I used to hate having my photo taken, there’s a good period of my life missing from family albums as I’m absent for various reasons. First, it was due to simply not wanting my photo taken and you may understand why soon, but secondly my photo wasn’t taken because I wasn’t there. When I transitioned, I was either cut out or side-lined, and this just made it easier to give less of a shit about what I was doing generally.
No, I’m not blaming my family but if anyone could have talked me out of it, it would have been my older sibling and my father, neither tried. Sure, it’s an impossible test, sure, they’re just guys at the end of the day who don’t understand any of this, but to not try at all? Fuck, that stings and even though it does, I still miss them both terribly.
I’ll not lie, part of me felt like my detransition would lead to reuniting with them, hell I was even dreaming about it, dreams that felt so lucid when I awoke it was hard to tell if it was real or not. But the reality is, detransition didn’t change anything, the damage was already done and just like I thought transition would mystically fix my problems, detransition certainly didn’t repair already fractured relationships.
Shame
Shame plays a huge part in my story, and it is layered in hatred for myself, being unable to deal with being gay, or being unable to fit in like everyone else seemed to do so naturally, and without effort. In conversations, I used to stay quiet, especially amongst unfamiliar people, but equally, amongst groups of familiar people, I would become enthusiastic, carried away, and say something without really thinking about it, causing disapproval. My way of dealing with this was to respond only with dry humour, often most people couldn’t tell if I was joking or not, and whilst this made me quite entertaining to be around, it also served its purpose of not offending.
It didn’t always work though, if I got angry and fixated on a topic, I would press on often upsetting others in the process, unable to see that what I was doing was hurtful to others until this was explained to me. I’m not talking about when I was a child either, this still occurs to this day and it does make interacting with people overwhelming as I try my best not to cause any fuss.
My ideal method of communication was online, in the written text. I can type at a lightning pace, but putting pen to paper causes my hand to ache, even after writing just a small piece. I always had this struggle, and when my hands found a keyboard it became so much easier to write and talk to others.
From a young age, around 10/11 I became obsessed with online chat rooms and under the false security of being at home, I felt my interacting with strangers would bear no consequences. At around the age of thirteen, I remember trying to self-soothe with the phrase “Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened” over and over, with such intensity that I thought for the longest time that nothing did happen, but something did happen.
At fourteen years old, the physical differences between myself and my peers were visibly apparent. Puberty just hadn’t arrived for me, and even before my friends sprouted into giants, I was well known for being the short one. As high school went on, younger kids joining the grade below would tower over me and this very quickly drew a hard target on my back.
I don’t deal well with confrontation and even as an adult, can have a meltdown in such scenarios, which as a kid, other kids picked up on quickly. I hate using words like bullying because it sounds harmless, innocent and without consequence but what I and others went through was straight-up torture and assault. Being set on fire, having acid thrown at me, being assaulted in classrooms with absent teachers, and the fear that came with just walking through the hallways.
As the harassment got worse, my grades slipped - to which my teachers thought the solution to this was to move me down a class, with the antagonists. I wanted to die, but I was too afraid to even try. I knew if I just waited it would be over. My home town wasn’t exactly the land of opportunity or social progress, it was a hard place to live and not exactly welcoming for gay autistic kids, being a former mining town in one of the poorest areas of the UK.
I was terrified to go outside by the age of fourteen and I much preferred playing games or allowing myself to get engrossed in the online world. I was already talking, sending pictures, and giving away intimate details to strangers by this point, and my desire to explore my sexuality led me to take more risks, and be more provocative for the sake of more attention. I felt I knew what I was doing and was in control, but I wasn’t.
Blame
One of the biggest misconceptions I’ve faced so far is that I don’t blame myself for my choices as an adult. Of course, I do, I take my part in not having the strength to ask for the help I needed and for allowing myself to be overtaken by this obsession. Because that’s what it is, an obsession, a fixation of the highest degree that never quite yields the satisfaction you’re aiming for. There’s always one more surgery you can have, one more treatment, something to make you appear more female and the in-between period is nothing but torturous, especially if you think like me, that this finally will solve it.
During transition, I had a good honeymoon period of around five years where things felt fairly calm, even resolved. I was still cautious, but my head wasn’t buzzing the way it was before, as I felt I had found the cause and solution to my struggles. Simultaneously, I would ignore the huge gaps in my memory as nothing more than ‘nothing worth remembering’.
Detransition was on the cards before I had surgery, and I dismissed this feeling as simply ‘letting TERF rhetoric get to me' when I had surgery I knew it would make detransition even less appealing, because I wanted to show commitment to others that my issues were real, and this felt like a very real way of doing so.
And it’s true, post-operative trans people are held in high regard by many, inside and outside the community. It’s a permeant seal of commitment, a physical reference point to your suffering where a person can say “Dysphoria was so bad I had to get surgery”.
Just imagine if a woman weighing six stone (84 lbs) went to the doctor and said “I’m fat, I need to be thinner, will you give me a gastric band.” I think many alarm bells would be rung at this point, and despite my therapist writing to my doctor in concern, a year before I had surgery as I had assertively laid out plans to take my own life, discussing the various methods and considerations. Throughout this time, even before and during, and after surgery I was dealing with addiction issues, which I had been completely open about.
I delayed and delayed my surgery as I was getting the therapy I needed, and I told them about my fears, I told them about my reservations and despite this - I was an ‘ideal candidate’. As I said, I accept my part in this, but you also need to see it’s not that straightforward, that safeguards are there for reasons. I do take responsibility for my part and I don’t care how little or how much people blame me, but to say that the blame is mine and mine alone, is disingenuous.
And if they cannot blame me, which they will, they will do what they can to dismiss me. It is so important for them that the onus is placed solely on the detransitioner, but this clear lack of empathy or critical thinking should be enough for others to take notice of, which is why our stories are so powerful.
Showing Face
It really won’t be hard to track me down and get my picture out there, I’m not hiding I just don’t want my family or friends' lives to be affected. Because they do come after everyone, your family, your workplace, your friends. If they cannot silence you directly they will make every attempt at destroying your livelihood.
The risk is real and I have immense respect for the detransitioners who have put their face out in the public eye. I’m sure I’ll be more public one day, but for now, I need to make sure that I and others like me have support, structure, safeguarding, and a way to tell our truth unhindered by belief.
One thing I will say that transition helped me get over was my fear of having my photo taken, and for the first few years I would gladly be in a photo, but that feeling didn’t last, and just like when I was younger; photos are absent, especially over the last three years, where the shame and blame crept back in and I couldn’t bear to see pictures of myself once more.
Since detransitioning, I’m able to take photos again without flinching. I smile without needing to feign one, and most of all I don’t recoil when I see them. I’m not sure what switched, perhaps it was letting go of the fear since detransitioning, perhaps it was just nice to see me smile again.
Thank you for reading and as usual; take good care and stay safe.
-TR
What you went through as a kid is awful. I think you should be proud of yourself for growing up to be an obviously decent, generous, and caring person despite these hardships.
Thank you for this. I hope you can heal and become stronger and have restored relationships with your family.