The term ‘cracking your egg’ is often used in trans-affirming spaces, aggressively spreading the idea that anyone who shows broad signs of unease or discomfort is in fact a budding trans person.
To crack your egg is to ‘realise’ you are trans. That realization, though, is not an autonomous one, but a process of group conditioning, toxic validation and a strict system of policing that realigns your political beliefs, religious beliefs and gives you the permission to question reality as fiction, up as down, left as right…
Therefore to ‘scramble your egg’ is to undo that conditioning. And it takes a lot to do that, it’s not just one moment, but a collection of many and not everyone gets there because the inbuilt barriers of self hatred of our sex, our sexual development and our apparent differences in social interactions are so overpowering, it’s much easier to fall back into a dissociative state.
My own scrambling started from the beginning, ironically - I was always fighting against the therapist and this was noted heavily in my discharge papers. Prior to entering the Gender Service in 2014, I had already been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and in my initial referal, my GP had mentioned everything you’ll see me write. There was no secret, no attempt to mislead, I was honest and was paid back with lies. My initial referral to the Gender Clinic included a line regarding my homophobic upbringing, and this was never once explored past the GP referral.
Despite everything, I loved my gender therapist. I had over 90 sessions in total with her by the time I got discharged. I did not want to lose her, but I knew that in 2016 if I didn’t say yes to GRS I would be ejected, I would lose the listening ear I so desperately needed.
Part of my OCD means I don’t throw away letters, It’s all packed in a disorganized drawer. Bills, Finance, Gender Clinic Letters, NHS letters, Documents…I keep everything and have recently been looking through them with glazed angry eyes.
It’s infuriating how badly I was betrayed, how I had expressed concern about being pushed into surgery…One of my ‘second opinions’ for surgery stated all my doubts and concerns and their solution to this was “Well thats rare, not many regret it and i recommend you have it’.
My mother came with me in one appointment and her concern was also noted, but dismissed. She never stopped voicing her concern and she was always dismissed, and I hate myself for not listening to her.
By late 2016 I had rejected an appointment at the surgery clinic and said I wanted more time to think about it. Every time I saw my psychiatrist (not my gender therapist) I was asked about GRS and eventually in 2017, they confronted me again and said ‘you can come back later but we’ll have to discharge you once again.’
So I said sure again and during this time I had been getting hair removal on my genitals in preparation for surgery. I messed around with these appointments to further delay the time needed and would also sabotage these sessions by leaving early or feigning illness, knowing they’d just rebook and I'd get score another session with my gender therapist in the meantime.
This dance went on for a while, but by 2018 the music had stopped and I was laid out for my sexual lobotomy known more kindly as SRS. Soon as I came around for surgery, I realised how much I fucked up and though I feigned happiness to everyone, deep down I was crushed. What had I done to myself?
But because I had GRS, I was able to see my gender therapist for another 2 years after surgery. I had expressed regret constantly, and this was blamed on obsessive thinking towards OCD.
Aside from keeping myself hygienic, I dilate about 4 times a year for 20 mins each and it never closes and most of the time never bother outside managing the trickle of urine from my constricted urethra after going to the toilet, the occasional shooting pain and the despair of my own stupidity.
My pelvis is behaving as if it’s been impaled, constantly trying to heal, constantly confused with what to do with the nerves. My urethra goes through cycles of constriction, meaning every 2 years I need surgery to open it again.
Dismiss me if you like, and put it down to ‘poor surgical outcomes’, but it’s not - I got lucky if you can believe it, I can climax, but there is nothing but numbness in the outer groin, I have tried prodding with clean knives and needles to see if I feel anything, but it’s just not there, there are isolated patches of nerve connectivity too where i can, but its mostly numb. This is not rare.
Most of my friends who had SRS have no sensation. Nothing.
I found that any negativity around this wasn’t discussed in the Church of Trans… “it’ll get better” but it never does. People are selling things they have no business selling, making promises they can’t keep.
By late 2019, I was chronically viewing a site known as ‘The Farms’, Suddenly I had access to research, content, views and experiences that were hidden everywhere else. I didn’t see anything about detransition, just the alarming rate of butchered men and women everywhere, sexual lobotomies in the name of dysphoria.
For the next two years I became emotionally numb and I was right back to where I was at the beginning, hating myself, hating my body, angry, confused, and bitter beyond anything i’ve ever felt in my life.
It wasn’t until an older gay man in my social media group, put on a post about Detrans Awareness Day 2021 March, the first day. He did of course get shot down hard, even by me. But I have recently connected with him, saying thank you as well as sorry and he’s been lovely. I wish I had known someone like him all those years a go; a man looking out for other men.
By this point I was working through the realisation of my monumental fuck up, and in September 2021 I began messing with my HRT, reducing the dose, increasing it, then eventually decreasing again.
By January 2022 I had found the /r/Detrans reddit and the discord which well and truly helped with the pain and feeling alone. It was apparent though, that the Detrans Discord was overwhelmingly populated by detrans women. It really did get me wondering why there were so few detrans males, and I know now that I only have to look inwards for that answer.
It’s no wonder we just off ourselves at this point, and the most painful thing is that these deaths will always get ghouled over by Trans people to prove their cognitive dissonance to others.
One of the men I connected with strongly had a similar story to mine, during a voice conversation it was one phrase that really brought me home, one phrase that is forever branded in my head.
“I woke up one day and just thought…..I CANT do this anymore.” he said it in such a way that pierced right through me. I felt the pain, i felt the loss, i felt the exhaustion in it because I had also lived it. It was so tiring waking up everyday and putting on a voice and a face that wasn’t me. Being paranoid about who or who didn’t clock me.
That was the defining moment I could say my eggs were well and truly scrambled, that I knew that detransition was possible, there was life after and it wasn’t going to be easy, but it gets better.
When I walk out and about now, I don’t feel it - for the most part I just end up getting ID’d as a young man and that really feels good.
I’ve got my strut back, I don’t care if anyone is listening to me or if anyone is looking at me anymore.
It’s so freeing to just stop the bullshit and be yourself.
As Helena very rightly said “My story is not a fluke”. The newly launched detrans mens discord is growing quickly, because she’s right, it’s not a fluke - there won’t only be a few more, there will be many many more eggs that will be getting scrambled.
Scrambled Eggs
Thank you so much for sharing. I am a mother looking to help my questioning teenage son NOT get entrenched in transitioning until/unless he has really been able to work through and identify the source of his social/psychological discomfort. I fear my voice will not reach him before he has done permanent damage to his body. It hurts my heart to hear what transpired for you, and I hope for good days ahead for you where you can feel comfortable and confident in your own skin.
This was gut-wrenching and amazing. Your story and the broader story needs to be told. I know it’s awful to put pressure on people who suffered/are suffering from the monstrous recklessness of clinicians, or to tether you to a phase of your life that you need to move on from, but we all have to bear witness to this dark period. This can neither be allowed to continue nor be forgotten. The surgeons and the therapists and the endocrinologists, the AAP and WPATH — they cannot be allowed to just slink back to their former lives. There is hell to pay.