#and i want to help stop all the painful detransitions happening

[tirfpikachu]

i guess while you're studying the blade i shall protect dysphoric people in my humongous blanket full of secrets and treasures and awesome foreign snacks that i totally bought with real money

[old-school-butch]

Thank you for having anon on, you must get a lot of hate, but i'm a hidden recently deprogrammed ex-TIF and i appreciate being able to... confess to being a woman without being hung for it. i know that when i come out with this i will lose most of my friends because my detransition will "invalidate" them all. they will push me out so they can remain "gay men".

i wanted to ask what you think about ex-TIFs? and if you've seen how it plays out when we (re)integrate into womanhood, from the side of women. i've only seen it from the side of TRAs and it's an excommunication and violent rejection. i'm going to lose my community, and i have (since i started looking into it) fully agreed with most radfem core beliefs you see here on tumblr.

i took testosterone for years, but i also stopped in 2019 because it made me so angry. i have no breasts and a deepened voice. i wonder how radfems might see me. will i seem like a returned traitor?

will other women be interested in me still? i'm bisexual, but was pushed to mainly date men as a TIF because those relationships were "gay" and dating women was hetero and "lesser" love. i don't want to center men anymore. but i have no breasts, and i have no woman's voice. do women care? i don't know.

i ask you because you are older and maybe you would know. my best wishes to you. thank you.

I keep anon on for just this reason, because I remember how insane I felt when I found the courage to stop pushing aside those thoughts that, surely, everyone knows we're making all this up and just being nice, right?

It's an unfortunate part of human nature that it's easier to con someone than persuade them they've been conned. Once the con is taken up, it's agonizing to admit it and pull away from it. You have to live with the harms you've done along the way, which I admit to and which will eventually weigh on you as well. It's not easy, especially when your immediate friends will be harsh with you. If they don't cast you out, you might find yourself self-isolating to pre-emptively remove yourself and spare yourself the pain.

I'm not going to lie, you will encounter women who regard you as a traitor because they, themselves, have not come to terms with the harms they've done, or they've been lucky enough to not have been tested on this crucible and can't believe that anyone can be turned so upside down as we have.

However, you're not alone. I have no statistics but in meeting younger lesbians I'd guess at least 1 in 3 of them are detransitioners from varying stages of identifying as trans. If you are same-sex attracted or gender non-conforming in any way, today's society will digest that as 'trans?' and without saying a word you will find yourself being they/them without ever asking, and transition will be suggested if you suffer from so much as a bad period cramp or any frustration with your body. As women and as lesbians, we experience so much pain that society ignores, and the most powerful articulation of that anguish in our time is 'this can't be the body I'm meant to be in.' Like anorexia, dissociative identities, cutting and other expressions of female despair, we are permitted to lash out destructively as long as we bring down that rage on our own bodies. We continue to inhabit these scarred battlefields long after the fighting has moved on.

I guess the main thing to know is that you are not alone. In fact, I suspect that the 'part of my story where I was convinced I was trans' is going to be part of the coming-out pantheon for lesbians in the future that is as common as having a crush on a straight friend and have the talk with your parents. I don't think having breasts or a deeper voice will condemn you to loneliness, I don't think anyone can blame you for what's happening or being swept up in it. If they do, you can ask them why they didn't stop you, why their voices didn't reach you when you needed it most, and why - now that you've found your own way home with very little help from anyone around you - they aren't appreciating the courage and effort it took for you to find your way.

Welcome home, sister.

[dervampireprince]

dervampireprince’s Audio Request Guide

Since commissions are closed there's not an easy way for people to see what I am comfortable or not comfortable with being asked to record, so I'm just making a little post here that I'll add as a link in my pinned post. Frankly though, basic rule I think you should always follow is 'don't ask person to create something with a very triggering/serious topic when you don't know if it's a trigger for that person'.

I will not record:

voicing female characters (genderfluid characters who also at times identify as male are an exception (eg Loki, Crowley) but I only voice them when they're identifying as male)

voicing underage characters

the listener character being underage

comfort for serious mental health topics (eg suicide/suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self harm)

incest (including step-families, adopted relatives)

abdl/sexual age play (daddy/mommy kink is fine, non-sexual age play and age regression is fine)

misgendering/detransition kink

alcohol/intoxication

drug use

non-con, cnc

raceplay

bestiality (monsters and anthros are fine)

scat

vomit

piss/omorashi/watersports

anything containing bigotry/slurs

gore/guro

feederism

pregnancy/child birth

taking care of a child/interacting with any characters/listeners who are minors

degradation (light degradation maybe)

pain play (including spanking and slapping)

violence and torture

yandere (I did a yandere audio once to test the waters and really didn't enjoy it and so don't want to again. I just prefer making more comfy vibes audios, there's other creators out there if you want the darker topics (I personally would recommend Dark and Twisted Whisper if you want monster and yandere audios)

NSFW audios where someone with DID switches between alters, switching is not an easy sudden thing like it appears to be in shows like Moon Knight, it's stressful and tiring and the person is dissociating, whoever comes into the body during the NSFW activity has had no way to consent to the NSFW activity due to not having any memory of what's been happening while they weren't fronting, it would be wrong and a violation of informed consent to continue any NSFW activity in this scenario.

any characters from: Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts, Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, any real people (including their Vtuber characters, SMP characters, etc), any FNAF animatronics that have dead children's souls inside of them (the animatronics from Security Breach do not and so are fine to request, same with Springtrap), specifically the ascended version of Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3, Cazador from BG3 and any other characters who are canonically sexual abusers, Loki Series related audios (MCU film Loki is fine, but I will not be voicing the alternate version of him from the Loki Series or anything relating to that show).

Silco from Arcane. I have talked about this before, but in 2022 myself and friends spent time with Silco's voice actor in person at two comic conventions where he proceeded to make us uncomfortable, be inappropriate, threaten one member, and start a relationship with another (who was a fan, which is an abuse of that power dynamic). He was then also found to have been private messaging multiple fans, including sending them sexual messages. After all this happened I took a break from voicing Silco, tried to go back to it, but had to stop. Voicing the character brings all this back up and makes me too uncomfortable and distressed. Voice actors are not their characters and vice versa, but I can't think about Silco without thinking about all of this.

ASMR and comfort content are not replacements for actual therapy. I am not a therapist or psychiatrist, I'm not qualified or able to give out advice on serious mental health and other issues. There are always people around to help and listen but this is not the place to vent and please do not ask me to make content about trigger topics and serious mental health issues. If you are in need of help with serious issues please reach out to qualified individuals or appropriate hot-lines.

Please do not send me asks/comments asking for me to do comforts for serious mental health issues, not only is it inappropriate to ask of a stranger, I am in no way qualified to offer real comfort to strangers for this and could end up saying something that makes it worse by accident, and I personally find some of those topics very triggering to the point it makes me upset/uncomfortable to see them mentioned.

Me not being comfortable recording certain kinks does not mean I am kinkshaming anyone into those things, they just make me too uncomfortable for me to even act out in fiction.

Do not ask me why I don't want to record certain things or certain characters. Do not ask me why things are on this list. Everyone has different things they're uncomfortable with and their own boundaries and that should be respected.

This list is subject to future updates. Last updated: 14th September 2024.

[roachliquid]

Dissecting some examples of rhetoric that tries to force trans people into privileged/oppressed dichotomies (CW transphobia, transmisandry, misogyny, biphobia, aphobia, exorsexism)

NOTE: This list is not comprehensive. The point isn't to cover every possible piece of bullshit rhetoric, but to educate people on the common problems and logical errors that characterize these kinds of claim. As such, this is mostly going to cover shit that harms transmascs, because that's the material that I know the best. This is not a claim that this bullshit only goes one way. It can happen, has happened, with ANY group cast as the oppressor.

"Trans women are publicly shamed and bullied for being trans. Trans men are 'just' invisible, so they're privileged because they don't have to deal with that!"

"Transphobes want transfem people dead. But they just want transmascs to detransition, so transmascs have it better."

Both of these are examples of oppression Olympics - claiming that one group is really privileged because their oppression doesn't look as bad. It's also misleading as hell, because it never explores what the actual consequences are of what's being done to AFABS/trans men - for example, that invisibility exacerbates the difficulty of finding transmasc-inclusive resources, or that the reason many transphobes want us detransitioned is so that we will be "sexually available" to them (I.E. they want us as sex objects and breeding stock, which is not all that better than death).

"AMABs are hated no matter what they do, because they're either seen as perverts or Evil Men. AFABs can avoid being seen as either simply by detransitioning, convincing society at large that they are harmless, vulnerable women."

And here's yet another example of the claim that being forced to detransition isn't "that bad", as if gender dysphoria and the pain of being in the closet are magically washed away by the healing powers of society's overwhelming love and support for women. And the assumption that that exists is a problem in itself, because misogyny? Racism? Islamophobia, fatphobia, literally everything that causes people to clutch their pearls and treat others like absolute shit? Apparently none of that matters at all, literally any (supposed) cis woman can say "jump" and society will start tripping over themselves to do so.

