People who go on about "listening to detransitioners" stop listening if you retransition and/or talk about how detransitioning hurt you. They don't give a fuck about people who detransition. They just want to use us and they stop "caring" when we stop being useful.
Hell, they stop listening when you say something they don't want to hear. Which detrans stories get into the mainstream media & debates about transition are very limited. So much gets filtered out because it doesn't fit transphobic narratives that justify control of trans people.
So many people who loved my writing when they could use my detransition story to "prove" how harmful transition are now treat me like I'm "crazy" & dismiss my experiences since I started talking about how detransitioning hurt me. They never cared about my suffering or well-being.
They never actually listened to me when I was detrans. I spent so much of my time telling people that the way they talked about my experiences were dehumanizing and exploitative and most of them never listened. It was always about exploiting my trauma, never about real support.
I know of so many detrans women who pushed back on how other people used and objectified us but that's never part of "listening to detransitioners". No one heard us when we asserted our boundaries or asked to be treated like people, not "mutilated bodies" or trauma porn.
I'm still a person who detransitioned. I still talk about how detransition impacted my life but because I now talk about how detransition hurt me and was a kind of conversion practice, my detransition experience isn't even acknowledged by the "listen to detransitioners" crowd.
What they really mean is "listen to detransitioners who support the narrative about medical transition I'm trying to prove. Listen to these detransition stories and don't even acknowledge other kinds of detransition stories even exist". That's exploitation, not real support.
I got very little real support when I was detransitioning but so many people tried to use me and my experiences. All their "concern" was bullshit and it vanished as soon as I came out as trans again and started talking about how detransition hurt me. They never cared about me.
I can't tell you how enraged I get when I see fake concern for people who detransition. None of these people actually do shit to help people who detransition, they just use us until we're no longer useful and then drop us. They want our stories, they don't care about our lives.
I'm still recovering from how the "listen to detransitioners" crowd tried to use my story. Their "support" was abuse and exploitation that fucking traumatized me. They never listened, not when I was detrans and not now. People who detransition deserve so much better.
Wow, this thread really took off. Gonna mute it now. Thanks to everyone offering words of support. I appreciate it.

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More from @reclaimingtrans

26 Nov
Watching people promote "exploratory gender therapy" for trans youth while I process how the conversion practices I engaged in hurt me and fucked my life up is uh, not particularly fun. By which I mean I'm absolutely terrified about young trans people getting really hurt.
Some of the conversion practices I engaged in are similar to some forms of "exploratory gender therapy", namely trying to link gender dysphoria and being trans to trauma. The conversion practices I tried caused me immense suffering that I'm still recovering from years later.
Coming to see my transition, trans identity & gender dysphoria as being linked to past trauma increased my depression, self-hatred, shame, and suicidal ideation. It didn't help me heal from my past trauma & it didn't "cure" me from being trans, it just traumatized me further.
Read 13 tweets
21 Nov
The first communities for detrans women weren't places for people who realized they "weren't really trans" but for AFAB people who believed their trans identity was rooted in trauma and misogyny and were looking for "alternative treatments for gender dysphoria".
They were "support groups" for people assigned female who experienced a trans identity they didn't want and were trying to overcome so they could "accept that they were women". "Reconciling with being female" was the "treatment" and the goal of being in such spaces.
It was assumed that members of such groups experienced dysphoria and the urge to transition and that they were using the spaces to deal with those feelings without transition or living as a trans person. We were "helping" each other live as women instead of as trans people.
Read 24 tweets
21 Nov
I knew transphobic detrans activists and therapists who talked about how conversion therapy bans could ban "exploratory therapy" by mistake and guess what, that's bullshit they sprout to win over the liberals and keep anti-trans conversion therapy legal and socially permissible.
Therapists in particular often need to be careful with how they talk about what kind of therapy they want to do on trans people because they could face serious consequences if recognized as a conversion therapist. They're trying to avoid those consequences.
Course a lot of conversion therapists and pro-conversion therapy activists don't see what they're promoting as conversion therapy because they believe their methods really work. That's why you also have to look at what they're really arguing for & compare it to other cases of CT.
Read 6 tweets
19 Nov
Anti-trans conversion practices include not only attempts to change or erase gender identity or modify gender expression but also trying to prevent/discourage medical transition and/or encourage detransition. A core part is about promoting "alternatives to transition".
Anti-trans conversion therapy/practices is based on the idea that both trans identity and medical transition are unhealthy and harmful. They include attempts to change trans people's identities but also lots of promotion of "alternative treatments for gender dysphoria".
People promoting anti-trans conversion practices try to get trans people to internalize negative beliefs about transition regardless of how transitioning has actually impacted them. They try to convince trans people that transition has hurt them to get them to detransition.
Read 17 tweets
17 Nov
When I was part of the rad fem detrans community, I wasn't given space to evaluate whether detransition was working for me or change my mind. Not only that, I felt like something was wrong with me when I became dissatisfied with my detransition, like I was messing up somehow.
I had internalized rad fem ideology so deeply and was so invested in the rad fem detrans community, I couldn't just think "well, I tried this and it didn't work out so let's try something else out." No, I thought I was the problem because I wasn't happy living as a detrans woman.
I was evaluating my life according to the values of the group, not my own happiness and well-being. When I tried to talk to another detrans woman about my dissatisfaction, she acted like I was messed up for feeling like things weren't working out. She got mad at me.
Read 17 tweets
9 Nov
Many cis people have an easier time seeing medical transition as harmful than seeing how detransitioning for the wrong reasons could fuck a trans person's life up. Transition as "mutilation" makes more sense to them than detransition as a kind of "conversion therapy".
Cis people aren't rushing to protect young trans people from anti-trans groups trying to recruit them into transphobic ideologies and teach them how to suppress who they are. They can't see how much denying one's transness can hurt a person because they don't value trans life.
Many cis people are freaked out by how many trans people are finally coming out but they're not willing to see their discomfort for what it is, so they rationalize it. Anti-trans detransition stories help them justify their disgust/discomfort with trans people and transition.
Read 17 tweets

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