Do people ever truely de-transition

[SeptagonScars]

It's interesting taking a little time here and there to read some of the posts that have passed by, whilst life is busy.

Our view is fairly black and white - we believe that the binary never question their gender seriously, which, yes makes the trans population quite large.

For some of us, it's a switch from one to another, to remain. For others it's a fluid journey, where we have to respond to our true selves as required. That fluidity may be slow - from one to another, and back; or it may be fast swings between them, but anyone who feels this is a welcome part of our community - even if it is protracted self exploration, they will end up with a very different perspective on the world than those who are a part of the cis community, no parts or fractions, no 'you were, but you're not now' once steps on the rainbow have been taken, you'll always be a part of it all.

Would a slow tempo fluidity be less stigmatised than the word detransition.? We don't know.

(Hugs)

Rowan

I'm not sure if I agree, unless I'm misinterpreting somehow. I don't tend to like it very much when others just promptly decide I must be trans. I've been fighting a lot reclaim my cis identity. I don't wish to argue or be feisty, I just wish to explain why I see things differently, from my detransitioning perspective.

Yes I made changes to my body and I used to identify my gender differently, but I don't think my gender has actually changed. Only my perception of it, and my feelings towards it, have changed. The cake is still a cake, no matter how much I believed it was a pie.

There are several reasons as to why I consider myself to be cis, despite my transitional gender journey... "There and back again" like Bilbo Baggins says. And I think of that line quite often, cause in many ways, transitioning to male was for me much an adventure like Bilbo's journey also was. I think a lot in metaphors, and the way I see my femaleness vs my maleness is that the former is a home for me, while the latter was a really great vacation. And after 9 years as a man... I got homesickness. I may still love my vacation spot. It's like a beautiful, peaceful lake house surrounded by a protective forest. But it's not where I live or truly feel at home. And I miss my home.

In my detransition I did figure out that me thinking of myself as male was never the true me, it was only a mask, or a shield. I was desperately trying to escape growing up to become a woman, but my subconscious fought me furiously and now that I finally listen to it and all of my conflicting and confusing feelings, no matter what they tell me: in my heart I am female and always have been. Despite my masculinity and also despite my love for maleness. It's a comfort blanket, but it's not my actual skin. This essentially means I'm dysphoric about my male traits I got from transitioning, but I still feel a certain fondness and attachment towards them. And it also means sometimes I get the vague, abstract feeling that "I feel like a man" even in my detransition, but I don't actually think I am a man. It's nostalgia.

I don't think I'm nonbinary or that my gender is fluid (although I used to think that might be a possibility, so yes I have looked into it) because I don't feel any genuine connection to any other kind of gender than female. And I feel very strongly female. My androgyny sometimes confuses my gender-feelings but at heart I know it's separate from my actual gender.

I have hated my own gender, my biological sex and being a woman so much that I suppressed it, rejected it, abused it, hid it and made every attempt I possibly could to rid myself of it. I was even at the cusp of getting irreversible ftm genital surgery. In my native language "transition" directly translates to "sex correction" and I cannot even breathe that term when talking about my own journey, cause of how much it was not a "correction" in my case but much more a destruction. Although I truly believed it was a healing move at the time. But no matter how much I hated my gender in my past, it was still my gender, all along. And it always will be. The cake was always a cake, even though I furiously hated it, beat it and screamed at it and tried desperately to make it into a pie. Now I love being a woman, but that doesn't mean I wasn't a woman when I hated being one and escaped into the disguise and self-deception of thinking of myself as a man.

I don't mean to sound bitter or accusing you of offending me, cause I'm sure that wasn't your intention and I like keeping a friendly tone. But considering my journey, I do take offense to being referred to as transgender. It does not mean I think it's somehow a bad thing to be trans, cause I don't think that. It's because it took such a long and hard time for me to finally be able to proudly say "Yes, I'm a cisgender woman and there's nothing wrong with that. I love myself for who I am and always was." I am binary, but how I relate to my transitioned body is very complicated and awfully distressing.

Essentially I'm torn between if I should reverse the changes or try to make amends with them. Cause what feeling often comes along with regret? The fear of making more regrets, no matter which way you go. I am scared to make any more permanent changes to my body due to what I personally think is dysphoria, cause I've been wrong before and it had devastating consequences. So like, me trying to reconcile and make amends with my facial hair, deep voice, etc and having decided to keep those things doesn't mean I have no issues with them. I can't connect them to my female gender, but I also don't have the heart to reverse of them, cause my heart is torn between my vacation and my home.

I don't think my past mistakes, my past self-deceit, the way my body unfortunately ended up, or my struggles with reconciling with any and all of that, should really be the deciding factor to whether I'm cis or trans. I'm a binary woman living in an afab body, which sounds "cis enough" to me. Perhaps that can be enough?

