I never fit in with the other girls.

I have vague memories of wearing dresses and tights to daycare, but

my mother tells me that around age 2 she showed me a dress to wear that day and I said, No Mom,
black jeans, and never looked back. I did have a dollhouse, but my favorite game was one I called
Godzilla Meets the Dollhouse People, where the family would adopt a baby Godzilla that would grow
up to either eat them or protect them, depending on the mood I was in. My hair was long, but it was
wild and untamed. I played with both girls and boys, but usually in pretend games I would pretend to
be a boy. I would sometimes get teased by other kids, called a boy pretending to be a girl because no
real girl would dress the way I did. I knew the teasing would stop if I conformed, but that wasn't worth
it to me, so I endured. Basically, I was a classic tomboy.

It wasn't until I got a little older that I started to really feel uncomfortable with being a girl. I was
introverted and spent a lot of time online where it was all no girls on the internet this and get back in
the kitchen that. I didn't have the words for it at the time, but I hated how my body was both an object
of desire and something to be scrutinized in every detail. I was called ugly because I didn't style my
hair or wear tight constricting clothes, but if I did do those things I would have been called a vapid slut.
This was around the time my dysphoria began to manifest. I don't know if I can separate whatever
internal feelings I had about my body from the feelings brought on by external criticisms. Just by
existing I attracted unwanted attention, even when I hid everything I could under my biggest hoodie.
Even female pronouns felt grating on my earsthat sh sound symbolized my status as an object. It
wasn't just a classification, it was a command. SHe. Sshh. Sit down and shut up, like a good girl. It
didn't occur to me at the time that other girls also felt pressured to be something they aren't, it seemed
to come easily to them. Clearly, the problem was with me, for not being like the other girls. So I made
an effort that lasted maybe a year or two. I thought maybe, if I tried hard enough to force myself into
the mold, I could learn to be okay with it.

I was 17 when I first learned about being transgender. It felt like all the pieces suddenly clicked into
place. This was why I couldn't act like a girl shouldI wasn't a girl in the first place. This was why I
liked boy things and felt so uncomfortable with my female body. I met every criteria in the
diagnosis, it just made sense. I don't think it's coincidence that my parents were going through their
divorce at the same time. That's not the subject of this story so I won't go too much into it, but that's
hard for any kid to deal with. My life was being flipped in all directions and I wanted to escape and
start over. I moved with my mom when she left, to a town I'd never lived in before. Nobody there
knew me, so I could introduce myself as a boy rather than have to come out to people I already knew. I
started to meet other people like me. Back then the trans community was a lot smaller, but everyone
was very supportive. I was starting to feel like I actually belonged somewhere and could be myself. I
started seeing a therapist, who agreed that my noncompliance with traditional gender roles meant that I
was actually male. At 20 I started taking testosterone, and it seemed like my life was on its way to
being where I wanted it to be.

All was well for a few years. My family accepted me and I passed well enough that nobody knew
unless I told them. I went stealth and decided that once I had gotten surgery I would put my trans
status behind me, thinking of it just as a strange chapter of my life. I listened to all the trans positivity
messages out there saying trans men are real men, and did my best to convince myself that was true.
Of course I knew that no amount of modification would actually make me male, and that I would
always have a connection to women that cis men do not have. But that wasn't the point; the point was
to say words that make people feel good.

In the years since I came out and now, there have been a lot of discussions in trans theory that eroded
my sense of belonging in the community. We always said from the beginning that gender is a social
construct and how you dress doesn't define what you are, but at the same time we uphold these
stereotypes to such a degree that anyone who doesn't conform 100% to their assigned role is considered
trans. The hypocrisy took a few years to sink in, but once it did I couldn't un-see it. I never liked the
concept of the cotton ceilingfor the uninformed this refers to people not wanting to sleep with trans
people whose genitalia doesn't match their orientation. Maybe I'm taking a radical stance here, but
nobody is obligated to sleep with anyone they don't want to, and trying to guilt them or call them
transphobic for that is honestly creepy. More and more people began speaking out against the
medicalization of transness and gatekeeping the community. But instead of criticizing how the
diagnostic criteria for being trans focuses on liking the wrong toys or clothes (which if we're going
with the gender is a social construct narrative, is a valid criticism), people wanted to drop dysphoria as
a necessary symptom, meaning that being trans just meant not conforming to gender roles, which aren't
important in the first place, but they are when we say they are. The logic felt so strained and
unjustified, and I started to wonder how nobody else saw the doublethink going on. But I had one
point that I held on to, that being brain sex. That was my justification for my feelings, I had a male
brain in a female body. Sure, I couldn't prove it, but it felt that way and that's what counts right?