"Nonbinary trans people aren't really trans, they just want to be because they think it's cool. They need to accept their cis privilege and get out of the way."

Folks, this is literally oppressor logic. Queerphobes have been trying to deny people rights since day one on the basis that their identities don't fit into mainstream concepts of gender expression. Are you trans, but mainly attracted to people of the "opposite" sex? Then you're not really trans, because normal people are straight. Are you bisexual? No, you're "really" straight or gay, because people are only attracted to one gender. Asexual? Bullshit, everyone's attracted to someone. Nonbinary? That's not a real gender, or if it is, it's not as important as my binary one.

You get it. This logic has been re-used and regurgitated so many times that it's mostly bare wires and bits of vomit. And yet people are still using at least half of the versions I just mentioned, plus more that I didn't have energy to cover. And all of it stems from the same, laughably conceited premise: that the mainstream model of gender and sexuality is so close to perfect that your understanding is all it needs to finish the puzzle.

I'm going to stop this here, because it's very tiring to write, but hopefully this helps to battle some of this nonsense.

[vaulted-ceiling-painted-sky]

I'm making a major life change. I'm detransitioning (for medical reasons, so please don't cancel me).

I don't talk about this sort of thing much on my blog because I prefer to live a relatively private life separate from social media. However, I still wanted to disclose some things to my followers. I was on testosterone for over 5 years. I got the prescription after 8 months of counseling for gender dysphoria, followed by a consultation with a psychiatrist and an endocrinologist. This all started back in 2016 and I began taking T in 2017.

The symptoms that were considered part of my gender dysphoria diagnosis were mostly related to body dysmorphia. Since puberty, I felt like my body shape was completely wrong and that certain parts didn't belong to me (no real explanation, just physical discomfort). I had an eating disorder for many years that I never fully recovered from until the T improved my metabolism enough and I could start eating intuitively again. My other symptoms were... pretty much just being a weird girl and a social misfit. I had learned to mask it ok but social expectations just felt overwhelming and exhausting.

T was amazing for the first few years. My period stopped after a month, I lost fat and put on muscle, I could eat a full meal again, my body felt right in a way it never had before. I even got a new job where I felt like a fit in way better as a guy. I was extremely well informed on what changes to expect and when, and I was always careful with my health, getting regular blood tests and checking in with my doctors.

The side effects started to accumulate and worsen however. My body temperature ran high and I got overheated quite easily, which affected my sleep among other things. After about a year I started to get intense abdominal cramps with increasing frequency. Several years of this and I eventually had to get a hysterectomy (I kept my ovaries) and the cramping finally stopped. I had already had top surgery at this point. That was an entire ordeal on its own. I needed to have an emergency revision a week after the original surgery when I got a hematoma in the left side of my chest. I had to drive myself to the emergency room (my boyfriend was at work) where they opened the stitches and tried to manually drain it. Blood was gushing out of my side. I had to be rushed into the OR to have it fixed. After about 4 years on T, I began to have constant pain in certain organs due to atrophy. Medication only stopped it from getting worse, but the pain was still there and sex was out of the question. This can take a toll on one's mental health and relationship. The side effect that really scared me though was the heart problems. After nearly 5 years on T, I started having episodes of fast, pounding, irregular heartbeats. They were uncorrelated with anxiety, and heartburn medication did nothing. I stopped T for a few weeks and the episodes decreased. I started T again and had the worst one yet, where I was actually afraid for my life. I stopped again and my heart issues resolved in a month or two. My last dose was in October 2022.

Since then my body has been reverting to its natural appearance. I just look more feminine and read as female in spite of a flat chest and deep voice. It happened quickly for me. I decided to file paperwork for a court order name and gender change last week. I think I'll be back to publicly presenting as a woman in a few months. This has been a lot for me to process but I'm cautiously optimistic. And I'm so, so grateful that I have a loving, open-minded boyfriend and a supportive family. I don't know what I would do without them.

Why did I post this? Well, I thought sharing my experience might be useful for some of you. If you're on T or getting gender-related surgeries, or if someone you care about is, it's helpful to know about some of the things that can happen. My experiences differed significantly in some ways from the standard information you get on this stuff. Side effects can be quite manageable for some people, but very serious for others. I thought I was at very low risk of anything bad happening yet treatment still proved unsustainable for me. It can be difficult to find accurate information in a medical field that's been unfairly politicized. I just want what's best for everyone though.

[shinra-makonoid]

@count-incel actually thinking thoughts, even gory ones, even violent ones, is ok. Thoughts don't hurt people, only actions do. You don't deserve feeling guilty over things you cannot control, it is not your fault. We don't control our thoughts, only our actions. Do not listen to the Christians wanna be "evil thoughts are bad uwu" they don't wish you good, they only wish to control your thoughts. I'm a fellow "I have violent thoughts" and nothing helps except decrease anxiety and accepting this doesn't mean anything. Thoughts are electric impulses in the brain, and our brains are a bit weird, so they produce these. If you wanna talk about it without judgement don't hesitate to say hi in my DMs.

There is absolutely nothing detransitioners do that is evidence based in regards to "dealing with their dysphoria", it's just a cope with probably some placebo effects and pretending. Some probably are truly dysphoric but they got trapped into an ideology the same way ex-gays do. I like to put the thread of a former big detrans name in regards to that:

It's really informative.

Some bits:

I learned to reframe and interpret my life story and feelings according to radical feminist ideology. I learned to see any sense of being a gender other than woman as something that originated from outside of me, not as part of who I was. People in the radical feminist detransitioned women’s community are encouraged to see themselves as women struggling with gender dysphoria and to see any sense of being a gender other than woman as a symptom to be managed, not an identity to express. While some flexibility is allowed in the name of “harm reduction”, the preferred solution to dealing with gender dysphoria is accepting one’s body and learning to see oneself as a woman. Feeling different from women was seen as a delusion to be overcome. Since people in that community believe that people transition and identify as trans because of social influences, there is a lot of pressure on members to live up to certain standards so as not to be a bad influence on others.

Something that really helped me figure things out was hearing about the experiences of gay people who’d survived conversion therapy. I happened to go to a book reading by Peter Gajdics, where he read from The Inheritance of Shame, his memoir about surviving conversion therapy, and some of what he described resonated with me. He talked about how he became convinced by his therapist that trauma he’d experienced as a child had made him gay and that he needed to stop being gay in order to heal from his trauma and stop suffering. Listening to him, I felt a uncomfortable flash of recognition.

Hearing his story made it possible for me to consider that I’d been fed a lie about how my transness was some kind of traumatic wound I needed to heal from. Something I wanted to believe because I was in pain and desperate and that story seemed to offer me a way out. I started reading more about conversion therapy and noticing more similarities between what I’d read and what I’d gone through but kept this all to myself at the time and didn’t quite let myself accept what I was figuring out. It was like part of me was realizing what was going on and another part wasn’t ready to see what had happened and tried to carry on as if everything was working just fine. It would be years after that book reading before I actually gave myself permission to take my perceptions seriously and get out but it planted a seed and I’m very thankful that I attended.

While I see similarities between my experiences and those of people who’ve undergone conversion therapy and/or participated in ex-gay ministries, I recognize many differences as well. Most of the experiences I came across were those of gay people trying to change their sexuality, while I was trying to dismantle my gender identity. They were also trying to become straight or assimilate into a homophobic Christian subculture that has a lot of power in the larger culture while I was attempting to live as a lesbian in a radical feminist lesbian subculture that has far less power and access to resources. There was also less structure than formal conversion therapy or established ex-gay ministries. The radical feminist detrans women’s community was largely inspired by the consciousness raising groups of second wave feminism, so there was a strong emphasis on detrans women coming together to offer support to each other and figure things out on our own, rather than turning to any kind of professional.

Another differences is that much of my engagement with the detrans women’s community happened online. I became radicalized through consuming gender critical/radical feminist media and began interpreting my experiences through those ideologies. I participated in online spaces where these interpretations were supported and reinforced. In many ways, my experience resembles how people are recruited online into other political ideologies and hate groups. In addition to researching conversion therapy, I’ve also studied online radicalization and how people are recruited into hate groups in order to understand what I went through.

