What Remains at the End of This?

On pain, growth, advocacy, and legacy

At the end of November, I attended a symposium on detransition research that was held at York University in Toronto. Videos from the event can be found on YouTube. One of the last things I tried to write in 2022 was an article regarding my thoughts about the event—particularly my thoughts on some of the data that was presented and my frustrations with specific presentations—but I only ever finished the summary, which outlined my disappointment with how the affirmation approach continued to be emphasized and experiences of regret downplayed as individual problems rather than systemic ones.

The following section is that summary.

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I spend my time in detransition spaces every day. I come across posts from suicidal people every week. (That said, I’m an introvert, so I don’t do one-on-ones, and I rarely offer personal support to people. I feel like a shitty advocate for this, especially because I have friends who are doing the work of personally supporting other detransitioners, and I know how soul-rending it is to speak directly to someone in crisis. I genuinely don’t think I’m very good at it, and it gives me anxiety to think about trying. I tend to think my work lies in writing, when I have time to process what I want to say.)

At any rate, it was difficult for me to sit in a room where panels of people with no regrets about their medical history emphasized the importance of unquestioning access to medically treating of a belief that has no grounding in material reality when I have met so many people who have been irreparably harmed by that same “treatment.”

I know people with ongoing vocal pain from testosterone use.

I know people who are devastated by their inability to ever breastfeed their children.

I know people who might never enjoy sexual intimacy again, either because they are horrified by their own bodies; because their libidos are completely shot; or because sex is now physically painful.

I know people who have been made infertile by this “treatment.” (I myself have sat sobbing as I process the reality that, during the darkest years of my life, I was insistent on eradicating one of the last indicators of “female” I had, when I had resolutely wanted to bear children my entire life before then.)

I know people deep in addiction because they are convinced it is the only way they can make it through the day after everything they’ve been through.

I know people who can’t get out of bed because they believe the best parts of life have been stolen from them.

I have seen (and felt) so much pain. So much. And I still keep myself one step back from it.

Affirmation is validation of the feelings you are having in a single moment. I think validation of one’s feelings and experiences can be important, especially in mental health settings. However, when it comes to authority figures affirming a transgender identity, it forecloses a person’s options to whatever they want right now, long-term consequences be damned.

From an adult to a child, affirmation is a truth; children do not have the requisite critical thinking skills to consider what else could be contributing to their distress. They only know how bad they feel in the moment and what they are convinced will resolve it. From a health care professional to a client, affirmation is a diagnosis; they will believe that medical treatment might be necessary… particularly when we are being taught that “gender identity” is innate, that people who identify as transgender are “born that way,” and that transition is “lifesaving.”

But then we have detransitioners by the thousands, many of whom have been perfectly clear that our “gender identities” were nothing more than a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma, hatred of ourselves, or any number of comorbid conditions. We were clearly not born that way, and transition did not save our lives. It altered our bodies; it destroyed our natural functioning; it gave us chronic pain and lifelong complications; and it left us feeling broken and alone.

Even if you do believe there’s such thing as a “true” transgender person, how could you see this happening and continue saying that affirmation without question is the best option? How can you champion self-diagnosis in a vulnerable and desperate person knowing that there is a possibility—however small you think it is—that they could be wrong, leaving them absolutely shattered? How?

So I am angry that the perception of detransitioners that was given to the audience was one of people who embrace the idea of gender diversity and frame their experiences, perhaps, as a “gender journey”—the number of times I heard that phrase throughout the day made me nauseous—in which they managed to find themselves at the end of it. It only reinforces the idea that transition rarely harms even the people who feel it was ultimately wrong for them.

I don’t at all blame them personally, and I’m glad that they don’t experience what I do. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. However… the longer that this overwhelming grief is quietly swept to the side, the worse it is going to be when our needs are finally directly addressed; the more people there will be in desperate need of support, and the more intense the rage will be from those of us who have been screaming into the void for years. I’ve watched as detransitioners who have been in this for years slowly harden their stances as they are, at best, ignored and, at worst, humiliated and threatened. I am two years out from detransitioning, and my patience, too, has worn thin.

I don’t for a second believe that detransition isn’t preventable, but that was what I came away with: the continued insistence that detransition is always inevitable and that efforts to avoid it are “problematic.”

Our stories might evoke sympathy, but it still feels like we are no more than justifiable collateral damage to the people who could change the outcome.

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(With that summary out of the way, the rest of this blog post is basically a diary entry.)

