I already had very high testosterone; I remember my levels being compared to that of an adult male. No wonder I was hairy and boyish and deep-voiced, I was destined to be a boy! My hormones were sending signs, despite my conflicting reproductive organs. I felt proud.

I was an early bloomer, so I’d already passed the point of puberty blockers. She taught me about the effects of testosterone. My therapist had already told me about this. There was all the good stuff I longed for, and very minor health risks. Thickening of the blood? Just donate it regularly. Male pattern baldness? You’re too young for that right now, plus you have good genetics, look at your father. Acne? You’re 13, everyone has it. Acne is so in for your age group right now. Vaginal atrophy? Pshhh, just get a hysterectomy, which you're going to do anyway. I think back then I believed I would genuinely become a man. Only I wouldn’t grow the plumbing, but that didn’t really matter. I could get surgery. It didn’t matter. I had the soul of a man, and it would finally start reflecting on the outside. (Keep in mind I’d yet to take a single biology class.)

I transitioned at the “perfect time.” I was just starting high school. New name, new boxers, new binder, new me. A few kids from my middle school went to my high school, and teachers and administrators saw that I was female on my school forms, so there was no stealthy way to go about it. Thankfully, I went to a charter school for weird, artsy, or delinquent children. I fit right in.

I started making friends and my grades soared to heights previously untold. I also made friends in my trans teen support group, that was specifically for the patients of my trans therapist. (She)He had somewhat of a monopoly on trans therapy in my area. All of us saw (her)him, and wouldn't have been granted access to the support groups at the local LGBT center had we not seen (her)him. It was facilitated by an FTM transman in (her)his 30s. Most of us in the group were female, and interestingly, many of us were also diagnosed with PCOS. I think most of us would’ve just been butch lesbians had we not been met with so much homophobia. We discussed and bonded over our struggles with transphobia and homophobia, familial and community unacceptance, and self-esteem issues. We also shared our personal triumphs and transition progress. We talked about how to pass, down to body language and vocal intonation. It was an acting class in a way. The facilitator showed us binders and packers and lots of other things, even taught us about safe, sane, consensual BDSM, and that sexuality, just like gender, is fluid. (Quite disturbing, in hindsight.)

In addition to the support group, I started going to LGBT youth groups and soaking up all the information. I learned about women's and trans history, and some aspects of feminism and civil rights, like the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Loretta J. Ross, and The Combahee River Collective. We read poetry and excerpts of literature. I learned about transfeminism, transmisogyny, and trans rights, and was informed of the work of Judith Butler and Susan Stryker. Gender is a performance, and trans women are more oppressed than trans men, y’know. What tickles me now, years into my feminist awakening, is that we were only taught about the feminist thought that the adult trans organizers agreed with. For example, bodily autonomy and intersectionality were included in conversations, but no writings on sex-based oppression. We were fed platitudes like trans men are men, trans women are women, trans people have always existed, and sex work is work. We were never exposed to literature that challenged our views, only further isolating and shielding us from unlike perspectives. That prevented me from pursuing deeper knowledge for fear of seeming bigoted. It shaped me into intellectual fragility with a narrow yet holier-than-thou perspective. It was indoctrination disguised as consciousness raising. And to give credit where it’s due, it was, and is, a truly brilliant manipulation tactic… look how many of us are drinking the Kool-Aid.

Despite the overwhelming oppression and the odds we were up against in the fight for our rights, it was positively righteous. The suffering was purifying and salvatory because I knew we were right. I was on the right side of history, being a part of something much bigger than myself. I was a part of something big, and I felt so supported and cared for. It was utopic. I felt a loving, compassionate community for the first time in my life. I was accepted by the trans community more than my own kin, and I could be authentic in a way I couldn’t be anywhere else. I was mentored by well-meaning (albeit ignorant and misguided) adults who genuinely thought they were helping me. My talents were fostered, honed, refined, and I was shaping up to be a promising young “man.”