Count incel you are literally insane. I am worried for you and for the women around you. Rape and murder fantasies are weird, sister

[sweetsweetemo]

why is transmisogyny always brought up when trans men try to discuss the fact they suffer transphobia lol

trans women are our sisters. stop speaking as if our experiences erase one another. trans women go through a very specific aspect of transphobia and misogyny trans men will never feel, and trans men go through a very specific aspect of transphobia and misogyny trans women will never feel. why do these two have to be mutually exclusive.

why can't I speak about how my actual health professionals infantilized my experiences? why can't I talk about how every time I come out to someone, there's the underlying tone that I'm just being silly and I'll grow out of it when I'm old enough to face my real feminine side (and settle down and have kids like every woman should)? why are my choices about my own body always regarded as "someone's daughter/sister/girlfriend doing irreparable damage to her beautiful feminine body" and I'm never allowed to speak about how misogyny and transphobia make my life hell on earth? how even though pride is big, getting metaphorically punched in the gut with every interaction just makes me want to give up and detransition, prove everyone right and live in peace for once?

there was an entire book made by some disgusting woman on how young girls are being brainwashed to become trans men, and our entire existence was reduced to painful changes to pursue a future we legitimately want, but for some reason hurt these cis women so bad they felt entitled to make a book and ideology on finding their "lost sisters" and bring them back home, to the right path. Which is obviously growing your hair out marrying a rich man and have 2,5 children with him. a man who will love you even though you had top surgery in one of your "phases" and still love your "mutilated" body.

this is not trans women's fault. trans women were never the ones telling me to shut up about how these things made me feel, it was always some idiot with too much time in their hands that thought me speaking up about my worst experiences would somehow make trans women's oppression be any less noticed. which was never my intention (and I'm Not fond of the idea it was anyone's intentions at all. as i said, trans women are my sisters.)

why is it trans men are always accused of "distancing themselves from the community" if we're tone-policed by people when we speak about a traumatic experience?

it genuinely doesn't make sense to me.

i don't give a shit about the word-discourse, by the way. it's incredibly, terminally online. using or not Whatever The New Thing Is won't change the actual oppression happening in real life. which I am honestly begging for people to pay attention to.

these are things i can discuss in therapy, i don't need a community as badly as i once did, but please, please help trans kids. help them feel as if no matter how they experience the world, there'll be somewhere for them to come back to and be safe, so that they never have the wish to finally give up that I'm sure a lot of us did once.

[jusky]

Well Adam, I talked with my mom last night for two hours and things were calmer and I’m feeling slight optimistim. Everything personal and moral aside, my mom's worried about me detransitioning + health effects. I guess at the heart of the matter I know this is the right choice for this moment and regardless of regret, I’m currently digging myself out of a number of ruts I’ve been trapped in. Dude! I hate feeling like a shitty kid. How do you deal with feeling like a shitty kid.

maybe i’ll just answer this one and not your multi-part background and question that i’ve been thinking about since you sent it. for everyone else, sorry you won’t have all the facts but i wasn’t sure how to post the multiple messages and i think you’ll do fine with context clues and general vibe if you even choose to read all of what i’m about to say which let’s be honest you probably won’t. anyway...

you’ll get out of those ruts. you’re going to be fine. and obviously like first off you’re not a shitty kid at all no matter how much it sometimes feels that way. like, i think your concern for them is a clear sign of that. but your bravery with respect to embracing your truth despite the difficulties and your willingness to be concerned about yourself if you visit these parents who might not be able to be supportive in the way you need right now is not being a bad kid--it’s being the kind of person every parent should hope they can raise.

to be honest i have a lot of thoughts on this subject. i’m not big on the idea that we inherently owe our parents all that much. i didn’t ask to be born and wtf for a lot of the years i knew my parents, especially early on, i was just a fucking kid! like the weight of responsibility and what is required of us isn’t automatic. a lot of parents in this world deserve absolutely nothing from their kids. obviously a lot of parents were like constant miracles who are rightfully held by their kids as like givers of something that can never be fully appreciated or paid back. but like it’s important to embrace the specifics of your own relationships. i think that there’s a way in which parent and kid, like, become funny labels and roles and like archetypes that haunt us and that rather than clarify can sort of confuse our perceptions about what we owe each other. sometimes growing up my father would be angry with me and talk about how i had like wronged “the family” and i would be so frustrated. oh is the family mad? ask the family to explain then. because don’t you mean you? or do you mean him or her? like in a way there’s no family, just us. people who can speak for themselves and have various and nuanced senses of what we want and need from each other. i just think the experience of feeling like a shitty kid is sometimes tied up in a framework in which you don’t get to be an equal party or like treated as someone who has the right to control their own life,

i guess this is what i’d say about being the bad kid. i’ve played that part. and i have felt bad about being the bad kid, too. to various degrees of intensity on both fronts at various times over the years. much of that experience is about how i have had a pretty major divide in outlook and expectations and many other things with my dad and stepmom. for so many years i had this deep sense of conflict with them. growing up i felt like i was always the bad kid and that i couldn’t ever fully be myself at all with them and that when they were involved in my life i had to be on guard and that i’d never feel like just being myself was safe. and when i grew up i didn’t like that experience and eventually we stopped talking for like a decade. i just kind of went off grid on them. 

now today we can talk and we can visit. and i can totally feel like myself around them. 

am i still sort of the bad kid? yes, definitely, but it’s kind of ok in my heart and fine ultimately. 

really for me i had to accept that i had to put my own oxygen mask on first, no matter how mad anybody was going to get at me. and then in those years of silence a funny thing happened. i think i began to feel solid enough in myself that there didn’t seem much threat from them anymore? and i think they kind of were humbled by the sense that i wasn’t a sure thing and that they’d rather have the bad kid than no kid. so like yes a shift in power happened for sure but it was also a softening and a kind of acceptance i never expected.

growing up i always had these imaginary battles and arguments and like imaginary trials in my head as if i was prepping for some vague future day where my dad and i would argue it all out ultimately and i’d show him he was wrong and do so so decisively that he’d believe what i believed and change things and everything would be fixed. 

needless to say that’s not how it worked out. instead we never fixed it really. we never sorted out who was ultimately right or wrong along the way. but you know what? it’s still fine. we can still hang out. we can still be a family. i don’t have to watch fox news with him and he doesn’t have to like my choices. there’s still plenty there that’s good. imperfect is fine. even fucked up is fine as long as it’s not hurting you. 

when you feel like a bad kid that’s the pain/worry of disappointing people you don’t want to disappoint. and that feeling can keep certain selfish or shitty impulses in check i think. 

but also the truth about being a real person, an adult who has to take care of themselves and navigate a tricky world, is sometimes you do have to disappoint people. it’s often the healthy and responsible thing to do. and parents--even disappointed parents--would do well to really see what’s happening in those moments so that they realize they’re not dealing with a bad kid, they’re dealing with an adult who is doing what needs to be done. it may be disappointing but it’s not unfair. 

i think you look out for your parents as best you can but you should make sure to look out for yourself even more sometimes. you seek love, health, and reciprocity. you try to proceed with a sense of both care and integrity. 

but mostly forget the guilt. guilt is very limited in terms of how informative it is. as kafka teaches us so decisively, you don’t even need a reason to feel guilty. you often just feel guilt and then start searching for reasons. that’s not where to put your energy with respect to your parents.

i have no idea if anybody else can follow this since i didn’t post the whole initial backstory but i’m really just trying to talk to you and be encouraging. i’m proud of you based on everything i’ve heard and i deeply relate to some of what you’ve said about your parents. it sounds like there might be some good signs now and i’m so glad to hear that.

embrace what’s positive and healthy from them and calmly reject everything else with as much kind patience as the situation allows, but also here’s a tip: reject the unhealthy stuff with a this-is-already-decided vibe, a strictly personal firmness that is declaratory rather than accusatory, you want to say stuff that’s more like “i am not willing to discuss this. i told you i am not comfortable discussing this and i expect that decision to respected.”  rather than like “you always do this” “please stop criticizing me!” or like just generally defending decisions or perceptions you have that aren’t actually up for debate. you get to set those boundaries and that really is that. you get set those lines and not tolerate them being ignored or blurred. you just have to be consistent and clear.

anyway i guess i’m saying to just trust your instincts about the visit, like either way. and just speak clearly about what you won’t be accepting from them because you do get to make sure you’re feeling ok. know what i mean? you’re strong and articulate and their worries will ultimately be calmed by the reality of the future you’re heading into. and i’m sure that beneath the stuff they bring to the table that feels unhelpful they must have a sense of the truth about you. their fears aren’t the reality and you may have to help them see reality by not letting them treat their fears as if they’re real and by i guess just fucking letting them see that the very same poise and sense of self that you possess as you make tough decisions and as you’re communicating with them is going to be exactly what you use to move forward and navigate your future--a future which will demonstrate that they didn’t need to be so afraid all along.

god i hope some of that is helpful or at least maybe makes some sense. please do get at me if you want to talk more about any of this.

