Author: twentythree Originally posted December 2015 on twentythreetimes.tumblr.com. Re-published by author on 23xx-unretired.tumblr.com. Re-posted with permission. [Original re-post] I. Me It’s been three years now since I started detransitioning - the same amount of time that I spent transitioning to male. Getting to this point feels like a milestone of healing, to have balanced out the time spent outside with the time spent inside the mindfuck. This completes the basic foundation of healing for me. I have grown full circle and pushed outwards to take up the right amount of space for myself, dug down to clean up the biggest fragments of how I inhabited my body before, and let my decisions cure and solidify into a tangible future. II. “Us”
Beyond this is building up. I think it’s important to move on - not just for me personally, but in general when it comes to healing from transition and dis-identification. Writing this blog was an integral part of my healing process, but it was the transitory state, pun not intended. My writing here was a bridge: it wasn’t actually the other side even though I spent quite a while connecting the two. I have to move on now and not linger in what was only a connection to a new part of my life. We’re not meant to live on bridges like that. Constantly thinking about my past of transition and continually leading people across the bridge I built works only as long as I am still securing the ties and cementing the unstable parts. Beyond that, I start wearing myself down for the sake of others, and contradicting the purpose of this journey by living on my own scaffolding. I want other people to know that there is another side, not just that there is a bridge. I sense that many people have gotten the wrong idea about what detransition is and see it as a sort of identity. On one hand, there are, of course, those who only see “trans” when they read the word “detransition,” and then there are also those who get caught up in seeing us as a movement or a cohesive political group or, bizarrely, as a sort of cool club. Detransition has become a solid bridge, thanks to those of us who have put ourselves out there with honesty, but we must remain distinct from this rather than forming a “detransition movement” with the whole of our collective personal lives or else we become a parallel to transition: a mirage of progress where there is only circular inward movement pulling others into the “club.” A bridge does not direct movement beyond its span. A bridge is no place to set up camp. If there’s a detransition movement, then I am not a part of it. III. All of Us Something that I’ve been sitting on for a while is the fact that we all (FTMs, other dis-identified females, detransitioned womyn, etc) reconcile with our bodies in one way or another, at some point or another. There are FTMs and other dis-identified females along a wide spectrum of experience ranging from having no medical intervention to having hormone therapy, a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy, and a phalloplasty - but the commonality is that at some point, one reaches “post-transition” and has no more changes left to make and thus must make peace with their body in ways other than medical intervention. In addition, there is all the time in-between these milestones where one must still live with themself the way they are because transition is a lengthy process. Further, none of these medical interventions are perfect and one must come to terms with the ways in which, for example, a double mastectomy may come out uneven, or a phalloplasty may have extensive complications, or testosterone therapy may not change the secondary sex characteristics in all the ways desired. One must learn to live with the ways in which their female body reacts to synthetic male hormones, the ways in which their body heals from surgery, the ways in which their body may be re-constructed to resemble, but not actually function as, or be, male. Is that not what we do? Do we not also learn to live with ourselves? Do we not also come to terms with our scars? Do we not learn to live with the ways in which our bodies cannot fit the molds of our minds and past identities? Do we not also come from every point along the spectrum of transition and medical intervention? We all come to terms with our bodies. You can put it off by focusing on the next milestone of transition, but you can’t put it off forever. If you think we’re doing something so different than you, then you are simply extremely short-sighted. What comes after the top surgery or the five year mark on T? What comes in the middle of all this waiting and change? Living with yourself. That’s all we’re doing by detransitioning: living with ourselves as we are and ceasing our pursuit of changes that will never truly conclude with maleness. Detransitioning is radically different from being trans, but in a way, we are still all doing the same thing, learning to live with and in our bodies. The difference with detransition is just that we stop avoiding the inevitable and stop contradicting the pursuit of contentment with change. IV. Greater than the Sum of Our Parts As I personally move on, and as I look on at the ripples from what I and other womyn have done, I see something forming that I do not stand behind and will not let drain my energy. It is not a direct result of our numbers growing. It is something that feeds off us. My past is a part of me, not something that I perpetually analyze and dissect as distinct from the rest of myself. We can’t let ourselves be dismembered by well-meaning feminists trying to stop the transition “movement”. We can decide for ourselves what our stories mean. We can decide for ourselves when we are done telling our stories. We do not exist for the benefit of others and if we set that as a goal we will fail when we have been bled dry. I am not ok with my story being used by radical feminists anymore. My most popular post ever was one that was used as ammo against trans people: The Gender of Rape. It’s painful and frustrating that this piece has been used within feminist conversations where "trans" is reduced to only meaning "male" by radfems who don’t differentiate FTM from MTF, when my writing was specifically about the intricate mindfuck of being an FTM raped by an MTF, and the contrast between the weight of our “genders” and our sexes. Something as intimate and ugly as rape was not a “Please Take One” pamphlet sitting out on a greeting table in the lobby of the detransition tag. It was never meant to be a source link in someone’s snarky comment or a gotcha! footnote. I didn’t spill my guts in order for them to be proportioned and freeze-dried and sold under someone else’s brand name. I feel used. My life is no more of an Exhibit A than any other woman’s. As a small detransition community is starting to form, I think it’s important to know that if our energy is not being reflected back on and returned to us, then we need to notice where that energy is going and recognize that our current situation is, at best, unproductive, and at worst, detrimental to our goal of healing. Our lives are not generators of anecdotes for an ideology. If something is feeding on the community from the outside, then it is a predator. If something is feeding on the community from within and taking energy without returning it, then it is a parasite. What I’m describing is not meant to be applied to us as if we are a single cohesive whole. It may characterize parts, circles, groups. Similarly, we may be experiencing a mix of healing and draining. I don’t feel completely good about the emergence of this “community.” It feels drafty. It feels like there’s an energy suck at its core, subtly bleeding our honesty out to feed the politics, encouraging homogeneity, and attempting to press us together into having a more cohesive narrative. The hypothetical creation of a detransition narrative would serve a similar purpose as the well-established trans narrative. V. We are Womyn It is absolutely infuriating that many radical feminists lump FTMs (and other dis-identified females) in with Trans™ as a whole, and detransitioned womyn in with Detrans™ as a whole when talking feminism. Such a positioning is absolutely ridiculous within discourse supposedly about the oppression experienced by females and perpetuated by males. Why the hell are we - FTMs and detransitioned womyn alike - lumped as with Trans™ and Detrans™ as if these are not each composed of two sex-specific groups? I will no longer willingly be fodder of dialogue that cannot differentiate me from a man, or my past from that of a man’s. If we are undifferentiated from Trans™ and Detrans™ as female, then we are being set up to be targets for “friendly fire” from radical feminists. We are female, before we are FTM or before we are detransitioned or before we are dis-identified as non-binary. VI. After In order to find our way home, we must cross the bridge. It, in itself, is not home. We are not there yet while we are still detransitioning. We are not healing if we become planks in the bridge ourselves. We are not growing if we are being bled dry. This is not identity. This is something we experience…and then move on beyond, because we all have futures after our FTM transitions and detransitions. #parasites and predators #detrans movement #detrans community Comments are closed.
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