#I transitioned. then I stopped taking HRT and started viewing myself as a woman again.

[mascwoman]

Not cis, not trans, but a secret third thing

[detransition]

from dickevandyke The other day a friend of mine said they hardly even consider me detrans because I "didn't really do anything to detransition". I didn't ask what they meant by that, because they're not really the kind of person I can have that sort of conversation with. I didn't want to have to explain to them why I detransitioned. I didn't want to have to justify finally feeling okay with myself after spending my teenage years being miserable and stressed about being trans.

It's kind of a fascinating mindset, though. I think it gives really wonderful insight as to how their brain works. Like, I stopped taking testosterone. I stopped asking to be referred to by male pronouns. I "came out" as a woman, and I Came Out as a Lesbian after also spending most of my teenage years trying very hard to repress my attraction to women. This person doesn't view that as doing anything. Why?

I imagine it's because I dress fairly masculine - as Butches generally do. I wear still wear, mostly, "boyish clothes". I didn't start wearing make-up. I didn't let my hair grow out long. I haven't done any voice training, or really made an effort to make my voice higher pitched like it was before. I haven't gotten breast implants. I rarely correct people when they call me "sir". I don't need to do any of those things. A stranger calling me "sir" doesn't mean I am not a woman. Not having breasts anymore doesn't mean that I'm not a woman. The point of my detransition was not to turn myself into a stereotype or to dive head-first into femininity.

The point of my detransition was just that I am finally comfortable with myself, just as I am. That doesn't mean that I love my body, but I am okay with it. I am at peace with who I am.

Do I regret getting a mastectomy? Yes. There was no other reason to remove my breasts, they were perfectly fine, they were small and didn't cause me any back pain, I didn't have any medical issues related to them. Do I regret wearing a binder? Absolutely. It has screwed up my ribs and back so severely that I am probably going to be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. Do I regret going on HRT? Sometimes, sometimes not. Honestly, it didn't really change much for me outside of my voice and making my body hair slightly thicker. Do I regret social transition? Absolutely. I dug myself into such a deep hole of self loathing and repression that it took me three years to finally crawl out of it. So after going through all of that - after putting myself, my body through all of that, why would I want to do it all over again in the opposite direction, when there is absolutely no need for it?

I "didn't do anything to detransition" because I don't need to do anything to be a woman, I just am one. Woman is my natural state. I "didn't do anything to detransition" because I already put my body through three years of cross-sex hormones, five-ish years of binding, and an unnecessary mastectomy which has left me unable to feel most of my chest more than a year post-op. I don't need more unnecessary surgeries or expensive treatments to make myself into a woman, I never really stopped being one. Getting breast implants wouldn't make me more of a woman because I don't need breasts to be a woman. Voice training to make my voice a higher pitch again won't make me more of a woman because a high pitched voice was never what made me a woman in the first place. Wearing make-up, growing out my hair, wearing "girly" clothes wouldn't make me more of a woman, because femininity does not make a woman.

I didn't argue with them when they said that because, to be honest, I don't want to hear what they think makes a woman. I don't want to hear them trying to justify why they barely consider me detrans because I have not tried to turn myself into a feminine stereotype. It just really struck a chord with me, because if I'm not really detrans to them, am I really a woman to them? Or do they see me as some kind of "failed" woman because despite explicitly and openly accepting my womanhood, I am not their picture of what a woman is suppose to be?

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

[valehirvas]

25 27 & 28 for the transmed ask

25. If you could change something/some things about the community, what would they be?

take it back to the basics

what it used to be. when i transitioned, we only had dysphoric people in the community. people understood and dealt with the reality of our circumstances and our existence and none of this reality denying bs was a thing back then. biology wasn’t offensive and all trans people actually wanted was just to live in peace. no one wanted to make a number out of it or bring it up anywhere and finding spokespeople for our community was HARD because people would rather go stealth than speak up and out themselves and start making demands. we were quiet. it’s not like we weren’t making progress, we had our rights movement and our organizations, but it was never aggressive and it was NEVER taking anything away from the other LGB. basically everyone was transmed and nobody had ever heard of stargenders. i miss that. i miss reason and logic and compassion as the building blocks of the community. i’m tired of this egocentric flat earther bullshit that the modern community pushes.