[tiphansia]

long and negative post under the cut that’s just a giant wall of text with no breaks lmao

ah lads now i’ve really done it, accidentally left myself unmuted in the voice chat of a discord server of online friends to whom I never said a word about being trans. In fact I lied about it, when asked earlier I said I was a cis dude. I even played up being a little homophobic/transphobic as a joke to reinforce the perception of cis-ness. But now they’ve found out I’m actually trans which is the most wildly humiliating thing that could happen to me on there. This sucks ahah god now they’re going to think of me differently and accidentally misgender me sometimes like they do with the other trans people in the server which i don’t mind in principle but the big problem is that it means they aren’t perceiving me as male anymore which. Really sucks. God it’s really my fault for lying to them but all I wanted was to be treated as normal. That’s not a crime, right? All I wanted was to be one of them and not a weird outsider like how they treat the other trans dudes. I feel like I’ve betrayed my own kind in some way. I even have an irrational hatred towards everyone who heard me, which is completely stupid given that it’s my fault for leaving myself unmuted. I wish they would hate me because it would make me feel a lot better if they did, but no one is mad at me and it’s making me feel sick. Hmm. Privileged problems, right? I know people out there have it worse than me and that I don’t even deserve to feel sad about this because nothing bad has ever happened to me in my entire life but still. I can’t help but be sad, and it makes me feel better to post this into the unfeeling void. Might get hate for this, but I really wish conversion therapy actually worked and was legal, I’d be the first in line to sign myself up. To me, the thought of becoming a woman makes me absolutely scared and sick, and therefore I am scared of conversion therapy in this hypothetical scenario, but just like dying, once it’s over I won’t care anymore. So it’s the most logical thing to wish for out of all my stupid fantasies, even though it’s the most painful one. My other fantasy is to go back in time and mess with my dna so that I’d grow up a cis boy, but of course that’s impossible. I once saw a post about how any religion that touts the idea of suffering as a virtue is one to be wary of, but I subscribe to that idea myself. Even though I don’t really have much real pain in my life since it’s not like being trans is actually the worst thing in the world (to me it is the ultimate shame), the idea that my being trans (very minor pain compared to others I know) is somehow a test of my character comforts me. I don’t know what scares me more, the fact that I’ll be like this my entire life, or the idea that it’s temporary, I’ll detransition, and all this pain was just made up for nothing. I also don’t believe in god logically, but whenever I’m in pain it’s comforting to think that there’s someone I can talk to, even if no one is actually listening. I think the most use that could come out of my life would be as a murder victim of a trans hate crime, so people can use my death to advance the cause. At least I’d be doing something useful for once. I think I’d make a fine martyr, too. I feel subhuman a lot of times, like everyone around me is looking at me and speaking to me without noticing that I’m a cursed and rotten creature to be crushed under their shoes. I almost wish people would hate me more so I wouldn’t feel like such a liar all the time, even though really I’m not lying about anything. I feel though that even by attempting to pass as male, I’m deceiving people. I’m a man inside I know but it’s so hard to even say the words or even think them because of this stupid shell of perception. I look and sound like Minnie mouse, anyone I told would burst out laughing if I told them: “I’m a man.” God, it even sounds so stupid here. I get by by presenting as ambiguously as possible, and saying nothing about pronouns unless directly asked. I’m such a pussy, not strong enough to stay female-presenting, too weak to correct pronouns and perception, and not even man enough to kill myself when I should have. It’s been 3 or 4 years since I was severely suicidal, and still I think life would not have changed for those around me if I had died then. I still wish I’d killed myself then, or at least tried. It’s kind of my life motto at this point: “Too pussy to do anything”. Even now as the grand landmark age of 18 draws near, all the hopes I placed on it in years past are evaporating. I told myself, “When we’re 18 we can get on hormones, we can change are name, we can finally live a full life”. And now, life’s realities are becoming clear. Transition with what money? And how are we going to deal with the family? I’d rather die than come out, but I’d also rather die than not transition. Real sticky situation we got here. Looks like I won’t be able to transition until my late 20s, which is horrifyingly far away to me. I thought I couldn’t make it until 18, but here I (almost) am. I know I can make it until then, but it makes me so unbelievably sad, and I can already imagine the amount of suffering in my future between now and then. Plus, I was on track to have a beautiful and privileged life. Was a 4.0 student, in multiple honors societies, great standardized test scores, the works. Now I’m none of that except the test scores  due to me being a dumb piece of shit this entire school year and letting my half a decade of hard work swirl down the drain along with my life prospects. Hell, it’s starting to look like I’m gonna be a highschool dropout. Me! It’s unthinkable. I’m gonna end up working in retail or at mcdonalds or something and while all work is honorable work, I’m not going to be making enough to fucking live off of, much less transition. I was set up for greatness, man. I let everyone down cause. Well, I don’t even know what happened,w as probably depressed or something but I can’t remember most of this entire school year so I’m not sure. Being trans ruined everything for me. I wouldn’t have ever even been depressed if I wasn’t trans. I’d be in the qualifying race for the cross country junior olympics if it wasn’t for being trans. To be honest I miss track, but guess what! You’re trans, no sex-segregated sports for you. You either have to come out and do sports with your chosen gender, or stay closeted to your parents and out yourself as a tranny to your entire fucking high school. I mean sure the whole world’s probably thinking, “Boo fucking hoo tumblr user tiphansia, let me play you a song on the world’s tiniest violin, those are first world problems” and yeah they certainly are but it doesn’t make it any less upsetting to me. Just let me have my little pity party in my little corner of the internet. I miss my online friends. Normally my response to anything painful that has to do with my being trans is just denial denial denial until even I forget the event, but I’m pretty sure my brain can’t take any more forgetting. I’ve forgotten this entire year I can’t do this anymore. I have to be strong and face it and stop being a pussy. I hope it turns out well for me. and for whoever made it this far reading hope your life goes well too. Thanks for listening. Goodnight.

[roadtohappy]

Why I detransitioned

I mentioned it briefly in response to someone else’s post, but I believe this subject deserves a post of its own. It included the statement: “I detransitioned because my identity changed, and I don’t regret my transition”, to which I expressed how much it resonated with me - and here’s why.

I was, I am, and I always will be transgender. As a young girl, I developed gender dysphoria. To anyone who’s unfamiliar with what that means, gender dysphoria is a term used to describe the emotional pain and distress a person experiences when their biological sex and their self-perceived gender do not match - a body/brain incongruence, if you will.

When I came out of the closet and told my family and peers that I identified as male, I had already spent a considerable amount of time contemplating my situation. I questioned myself constantly, and doubted every answer. I did this prior to, and after coming out, and even during my social and medical transition. Not because I was unsure of myself, but because I needed to know if there was any chance that my gender dysphoria could’ve been caused by something other than simply being transgender. It was important for me to unveil and deal with any underlying issues that could’ve been linked to my gender-identity, because it’s better to find out early on and stop before you find yourself overwhelmed with regret later in life if it turns out that you were actually mistaken. I asked myself the same questions constantly; “Am I being influenced by my peers? Media? Online communities?” “Is my brain using this as a defense mechanism to mask childhood trauma?” “Am I using my trans identity to escape from my past/present problems?” “Do I have any undiagnosed psychiatric or medical conditions that could alter how I perceive myself?” “Can I learn to cope with my gender dysphoria without transitioning?” “Am I trying to mend the absence of my father and lack of male role models by becoming male myself?” “Do I have any unhealthy ideas of what it means to be a woman?” “Do I have enough strong female role models in my life?” “Am I simply not ready to become a woman yet? if so, why?”

-These are all questions you should never ever be afraid to ask yourself, no matter where you are in your transition - whether you’re in the closet or out. Early, mid or late-transition; it is never a bad time to discover yourself and make the best choices for yourself, wherever they may lead you. This is not at all meant to discourage anyone from transitioning, but rather inspire people to ask them self the right questions.

As I mentioned in my introduction-post; I started living as a boy at 15, meaning I wore boy’s clothes, and went by a male name and male pronouns. I started taking male hormones when I was 18. If you’re unfamiliar with what hormone therapy does for trans people, it essentially means that you’re taking hormones regularly to induce a second puberty in order to bring on characteristics of your identified gender. I’m now 21 years old and I had chest-masculinization surgery 8 months ago. I never wanted to go any further than hormones and top-surgery, as my dysphoria mainly revolved around my feminine voice and other minor characteristics, and my breasts. The further I progressed into my transition, my gender dysphoria decreased, as you’d expect. After having my top-surgery, I also no longer feel dysphoric about my chest. To my surprise, I now feel completely comfortable with my natural body, including my femininity.

Early 2020 when the lockdown started, I began to spend more time alone by myself, going on long nature walks and exploring my thoughts through art and creative activities as a way to “unlearn” some of the unhealthy masking-behaviors I’ve taught myself over the years, in order to fit in better among other people. (Very common coping mechanism in autistic people, apparently.) As I began this process of “un-masking” I made it my top-priority to stop caring so much about what other people think of me or how other people expect me to look, talk and act. My new mindset became something along the lines of “Okay, the way my brain is built means that I experience the world and process information differently from other people, which also means that my actions and feelings are based on a different set of experiences than other people. I will no longer measure my worth by my ability to blend in and be ‘normal’, and I will no longer apologize for being different.” And so began a whole new level of self-exploration. I played around with some of my old make-up, I started taking up fun activities that most people would deem feminine - and it didn’t make me feel dysphoric at all. In fact, I liked it. I was unapologetically leaning into my feminine side and it felt good, it felt right, it felt safe - an experience I was never able to have before I transitioned.