Well, then more brain studies started coming out. There was a study on brain plasticity, meaning the
brain changes shape or function depending on external circumstancesso a woman who's been living
in that role her whole life would have a woman's brain, but that was due to the life she lived, not how
she was born. Last year, another study came out essentially proving that brain sex does not exist,
because there is no single trait or list of traits that determines if a brain is male or female. I consider
myself a scientific person, so when irrefutable proof that contradicts my beliefs is staring me in the
face, my only option is to change my beliefs. Aside from that, there is a lot of evidence showing that
transition usually does not reduce depression or suicidal ideation. But honestly I don't need a study to
tell me that, I could see it in my own life and in the lives of other trans people I knew. So I began to
wonder, what actually makes me trans? If it's not the way I dress, not something in the brain, and not
dysphoria, what is it? My soul or spirit or whatever? Spare me that, I'm an atheist. I deal with facts
and proof, not things that feel good to think about but don't stand up to critical thought. My search for
answers led me to gender critical feminism, which I was apprehensive about but I needed to
understand. I began to read the forbidden texts of radical feminism where they spell woman with a Y,
but I couldn't speak to any of my trans friends about it because they were critical of transition which
made them Bad People, and me a Bad Person for even being curious about what they had to say. I was
surprised to see that there were a lot of similarities to what I had already been taught. Gender is a
social construct, I know that. Female gender roles hurt female people while male gender roles benefit
male people, that's obvious. The biggest difference was that the ideology I was already in approached
the problem of gender by creating more categories, while radical feminism advocated for abolishing the
categories entirely. What a concept, treating people the same regardless of what organs they're born
with and not assigning things like colors or behaviors to one organ set or the otherof course the trans
community advocates for this too, or claims to, but gender abolition actually seemed like the logical
conclusion of that line of thought. I realized that I hadn't needed to transition to become the person I
wanted to be, that my dysphoria was more due to the way I was treated for the crime of being born
female than anything else, and indeed, that I now had regrets. I still felt dysphoric, but it seemed like
transitioning would never solve that. Even if I changed everything I could, I would still be fixated on
the things that I can't. I wanted to go back but felt like I couldn't, because I'd forever have an altered
voice and facial hair. I just knew I couldn't keep acting like this was sound logic when I knew it wasn't.
I knew I couldn't live like this anymore.

So I made an anonymous blog. No ties to my real identity, just a place for me to vent about my
feelings. Shortly after, I stopped taking hormones and canceled my future appointments with the
therapist I was seeing to get approval for top surgery. I got in contact with other people who had
realized that we needed to break the chains of gender, rather than add more colors of chainssome
with a history of transition, some not. Blogging about my experience has only made it more clear to
me that gender theory has become dogmatic. I get insults and threats from anonymous posters for
talking about my own experiences, even if I don't say anything against anybody else. I've been called a
self-hating trans man in denial, brainwashed by the radical feminist cult. I've been asked sarcastically
why I hate trans people, as if being critical of the way power structures affect the way people think
means that I hate individuals or want harm to come to them (I don't.) I've even been accused of being a
shill making up my whole story just to undermine the trans community. It's a lot to deal with, but I
can't disable comments because I also get people coming to me for advice or just to vent, people who
either share my experience or are just questioning mainstream gender theory but are afraid to tell
people they know. I'm happy to be there for someone who needs a sympathetic ear, but it's also
upsetting that we have to talk about these things in secret. Detransition might not be common (yetI
honestly believe that a lot of young people who identify as trans now won't within a few years), but it is
an important part of the experience that anyone considering transition should take into account. I want
to reiterate that I completely fit the narrative of a trans childhood and am formally diagnosed, I didn't
just get into it because it's cool and trendy to be androgynous and have a dyed undercut. And yet, I still
realized it wasn't right for me. The same thing could happen to anyone in transition, especially if they
are willing to critically examine their ideology instead of blindly accepting it. Detransitioned people
deserve a voice in the community instead of being no-platformed the way we are now. We used to be
just like you, and you could easily become like us.

I only recently came out to my family and friends about detransitioning (via Facebook, since it's easier
to write one post than to tell everyone individually.) It took several months for me to work up the
courageComing out once is hard enough, and I worked so hard for everything I had achieved. It felt
like throwing away a lot of effort, and I was worried that retracting my identity would make me look
crazy (or at least uncommitted) and alienate my trans friends. I was finally inspired to speak up by a
friend (who shall remain anonymous) saying that she was also going back to living as a woman, and
getting a lot of positive and supportive response, including from mutual friends. When I did finally
make the post I had been dreading for ages, it was uneventful. I called both my parents and they didn't
care as long as I was happy, and life immediately resumed. Not a lot has changed, and I don't expect it
to. I'm keeping my wardrobe because I like my clothes and clothes don't define gender anyway, so I
can wear whatever I want. I'm not going back to my birth name because I never liked it (sorry Mom
and Dad!) and the name I chose for myself has become part of my identity, and is fairly neutral. People
still assume that I'm a man because of my appearance, and that's probably just something I'll have to
live withI'm certainly not the only woman who does, even among women who have never
transitioned. It's still a struggle to be okay with myself, but I feel more authentic now than when I was
relying on external things to validate my identity. It feels like I'm actually accepting me for me, rather
than try and modify myself to chase an impossible end. Right now I'm just taking things a day at a
time and focusing on taking care of this body, feeding it well and staying physically active to feel at
home in it.

If you're reading this and you're family or a friend, thank you. If you're reading this and you think I'm a
violent transphobe, I can't stop you, but I hope you understand that my viewpoint is not an outsider's
opinion, it comes from an intimate understanding of the trans community. If you're reading this and
questioning your own transition, I'm here to tell you that it's never too late. Some detransitioners I
know were on hormones longer than me, or had surgery, and still reclaimed themselves. Our
community is here for you, and we're all just trying to heal.
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