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Many people who have spoken publicly about their detransition are women. An anonymous man with the initials TWT read some of their stories and created the website Third Way Trans in the hope that his story might help men like him: “This website was inspired by several post-detrans women who have recently made videos. That’s why I thought there should be videos from post-detrans men too.” TWT started the blog to “help people cope with dysphoria.”
He continues: “One of the things I discovered on this journey is that there are other ways to deal with dysphoria that work better and are less harmful. To figure this all out, I first had to go through this whole transition and then spend the next twenty years as a trans woman. I made the transition at nineteen and broke it off again at thirty-nine. I am now forty-two years old. All this time, I have lived as a trans woman and changed my body in many ways that still cause me problems to this day, and I want to help people deal with these problems without having to go through all of that.
She takes a nuanced stance, recognizing that others may have different experiences and being empathetic to anyone who chooses to transition.
“I’m not against transitioning,” she says, “and I really understand how debilitating gender dysphoria can be.” But she also wants people to understand that transitioning brings new challenges: “I don’t think that this treatment should be abolished. But at the same time, we should help people as much as possible to deal with these problems without having to go through them, because it is a terrible process, and it is not perfect, and it causes social and potential health problems, including infertility,” he emphasizes , says that this last concern is particularly important, even though it may not feel that way to minors thinking about transitioning, because “having children is important to a lot of people, but when you’re young, it might not feel that way important.”
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TWT sees the recent sharp rise in the number of transitions as a result of a more welcoming culture, but also partly as a “social contagion” that encourages people to transition even though they may be better off: “people who wouldn’t have felt the same way.” They have otherwise changed, but now they think of them, maybe they have better ways to deal with their problems, so I think there is definitely a problem. In my opinion, it’s a problem with therapists who are okay with people transitioning.” TWT can back up his judgment with some expertise, as he is pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology and has worked in several clinics where some of his clients are identify as transgender. “One of the things I discovered during my clinical training,” he writes, “is that you generally know very little about people after meeting them once, twice, or three times.” “There’s a lot we don’t know.”
The therapist prescribed hormone treatment after just two sessions and didn’t know the full story behind his feeling that I would be happier as a woman: “I was traumatized by bullying as a child. As a boy I was slow in movement and behind others, but I was also ahead intellectually, such a little genius. In fourth grade, I went to high school to take math classes, but physically I was the weakest of my elementary school classmates. This is how I stood out from the crowd as a super nerd. I didn’t like it at all. I was actually popular with adults, but not with my peers. So they bullied and beat me a lot. The peak was in second grade when I was attacked by someone every day.”
When I was a child, I began to imagine being a girl because it meant I could be safe and not have to endure that violence because I was at the bottom of the male hierarchy. I could also be gentler. I cried a lot and the boy didn’t take it well either. I could be free of that and still be an intellectual because everyone said girls could be smart too. Of course, back then I didn’t understand the complexity of society or the hidden sexism behind this message because I was six years old. It became a comforting fantasy that couldn’t actually happen.
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In adolescence, this fantasy continued and became associated with sexuality. At the same time, I was attracted to women, which was confusing for me and I initially had difficulty dating as a teenager. I grew up later, but eventually, by the time I started my freshman year of high school, I had a few girlfriends. After that, my gender dysphoria subsided.
When I started college, I didn’t meet any women for the first few months. It felt like a step backwards and my feelings about gender resurfaced. I now understand that one of the reasons I had no trouble dating as a high school senior was because I was at the top of the hierarchy, whereas by my freshman year of college I had sunk to the bottom.”
TWT writes that his gender dysphoria “came back even stronger” when he discovered a new internet forum called alt.transgendered, which gave him hope for treatment. “I couldn’t believe there were people in the world who felt the way I did! I also struggled with the stress that comes with being new to college and away from home for the first time. I felt very euphoric when I discovered people with similar feelings, and I began to believe that I could make a transition.” When he found out that others were struggling with the same feelings, it was “like a revelation for him “, and it seemed that these people knew how to react to them. “Other people had these feelings too and I could understand them. It meant it really worked. It really could have happened!’
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That’s when he decided to visit the university doctor’s office, which recommended him to a gender clinic: “I went to the clinic, told the psychologist my story and that I wanted to be a woman.” I didn’t talk about bullying and didn’t even know that it could be related to that. I only realized that later when I started proper therapy.” After just two sessions, he was prescribed estrogen and it was easy for him: “I just said, this is me and this is what I want to be and her “I’m there, that’s great.
At first he believed treatment would take over: “I came to believe that I had a core transgender identity and that it was important to express it. This was confirmed by those around me and the therapist I saw twice and who prescribed hormones for me on the second visit. I took high doses of estrogen and it gave me a kind of euphoria and heightened emotions that I had never experienced before. It was seen as confirmation that I had found my true self.” And he managed to appear as a woman: “Men gave me quite a lot of attention, often the same men who bullied me when I was growing up.” This attention strengthened me at the time fragile self-esteem and confirmed that I was on the right path.”
TWT tried to live as a woman for twenty years but could not eliminate the dysphoria. “I just had uncomfortable feelings about parts of my body that didn’t look feminine,” she remembers. “I had really big hands and a big chin, so I always had the same problem of hating certain parts of my body.” He also found that new social problems were emerging, both among people who knew he was transsexual, as well as those for whom they did not know. I don’t know that:
“When they didn’t know, I felt like I couldn’t tell them, and that really makes intimacy impossible because you can’t share this really important part of your life. And if they knew about it, I would get a lot of different reactions. Someone was cool. A lot of people were cool on the outside, but in reality they treated me differently. I almost felt like I had no gender at all and maybe wasn’t even human. “It was a really terrible feeling.”
Excerpted from When Harry Became Sally, currently published by Echo Editions.
Book
When Harry became Sally She is critical of modern transgender rights and some treatments for gender dysphoria. In it, political philosopher Ryan T. Anderson focuses on the cultural and political debates surrounding transgender identity.
You can buy it here.
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