When the semester came to an end a few weeks ago, I found myself in a weird position. I now have two completely empty months ahead of me, I truly detest big changes like that. A solid everyday schedule sort of functions as a mental “anchor” for me. Because no matter what happens in my life, I know one thing for certain; I will go to sleep tonight, wake up in the morning, do my morning routine and get ready, get the bus at exactly 7:41AM and arrive at school 10-15 minutes later depending on the traffic. I then attend class and adhere to the school’s timetables for the next 6 hours. I get the bus home and change into my uniform, work for 5 hours, go home and do my homework, make dinner, do something fun or watch youtube, go to bed - and the cycle continues. These little “anchors” make me feel secure and grounded, they help me cope with a world that can feel chaotic and overwhelming at times. 

So last day of school arrives and I’m like “shit, what now?? One day I’m at school and suddenly there’s just *nothing* for two months?? Not only that, but I’ve just discovered that there’s a whole new side of me that I’m now free to explore since my gender dysphoria decided to evaporate into thin air.” Everything around me was changing, even myself - and that’s the moment when I decided that maybe it was time to give Testosterone a break. Whether temporary or permanently, doesn’t matter. It’s not like my body is going anywhere and I can always just resume hormone therapy again if I want to. But for now, it was time to just take a break, let go of everything and truly get to know myself. My transition is complete, and I am ready to continue this journey in a new direction. It’s been a month now, and I’m happy to say I’ve had a lot of fun just enjoying the time off and being my authentic self. I haven’t really told anyone I’m detransitioning. I’m just kinda doing my own thing, and if people want to run along with it and refer to be as female at some point then that’s their choice, I don’t really care to be honest. Name-wise, I might just jokingly suggest “Jane” when people ask, since it’s so similar to “Jake”.  I get weird looks from people when I’m out in public, because I’m starting to pass as female again, but my voice is unmistakably masculine - I like my voice though, so I don’t care what they think. If people ask why my voice is so deep, I just tell them the truth: “I am a woman, but my body was testosterone-dominant for 3 years, hence the voice.” Simple as, lol. Not only that, but I am a whole, grown ass adult, I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.

On the topic of irreversible changes, there is one important thing that I cannot stress enough; My decision to detransition does not come from a place of regret, I have loved and cherished every step of this process. I’ve heard a lot of people say this about detransitioners but I don’t have “reverse-dysphoria”, why would I?  Man or woman, I love myself and my body regardless. I absolutely needed to transition from female to male in order to be happy, I could not have attained this level of happiness otherwise. I would not have been able to accept or even come to terms with my femininity if I hadn’t transitioned. I’m still on the same journey as before, I simply took a new path.

Anyway, I best end this wall of text because it’s 3:00AM and I’m going on a 9km hike with a friend in the morning, I can’t waiiiitttt!

[justbutch]

How & why do you keep going? i'm butch and plain exhausted. Lifelong intolerance and bullying of my being, then my only butch friends all transitioned then this mess in lgbTQ everything, now i get constantly theythem'ed, and dating is shittier to top it off. COVID doesn't help but i just think about offing myself because i dont see a point at all in existing. To me butch lesbianism is a futile deluded joke at this point. We're nothing. Nothing meant to be sustainable. We're a mistake. Nonsense.

Hi there, I’m really sorry that you are feeling so low. Things can be really though sometimes, and like you say, the pandemic sure isn’t helping :/

I know what you mean; it is hard to keep going when it feels like your way of existing seems fundamentally incompatible with people’s worldview. Of course, butch lesbians have never been particularly well accepted in society, but the additional homophobia and marginalization of butch women within “queer” spaces is particularly depressing. And even in somewhat accepting spaces, it can get just plain lonely. It’s not easy to feel so left behind.

As for why & how I keep going, there are actually quite a few reasons:

The main one is: there is more to life than gender. Don’t get me wrong, both my sexuality and the shit I experienced due to being female matter to me, and not being able to talk about this completely openly with people and therefore never being really understood even by people who matter to me is actually quite painful. However, that doesn’t erase the good things in my life. I get to pet cats and float in rivers. I get to spend time with people I like (less so now of course, but this is not forever). I keep my plants alive (or at least I try to). I try to be kind and to make the world a slightly better place. Sometimes, when I feel a bit better, I make art. Sometimes I walk around in the woods until I can’t see any other people anymore. No gender there, just trees and birds and the smell of moss. This is probably something where I have a bit of an advantage from being somewhat older, but I also have some straight normie friends whose opinions on queer stuff tend to range from “of course trans people are valid, but saying that gender identity changes your sex is kinda dumb” over “I just don’t understand any of this weird stuff” to “if she talks about her girldick one more time I’m gonna scream”. They do not relate to my constant ruminations on gender identity or my frustration with queer homophobia, but we can hang out and make pizza, play board games and complain about the general state of the world…and I can even talk about being female without being accused of causing people’s suicide. That helps.

I think there is worth in the butch identity. I know that it’s not the cool thing at the moment, especially of you add “woman” to butch. It’s old-fashioned and not in line with many branches of gender ideology and maybe people do think I’m a joke, but that’s on them. I am female and I am like this and that is okay; I do not need to change anything about myself just to be. I do not need to perform nor curate how other people perceive me. While womanhood exists, it will have to make space to include me. There is both revolution and a certain peace in that thought.

Things will not stay like this forever, so much is certain. Having followed the discourse at least peripherally for quite a while now, things have already changed a lot, rather rapidly, over the last few years and seeing the multiple contradictions in opinions even within queer spaces it’s highly unlikely that we have somehow now reached a stable equilibrium. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that things will change for the better (just look at the last few years), but it’s also not a given that it won’t. Maybe we can contribute to that, but I’m definitely sticking around to see what happens.

As lonely as it can feel sometimes, especially with a lot of my former role models recently coming out as not-really-a-women-and-definitely-not-an-icky-terfy-homo-lesbian, we are not, in fact, the last two butch women around. There might not be many of us, but butch lesbians are still a thing, both younger (often desisted or detransitioned) ones and older ones. There are lesbians not just surviving, but thriving away from mainstream queer spaces. There are people talking about the dysfunctional dynamics. There are people who are trying to rebuild community. There are people who understand, although it can take a lot of effort to find them.

I know how important it is for me to see other butches just…exist, so I want to be this person for other people. If I can show even one baby butch that it is possible and totally okay to be like this, that would be worth it.

None of this is really new. Homophobia has been around for a long time, and so has been the hatred of butches (or masculine female people in general), often even within lesbian spaces (radical feminism e.g. has some fairly nasty history there)…and butch lesbians still existed, whatever they may have called themselves at that time. Yes, the homophobia in the queer community is a particular betrayal and I don’t think I will ever get completely over that particular disappointment, but if hundreds of years of persecution didn’t stop people from being gay, neither will queer theory.

In many ways, it’s not like all the former butch women are truly gone. This doesn’t mean that there is no real loss there, there definitely is: of community, shared language and even shared experiences, because living your life as a trans man or nonbinary person is different from existing as a butch woman. But people don’t just stop being female/afab and homosexual when their identity changes and there is still a lot of overlap in experiences, especially when it comes to transmasc butches, FTM/butch cuspers and many nonbinary/agender lesbians. And while there are currently many people who really hate acknowledging that, there are also people who don’t (especially in private). It sucks that talking about this can be such a minefield and navigating the ever-changing rules regarding approved terminology and ideology can definitely be really stressful, but I still think that it is worth trying to build these bridges. Although I also think it’s also totally okay to draw back when needed for self-protection (I can’t be around surgery talk and every time I hear an enby say something along the lines of “I’m not a woman, I’m a human being” I want to scream).

When nothing else helps, there is always spite & anger. I am not going to let this homophobic bullshit be the end of me. That at least keeps me to going long enough to go back to the forest and smell some trees and stuff.

Hang in there! I really hope things will get easier again soon. But even while things are hard, I think it’s still worth it.

[frankencocksupremacy]

You don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal I was just wondering how did you deal with the negativity/stress around phalloplasty? I’m having it soon and it’s a serious downer hearing both the negative talk from non-op guys and stories from people have regretted surgery (even if that’s rare). I’d appreciate any advice if it’s not too much to ask

i don't mind answering this at all, no worries. this sort of thing has actually been on my mind for a long time and this gives me an excuse to talk about it lol. please note that just because something made me feel better that doesn't mean it'll work for you. we're all individuals and i'm no therapist. also note that i'm still in recovery and my main way of coping with anything heavy is cracking jokes (INCELS STILL WISH THEY WERE ME) so try to take particularly specific things i say with a grain of salt and feel free to toss out whatever advice seems unhelpful. if none of this works for you, i apologize, but maybe someone will find it beneficial.