I thrust my free time and energy into work, volunteerism and activism. It was really wonderful to get out of the house and do something constructive. I babysat younger trans children. Some of the kids seemed normal enough, playful and happy, but there were a few that I knew were on puberty blockers. They were significantly less energetic than the others. There was one boy, he identified as a trans girl. I didn’t like looking at the child because he scared me. I think he was 9 or so, skeletal and pallid, dark eye bags. He would sit at the table and stare at the wall and rarely spoke, and I remember him complaining about how badly his teeth hurt. I felt like something was deeply wrong, but figured it was that individual child rather than an issue with puberty blockers. I berated myself for having such a bigoted thought. How dare I be critical of life saving care? Subconsciously I knew something more was going on. I felt lucky to have never been put on puberty blockers.

I passed for male easily and well, was precocious and well-spoken. I was paraded around LGBT fundraising galas, rubbing shoulders with seas of rich gay men that all looked like Stanley Tucci. I felt privileged to co-facilitate workshops at the local LGBT center, presenting lectures on “queerness” to LGBT elders. We said that damn word, “queer,” as much as possible in those workshops, and a minority of the elders were supportive. Most were not. That was when I learned firsthand about the lesbians and gays who did not support gender transition, nor did they appreciate being called “queer.” They said that there was nothing strange or unusual or perverse about being LGBT, so they weren’t queer and didn’t appreciate it. I made an elderly gay man sob in one workshop, begging us to understand what a weight that slur has. He was almost killed as a teenage boy, and had to fight for his life with a brick he found on the ground because he was a homosexual. My throat hurt and tears welled, sharing his woe. I knew what it was like to be bullied, chased, and beaten. After the workshop, I told my mentor that what we were doing seemed wrong. She consoled me, assuring me that progress will come whether they (the generation who got us our rights in the first place) liked it or not, and they were going to die soon anyway. The world would be ours when the old guard went extinct. Despite the transphobia and pushback, I was still happy to be living proof of the trans son, not the dead daughter.

Until I went home. I lived in the shadow of the dead daughter. Her memory haunted me in every mirror and every interaction with my father. I was never man enough. In hindsight, I think part of the reason I transitioned was for the desperate hope that a vestige of maleness would keep me safe from male violence. Not so. I remember being told, “You wanna be a man? Then Imma hit you like one.” Quite strong words of encouragement to dive deeper into masculinity. Still, I wasn’t man enough to stop getting molested. I wasn’t man enough to stop getting abused. The difference was that I was angry enough to fight back now. My anger outweighed fear, danced in leading step with it, controlled the pace. My home became increasingly more tumultuous, chaotic, and violent. If I was home, I was in my room with the door locked, wishing I wasn’t there. I stayed where I could with whatever wounded souls that took mercy on me. I isolated myself from those who weren’t affirming of my identity.

I was stealth in some spaces. (Stealth meaning being perceived as your identified gender and not disclosing your biological sex or transgender identity. I was seen as a biological male.) That is where I learned about the social dynamics between men and women. I truly lived my adolescence, in many ways, as a boy. I learned what the other boys and men thought of women, when they thought they were confidentially contained in their sacred bond of fraternity, built on the necks of women. They talked about sex, which was really just rape, and they talked about women like a pitbull would growl with his teeth around a chew toy. I crossed my legs during these conversations. Not the gay way, but so my ankle rested upon my knee, my legs still spread, projecting my imaginary phallic supremacy. I never legitimately believed in my supremacy for a second, though. It made me deeply sad. As I was perceived as male, I realized how much women surrender and defer to men, treating them (now me) as the authority. If emotion was physical action, the women would be begging on their knees. I hated it.

I hated the lack of familiarity, the lack of, “hello, sister,” on their faces when they saw me. I savored what little sisterhood I remembered, rolled it around in my mind, wishing one day I could be loved and accepted by women. I hated scaring women while I walked on the street, especially at night, especially because I was deathly afraid, too. Just like her. I was increasingly afraid of my lie being found out, that under the binder, and packer, and peach fuzz just beginning to thicken, just behind the happy brave little transboy mask, was a deeply wounded teenage girl. Her screams were choked out.