It’s been eleven years since my mastectomy. About 99% of the time, I’ve accepted what my chest looks like. But there are still moments where I remove my shirt to change, my breath catches, and my mind leaves my body. And I have no way of predicting when it will happen. This reality will never go away for me. I will still be living in this body long after everyone has moved on to whatever the next big scandal is. And compared to some of the complications other people are going through, I got lucky.

I’m approaching 35, and I am looking at my life wondering what there is left to salvage. I have work that I’m good at and pays my bills, but I’m still on disability. I can’t drive, and I spend an extensive amount of time by myself, isolated. My social anxiety hasn’t gone away; it’s just morphed into avoidance and hyper-independence. Relationships with other people still trigger childhood wounds, resulting in emotional breakdowns that I have difficulty getting under control any time something goes wrong.

I don’t feel 35. I have some of the wisdom that comes from life experience, but socially, I feel like I’m still a teenager. I spent the years I was transitioned in arrested development, focusing on the cultivation of a sham “identity” and changing my appearance to try to control how others perceived me. I should have been developing resilience and social skills: learning to tolerate rejection and to accept differences in opinion, finding the courage to ask for what I need, and knowing when to leave when my needs aren’t being met.

I can only do these things with practice. Instead, I spend most of my time disconnected from the world—either scrolling mindlessly through Twitter and TikTok or lying on my couch listening to music and/or watching television. Even online, very little of my time is spent having quality time with another person.

Something has to change because I can’t keep living like this.

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The last time I thought about leaving advocacy in a serious manner was almost exactly a year ago. That’s probably not a coincidence; I experience seasonal depression and regularly hit my lowest in November and February.

I’ve recently been on vacation, which I had been framing as necessary for my mental health. Counter to its intended purpose, though, I’ve come out of it feeling more burned out than ever before.

I’m tired, I’m still broken, and this fight is far from over. Everything we’ve seen so far is only going to get worse. The negligence in pediatric gender clinics is slowly being exposed. The number of people harmed by transition will grow. It’s inevitable that there will be eventually be widespread grief over this horrible scandal.

And throughout it all, I’ve been keenly aware that it is unlikely that people who transitioned as adults (like myself) will ever see the kind of justice that minors might have a chance at. It won’t matter that we were desperate, vulnerable, and sold a lie by those we trusted to guide us toward long-term health. Mental illness isn’t as sympathetic as innocence.

At the end of it, nothing I do in advocacy is for me. I’ve always known and accepted this, but time has made me grow resentful of the effort I’ve put in; I’m not getting enough out of it to justify what I am losing. I wanted to change the world, but everything action I take is criticized by someone who thinks they can do it better. I wanted female solidarity, but if I don’t meet a purity test, I get called a handmaiden. I wanted justice, but ultimately I will probably get skipped over.

I have a few more advocacy projects to finish—I do intend to leave some kind of legacy—and then I hope to declare myself done. A couple of them are big deals (to me), and I hope they leave an impact. I want to feel resolved, like I did everything I could. Why else would anyone bother suffering through this?

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I’ve already said I still feel like a teenager, so I want to leave with something beautifully cringey that I did as a teenager, which is post lyrics. I’ve posted these ones on Twitter before, but those kinds of tweets never get much engagement (lol).

This song was about the singer’s disdain for the music industry and the way he felt controlled by others to meet an ideal, to conform, to do what he’s told. Over time, I’ve grown very jaded about my role in advocacy—particularly turning my pain into content for the masses (who, on both “sides,” feel entitled to telling me whether I’m doing it correctly)—and I feel a parallel.

Buy in, it’ll shut you up
Try it, it should shut you up
We’ve brought you someone in to shut you up
It’s a life’s work

While we were hunting rabbits
I came upon a clear
The sky, its stars like fortune,
Drilled me

‘til now I was a soldier
‘til now I dealt in fear
These years of cloak and dagger
Have left us disappeared

And I dance, and I sing
And I’m a monkey in a long line, a long line

Buy in, it’ll shut you up
Try it, it should shut you up
They’ve brought someone in to shut you up
And it’s getting to be light work

While we were hunting rabbits
I came upon a clear
The sky, its stars like fortune,
Filled me

‘til now I was a soldier
‘til now I dealt in fear
These years of cloak and dagger
Have left us disappeared

And I dance and I sing
And I’m a monkey in a long line of kings
And we dance and we sing
And we’re all monkeys in a long line, long line

I’m just a boat on the ocean
And I’m just a ship lost at sea