Perhaps the reason this gets to me is because most other cis people do not consider me to be "cis enough" and some trans people too. I phrase it like that cause it's the exact same thing as some trans people being told/treated as they're not "trans enough". So yeah, I am being frequently alienated and othered by essentially "my own kind" and it hurts. I think I do still have a place in the trans community, but not as a transgender person myself: I have a place in it as a transitioned cis person with lots to give, and as someone with nowhere else to go.

But also, if you'd (dare to?) take the approach that my gender was male but then changed to female, you should also probably be aware of that the reason my perspecive on my gender changed was because I healed my dysphoria (towards my female traits) with self-therapy. The way I see it is that it wasn't really gender dysphoria I had, but a form of dysmorphia that disguised itself as dysphoria, and it tricked me into thinking I should have been born male. Upon healing it, I connected to my body being female and it also made me connect to thinking of my myself as a woman, cause it healed my psychological wounds that made me want to flee from myself; as well as made me actually dysphoric (although it's fluctuating dysphoria) about the male traits I got from transitioning. But if I'd look at it from your perspective, it would look a lot like I cured my transsexualism, wouldn't it?

I'm just grinding your gears a little with that last paragraph, and I mean nothing else by it. I'm not opening that can of worms, I'm simply pointing at it, with a gentle warning to perhaps not go there, unless of course you'd actually want to. I don't think I cured my transsexualism, I think I was misdiagnosed and never had it in the first place.

You wrote: "we believe that the binary never question their gender seriously" and I can't help but wonder why you believe that? In all honesty, why would a binary cis person have to be 100% certain of their gender to not get their cis-card revoked? Aren't we all, cis or trans, as people, just as fallible? I'm just curious.

I hope I didn't come off as very defensive, this is meant more as an explanation of my perspective than a self-defensive rant. However.

[Sno]

(Hugs).
For some, to find that place, it takes a considerable journey. For others it takes that journey to realise that where the journey started was the best place to be. For others again, it can be many journeys over the lifetime.

We, are happy that you've finally arrived at a place where you are comfortable with yourself, and we want you to feel included, regardless of how you identify - there is no requirement for qualification, no grades, no competing.

No questions of are you "enough".

You are, and you are happier with yourself. That is what matters

Personally, we dislike the term detransition, as it implies regret, carries a desire to return to the original state of being before transition, and we know that simply, that is not possible. Yes the physical can be recreated, but our experiences along the way will have had consequences on the formation of our character, in the present and future.

Rowan

Ps. Yes we refer to ourself in the plural. Long story.

[SeptagonScars]

@Sno
I think I will always be on some kind of journey, always on my way somewhere greater and more me, both physically and spiritually. I'm comfortable with my gender and that I found self-love through my hardship, but where I'm at with my body I'm terribly unhappy. I understand what you mean though, and thank you.

I think me just being honest, kind and supportive of others within the trans community might just be enough to serve me a spot. Even though I also like to ruffle some feathers sometimes But that I also happen to have a lot of info and wisdom to offer as well, is a plus. I think I'm more than just a cis ally, cause I've been through the same journey even though I ended up connecting with my bio sex in a way that they typically can't.

I personally like the term detransition, although I don't think it's a perfect one. First of all it's linguistically incorrect, which irks me ever since someone kindly pointed it out to me. And yes I think the term itself implies a journey of going back in time, which of course is not possible although that would have been convenient, but I see the term more figuratively. The poet in me likes the term. My only real issue with it is that it's complicated to spell (especially in the tense "detransitioning") and quite a clunky word. Hence why I like the shortened form "detrans/detransing" better.

For some people a detransition is very loaded with regret and a desire to return to one's original state. That is of course not physically possible but the feeling itself may still be there, and although that's painful and terrifying to experience, it should not be denied or brushed aside when experienced. I know that feeling all too well, but for me that's the reality I'm faced with. I can heal and get better, but I have to first acknowledge and accept that I am regretting my transition and wish it undone.

For me, it's comparable to having lost a beloved pet and wishing it would return back to life again because the grief and sorrow of missing that pet is so incredibly painful. Having that wish can't bring that pet back to life, but it's understandable I feel that way in my grieving process. And I need to grieve before I can move on. I need to release that feeling so that it doesn't fester.

I don't see my own detransition as me trying to time-travel back to my pre-transition state, but rather as me becoming a woman I have not yet ever been. I'm not going backwards, I'm going forward but in another direction. If anything I went "backwards" when I transitioned because it was an escape mechanism and me trying to erase and undo my gender, instead of being true to myself as it should have been. I wouldn't call it an mtf transition as I'm not bio male and already technically am female, both biologically and in my mind.

Perhaps I'd call it a restoration, or a journey of reconstruction. Because I feel like transitioning ruined my body and what I can do with that is to mitigate the harm done and try my best to reconstruct what became missing, damaged or skew. Others don't like to agree with me that I ruined or broke my body, but it's my subjective perspective of what my transition did to me. Because I altered and removed healthy parts of my body that I could and should have kept as they were, and cause I made those decisions while not mentally sound. At the very least transitioning warped my body into something I'm not comfortable with.

