Detrans Titans - Grace
An interview with Grace (@hormonehangover)
Next up in the Detrans Titans series, we have the wonderful Grace, who goes by the substack and twitter handle @HormoneHangover. Grace rose to the spotlight when she featured alongside four over detransitioners in May 2021’s CBS’s 60 minutes look into Gender Affirming Care. However, Grace has been advocating for better healthcare and awareness well before the segment.
Alongside Sinead, I first saw Grace’s interview on Benjamin Boyce’s YouTube who has platformed a number of detransitioner stories, and once again I found myself relating strongly to the story of another detransitioner, regardless of the differences in our sex.
It felt like, although there are key differences in the route ways that take young men and women down this path, the thoughts are strikingly similar. After all, we were all part of the same belief.
Grace is proof that there is life after, having recently gotten married and looking ahead to the future. So please join me as I interview another Detrans Titan.
The Interview
Hi Grace! I’m so grateful you’ve agreed to be my next detrans titan. I’m not quite sure how to say this, but I strongly relate to your demeanour, sort of confident yet anxious, though most of all what I continue to be impressed with is your calmness despite everything, especially through discourse. How different do you find yourself now in detransition versus how you were in transition?
Thank you, that’s very kind of you! When I was in the middle of transition, I think I was obsessing and ruminating over my gender dysphoria, the steps of transition, etc. I was extremely unsure of myself, and it sucked.
After detransitioning, I experienced a kind of ego death and had to completely rebuild my life. It took me a long time, but I’m certainly more confident than I ever have been before.
Belated congratulations on the 60 Minutes interview! How did you feel before and right after you did it? And what was the reception like from those around you?
Before I did it, I was dying of fear. I thought it would change my life and cause vast social ostracization. In some ways, I was right. My life changed, and I did lose some acquaintances. Plus a bunch of people I didn’t know started raging at me online. But at least about the online masses, who cares?
I feel really strongly that there needs to be some alarm sounded about the shoddy mental and physical healthcare I received and that other people are receiving. Although I’m willing to hear criticism, I feel very justified in my decision.
I think it was worse feeling the anticipation, but I felt empowered by being able to speak up. Although I wouldn’t encourage every detransitioner to go public as I did without giving it a lot of forethought, I think for me, it helped me level up in terms of confidence and not caring what other people think. A lot of my old anxieties fell away after that.
JK Rowling has been supporting detransitioners for a long time, and I think it was her quote tweet that led me to your account when I first started twitter. It was a beautiful post, as was the sentiment - I really thought it was such a wholesome and meaningful thing to do to help. Firstly, how did you feel when the blanket was finished, can you remember the moment? And how did you feel JK quoted your post?
Right, so the blanket was something I made because I was having intense despair that I had made an irrevocable mistake (true) and that my life was basically ruined.
My basic thought process was, finish this gigantic blanket and see how you feel afterwards. I think it took me about 6 months, and when it was done, I did feel a little better. It gave me hope that things could continue to improve for me, and I think it spurred me on. It showed me that my life could improve, but it would take effort, and I would have to do it every single day.
JK Rowling quoting my post was an amazing feeling. I shrieked out loud, I scared my husband. It means so much to have an ally like her. After I went on TV, Laverne Cox and all these ACLU people were denouncing the episode. It felt like these really powerful high profile people were against detransitioners.
So to have someone like JK Rowling in your corner giving you a boost is INDESCRIBABLE. I’m so moved by her support.
I’ve noticed you have a lot of musical instruments, how many do you play and which one do you enjoy the most?
Most of the instruments in the family are my husband’s. I mostly play the flute, although I messed around with piano lessons, guitar lessons, and singing lessons in my adolescence. I played flute in middle school and high school and then abandoned it for a while, but I always liked music and singing.
My singing voice was pretty much ruined by T, and I missed the feeling of producing music. So I bought a flute during the pandemic and I’ve really enjoyed it. A lot of my old skills just came right back to me. Plus, it keeps me off Twitter.
Your wedding and honeymoon both looked enchanting to say the least. It really did look like it went off without a hitch - did you ever envisage yourself getting married in 2022?
Thank you!! It was a really great time. It’s strange to have gone from being totally lost, to planning this life of passing as a man and maybe getting all these surgeries, to having this huge detransition detour and then ending up getting married.
