Thread by @reclaimingtrans

In my experience, detrans people and trans people generally get along. The first detrans/retrans online space I ever participated in was trans-friendly and many members considered themselves trans. The line between trans and detrans has always been blurry.

https://twitter.com/reclaimingtrans/status/1491839221639925764

Most de/retrans people either consider themselves trans or feel like they have a lot in common with trans people. Most continue to participate in the trans community to some extent. Many trans people likewise sympathize with de/retrans people and consider them siblings or allies.

I and another founding member of the detrans radical feminist community had previously been part of trans-friendly de/retrans groups before we converted to transphobic feminism. We deliberately tried to create something completely different from past de/retrans groups and spaces.

We actually first met in an online trans-friendly de/retrans group that was fairly inactive at that point. I wasn't a rad fem when we first started talking but she already had at least some TERFy sympathies & encouraged me to go in that direction, sending me GC articles, etc.

I've wondered many times how my life had been different if that group had still been more active or I'd been able to find more trans-friendly de/retrans people, spaces and resources. The one space I knew of was fading out as first detrans TERF blogs started popping up.

In any case, we both ended up getting into transphobic feminism. I think she had a head start on me, based on articles she sent me but we both ended up pushing each other to go deeper as we came to believe transphobic feminism had solutions to our problems, that it could heal us.

We thought we had come up with something new, combining our personal experiences with readings of radical feminist theory and psychological theories about dissociation and trauma. We came up with our own weird TERF theories "explaining" transmasculinity as a trauma response.

Eventually, we set out to blog about our experiences,spread our theories and "alternative treatments for gender dysphoria" and connect with other "re-identified woman", other afab people who believed their transness was a product of internalized misogyny and/or trauma.

We thought trans-friendly de/retrans spaces were still "infected" with "trans ideology" and people in them were still "deluded" & "stuck in their trauma". Our new detrans community would completely "free" afab people of their transness so they could "reconcile with being female".

As far as I know, we were the first group besides right-wing Christians to create an "ex-trans" style detrans community but grounded in transphobic feminist and lesbian separatist ideology instead of conservative Christianity. Also the first group to only be for afab people.

Now it's so obvious to me that we were just making up a new kind of conversion therapy and starting a fucked up "feminist" ex-trans cult but at the time I completely believed we were doing something new and radical. I regret and am sorry for the harm I caused by my past actions.

I now feel partially to blame for creating more conflict, misunderstanding and hostility between trans and detrans people, including creating the impression that most detrans people are transphobic. That's simply not true. Transphobic detrans people are just very loud.

The detrans rad fem community is more or less a cult and cults generally don't play nice with other groups or care much about how their actions impact outsiders. They just work hard to promote the cult at all costs, recruit new members and expand the cult's influence.

So of course we wanted to define what it meant to detransition, we wanted to control public narratives and so on. We actually didn't do that great because other more powerful transphobic groups had their own detrans narratives they wanted to spread and ours was too fringey!

Like one detrans woman who got interviewed by the media a couple times, Max Robinson, is a hardcore lesbian separatist and talks about how she'd still be trans if she hadn't found the detrans rad fem community. But journalists wrote her story like she'd been "misdiagnosed".

These cis journalists wanted to sell a detrans narrative about how cis people were being "misdiagnosed" as trans to push for more gatekeeping but many of the detrans women they interviewed believe that they used to be trans before radical feminism "raised their consciousness".

A bunch of transmasc people turned lesbian separatists, going on about how they're still the same as trans people except that they've "woken up", is going to come off as a weird ex-trans cult to a lot of people because that's what it is. It's not a good argument for gatekeeping.

It's more like another example about how people can get "radicalized" online and joined hate groups and wellness cults. We were basically fucked up "alternative health" influencers but for afab trans people, pushing misinformation and bogus treatments for gender dysphoria.

So basically, the detrans rad fem community is a dangerous political/wellness cult that's not representative at all in terms of how detrans people & communities generally are. Its leaders work hard to extend its influence as much as possible and recruit more afab people.

They see any trans-friendly detrans resources as a threat. For a while, they created and ran many of the only resources for detrans afab people. People came looking for help/support and got indoctrinated into transphobic feminism after they joined. It's really fucked up.

Detrans rad fems and other transphobic detrans people try to indoctrinate trans and detrans people into believing that the trans community is a dangerous cult. They encourage people to cut off contact with the trans community and feed them transphobic propaganda.

It's not like trans people are never hostile to detrans people just for detransitioning. Transmedicalists, for example, can be pretty bad. But just like most detrans people are trans-friendly, most trans people are detrans-friendly. The problem is assholes in both groups.

Trans people are being truthful when they say they have no problem with detrans people, only when transphobic detrans people work to restrict access to transition, spread misinformation, try to recruit them into a transphobic ideology or otherwise harm them.

Writing all this out, I'm struck again by how much damage I and other detrans rad fems did, not just in terms of creating more conflict between detrans and trans people but in all kinds of ways. I'm very sorry for the harm I've caused and work to repair it as much as I can.

At the very least, I can help explain where some conflict and misunderstanding between trans and detrans people comes from and make it clear that my old community doesn't represent most detrans people and their interests, as much as it likes to pretend to.