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I HATE talking about Gender but my Gender Experiences are so relevant to the current anti-trans narrative which is concern trolling around teenage transmasculine kids being overindulged and having too easy a time accessing transition related medical care.
I socially transitioned at 14 (in 2004). Most of my friends were queer but I was the only person I ever knew who was trans. My parents were unsupportive while my friends were supportive and my relationship with my parents deteriorated.
Just like in the concern troll stories! Then I was sent to Utah with the express goal of making me not trans. I wasn't allowed to eat hot food or make eye contact or be near other people until I agreed to use 'she' pronouns and go by a feminine name.
I eventually gave in after three weeks because I was worried about the long-term effects of not speaking or making eye contact for extended periods of time on the juvenile mind (my mind)!
I stayed detransitioned for years! I was an essentially functional person but I also had cPTSD from those experiences, nightmares every night for 7 years, and trying to transition after all that would result in not being able to leave the house.
At that point maybe I would have seemed like a success story to these transphobes because I was detransitioned. But I still knew I was trans, it's just the cPTSD that made me have to choose between retransitioning and leaving the house. I chose leaving the house.
After seven or so years, the nightmares etc stopped and also a lot of people around me were transitioning, so I was able to access testosterone and top surgery. It still took a long time! Now I am so much happier, I still deal with the trauma but it's not defining at all.
Growing up I always had one best friend at a time, like a deep & profoundly bonded one best friend. My best friends in late elementary and in middle school are both trans, but they both came out publicly as adults, when I wasn't even in touch with them.
If we were both out younger it would have *looked like* the dumb 'social contagion' hypothesis. But actually idk similar people are drawn together.
Also I have never had a tumblr, and I learned most of my original ideas about being trans from Stone Butch Blues, which was published in 1993. And it just fit. I think to the concern-trollers I would qualify, at 31, as a 'real' trans person.
But I also was EXACTLY like the people they say are OBVIOUSLY not trans in things like Irreversible Damage or these recent court cases.
I like posting about (and talking about and thinking about) prison abolition, utopianism, and the psychology of Qanon/the far right. I actually hate talking about gender, and I am mildly annoyed by a lot of zoomer trans culture. (Sorry, zoomers).
But my experience is such a SPECIFIC refutation of these people. And also idk I go to Yale Law School and was a software engineer and data scientist and I feel like I have high legitimacy so I feel like I should say something. Also taking suggestions.
I care way more about criminal stuff but if anyone is doing trans advocacy and I can somehow lend the legitimacy of my story to you without reorienting my life to be about Gender instead of Crime lmk.
Also I will note: my parents really really messed up by doing this thing but I do have a much better relationship with them now and I love them. I have a lot of complicated feelings about that which I'll keep private. It's been more than a decade and healing is still happening.