My father started asking me about my education and career goals in my later teens. He swung like a pendulum between seeing me as a man, and seeing me as a girl, whatever would hurt me worse in that moment. I was accepted into a carpentry program and he made me withdraw, insisting I couldn’t handle hard work or getting my hands dirty. When I said I wanted to go to a maritime academy, he actually entertained the idea. Of course, there was an ulterior motive. He suggested that I detransition, because I would have a higher chance of getting in, for “diversity points.” He was extremely critical of Affirmative Action, unless it meant a success for his children that he could vicariously live through. I thought what he was saying was terribly transphobic, and I stormed off. But, the suggestion of detransition didn't leave my head no matter how hard I tried.

Suddenly, I realized that I could imagine my potential future as a woman, and my heart could’ve stopped from the fear. I could picture myself as a tough woman, a strong woman, embarking on a wild journey, in places where no one knew me, far away from this godforsaken town. Most importantly, I would be free. I always fantasized about being free. But being a woman scared the ever living shit out of me. Misogyny scared me, male violence scared me, but I had been trans long enough to understand that I would never really escape it no matter how far my transition went.

My manhood relied on biweekly shots in the ass. I still had to go to the gynecologist, and endocrinologist, and complain about my excruciating abdominal pain and months of non-stop vaginal bleeding to be told, “sweetie, this is womanhood, we get periods,” by the nurse. See, testosterone didn’t stop my periods. My endocrinologist had injected, as well as testosterone, Depo Provera birth control. She also prescribed me Estradiol (synthetic estrogen) tablets. I took it all on with the hope that the pain and the bleeding would stop. In total, I bled, cramped, and tried to pull a poker face through the debilitating pain and dysphoria, for nine long months. I remember my father laughing at the cruel hand of fate, as if I was getting what I deserved. Things were going well before the bleeding, but my physical and mental health, along with my academic performance, began to slip. I had been looking forward to top surgery as soon as I was 18, and already had a list of surgeons to contact. I was saving money too, tucked away in a coffee can. One day I went to count the money and fantasize, and it was empty. My mother had stolen the money. My ambitions of happiness and freedom in manhood withered further.

I was sinking further into misery, and waking up from the long dream. I started thinking about detransitioning, keeping it to myself, but it consumed me too much to be hidden for long. I was afraid of facing the weight of my mistake I made years ago, as a 13 year old. I was told that no one detransitioned. I was still dysphoric, but I knew I would never truly be a man, so what was the point anymore? I had to find another way. Some way no one had told me about yet.

One of the last times I attended the trans support group, I asked how we could possibly cope with the fact that we would never truly be the opposite sex. Silence fell over the room. Several group members were very upset, I remember tears. After the group, the facilitator, who had grown very close to me over the years, gently told me it was not appropriate to express such a sentiment. But what if it was true? What if that was what I was struggling with? What if the truth hurts me, and I didn’t want it to? It didn’t matter. I realized that I can’t speak the truth if it hurts peoples’ feelings.

My transition was wrapping up, the cracks were there to stay, and growing. My family saw the end, I saw the end, and my long walk of shame began. I told my support group that I didn’t think I was trans. I didn’t feel like a woman, either, so I settled on nonbinary. I told my therapist, too, who had told me that detransition occurs in less than 1% of transitions. (S)he had no idea what to say. I was still dysphoric, I passed so well, it didn’t make sense to anyone in the trans community. My family breathed a sigh of relief and tried to forget the whole thing, only sometimes referencing “the trans incident,” when they wanted to twist the knife. I was never really a part of the family unit, forever the black sheep, but my transition had caused an unmendable rift, as I was disowned from half of them. During this time I also came off of all of my psychiatric medication after 10 years. I wanted to have command over my own life, without any medical intervention.

The trans community came after me for my “transphobic crimes.” Many of my trans peers believed I had lied and infiltrated and used the community for years. Identifying as non-binary and getting off testosterone was taken as a massive betrayal. I was physically stalked, bullied, and exiled. One time I was on a date, and a transman from my support group came up to the table and told my date that I was a detransitioner and that I was transphobic. I never even got the chance to tell her my history. She never saw me again. I had to be isolated from the other community members at a summer retreat because of the vicious bullying. They spread rumors about me, saying anything to discredit and defame my character. I was anonymously threatened with death and rape, and my social media was hacked. See, I had committed the ultimate sin: apostasy. They had accepted me with open arms, I had even become a darling (pawn) to their cause, and then I betrayed them by questioning the gospel and abandoning the faith. I lost everyone I really cared about, everyone that I felt (at the time) really understood me.

