Detransition Gave Me a New Story to Tell
Identity as Subjectivity vs Identity in Objectivity
Julian Jaynes said, "Language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication.”
That includes self-perception as well. We think in terms of narratives. We all have an autobiographical narrative identity.
For me, detransition was a new narrative that replaced the trans one.
The narrative identity of detransition was appealing because it offered a bridge to reorient myself in the core social narrative of my natal birth sex.
Unlike my "trans identity" which was fundamentally grounded in subjectivity, the detransition narrative is grounded in a material reality that is publicly observable because it allows one to accept the reality of your material body as it naturally is.
The autogynephilic desires are still there. But I have found it easier dealing with them without having to do this awkward social attempt at passing myself off as "Rachel" who was a "trans woman," which creates not only less of a psychological burden on me but is also less burdensome on everyone else around me as well.
Now people don't have to walk on eggshells around me. I never went out of my way to ask for pronouns or anything like that. I would never “correct” people. But every knew I was a "trans woman" and the social script in the corporate and liberal spaces I moved is to use "she/her" pronouns for people who are "trans women" even though everyone knows they are, in fact, natal males
The trans narrative led me to believe that people making reference to the material reality of my male body in anyway was a bad thing. This led to social anxiety and neuroticism about the degree to which I was being perceived as male
Detransition was a total paradigm shift in my autobiographical story that allowed me to give up this pretense. It is a huge relief to feel people being more relaxed and natural in my presence because I am more relaxed and natural because I am not trying to "pass" as something I am not, which if you think about it, is fundamentally based on dishonesty, whether intentional or not.
It is dishonest because it attempts to mislead people about the material reality of your body: that you were born male. The trans identity often means going through elaborate efforts and heroic contortions to hide the truth of that material reality. Even if people fall for the "passing attempt" temporarily the feelings of “euphoria” were soon replaced by anxiety about people finding out I’m male and all the associated normative violations that implicitly come along with a male passing themselves off as a woman.
This anxiety created a preoccupation with hanging out in “safe spaces,” and feeling “unsafe” in perfectly ordinary public situations where I feared people being “transphobic.” And because the social script of “trans woman” says that you ought to use the female restroom, I not only intruded on a single-sex space but made myself deeply uncomfortable doing so out of constant fear of getting confronted in the bathroom. Something so trivial, using the bathroom, became a harrowing ordeal. For no reason! Despite what mainstream trans ideology teaches, ultimately trans identification is an optional path in life.
All things considered, it is preferable to not live this life of “passing” as the opposite sex. It brings too much psychological and ethical problems. At least for me.
Are there trans identified people who manage to not be psychologically tortured about the many, many difficulties and efforts involved in making yourself passable as the opposite sex? I suppose. There seem to be happy and well-adjusted trans people out there. But I suspect that many are happy despite the fundamental neurosis of passing toxicity being still omnipresent in their lived experienced.
I have been around the trans community long enough to know that passing anxiety is the fundamental neuroticism that defines trans identification. It is fundamentally not a psychologically healthy mental state to live in, day in, day out. You project your happiness out into the future, after your next “transition milestone,” when you’ll finely pass better.
Gender ideology teaches transition is meant to “bring your body in alignment with your identity.” But that alignment will never be complete, because natal males cannot be reborn as natal females and fundamentally human beings care about that distinction.
Regardless of your current phenotype, human beings are hardwired by evolution to care about detecting the sexual dimorphism of male vs female defined in terms of gametes (which is almost always equivalent to natal sex) that defines the typical experience our brains are trained on growing up on. Mechanisms for detecting that dimorphism are deeply programmed into our basic cognitive machinery.
So, it doesn’t matter what you currently look like, people care deeply about natal sex. After all, if we do not know someone’s natal sex, we cannot know whether it’s possible to make a baby with them or not, something that would have been incredibly subject to natural selection to have mechanisms for detecting.
The detransition narrative is powerful because it takes an autobiographical narrative identity based on subjectivity and replaces it with a new narrative constructed around the provable objectivity of your natal male sex rather than some amorphous subjective “sense” of being the opposite sex.
I have found it is psychologically healthy to live in truth without forcing everyone to walk on eggshells and pretend to not know my natal sex and then feel bad about being “transphobes” if the brain automatically blurted out the pronoun that corresponds to natal sex because that is fundamentally what the brain is programmed to do and what it spent its entire lifetime learning and training to do.
