Quote from: 2.B.Dana on April 02, 2017, 08:51:33 AMI think another grouping came from "informed consent" channels where the person was never in therapy or RLE or whatever that may have brought things to the surface earlier in the process.
I know everyone has different opinions on these topics but in the end I had to look at many other "lifetime" commitments we make and there stats are far worse than those who transition and later choose to go back. I think the crap we struggle through weeds out folks along the way any way you slice it.
I was one of those idiots who went the informed consent path, 100% convinced that I was male and needed to be on T to survive, and here I am several years and many $1000s of dollars later with fake tits and a voice that never passes for female on the phone. I think gender therapy is a MUST for anyone who is considering transition and therapy to address sexual trauma before transition is also important. If my sexual trauma had been addressed, I never would have felt so alienated from my femaleness. Also, I think that 18 year old kids who haven't spent a year living as their target gender should really consider waiting. I started hormones as soon as possible and I may not be able to have kids now for all I know. Even when I was 20 I thought I hated kids and never wanted to reproduce, but now at 22 I realise what a massive mistake it was and if I ever do have kids it breaks my heart that I won't be able to breastfeed them. I now experience dysphoria (if that's the correct term for it considering I have two X chromosomes) because I don't pass as female enough. Though I've always been butch, I now have to actually take the trouble of applying make-up and dressing femininely just so I won't be misgendered.
It really sucks that there need to be gatekeepers, but they're there for a reason! Even if I'm just a part of a very small minority (I don't think it is as small as people would have you believe: just in my "transitioning class"-- the group of FTMs I knew from the trans group at the local LGBT center, who I knew in high school and who all started transitioning at about the same time-- I personally know of
7 FTMs (including myself) who are now detransitioning. Maybe my city is unusual in that regard, but I think in the coming years we're going to see a lot of FTM detransitioners who had unaddressed sexual trauma. 3 of us in the detransitioning group were sexually abused and I haven't asked about abuse or been told anything by the others. Though, to be fair, 4/7 of us now identify as some kind of nonbinary rather than as cis females. Interestingly, I don't of know a single MTF from the trans group that has detransitioned, so I suspect it may be different for FTMs and MTFs. FTMs don't really have as much trouble passing after a few years on T, so I don't think that failure to pass is really the reason most FTMs wind up detransitioning. My suspicion would be that a lot of us have been sexually abused or faced some sort of sexual trauma; after all RAINN says that 1 in 6 women have been victims of rape.
Being disowned by my own mother wasn't enough to stop me from starting T and getting top surgery, so I think that transphobia isn't an adequate alternative to therapy before taking the plunge and starting HRT. But, that's just my opinion.