No one understood now. I still believed in gender ideology and trans rights, I still identified as nonbinary too and struggled a great deal with dysphoria, still fantasized about surgery. Nothing about me fundamentally changed, but that didn’t matter to anyone anymore. Once again I turned to the internet for shelter. This time, I found nothing. I read about how transphobic detransitioners were, how detransitioners were never really trans in the first place, and how exceedingly rare it was. Less than 1%, I read, over, and over, again. What if their numbers just weren't being recorded, and they lived under the radar, suffering in silence? What if all the detransitioners disappeared from their communities and skipped town, like I so badly wanted to? What if they were ashamed and never went back to their doctors, like I did? What if the doctors were lying or never bothered to follow up?

I felt abandoned. Isolated. Once again, the solitary, weird girl-thing, left all alone and unloved with a mountain of unhealed trauma. I was worse off than I had been before, now straining under the crushing weight of transition regret. Back then I couldn’t find any supportive media about detransition. Detransition was a topic met with immense cruelty, and I was shocked to see just how awful my former community was to people like me. I just tried to forget about my transition and move on. The dysphoria, (something I understand now to be simple self-hatred,) hadn’t gone away. But now that I was a legal adult and not trans anymore, it was time to grow up. It was time to give up the tomboy thing and be the woman my parents always expected, especially my father… “So, you’re gonna be a girl now right?”

I spent years trying to escape and overcompensate. Those are the darkest years, where I had truly lost myself. I lost all my friends. I stopped seeing, dating, or sleeping with women. I did that with men. Any time I fantasized about women, I would make sure I was with a man as soon as possible. I felt angry at my attraction to women, and rejected it as much as I humanly could. Moreover, in my former relationships with women, it was assumed that I must fill the role of a stereotypical male in a heterosexual partnership because I wasn't feminine. The exact opposite occurred in heterosexual partnerships, as it was acknowledged that I was a woman. That brought little relief, as I was expected either explicitly or subtly by male partners, that I must be feminine. I wore dresses and skirts and makeup and waxed every goddamn inch of my body until I was scorched earth, not one coarse hair dare come back. I scrubbed my body with floral soaps under scalding water until my skin came off. I made myself bleed; that was the only way I knew how to express any control over my body. I’d built an uncompromising habit of self-punishment, brick by brick. I smoked and drank until I could smile, until I could stomach sex with men. I told myself, over and over, on my knees, on my back, “you will do this, and you will like it.” I didn't.

The revolving door of trauma kept turning, and I watched my life from a haze. I wasn’t myself, I was just hatefully watching my life from within my body. I just kept twisting the knife in my heart that I felt I was born with. The knife was a part of me. I tried so very hard to be as feminine as I possibly could in an attempt to earn my womanhood back (since I falsely equated womanhood to femininity). Even with a dress and a full face of makeup, some people still assumed I was a trans-identified-male. I was sexually harassed by men who could tell I was a woman, and sexually harassed by people who thought I was a man in a dress. I realized the adversity that gender-non-conforming men face firsthand when I was chased and cornered into an elevator and called a tranny. It was the first of many such situations.

I couldn't do anything right, the damage of my transition was done and there was no going back. I'd be forever androgynous, and deeply unsettling to “normal” people. My mere existence had a way of making everyone uncomfortable—the general public didn't like when they couldn't tell if I was male or female, trans people didn't like that I detransitioned, women didn't like me in their spaces because I was masculinized, men didn't like me because I wasn't feminine, or, fuckable, enough. There was not a single mold I fit into. When I left an abusive relationship, (with a man, who ended up transitioning) I briefly re-transitioned, and got back on Testosterone for 6 months. I felt too far gone to ever look like a woman, to be a woman. I told no one, and silently began passing as male again, in hopes to ease some of the dysphoria. Again, it didn't work. Nothing ever worked, I was damaged goods, a lost cause, broken to my very core. I was punishing myself, drowning myself, digging myself deeper into the suffering. Neither feminine womanhood nor perceived manhood could make me love myself, nor make me accepted by society. I gave up on identifying as non-binary, feeling like there was no hope in any direction, so I'd settle on womanhood unhappily. Being female was a fact of my life, and I gave up on trying to be anything else despite how much I hated it. I couldn’t be saved and I was heading toward rock bottom, full speed ahead. I was a terrible success of false consciousness.