Detransition is a new story I am telling myself spun out of the narrative building blocks of objective biological reality, creating a mental foundation that is solid, cannot be philosophical challenged, and is not subject to scrutiny by existing social norms designed around the fundamental sexual dimorphism of male vs female.
Wow, Ray, thank you -- as always -- for your thoughtful and vulnerable narration of your thoughts and complex experiences around transition/detransition and the overall trans experience. I'm amazed at the fact that, although I'm in a lot of ways on the "other side of the hill," so to speak, I've come to many of the same broad conclusions. I guess it's my freethinking disposition -- having rebelled my way into "being trans," I then immediately rebelled against the way that basically every other trans person I met was investing meaning in their experience. (That, and I have a unique set of circumstances to navigate, and a unique toolkit with which to navigate them.)
I resonate with much of what you expressed, particularly the profound psychological and social burdens that can come from attempting to fully inhabit an identity running against the grain of the givennesses of one's sociophysical body. This contemplation led me to the pre-emptive decision not to identify as a "transwoman" or attempt to forge a fully fem presentation -- despite a strong identification with an interior feminine persona, and strong sense of disconnection from the exterior masculine persona. Trans, transfeminine, genderqueer, fine -- those are all accurate descriptors of my experience -- or (more often than not) I just don't talk about it at all.
I've been experimenting with heightened feminine expression through HRT, grooming, subtle fashion choices and fully inhabiting female personas online, and I'm open to where those things may lead -- generally positing that the goal is integration, not transition. But I do this for personal satisfaction, retaining my masculine presence and persona for the purpose of hospitality and serving others. Ironically, giving this explicit space to the feminine has actually improved my masculine presentation substantially, because it has helped me for the first time in my life stop running from being in my body. I've gone from looking like a monk who crawled out of a cave to ... idk, kinda artsy. Maybe I'll change my strategies here at some point. Right now, it's working for me.
Regardless, for me, the MOST important piece of the puzzle has been anchoring my core selfhood not in binary gender categories, but in the profound reality of being Beloved of God in Christ. From that sacred ground of radical acceptance -- of being not "affirmed" but "absolved" -- I've been able to approach my multifaceted experience of gender/embodiment with holy playfulness, compassion and curiosity. This has been the true and deepest liberation for me: not "being trans," but knowing that Belovedness to extend even to this deepest, darkest area of my heart that I always thought to be inexpressible, unlovable, unredeemable.
This is where I guess I would push back a little. As much as these experiences and identifications are subjective, they are still very real. I did very real damage to myself in compartmentalizing and repressing them. And I'm finding very real healing in finding safe and socially legible ways, within the context of prudent consideration of my other roles, goals, and commitments, to give them embodied expression.
I find myself interested in exploring and cultivating my trans narrative, experience, identity, not for the sake of wish (fantasy, tbh) fulfilment, but for the sake of this extraordinary depth of grace that I have been experiencing through it. Above all, I want to leverage every personal and social good at my disposal to deepen my experience of and bear witness to this Love that I find grasping and sustaining me in the midst of the strangeness and incoherencies of it all.
Yes! Any identity more firmly grounded in reality will be better, cleaner, less stressful than a reality based on fantasy. One should always strive for alignment to reality over swimming against the current of reality. Even if one is seemingly stuck with a trans identity,
“I don’t have a choice!”
One should try what one can first to dissolve such an identity in favor of a cis one because, as you said, life is easier and there are many perks to a cis life!
My “post trans” case may be slightly more complicated, but being open about my past and current state of affairs I have found freeing. I never needed to say anything, living stealth and all, but I had to avoid talking about various aspects of my childhood. I also would avoid discussing certain topics about myself with my female friends. I hated the thought of being dishonest with others. An old transman friend of mine from back in the day, Vern, who is no longer with us, once told me about the unavoidable fact of being trans, with regard to me and my passing status (which was unique in the community),
“You can’t run away from your shoes.”
We had known each other from high school when he was a foster child of the man I derived my pseudonym from. He had not transitioned yet, but if he did and if he passed (he eventually didn’t do too bad), he too would be in the same position. There would always be that past and some things about his present he could never talk about with other guys. We were both honest people and not being completely honest, even if we didn’t have to, still bothered us. Frankly, it DID bother me all those years until I finally came out to everyone.
My narrative identity is now based on the truth, the whole truth. You know, it is a more interesting story actually! I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…