27. What’s an unpopular opinion you hold (in relation to the transmed ideology)?

my view on nonbinary identities i guess. i’m not that controversial, but i do believe that dysphoria can manifest atypically, because dysphoria fluctuates and appears differently person to person. i.e. after taking t and doing some serious work w my mental disconnect from my body i basically don’t have any dysphoria surrounding my genitalia anymore, even though it used to be pretty bad to the point where it manifested physically. that makes my dysphoria atypical, because i’m selectively dysphoric about my sex characteristics. if someone has dysphoria like this, and the dysphoria only focuses on certain aspects of your body and not the others, it kind of does leave you “in the middle” where you might want a flat chest but no penis because you’re ok with what you’ve got

so it makes sense to me, and if these people feel comfortable with a non-aligned identity label for themselves it’s nothing off my back.

oh yeah and the whole rad-leaning thing isn’t that popular. a lot of trans guys just want to forget about the problems we face as females but i’m incompatible with men on a fundamental level so female problems and female existence is still central to my life. which leads me to

28. Were you ever a feminist/radfem?

so, i have this backwards

i had a massive internalized misogyny problem when i transitioned. i hated women and everything related to being a woman and if a woman loved herself or was even remotely comfortable with herself and her womanhood she was a bitter enemy to me

‘luckily’ for me it was just my dysphoria, i couldn’t bear it and saw no way out of it so i projected it on everyone else to be able to live with myself & in my body. that was never addressed during the process i went through to transition medically and if it hadn’t been projected dysphoria i could very well have transitioned for the wrong reasons, if i’d had dysphoria because of misogyny instead of being misogynistic because of my dysphoria. you know?

either way, over the years hrt cut off my dysphoria so that i could stop feeling personally attacked over every mention of women’s existence, and i could learn to love other women again and eventually from there to be at ease with my female body as well, ultimately getting to this point where i appreciate my body and my sex a lot and i feel like i have a pretty healthy relationship with it. and this all made me way more into a feminist over the years. i’ve grown as a person and matured politically and at the same time my dysphoria has lessened and i’ve grown comfortable with myself and my reality so i could really start focusing on these issues that are mine and everyone else’s who’s like me universally without it digging at my dysphoria at every corner. i can talk about these things now and really think about them and i’m a really angry fucking female underneath everything else. i’ve had an easy time as a female human being without the pressure of needing to adhere to gender roles and always having the support of my family and friends and never facing any meaningful discrimination despite being gnc and same-sex attracted and yet i’ve still suffered enough that the consequences of my socialization and the trauma that i’ve gone through because of my sex has formed me from the ground up as a person and i’ll deal with the problems rising from that forever. i’ll never outgrow or escape the fear that being female comes with. and that makes me really angry. being denied the right to voice my real experiences and talk about my real suffering or that of others around me has made me really fucking angry. so NOW i’m a rad-leaning feminist, and not when female was a simple way to describe everything about me. because i have space for these thoughts and this process and this healing from my dysphoria, which i didn’t have before.

questions

[leaves-reality]

Rant™ About My Dad

My dad and I have never had a good relationship. As a little kid, he never cared about what I wanted to do. He only wanted to do things that he wanted me to do. Boy Scouts, Cars, Fishing, Building or Business. If what I wanted to do was outside his realm of Interest, he wouldn't even pretend to care. Drawing, Warhammer, Video Games and Writing. As a twelve-year-old I bought him his own Minecraft account. 30 bucks is not an in considerable amount of money, especially for a 12 year old. I even made him a custom skin.

He played it for five minutes, closed out, and has never played it again.