I genuinely believed I was bisexual back then, because I believed that a Good Man would come along and sweep me off my feet. Shitty men made it easier for me to think I was bisexual. Of course I didn’t feel anything, he was mean, of course I wasn’t attracted, he wasn’t funny, of course I was disgusted, of course, of course, of course… just wait for a Good Man to come along to make you happy.

Then a good man actually did come into my life. He was emotionally expressive, hilarious, caring, tall, dark and handsome. And he fell for me. I remember one morning a few months into seeing each other. He had stayed the night, and I watched him search for me in the bed with a slight smile, eyes still closed. He pressed his face into my pillow and inhaled deeply. I was watching an intimate, domestic moment not meant for me. I stood at my door, watching in silent agony. My heart sank to my knees and I realized that I could never love him back. I wanted to, I really wanted to love that man. I was incapable of loving or being attracted to men, no matter how good they were. I was a lesbian. All along, everything that happened was because I was a lesbian. I felt crushed under the realization that I'd had, and repressed, since I was a girl. I broke it off with the guy and stopped performing. I was beginning to return to myself. The realization of my sexuality and the path of destruction I went down to escape it broke my heart and crushed my dreams of societal acceptance. It was painful to unveil who I was supposed to be, exposing my raw, tender, wounded self underneath. The darkness of a lived lie could no longer be a refuge to me. It was a personal apocalypse.

I had to grieve everything I lost. My life was an anthology of pain, rooted in misogyny and lesbophobia. I had to mourn the woman I could never be: that heterosexual, obedient ingénue. I will never know the woman I would’ve grown up to be had I never been medicalized. What would she look like naturally, if there was never any medical intervention? What would she sound like? Who would she be? Happy and whole? Unlike me? I used to trace the sharp contours of my androgynous face, wondering what I would look like: softened, supple, more feminine. I used to hate catching my own gaze. Because of medical transition, I lost physical health and some sexual function. Forever, I would have the aftermath of transition marked on my body: a deepened voice, excess body hair, bone structure and muscular differences, an enlarged clitoris, and reproductive issues and chronic pain that are yet unexplained. I was heartbroken to know that there was no going back. I would always know the intimate and sickening details of male violence; my emotional and physical scarring would forever be a betrayal of the secrets men keep. I wondered what it would be like to be a virgin, to have an endearingly awkward first experience. I dreamed of white roses and harps, cherubs, memories I’d look back at and laugh or cringe, not ones that left me far away with a vacant expression. I lost years coveting and chasing normalcy in an attempt to be loved or accepted, by others and by myself. I lost ownership of my body, but I don’t think I had it in the first place. I lost my girlhood. I lost my adolescence. I lost sisterhood. I lost integrity and dignity and honesty and reality. I lost myself. Until my epiphany, I had kept battling myself like a hydra; I tried to escape one problem, and two more rose to take its place until my suffering crushed me between innumerable jaws of jagged, gnashing teeth. I lost so much more than I will ever, ever know.

The pain over the loss consumed me, and I drowned in the dark red stillness of it. I surrendered into the abyss, the deep well of all I had tried to escape. Reaching for an end to the suffering was causing my suffering, perpetuating my self-destruction. I stopped reaching for a pacifier. I knew there was no such thing as an escape anymore, and I renounced the desperate hope that anything could be different. I had spent my whole life until that point trying to escape suffering. Now I felt there was nowhere left to turn. I had to shed the old way of being in order to embrace my true self, and I had no idea who that was yet. I was at the point where I didn't want to die anymore, but I was deathly afraid of living. I spent days in silence and isolation, barely moving, barely doing anything at all, watching the signs of life outside my rain glazed window. The swaying tree, the barking dog. It was almost meditative. Nothing existed but the eternal present moment, full of formless hurt, anger, grief, confusion, and awe. How was I still alive after so much loss? Why was I alive? How did I even manage to make it? And, what now? It felt absurd that I had gone through such intense and concentrated pain all because of the simple fact that I am a woman, and a homosexual.