Although I know the physical body can't be 100% reversed after a transition, it is no less a "reversal" than a transition is a journey to look like the opposite sex. Neither has a "perfect" outcome. If I'm allowed to be so harsh, for ex: getting a breast reconstruction after a mastectomy is just as much a false replica of the original breasts as breasts grown on estrogen hrt and/or an augmentation is a false replica of natural female breasts that were not there to begin with. If you're gonna be harsh to me about the limits of what I can do with my unfortunate physical state, I'm going to pay back with the same coin.

I don't say that with any intent to be hurtful or mean, but to highlight that the limits of reality goes both ways and we're all just trying to find peace within ourselves and with our bodies no matter if we're transitioning or detransitioning, or not transitioning to begin with. My detransition back to female is not more false or fallacious than an amab person's transition to female is. My body is also not a false replica of femaleness compared to what another cis woman's unaltered body is. I have things in common with both but ultimately I am not like either. I would actually argue that detransitioned people are neither cis nor trans, but a category of its own. A third category, that breaks the dichotomy.

My journey doesn't erase my starting point. Just like transitioned people have always been the gender they sense that they've always been since long before they transitioned, I will always be and have always been the cis girl I was born as. I believe that wherever we go in life it doesn't change who we are at heart, and no matter what we do with our bodies we will still always be whoever we truly are within them.

It's okay with me that you refer to yourself/ves in plural. I sometimes do that with myself as well, depending on the context.

/Laura

[Kirsteneklund7]

Love your stuff Laura,
                                      Putting it out there with no sugar coating.

Valuable food for thought for everyone FTM & MTF.

Love the positive angle on the detransition being a way forward - not a return to the state that once was.

Sending you my kindest regards, Kirsten.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Sno]

Hi Laura,

We're not harsh, just kind, and supportive - this is your journey - in your case restoration (which we do like btw).

The term transition, intrinsically implies two points, a start and destination, that always gets conflated with binary genders and carries the weight of the destination is final, so allowing the concept of 'mistake' and 'regret' to enter the vocabulary of this topic.

When these journeys are started, often we have little detailed idea of where our journey will finish, other than some broad ideas - for us (me), yes, we have clinically diagnosed dysphoria, but no 'gender' destination (oh the joys of neutrois) - which is why we are non-transitioning. To start that journey with a classical destination in mind, would for us we feel, be in error and we are better served by finding ways to cope. In doing so, however, it is easy for us to be written off as cis, or as an ally; whereas the reality is that we are stuck, and just having to improve the ways we cope.

That raises the challenges of 'queer' enough? 'Trans' enough? For how can you portray the feeling of alien in an honest and genuine way, that isn't blue or rainbow hair, or long hair, or short hair, or deliberately mixing the stereotypical clothing? All of which, for us are equally inappropriate.

So, do not please be under any doubt - you are a part of our community here, and will always be welcome - your perspective is very valuable, and valued.

Let's also remember, that without challenge, no discoveries are made, or new things learned.

(Hugs)

Rowan

[Athenajacob]

My case is similar to that of the transphobic Walt Heyer that you mentioned, as I also have DID or some variant of it and went through a lot of trauma in my past that messed with my mind and relationship to my body. The difference is I did not become transphobic upon my detransition. The sexual abuse I went through as a child and teen made me target my gendered physical traits as something to hate and be grossed out by. That seemed very similar to gender dysphoria, but it wasn't that. I was never trans to begin with, I just convinced myself that I was. Nowadays I've come very far in my healing, accepting and loving myself. I still carry that pain from the traumas, but I don't hate myself for being female anymore. My gender was never the real issue but it was what I targeted and attacked. I used to consider myself totally male before, but now I know I'm totally female and I love being a woman. I love being feminine, wearing makeup and dresses, etc. For me it was a mistake to transition in the first place. I should not have done it. So yeah, I'd say I am truly detransitioning.

I too had sexual traumas during childhood and my wife believes I could have DID, as did another user on here when I told my story. I think she is wise to hold me back a bit, but I have trouble knowing if she is right or not--a lot of what really is preventing me from moving forward is my role in the family, the AMAB breadwinner married to a cisgender woman. Honestly, I probably would prefer to be with a transwoman or a man rather than a cisgender woman, but this was not something I could readily admit for many, many years (mostly due to a fear of familial judgement from relatives who have now passed).

I also have some BPD hallmarks as well, so I am trying to accept that I am not exactly an unbroken individual as far as mental health, but also be aware that even just presenting as myself in the home when my child was at preschool was so comforting that I shed some severe bad habits with very little effort and kept them off without stress really until I was forced back in the closet by my wife's reactiveness.

Its honestly just so hard to know what is real--I never thought my life would be an exercise in epistemology, but it seems that's what it is for most of us I guess.