ANYWAY here's whats been helping me get through my days (i tried to condense it but it ended up being a novel anyway oops):

⦁ post-op depression is real and it happens to lots of people. it can be coped with. keep yourself as mentally well as you can post-op. seek the support of people who care. immerse yourself in things you enjoy (just be careful if those things are drugs or sex. ask your doc about what your limits are while you're healing). develop a strong sense of humor. and be patient with yourself if you get frustrated or insecure. post-op depression doesn't last forever, and contrary to what some people believe, it also doesn't mean you've made a mistake. it's completely normal to feel shitty when you're in pain and exhausted for a long time

⦁ don't share more then you're willing to, no matter what. you don't owe nobody nuthin. transition is personal and nobody is entitled to the details, esp if they just want to know how to better shit talk you. be polite towards the well meaning, but set your boundaries and don't let people bully you past them. there are some trans people who think we must share all of our experiences, that we must make ourselves vulnerable for each others' sakes, but i promise you nobody will die if you choose to keep things private

⦁ understand when people are speaking in bad faith. non-ops who find bottom surgery "faulty" or are jealous of it don't care about the actual results, they just want you to feel bad for either living differently then them or for having what they don't. spiteful detrans people don't care about the thousands of happy post-op people who live and die as their transitioned gender, they're bitter about their own difficult experience. trans people who regret bottom surgery have their reasons to and that should be respected, but those reasons are entirely theirs (read: not a reflection on you or a guarantee that you'll feel the same way). Their_Experience_Is_Not_Universal.jpeg. none of these people having different lives or opinions needs to mold your reality

⦁ in addition to that, realize when people are speaking from a place of bias. of course someone who hasn't/can't have this surgery may talk shit, that's what sour grapes and internalized transphobia do to you. of course shittier people who've detran'd think nobody can be happy with the outcome of surgery, they're focused entirely on their own pain. of course people with surgical regret may try to disuade others from surgery, it wasn't what they wanted/needed/expected and they typically think they're doing you a favor. don't buckle to other people's perceptions of this operation without asking yourself what's motivating their mindset and what they'd get out of you believing it. everyone has intentions and they're not always good

⦁ don't argue with people who have made up their minds that they dislike your body, your decisions, or you as a person. you will not win, and you won't change their mind no matter how you respond to them. they'll just drain your energy and convince themselves that your reaction proves they're right. if someone makes a disparaging comment in person, subtley express disapproval at their social faux pas and then ignore them. if you get nasty messages online, delete them without acknowledging them publicly at all, even if you have the sickest of burns ready. and then reward yourself for staying mellow by doing something you enjoy, esp if its with people who actually respect you and make you happy

⦁ you are not a hypothetical or a statistic, so don't cling to them and psych yourself out. many men have this surgery and are thrilled with their lives after, and no percentage of people who encounter A Bad Thing That Happens Sometimes has ever changed that. live with what's happening right now in mind, not what could happen or has happened to others. this isn't to say you shouldn't be aware of or prepared for things like complications or difficult feelings, of course, just don't borrow trouble

⦁ in case it ever comes up: anyone who says your penis "isn't real" or "isn't functional" is wrong. your penis will be real, and chances are that if you've elected to get phallo, it will have the functions you'll need for it to be worth it to you. i can't predict your surgery outcome, and i'm only 6 weeks out as of yesterday so lord knows what's in my future, but my penis is very much a penis and it becomes more like how i want it to be every day. it's my own flesh and blood, i urinate through it, and someday i will have sex with it. cis =/= real and we'd all be better, happier people if we stopped pretending that was the case

⦁ reach out to other men who've had this surgery. feeling isolated and alone makes it easier to fall victim to the negative mindsets of (internally) transphobic people. frankly a lot of us are very happy to share because too many of us had to go through our transitions without much guidance or support, and we get that from discussing it with each other. if you need explicit permission to feel comfortable reaching out, though, my ask and IMs are always open and i love talking to other trans people about medical transition wink wink nudge nudge

⦁ don't be hard on yourself if you have transphobic or unsure thoughts. this is normal and almost impossible to avoid regardless of how things go. beating yourself up fixes nothing, least of all negative thinking. instead, if you find yourself half-believing non-ops who are insulting this surgery, question yourself. would you berate or judge another man getting phallo? are your thoughts framing cis people and their bodies as superior to trans people and theirs, and if so, why? are you dwelling on your own insecurities or dysphoria with little else backing your logic? if after surgery you start panicking because of things detrans or regretful trans people have said, keep asking. has this change actually made your life worse, or are you just anxious about it hypothetically being a regret someday? does focusing on the negative experience of others actually benefit you in any way? do you genuinely relate to the experiences these people have when they share why they're regretful? self interrogation might keep you from feeling like you're just ignoring narratives that make you uncomfortable, all while letting you constructively work through your feelings

⦁ remind yourself that no matter what anyone says or thinks, you're not changing for them. naysayers of phallo never prevented me from getting - and loving! - mine. ignorant detrans people have never made me go back to being a girl. others' surgical regret and post-op horror stories have not kept me from getting any surgeries. my life is mine, i choose what to do with it, and no matter how much hate or misinformation i've been faced with, i have persisted because my transition is for me and i know i'd regret it if i never took my chances with it. phallo wasn't for any romantic partners, or my family, or society, it was truly for Me. your transition is for You. you have one life. do what you truly believe will make it the best it can be, and no matter what happens you will be better off in some way for having tried

if you can maintain a healthy, productive way of thinking that focuses on self acceptance, you're golden. it's not easy, i know, but even the smallest effort to try makes a noticable difference. you're gonna do great. keep your chin up

(small note: i mention detrans people a lot here because they are among the people who experience surgical regret and some are loudly opposed to surgical transition because of it. i have no issue with people detransitioning. but notice how each time i bring them up i'm describing ones that are volatile and intentionally hurtful. those are the kind of detrans people i don't care for. plenty of detrans people are chill. don't listen to the ones that aren't)

[stars--n--stripes-blog]

At age 17, Charlie Evans lived as a boy, binding her chest and shaving her head. A decade later, in 2018, she publicly stopped being transgender. In the year since then, she’s been contacted by “hundreds” of transgender people looking to do the same, she recently told the United Kingdom’s Sky News.

The people contacting her “tend to be around their mid-20s, they’re mostly female and mostly same-sex attracted, and often autistic as well,” Evans said.

In the past decade, the United Kingdom has seen a 4,500 percent increase (not a typo) in girls identifying as transgender. Brown University last year tried to repress the first major study looking into “rapid onset gender dysphoria” as a social contagion that seems to especially affect girls.

After a recent public talk, Evans says, a young woman with a beard approached her, saying she was also working to return to living as her birth sex. This young woman “said she felt shunned by the LGBT community for being a traitor,” Evans said. “So I felt I had to do something.”

'Hundreds' of young trans people seeking help to return to original sex.

Charlie Evans, who has detransitioned, tells Sky News she has been contacted by hundreds of people seeking advice.

You can find the full story here: https://t.co/qhxV4uQnZj pic.twitter.com/XcpGyZf9l9

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 5, 2019

Evans is starting a U.K. charity, the Detransition Advocacy Network, to offer support to people like Ruby, another young woman Sky News interviewed for its story on growing numbers of former transsexuals. Of her decision to stop being transgender after eight years of taking cross-sex hormones, Ruby says, “I didn’t feel like there was any support out there, other than like a few friends online.”

"I didn't feel that there was any support out there"

'Ruby' began to identify as male age 13, but now, 21, she has decided to stop taking testosterone and detransition.

Read the full story here: https://t.co/iEsF6R8XeY pic.twitter.com/KWpsEvpZGc

— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 6, 2019

“For everyone who has gender dysphoria, whether they are trans or not, I want there to be more options for us because I think there is a system of saying, ‘Okay here’s your hormones, here’s your surgery, off you go’. I don’t think that’s helpful for anyone,” Ruby told Sky News, a division of Comcast.

A nearby National Health Service location that specializes in transgender medicine “now ha[s] a record number of referrals and see 3,200% more patients than they did 10 years ago – with the increase for girls up by 5,337%,” Sky News reports. They see patients as young as age three for transgender treatments.

This sudden and explosive growth in transgender identification has happened in both the United Kingdom and United States. As Renee Gardner notes, “The first gender clinic in the United States opened in 2007 in Boston. An October 2016 article states there are now more than 60.” The state of Oregon now offers taxpayer-paid sex-change surgeries to children as young as 15 with no parental notification, and Oregon “health providers are immune from liability for acting against parents’ objections ‘in good faith.'”

A U.S. researcher recently did a study that confirmed at least two 13-year-old girls and five 14-year-old girls have been given double mastectomies as a result of identifying as transgender. Yet a recent review of the research available on this topic found that “Only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.”

With the growth in transgenderism, once an extremely rare phenomenon, has also come a growth in formerly transgender people. Nine such individuals just filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that will decide whether employers must allow transgender people to live as the opposite sex while on the job. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments in that case Tuesday.

“Almost every single person in the brief said they stopped being transgender with the help of therapy,” writes Nicole Russell in a review of the Supreme Court brief from formerly transgender people. “It didn’t just help them heal, but also revealed that deeper emotional traumas were often the cause of their gender dysphoria and the reason they chose transgenderism in the first place. All of the people claim that those who proposed or helped them transition often (unknowingly) created more pain.”

