DETRANSITIONING IS NOT FAILURE
I have a close friend out in Long Island. She is a woman in her early sixties that tells about an episode from her youth. She wanted to be a chef, more than anything in the world. And by sheer force of will and the blessings of a merciful God, she managed to go to Paris to attend an acclaimed cooking school there. When she talks of this period, her voice becomes young again, and her hopes and joy of living, learning and loving in Paris come through the phone's receiver clear as a bell.
But, and there always seem to be a “but” in these retold fairy tales, she was forced to return to New York City by circumstance. Once back home, the only jobs for newly trained cooks, paid less than her cockroach infested apartment down in Chelsea. It was then that she began working, using her first degree in accounting. It paid much more than cooking and came with benefits and promotions.
With this change, the path of her future life was laid down in stone, and led to a husband of twenty-eight years, two children, and a beautiful house out on the island.
I mention her story, because unlike modern day transgenders who have detransitioned, she was not physically harmed by going to Paris for a couple years. She was not harmed by taking on a Parisian lover. When she boarded the Trans World Airline flight in Paris to return home, she had both her breast still attached. And she still had her vagina and ovaries intact. Her body had not been under chemical attack, filled with massive mind and endocrine altering injections.
And yes, at the time of her moving into accounting as a career, there must have been some resentment over her “failed” desire to work as a chef. It faded as the daily demands of life forced her, like it does all of us, to focus on the here and now, and not old decisions. She did what everyone should do in such a case, move on with her life and don’t look back
But people who detransition are not so lucky.
I started taking them back in 1977 and only stopped taking estrogen about five years ago. That' s a total of 49 years of my poor male body being under attack from my listening to gender affirming doctors who fully believed that living as a social pariah with these chemicals and silicon in my body, was better for me, that facing my emotional problems head on. The physical contortions my body and mind went through from withdrawal took months before my body slowly adapted. And I'm still slowly returning to my maleness.
I had breast augmentation in 78 and then again in 89. Yet when I removed the second set of implants five years ago, I experienced a seroma pocket under my right breast that continues to fill with fluid...to this very day.
And beyond all the physical realignment that I've gone through these last few years since I've detransitioned, is the overwhelming sense that I fucked up my entire life by going down this gender hole.
When I first detransitioned, there would be times late at night, the bitterness that I hold for myself, and the doctors who supported my gender journey is so rancid, that I feel as if I'm rotting from the inside out.
This gender affirming journey that I and other transgender people put ourselves through is not like my friend’s trip to Paris. Our original gender dysphoria is so pervasive, and uncomfortable, that we will buy any tonic or elixir from traveling snake oil salesmen who promise relief from it. We hope and pray to find just one moment of peace from this itch that can never be scratched.
To detransition, is not just a struggle to bring our physiologies back into balance. It is largely about learning to let go of our personal bitterness, and sense of shame and disappointment over what we've done to ourselves.
No one I’ve ever spoken to about their detransition makes the decision lightly. The doctors who gave us the drugs and surgeries don't have to live with the ongoing health problems, or societies reaction to us choosing to live on the edge. Quite simply, having put all of one’s hopes and dreams into cross living, and then when it does not work out, it forces the transgender person with the only real option left them, to return to a life we once fled in frustration and disgust.
We’ve all done it. Everyone who ever crossed the gender Rubicon did so yelling and screaming “fuck you” to their old life as we happily marched off to get our hormones, and surgeries. We emailed and texted all our friends, bombarding them with smiles and naked pictures of our new, surgically created/ defined bodies. I went so far as to take a film camera with me, taking pictures of my gurney ride straight into the operating room where they would cut off my penis. I can honestly tell you, my friends I showed this slide show to, have never forgotten it.
After all this transition jubilation and then the ultimate remorse over how cross living wasn’t what we were told, or thought it would be, or how it turned out so badly, most of us felt shame over how stupid of a decision we made.
And because of this self recrimination, I believe the only way to return to living as our birth sex, is to first start with forgiving ourselves.
Humans aren’t ever told how to live our lives. Older family members try to caution us about dangers in the world, but every new generation of humans must find out for themselves how best to navigate their new and strange world. It is for this primary reason that our children and loved ones must be given the right to make their own decisions, mistakes and missteps.
The hardest part of detransitioning for me was dealing emotionally with my new normal. I had presented myself as “woman” for so many decades, that suddenly I no longer had to wake up, and think about getting into my “woman” mind set. The years of worrying about my facial hair, my voice registry being too low, or how I walked and sat down in a chair simply disappeared. I eventually felt a great relief from not having to put on my emotional armor every day before I walked outside. During my gender years few days went by where I did not get shit from people out in the world.
But after the first little old lady in a store called me Sir, I took in a deep breath and laughed. It was at that moment, I no longer had to ensure I was passing as a woman every moment of my life. This was such a deep emotional relief.
I believe that detransing our lives is more about accepting ourselves as spiritual beings, rather than as physical ones. We are the thinker, not the thought, we are the consciousness not the sex listed on the driver’s license. We are not the clothes we wear, or the shoes we put on our feet. We are not the car we drive, nor who we have sex with. We are not our gender, or the pronouns we use. You are not your breasts, anymore than I was my penis.
We are first and always spirit having a physical experience.
Once you embrace this, you can finally walk in your own skin with confidence.
I was able to embrace myself as I am, and the decisions I’ve made around gender by understanding and believing in something greater than myself. And when I began to see the world is about something more than about how I look or dress, I was finally able to stop looking back in anger and move forward and beyond gender and sexuality.
How to start living your actual authentic self
- Accept yourself as you are.
- Identify the experience of life you desire.
- Decide and know that you will get there.
- Daily visualize it as a reality.
- Don’t take detours of any kind.
- Keep making the same decisions that will lead there.
- If it is not what you thought, and don’t like it,
- Rinse, repeat steps 1-6
- And like most normal people, you must let go of the past, don’t look back, and move forward with your life.
Best of luck!
If you or someone you know is struggling with detransitioning, please reach out to me at renejax@renejax.com
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