Days passed. I don’t know how many. Sailing on the winds of curiosity, I left the doldrums. To relieve suffering is to cultivate understanding. I had to know why and how I was still here, and what that meant. I had to know why such things could happen, things that were encouraged as “progressive” yet harmed me irreparably. Why did so many people hate who I was? Why did I hate who I was? Why did I transition? Why did it take me so long to acknowledge and accept that I was a female, and a homosexual? Why was being a lesbian so hated? Why was my exclusive attraction to other females transphobic, why was it evil, if I was this way naturally? I tried everything I could to not be a lesbian, why did I have to be this way? Why did I make the choices I did? Why did I hurt myself so much, and why did society encourage it? Why did I try so hard to escape the truth? Why are we all abandoning material fact and biological realities in favor of nebulous, undefinable self-identity? How the fuck did we get here as a society? How do we fix it? How do I fix me? There was no guide on how to navigate the aftermath of detransition, how to heal dysphoria without transition. I was waking up to this culture war of gender versus fact, which is really patriarchy versus female liberation. I had to get to the heart of the societal issue to understand why it happened to me personally.

A doorway is an opportunity of expansion. I stepped through. I unravelled the lies I believed about myself and my womanhood through research and self-exploration of my own traumatic experiences. I spent most of my time reading and writing, ranging from topics of biology, neurology, psychology, post-traumatic stress, philosophy, religion, spirituality, dharma, lesbian history, and feminism. I went through archives for the literature and feminist theory that I was told to avoid and hate all those years ago: the forbidden, “bigoted” radical feminist literature. At first, I was very afraid of believing the TERFs were right all along, but my desire to understand drove me to persevere. I knew I had no right to hide behind my fear, nor did anyone else. I pored through what I researched, hours every day. I recorded my findings in my diary and told no one, believing I was studying a dead language. I thought all the great thinkers and theorists were dead. Especially Andrea Dworkin, who years after her death, still held the torch to light the way through the dark caverns of suppressed knowledge of systemic patriarchal technology. More than any others, it was her words that forced my eyes painfully open in such a way that they will never close again. She was exactly right when she said, “Many women resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.” I was taught that the familiarity of living in my chains was more comfortable than searching for the key to free myself. I could only look up and see that all my sisters, all of womankind, were also imprisoned, once I acknowledged that I myself was held prisoner, too.

Feminism helped me reconcile with the lies I was told all throughout my so-called “gender journey.” I was told that I had a neurological miswiring and was subsequently diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria Disorder, and medical transition was the only cure. In reality, nothing was wrong with me. My desire to absolve myself of the fundamental guilt that came with being born a girl was a product of my environment. My body was not the problem. Policing my body was the problem. Male violence was the problem. How society treats women was the problem. I used to think that my dysphoria was innate, something I was born with, but now I understand that all dysphoria stems from trauma. In order to heal my “gender dysphoria,” I had to radically accept all that had happened: explore the horror of my dark past, look the monster in its million eyes, and soulfully acknowledge that it was real and it happened to me. And then, most herculean of all, I began the process of forgiving myself. It was not my fault for what happened to me, but my life was entirely my responsibility. I had to take responsibility for myself: the rest of my life was up to me. So, what was I going to do with it?

For the first time in my life, I developed a healthy relationship with the truth. My reading and self-exploration of my past and my emotions revealed the truth. Through the confrontation with the truth, I willingly subjected myself to live through a disruptive, messy, uncomfortable period that put my life into an upheaval. Out of that experience, I was able to re-emerge as the person I always needed in my life, the adult I needed in my childhood. I visualized my adult self rescuing my child self, hugging her, telling her it was okay to be a lesbian, that there was nothing wrong with her. I imagined telling her that I'm doing all of this work for her. She should've been protected, kept safe, cared for and loved. Now, I do that for myself. I found strength in what remained.