People looking for help in returning to a life that affirms their biological sex can find resources at SexChangeRegret.com, the website of Federalist contributor Walt Heyer, another former transgender person.

By Joy Pullmann

[destroyyourbinder]

why not go to therapy for gender dysphoria?

I see this question often posited by both trans people and radical feminists, as well as garden-variety homophobes and transphobes. This is a brief attempt at an answer from my perspective. --- 1. The first reason is that trans people aren't stupid. They are right when they say there is no known therapeutic modality that is known to reliably reverse transgender identity or get rid of gender dysphoria. This does not mean that transition is therefore the best means of dealing with gender dysphoria, but it means you cannot currently just go to a psychologist or therapist and "get therapy" to make it go away. I’m tired of dealing with radical feminists or gender critical types who dismissively insist that this is currently a possible option. I am skeptical that you can ethically treat transgender people with the intent to change their personal identity anyway even if some sort of treatment protocol was developed. There may be some way to lessen gender dysphoria in a therapeutic context without major ethical violations, but few therapists are willing to try, and those who will work with people wanting to ease their gender dysphoria without transition often are working blind and therefore are liable to make mistakes that can harm already vulnerable patients. Even barring the political environment around transition right now, I am not sure therapists generally know what to do to help people or even how to conceive of the problems of those who come into their offices framing their issues as "gender dysphoria" but who do not wish to transition or who are postponing the choice to do so. When I discussed my gender dysphoria outside of a transition context with two different therapists previous to desisting from trans identity, one in about 2007 and the other in about 2014 or so, the first one told me I couldn't possibly be transgender because I was waffling on wanting a penis and attempted to get me to work on rejecting femininity by asking me to do CBT practices when I got compliments about my appearance, and the second did not even know how to deal with my gender issues at all, asked me to educate him on trans identity more broadly, and then tried to get me to accept that I was attracted to men because I considered myself bisexual but was not wanting to interact sexually with them. I ceased discussing it in therapy (and considered the times I had attempted to an unacceptable risk) because I sensed it was actually impossible for my feelings to be understood outside a transition-based context and at the time transition was impossible for me. The desisting and detransitioned women I know who are trying to reconcile with their femaleness seem to have had a very mixed bag of luck with therapists; the ones I know with positive interactions with therapists around their gender stuff have had to go through multiple therapists to find a decent one, and I know a few women who avoid therapists entirely now. Even if you go explicitly seeking a therapist for this issue as a full and competent adult with decent boundaries and deep pockets you will often have poor luck. 2. Those people offering means of getting rid of transgender identity or gender dysphoria are generally explicit religious conversion therapists or pediatric doctors using unethically coercive strategies to alter children's gender behavior. These are the last people you want to be in contact with if you have a gender or sexuality problem, and their strategies don't work except insofar as they might shame you into suppressing your feelings and desires. The doctors offering these therapies for children are direct descendants of therapists who used these strategies to prevent adult homosexuality, some of the older ones literally having studied under gay conversion therapists or at clinics offering anti-gay therapies, and I would guess they probably have similar outcomes in that they permanently traumatize kids. You would have to be extremely self-negating to seek these people out or literally under the pressure of authorities, which obviously isn't conducive to developing a way of coping with your body, sexuality, and gender structures that is healthy and promotes your well-being. 3. One of the hallmarks of being trans is wanting to transition, and one of the hallmarks of gender dysphoria in female people is either strongly wanting to be male or literally believing you are in some way male. Trans people do reach for "being trans" as a primary explanation for their thoughts and feelings about gender, even though they may have pervasive doubts and obsess over the question of whether they are "really" trans or their dysphoria is "real". Female trans people in particular often believe that if they aren't trans or don't have gender dysphoria, they must be "making things up" or that their suffering is stupid, only for attention, not as severe as they thought it was, and so on. The obsessing over whether you are "actually trans" or not ends up locking you into your dysphoria deeper than you might have gone otherwise, and means you will hold onto being trans as an explanation and the trans identity far longer than you otherwise might, because your dysphoric mind is telling you that if you aren't trans then you must really have been a stupid girl this whole time. The last thing a dysphoric female person wants to be is a stupid girl, so you will continue holding onto interpreting your experiences as trans or as gender dysphoria because that is part of the dysphoria itself. I don't believe most trans people look to transition as something they wholeheartedly "want" to do (and those that claim to are likely extremely dissociated from the reality of transition and their bodies more generally); most I think recognize to some degree that transition is risky, painful, socially isolating, legally fraught, and a medical nightmare. But the whole problem with having gender dysphoria is that it's self-reinforcing; if you are actively dysphoric, the way your dysphoria works is to propagate itself and that means you will not try a solution that invalidates "dysphoria" or "being trans" as the reason why you feel this way. Although in some sense nobody "wants to be trans", most trans people are relieved in some way or another when they find out transgenderism exists and that transition is possible, and most female trans people actually resist the possibility of therapy to get rid of their self-concept as not-female. I have not met a trans man who actually wanted to stop considering himself a man, although I have obviously seen many trans people want to ease the suffering caused by gender dysphoria and stop being subject to the negative social consequences of being trans or transitioning or being subject to misogyny/homophobia/transphobia. The reason why trans people reach for transition is because it purportedly allows them to maintain their self-identity and also get rid of the suffering caused by their body being incongruent with their self-identity. If you already conceive of yourself as trans or have extensive gender dysphoria it is unlikely you will reach for a solution that will invalidate your own perception of what's gone wrong, a.k.a. you will not go to therapy that will eventually cause you to let go of the idea that you are a man or not-female. The problem is that the self-identity is not separable from gender dysphoria, and interpreting your suffering as the result of the fact that your body is female but "you" are somehow not is a framing driven by the insecurity cycles and obsessions particular to gender dysphoria. You cannot ease dysphoria long-term without being able to recognize and confront that you are female in a value-neutral way. I honestly believe to the extent that transition can work, it works precisely because it allows some trans female people to let go of constant nitpicking at their bodies, it allows them to be among other female people who don't see them as worth less because of their bodies (albeit ones changed through transition) and in an environment where they can freely discuss their experiences together, and it permits some to actually experience being embodied without shame and distance from themselves. This should not sound unfamiliar to most trans people as it's exactly how the positive results of transition are framed. I just disagree that transition is necessary to achieve these results, that transition actually achieves them persistently in most people, and that to whatever extent they are achieved it means that trans people are right about why they happen (that it means you are a man or not-a-woman). 4. I don't think therapy to achieve peace in your body usually works if you are female, whether you are dysphoric or not, and it's because I think the therapeutic relationship and medicine more broadly are a small-scale replication of the authoritarian and misogynistic practices that cause female people to be alienated from their bodies to begin with. I don't think most female people want or need an authority implicitly or explicitly telling them that their bad feelings about their body are wrong when authorities have inculcated these feelings in us to begin with. Most female people don't end up with gender dysphoric feelings specifically, but I don't think it's an inherent sign of mental illness or irrational for trans men or other female trans people to avoid authorities trying to invalidate or reinterpret their experiences with gender, sexuality, and their bodies. Maintaining a core identity (even if it's a male one) that is untouchable by others trying to convince you out of rejecting womanhood, when "accepting womanhood" means a shitton of gross, dirty, and violating things, absolutely makes sense, and I'm never going to try to convince anybody otherwise. Therapy is inherently intended to guide you to "better functioning" and for most therapists, this means decreasing your friction against social reality so you can hold a job, housing, maintain relationships, and so forth. Obviously being able to survive is important, but being able to survive in this world means making some horrible bargains against your well-being (such as devoting forty hours a week to being captive to people who don't share your interests in a place you don't want to be so you can make enough money for shelter and food) and therapists do not usually frame these bargains as having severe costs. They sometimes actually frame you as ill precisely because you recognize the costs of these decisions, and because you fixate on trying to find a way to escape them. So why would you go to a therapist, then, so you can make yourself believe you are a woman again, if that therapist won't acknowledge the costs of everything required for you to psychologically adopt that identity as well as try to adjust as a "proper woman" to others and gives you a pathological label for insisting that the costs are real or too high? If you are a trans person attracted to your same sex, why would you try to go to a therapist to adjust to being a lesbian for example when few therapists even know what healthy adjustment looks like, nonetheless the kinds of terrible bargains you have to make to avoid or deal with homophobia? One of the most isolating and devastating things about having gender dysphoria is that nobody else seemingly sees how awful it is to be female, and the people around you who should be supportive of you (your female family members, friends, peers, coworkers, etc.) are invested in doubling down about how happy they are and how great it is to do things that you find invasive and traumatic, and seem to be in horrific denial of how it could possibly affect you and may even attempt to force you to adopt these practices and attitudes yourself. If therapy is supposed to get rid of these feelings and replace them with the feelings of the women around you, of course you won't go! Of course you won't go to therapy if the therapist herself is one of these women, or is a man who does not seem to get it at all. If "adjusting" and "functioning" means accepting your lot, trying to gaslight yourself into believing your shame about your existence was unwarranted, crazy, or came from nowhere, and fixing your dysphoria means learning to act and speak and think like these other women and to LOVE it, then hell no, most of us will not adjust or function until our feelings are recognized in some way or another. For some of us this means maintaining being trans and pursuing transition, and for others it means politicizing our experience and becoming active feminists and/or radically anti-authoritarian. It’s telling to me that the medical industry is supportive of one rather than the other, because the latter choice is more likely to indict psychology as a practice and transition is capable of being incorporated into medicine. But seeing it that way is a function of my political view on the whole thing.

