Thread by @reclaimingtrans

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.

It upsets me to no end that the same people who go on about the supposed risks of transition and affirming young people's trans identities promote "exploratory therapy" as if it carries no risks or potential for harm. But those kinds techniques caused me years of suffering.

And like I said, the suffering hasn't ended yet. Just because I stopped engaging in conversion practices doesn't mean that the damage they created is gone. I created psychological wounds in myself that I'm now healing. I expect this recovery process to go on for years.

I'm actually very optimistic about recovering from the my past detransition/conversion practices but I sure wish I didn't have to spend so much time and energy working through this shit. There's so much I'd rather focus on in my life.

Transphobic people don't realize or care how much their anxieties and disgust about transition end up harming and burdening trans people. It's depressing to think about how much trouble I could've avoided if I'd just gotten the support I needed to live my life as a trans person.

And I'd be using way more of my time contributing to the world and helping other people if I didn't have to spend time/energy recovering from trauma and figuring out how to live as a trans person in a transphobic world. It's such a fucking waste of everyone's time, not just mine.

Transphobic people aren't considering that "exploratory therapy" could end up traumatizing the young trans people they claim to want to help, that it could end up wasting years of those young people's lives & lead them to suffer needlessly just to ease cis people's fears.

I hate that we live in a society that thinks it's reasonable to psychologically torture young trans people before or instead of allowing them to transition all because trans people's well-being and happiness isn't taken seriously or valued.

Trans youth deserve better. They deserve to be protected from adults who want to practice "exploratory therapy" on them. There's nothing wrong with growing up trans, it's not something to be avoided or "cured". If you want young people to thrive trust them to know themselves.

Let kids grow up to be trans. Let trans people be, period. We exist. The fact that more of us feel comfortable being who we are and that many coming out younger is great. It's not a crisis. Transphobes promoting anti-trans conversion therapy/practices is the fucking crisis.

The threat to trans youth isn't transition or affirmation, it's anti-trans conversion practices being pushed as "exploratory therapy" and the like. Trans youth deserve to grow up without being psychologically tortured "for their own good". They deserve real support and care.