I fostered awareness and self-compassion, and to be honest, it was an utter pain in my ass. It was the most intense and overwhelming change I'd ever experienced. I never learned how to sit with discomfort before. At that point, sobriety was extremely uncomfortable, but I knew I had to surrender any escape from who I was. I realized the growth and healing was worth it—being uncomfortable is where transformation happens. I had no idea how to take care of myself, but I had to learn in order to liberate myself. Something deep within me was demanding a revolution of authenticity. As the saying goes, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I couldn't keep living on my old system of understanding because I knew it wasn't sustainable. Gently giving myself the space to be uncomfortable and explore all I had been through made me realize that what I experienced was not who I was—it did not define me. I refused to self-identify with my trauma, rather just recognize it was an experience, not an identity, which provided healthy distance and lessening attachment. It wasn't sustainable to be unhappy and self-hating. Growth cannot happen swaddled in thorns. I had to notice, name, and accept what had happened. I realized that my whole lifetime was just a pinprick in time. Once I let go of the clinging attachment to my young and incredibly difficult life, I felt relieved to know that I'm just a wave in an endless ocean, a spectacularly small piece of it all, of nature, of the entire universe itself.

While my emotional awareness and control broadened, I dove deeper still into feminism. These transformations happened at the same time for me, which made it all the more impactful. I did not yet understand that the radical ideas of second wave feminism were still alive, underground, with deep roots, and starting to sprout up again in earnest. I learned about separatism, critiques of pornography and prostitution, male violence, incest, and gender ideology. I now understood my condition as a woman, and my consciousness broadened. Women are united by our biology, bound by millennia of oppression and surviving despite it. It was healing to know that all along, I was a woman, and I will always be a woman and a lesbian no matter what happened to my body. Womanhood was not something to be earned or proved or quietly suffered through to produce stoic virtue. I realized that womanhood was not contained in the tubes of lipstick and pleats of skirts; womanhood is blessed upon me by my birthright and nothing more. I knew what womanhood meant, then, despite feeling rejected by my own sex for so long, and understood that I was alienated because I didn’t perform according to feminine gender roles. And, the women and girls who pushed me aside would be punished by the patriarchy had they accepted me as one of their own. I don't blame them for their social conditioning. I don't even blame the trans people from my past, either, for they are victims too. I view them with compassion and sadness for how society has conditioned us to be so cruel to each other, and to ourselves.

Now, I wish trans people would dare to accept themselves, as they are, and realize that they are not the problem, the way society is structured is the problem. I want them to know that no one is born incorrectly. No life is incorrect. No body must be reshaped to be an authentic expression of the self, nor is transitioning a rebellion from the gender binary: that is a lie that we have been told in the interest of upholding patriarchal standards of manhood and womanhood, and the ulterior goal behind such standards is to maintain and expand patriarchal power. When feminine men can't be men, and masculine women can't be women, who benefits? Patriarchy does. Gender roles keep everyone in line. If a feminine man maintains his identity as a man (rather than transitioning to a trans woman), the male sex is emasculated, and in patriarchal terms, disempowered, because the masculine is viewed as more powerful than the feminine; the most disempowering state of being is femininity, as women are seen as mere sexual objects. The gender-non-conforming male must be punished and exiled from his brethren. If a masculine woman maintains her identity as a woman (rather than transitioning to a trans man), she loses her use in patriarchal society, as her use as a woman hinges upon her sexual objectification and servitude to male power. The gender-non-conforming woman must be punished and exiled into inhumanity, relating to no one. Gender non-conforming people are a threat to patriarchal power because we rebel against social coercion and conditioning. Of course we would be encouraged to transition! It's a brilliant method to silence us, busy us, while the world goes on as it's been for millenia! These standards of gender roles hurt everyone. I wish society allowed us all to express ourselves as we wish while keeping biological fact intact: I dream of the abolition of gender roles, I dream of a world where no one wants to transition. I dream of a world where the healthcare system doesn't make billions of dollars each year by exploiting the insecurities of gender-non-conforming people through medical experimentation (with hidden health complications) marketed as life saving, gender affirming care. Transgender healthcare (if you can even call it that) is a criminal deception on a massive scale, driven by greed and patriarchal power. The only way that society will change for the better is if we make it that way. It produces much more social change to reject the rigid, unfair gender roles thrust upon us by our birth sex and express ourselves as we feel, rather than reinforce gender roles by transitioning. Because when you transition, you perpetuate the idea that feminine=woman, and masculine=man, and that simply isn't true, nor has it ever been. A woman is a female, a man is a male, and there's nothing that should tell us what to say, how to act, what clothes to wear or who to love. In my personal opinion, going down the arduous and honorable path of radical self-acceptance is the most important work anyone can do. Self-acceptance is a much more rewarding and worthwhile task, rather than changing yourself into something more palatable within our society and within your own perspective. Self-acceptance leads to a fuller, richer, more authentically joyful life.