My husband was with me through my whole transition and detransition. I think he was my saving grace.
I don’t know where I would be without him today. Maybe I would have doubled down again and gone farther medically, or been unable to recover from the grief of detransition. I’m so lucky to have him.
You once told me the deeper you get into detrans activism the more you could relate to Eminem, and I too have to admit he is a guilty pleasure of mine. Do you want to elaborate on why you feel that strong relation?
Hahahaha. This is embarrassing. Here’s the deal about Eminem. I grew up listening to gentle folk music and such, I thought he was pretty scary when I was younger.
But when I was trying to hype myself up to go on 60 minutes, I got on a kick of listening to pop music that was popular in the aught’’ and early 2010s, when I was in high school, and at that point Eminem started to appeal a lot more.
I think after many years as a very anxious conscientious person, I needed to tap into a completely different mode in order to be brave enough to do this thing that I knew would make people angry.
So in that context, I felt very bolstered by his braggadocious, aggressive songs. He’s always saying something extremely provocative and then getting protested and then talking about that experience. On a much smaller level and on a much different subject, I can relate to that.
Prior to speaking out, was there anyone in the detrans sphere you strongly related too that influenced you to be vocal or was this very much fluid for yourself?
Yeah! I think Carey Callahan was my biggest role model for speaking out. She’s mostly moved on from detrans stuff and I think deleted most of what she wrote.
But at the time, her writing comforted me a lot and helped me feel understood. I wanted to also create writing that could comfort people.
We’ve all had wild theories been thrown our way from dripping in that crazy detrans money to being gifted Yachts! Have you had any interesting accusations come your way and if so do you have any favourites?
I got some hitpieces that came out after 60 minutes. It was so nauseating. They never contacted me to defend me.
For the record, I haven’t made any real money off detransitioning. I guess I got paid $200 for an Op-Ed in Newsweek once. And a lady sent me a yarn gift card recently, which was amazing. But no yacht. Not yet…
Do you ever get recognised in public? If so how did that go?
I have once.
This guy stopped as I was eating in a roadside restaurant and pointed at me and exclaimed “I saw you on 60 minutes! Good for you.” It was nice.
Where do you see yourself with detrans activism by 2024?
I’m hoping I can step back and focus on my normal life, but I also want to keep writing.
I feel like I can finally take a step back now because more and more people are getting brave enough to speak out. I would love to do a bigger project than just blog posts, like a book.
One thing that needs some work in the US is insurance coverage for detransition surgeries. I’m not sure how that can be achieved, but I’d like to figure out a way to get that covered.
There’s still a lot more work to do!
Tulip you are a really talented interviewer. Grace; what a strong story and love the joyous wedding pic!
Questions
Grace:
1. In US how is detrans surgery not considered “trans healthcare” after all if transmen are men, and a transman has dysphoria about their maleness, feels female and is distressed with their male body, then affirmation of being female and transition (back) to female is the correct pathway! Right?? . If TMAM and TWAW How do they get to argue that gender dysphoria and transition are a one way street? Isn’t that sex descriminatory?
2. I’m interested in your sexual orientation- there’s a lot of talk that TiW are largely butch lesbians, but from Benjamin’s podcast I learned of young women who imagined themselves as gay men, and that in part drove their identity. You spoke of being with your husband throughout- Did you identify as a gay man?
All of you outspoken, re-identified men and women are awesome, your words are more important than you can imagine. I hope doctors will start to listen. The "sexologist" psychologist who diagnosed my former husband in one appointment in 1993 (which she documented in a sworn affidavit, submitted during our divorce) demonstrates the arrogant, superior attitude the "specialized" practitioners had about their unsupported diagnostics, going way back. I believe that a high percentage who did the surgeries are unhappy, but sunk cost fallacy and pressure due to potential cancellation keeps them from speaking out, or even admitting it. I never saw my ex genuinely smile after. He's very much caught up in advocacy, as well as exerting his 'right' to call himself the mother of our children.
I hope Ritchie and Grace find connections to nature and the mind/body lifeline. I walk with nordic sticks and do floor work to keep my abdominal wall felt as a source of strength. This is influenced by Feldenkrais physical therapy, which I think should be the first course taken when dysphoria hits.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)