[werevulvi]

I have recently come to the conclusion that I have to take a distance from helping trans people who seek my advice on whether they should transition or not, or whether they should detransition or not.

I'm making this announcement because I have many times been contacted by trans people asking me this, ever since I began my detransition, and always done my best to help, but it has been very hard on me. So lately I have at times done it despite it being too painful for me, and at other times politely told people I don't feel up for doing this anymore.

I very much feel grateful and honoured that you value my opinion to help you with your struggles, and I'd very much like to help you figure out whichever path is the right one for you, but doing so pours salt into my own, still fresh, wounds. That is not your fault in any way, and I don't not blame anyone for my pain at all. My pain is my responsibility, and so is caring for it. It's just that the more I dig into my own regrets and what went so terribly wrong for me, unable to change what happened to me, in order to help you avoid ending up making the same irreversible mistake that I did... it reminds me of what a fuckup and broken person I am, it reminds me of how horribly badly I betrayed myself.

I have never felt or gone through a grief as heavy and painful as this before. It's terrifying. It's everything I feared it would be and more. I don't even understand how in the hell I'm managing to survive this. And I do not know how or even if I will overcome it. All I can do is comfort myself, and allow myself to feel that pain. Try my best to cry when I can. Not be too hard on myself.

Just the sheer mention of top surgery makes me want to tear my skin off, crawl up into a ball and cry out how much I want my boobs back, until my existence stops being so god damn painful. I've struggled so hard to reconcile with my effects from testosterone as a detrans woman, and even though I became fine with them and ultimately decided to keep them, mentions of hrt still ties a knot in my stomach, cause I still altered my body unnecessarily and my transition in full still was detrimental to my mental well-being and something I simply should not have done in the first place.

I still sometimes feel broken although I know I am not actually. My body is not incomplete, a failed project or damaged goods. It still functions like a body is supposed to, it still looks like and is a human body, and it is also not ugly. I am not less of a woman for looking like a gender patch-work. I don't need to look my gender to be my gender. But it pains me when so many others (in general) completely disagree with me on all those points. I feel disfigured but I know my worth. I still feel like I made a horrible, devastating mistake by transitioning even though I have forgiven myself and no longer beat myself up for it. I know I made a mistake, but now let's move on and try to do the best of this terrible situation so that I can heal and feel good again.

I don't regret having been on T but I'm still going through a harsh struggle with being a visibly masculinised woman in society and when I look in the mirror but don't recognise myself. I do regret my top surgery and I feel terribly disconnected to the way my chest looks. I am looking into and feel hopeful about getting breast reconstruction surgery but my chest is still going to be surgically altered for life and there is no possible way for me to get my original breasts back. That I have to mourn. I worry about what my new breasts might look like, scarring, sensation, what would others who see them think? Would anyone even want to touch them?

I worry about dating. My sex life has taken huge toll. Dating while detransing is so many million times worse than dating as a trans man was, for me. I fail to even make my partners understand that I'm biologically female and that my genitals are natural. It hurts when they touch my parts yet still can't even tell they're natural, and when I sense their hesitation and disbelief. Or when they tell me it's a shame I got my boobs removed but that it "doesn't look too bad" while keeping their hands far away from that part of my body. It makes me feel wrong, gross and it hurts. I withdraw. Yearning for intimacy but unable to perform. I can't do it.

I may not have dysphoria anymore and I may love my body and all it's lovely femaleness, but as you see that is not enough to make me happy or in a comfortable place in life. Detransition for me is very much a two-sided coin in which my lack of dysphoria, forgiveness and self love is the bright side - and my grief, regret, pain and social struggles are the dark side.

I'm telling you all that painful personal crap because it has everything to do with why I can't help you discover yourself without hurting myself in the process, and because I want to share it. It pushes all of my buttons. I don't know if it makes sense or if it's understandable, but "being a trans man" was an escape mechanism for me, the biggest escape mechanism I've ever lived my life behind, and letting go it left me far more naked and vulnerable than I have ever been before. But it was also not the only escape mechanism of mine that I've recently let go of. I'm very traumatised and have lived my whole life through various escape mechanisms to simply survive. It's just recently I've found enough courage and tools to manage letting go of that self-defense escapism and deal with my traumas. Me thinking I was a man and transitioning was the most profound and most damaging after-effect my traumas had on me. I'm currently in a very intense healing process of recovering. And not to be "like that" but I'm probably in a bigger need of therapy right now than you are, whoever you may be. But most of all I just need more time to let my new, fragile skin thicken and strengthen.

However, it helps me to reflect on my transition and detransition on my own terms and in my own pace, as it helps me reconcile with my past choices and forgive myself for the mistakes I've made. But it pains me to tell another person that if they think transition is right for them and if they've gone through all their doubts, then they should probably do it. Cause my heart just keeps screaming inside me towards that person that "please don't end up like me!!!" but yes, my heart is an irrational blob of tears that is incredibly self-focused at this point and acts like a hurting, undisciplined child. Please excuse its wailing, it really has nothing to do with you. But I struggle more and more to contain it.

Though I know I have good advice to give to people in that sort of situation without swaying in either direction because of what I would have wanted for myself, and that I have helped many already, so I might try to make somewhat of a "masterpost" and possibly also a video about it (but I only have 15 min per video so that might be hard). In that way I could still continue to help others but without depleting myself in the process. I would then make it as ridiculously comprehensive as I possibly could, and put a lot of work into it. Not only include general stuff but also things that I've been asked more rarely and/or may only be applicable to a few, and sort it up into sections and categories and what not. Of course it still can't possibly be applicable to every single person asking themselves if to continue or take another path, but I'd try to make it applicable to as many as possible.

Not today, but at some point in the future when I might feel up for it. Cause I do still care to help, I just have to put myself and my own healing first right now.

[carnographix]

genuinely actually took time to properly cry for the first time this year. it felt. i dunno. weird.

// vent incoming , transphobia

i just. it hurts to admit to myself that my mom is. really not great. because i already came to terms with the fact my dad is horrible years ago, but really? mom too? fucking hell.

she's such. a fucking hypocrite. her and dad really aren't all that different, the major difference between them being that i'm afraid of her, and not him.

i don't fucking like feeling unsafe every time i'm around my mother, let alone staying at her house. i feel i have to walk on eggshells around her, desperately yet silently praying they won't shatter, i feel i have to watch every single little thing i say or do because the second i slip up and do something wrong it's the end of the world. the second i make the slightest mistake i'm "stupid and lazy."

the only reasons i even come here anymore are because if i spend too much time with my dad i'll hurt someone, so that i can go to school and so that i can see my little brothers, and because, somewhere inside me there's that little boy who loves her.

...

y'know what's real funny?

a year or two ago, mom said- no she PROMISED- that if i or my brothers felt unsafe around anyone she was friends or in a relationship with, she'd leave them, because, "you kids are more important than anyone else."

and then when i tell her that i don't feel safe around nor do i trust her partner or his kids, what does she do? fucking ignore me.

y'wanna know what else is real fucking funny?

the fact that over four years ago, when i first came out as trans, she swore she'd support me, she swore that she'd help me and respect who i am, regardless of what happens. y'know what happened? i got diagnosed with gender dysphoria and she completely took that back, fucking forced me to socially detransition, she took back everything she said. she fucking threatened to send me to an all girls' school and send me to fucking conversion therapy, which she KNOWS is harmful and dangerous, and then laughed at and mocked me when i panicked and cried.

i came to her a year later, told her i wanted to go on hormone blockers and that i'm still trans, and she told me that i was WRONG. she told me i was LYING, and that i'm not really trans. she told me that my dysphoria isn't real and just caused by my dad treating me differently to my brothers, she told me that i just loved the attention of being a gay man.

every pride month she always makes posts saying happy pride month, and to love yourself and be true to you, but of course it's simply performative. it's always "i support lgbt+ people," until it comes to her own children.

y'know what mom did, very recently? outed someone without their permission, yelled slurs at them, threatened to beat the shit out of them. i can't stop thinking about the vitriol in those words.

i'm so scared.

mom, i love you. i love you so much, but i can't be with you if you keep hurting me. i don't know if i can find it inside of myself to forgive you. i don't know if you can make ammends for all of the pain you've caused, i just pray that you can help me make sure the future isn't filled with the same agony.