Thread by @reclaimingtrans

Something else left out of many media detrans stories is that many detrans people still deal with dysphoria after detransitioning and rely on "alternative treatments" to cope. Most detrans women I knew were struggling with some degree of dysphoria.

It's not like most people in the detrans women's community detransition and are then are totally comfortable living as women. There are plenty of detrans women working hard to "accept that they're female" because that's what they think they need to do to be happy.

A lot of detrans women struggle with gender dysphoria but are convinced that they can't find happiness transitioning or living as a trans person. They live as women because they think their dysphoria is rooted in internalized misogyny or trauma.

I spent a lot of my time as a detrans woman talking myself into womanhood and talking myself out of being trans. It took so much work to be the kind of woman I thought I should be.

I often felt like a man or genderqueer or like I had phantom male body parts but I learned to dismiss those feelings and explain to myself why I was really a woman and why those feelings really came from outside of myself, from past trauma or living in a sexist culture.

I spent years trying to cope with my dysphoria by treating it as a trauma reaction or a result of living in patriarchy and it didn't work. It actually made me pretty miserable because I learned to see whole parts of who I am as a wound I needed to heal from.

The "alternative treatments" I tried feed into my depression, self-hatred and shame. Not only did they not work, they caused a lot of intense psychological distress. In public I talked about how great it was to be a strong woman, in private I was often miserable.

It took me years to realize that the methods I was using to try treat my dysphoria were actually making me suffer. I thought I was hurting because I was still working through my trauma and internalized misogyny but really I was hurting myself by rejecting what I was.

There's very little research on detransition or detrans communities. There's no research on whether most detrans people are actually happier or less dysphoric than most trans people. There no research on how well "alternative treatments" for dysphoria work.

Therapists and "concerned parents" have used my story and my old writing to promote "alternative treatments" for trans youth. This disturbs me so much now. What I did to myself was intense self-harm, forcing it on a young trans person would be psychological abuse.

I was able to repress myself for so long partially because I got so much encouragement both in and outside the detrans women's community. A lot of people love the idea that being trans is something you can get over. They will reward anyone who seems to make that idea a reality.

A lot of cis people would rather have bunch of "dysphoric women" using "alternative treatments" and support groups to cope rather happy transmasculine people. This is about their comfort, not what actually works for dysphoria or trans people's well-being.

I know from firsthand experience that plenty of cis people can have a conversation with a self-hating trans person who's been indoctrinated into a transphobic ideology and is struggling to repress themselves and totally accept the story they tell at face value.

Hell, a lot of cis people will tell that self-hating trans person they're brave and an inspiration for others to follow! They like that story so much, they don't question it. They they assume that the person is better off now that they're "not trans".

This is the kind of society we live in. Cis people can easily imagine the internet turning young people trans but can't imagine that social and ideological factors could influence a person's decision to detransition or pursue "alternative treatments" for dysphoria.