Okay I have a feeling that there’s gonna be a lot of talk about detransitioners and desisters in the media soon and their experiences, so I’m gonna say this before it all happens.

I’m a desister. A desister is someone who used to ID as trans and/or had GD but doesn’t anymore 1/

I’m the “traumatized kid the trans agenda abused”, “the transtrender” and “living proof that the trans ideology is a sham”

I’m writing this to tell y’all that that’s all bullshit. I was not abused. In fact, the trans community helped me in many ways with my identity 2/

And yes, it sucks to be seen as “living proof that being trans is a phase” but I refuse to be used as a weapon by transphobes against the community I know and love.

Going through my “phase” helped me with my own identity in a way I wouldn’t have been able to do by myself 3/

And this is common among desisters. Though I haven’t met any other desister, many who’ve spoken out say that their time living as trans helped form their own identity. They didn’t “go back to being cis”, they reinvented being cis 4/

And I understand if many desisters feel like it didn’t help them. That’s fine too. We aren’t all the same. And so we shouldn’t be used by the media as such, who aim to frame all of us as confused victims of the “trans activists” 5/

And may I add that when I lived as trans (nonbinary, they/them) there were no signs that I would become a desister. I felt the same feelings trans ppl felt. I found my trans identity the same way they did. There was no way to tell me apart from the persisting trans ppl 6/

So talks about making trans identities harder to obtain in order to help desisters (and detransitioners, though I don’t want to speak for them because I didn’t medically transition) just makes everything harder. There’s no clear way to differentiate persisters and desisters 7/

And going “you need to transition to truly be trans” is harmful because you’re pressuring trans ppl (desisters AND persisters) who don’t want to transition to go through the process to be seen as valid. If anythings forcing ppl to transition, it’s that. 8/

So claims about denying trans kids their identities because “they might desist” is wrong because you need to give them the opportunity to explore their gender, and there’s no surefire way to tell if a trans kid will persist or desist. So the best you can do is be open minded. 9/9