It has finally occurred to me why this is. He and his father had a very very good relationship. His dad was the vice president of the small Bank in town and his mom was a teacher at the local Elementary School. The only source of strife in his childhood where his three older sisters who liked to tease him. He had an almost perfect childhood spent almost entirely with his dad. And he recognizes that he had a good relationship with his dad and they wanted that for him and I.

The issue is, he has covered a Pig in eggs flour and yeast, and calls it a ham sandwich. He doesn't understand that it is not the actual activities that he did with his dad that made their relationship so good but the fact that they spent time together doing things that they both genuinely enjoyed doing together.

Of course our relationship isn't nearly good enough for me to actually bring this up and for him to take me seriously or even without getting in trouble. He has never taken me seriously or respected me as an individual who is separate from him.

As a kid I had a really hard time socializing with people, especially kids my own age. My parents noticed this and started giving me little pointers. Things like "Go say Hello to Mrs. ______" or "Make sure you don't mumble" and I'll admit that at the time it was genuinely helpful. While my mom dropped it about when I was 14, my dad has continued to do it in a very condescending manner. In fact the reason I felt the need to write this tonight was because I said "Yes" in an irritated tone of voice to him after asking if I had said hello to everyone. (The reason I was frustrated was because I was the person cooking literally all of the food for dinner and the kids were getting impatient and bugging me to go faster, all of which was information he had.) Instead of reading the room and just realizing that I was was just frustrated, he then snapped at me "Don't talk to me like that!" In front of like 6 guests. I stormed off. I came back 10 minutes later ate my dinner, took a shower and went to bed, where I write this to you all from.

The reason this whole part is relevant is because it shows how my father doesn't think I can handle myself in social situations and still views me as a child. I am 19 years old, I understand that I am not old or wise but I am not a child.

The final section I want to write about my father and I's relationship is ever since I came out as queer. I came out to my parents on my 17th birthday, early 2016. While I knew I was a trans girl at the time I decided I would come out as gender-fluid because it would leave some masculinity in there to appease my father. When I said that identified as gender-fluid he just didn't really even engage except every once in a while to tell me to stop being so feminine like when I had grown my nails out, or to make fun of me for wearing wig or breast forms. Then I came out to my family as a transwoman mid to late August. My dad just didn't even react at the time. While about 70% of the time he uses the correct name and pronouns, it's still very obvious that he doesn't take me seriously. He still thinks that I'm just a phase. I genuinely don't understand how he could think that I am temporary. I know it's just him desperately hoping, but I've been very honest with my family and have told them that I knew I was a trans woman from the beginning. Despite knowing that I've known myself for three and a half years he still thinks I'm temporary. He won't even allow for a conversation about HRT or anything medical. He still asks me to go back to being a boy for certain events. He still makes passing comments about how he thinks my boobs are too big, or that my hair is too long. My parents have told me that I can start transitioning medically once I'm out of college. I have told them that I was too long. My dad does not care. My mom is sympathetic but unfortunately while she is a lot more supportive I think that she doesn't see me as permanent either.

So I am now here to State my grievances/demands as a list towards my father. Some of these overlap. I know he won't see this but I feel the need to say it.

Grievances

1. Respect me in my skill as a technician, an artist and a world builder.

2. Don't Call me Bud

3. Get off your high horse of of supposed superiority. You don't know what the word sentient means.

4. Love Me, not your idea of who you want me to be.

5. Get it through your three-foot-thick skull that I am a woman and always will be a woman.

6. Respect me as a woman and a person who is separate from you.

7. Pull your head out of your ass and realize that your supposed status is less important than my need to exist as myself, and that I am not a woman for the sake of rebelling against you.

Honestly I don't really know what to do at this point. I can maybe make it one more year without any sort of medical transition but I can't keep this up. My neck is raw from shaving everyday and my dysphoria just gets worse and worse.

Thanks y'all for reading this it means a lot to me.