During the later parts of my personal consciousness raising, I was not an island of myself. I found other staunch feminists on social media, and from there, I was blessed with the knowledge of operational womyn’s lands. I visited one. I remember the fear and excitement, setting out with written directions to an undeveloped region. It was a scavenger hunt for landmarks on winding dirt roads. Over the hill and through the trees, land dykes met me with open arms. I arrived in time for a work day, when the community gets together to work collectively on land, structure, and road maintenance.

I’d never seen so many lesbians in one place, let alone masculine lesbians. I was awestruck. Tough gentle women, velvet wrapped in steel. Women like me. I was breathing fully, I was seeing with new eyes. I realized we could live like this, together, as it always should’ve been. It felt so natural, living lightly on the land, in the company of lesbians, unbound from male oppression. I was quickly put to work with a few other women, cheerfully proving my strength by digging post-holes into the earth. I rolled my sleeves up over my shoulders and I hammered the shovel down, over and over. I remember my mind fled to the past without permission, thinking of my father while I struck downward, channeling my fiery rage toward the patriarchy from my clenched hands, down the shaft, to the penetrating spade. And the rock beneath, his throat. I had gone somewhere else, the murky snakepit of my childhood.

Plumes of smoky dust came from the rock breaking open while sweat gathered at my eyebrows, and I didn’t stop. Two women had paused their work to compliment me. I looked up at two loving faces, and to my surprise, I softened and smiled through heaving breaths. I came back from the frothing, turbulent shore of my past. I had never before been appreciated nor seen authentically like I was then. My work, my body, my female masculinity, had never been openly admired like that before. My anguish had been my true north for so long, but I realized I was finally in a safe place to lay all the weight down and shake off the ache. A closed fist cannot receive, only an open palm, tension released. It was time to release my grip. Exhale. Let go. Let it all go.

A carpenter in her 70s leaned against her truck and gave us direction. After the package house was built, she took us to the river. My lover and I rode in the bed of her truck, bracing ourselves between shovels and bags of concrete. I looked out at the bright blue sky, the rolling land that quickly stepped up into mountains. The late spring scent of flowers and trees danced between my sweaty skin and dirty clothes. I felt oneness with everything, taking it all in, sure I would remember the experience for life. This is what liberation felt like: a grand adventure.

We went to the river. I disrobed to my boxers and white T-shirt, and waded into the cool water with my lover while another woman dove right in. The hot day was forgotten, my body satisfied with the kind of feeling only manual labor could provide. I immersed myself down to my shaved head. I felt new, shiny and freshly-formed in my healing; what would come, I didn’t know yet, but I knew it would be glorious.

I found community among genuine lesbians and feminists. I found my place in the world, in nature, steady and strong. I realized that my existence as a female is unchanging. And now, it is unwavering, bowing to no one. My womanhood and lesbianism are gifts, as is life itself. My experiences of profound suffering led me to a greater understanding of the flow of life. I no longer feel any dysphoria, healed by accepting life as it is. I also no longer regret my transition, as much as I believe it should never be an option for anyone. I internalized priceless lessons about feminism and patriarchy, and have a deep self-knowledge and consciousness that I would not have had if I never transitioned. I learned that speaking the truth is dangerous, my experience is powerful, and I have many, many more stories to tell.

I’m just getting started.

. . .

I am the canary in the mine shaft, shouting out as a lucky survivor of child transition. Listen to me: there is danger here. Turn back if you want to live.