I Hear, “you Don’t Have To Have Dysphoria To Be Trans” A Lot But I Never Hear The Equally True,

New lino print! Based on an old poster that I saw online but the source of which I couldn’t track down. They’re up in my shop if anyone’s interested! (shop link in tumblr header)

It perturbs me when I see people write that detransitioners “were just confused cis women”. At best, it’s a stunning lack of empathy or understanding of our experiences. But often than not, it’s an attempt to neutralize and silence women who are getting too loud or causing trouble.

At no point during my transition or detransition was I “confused”. I was many things, but confusion wasn’t part of the equation. If I had to only one word, it would probably be something like, “deliberate”, “driven”, or “ambitious”.

The insistence that detransitioners are helpless or confused is a two-pronged attack, both a shutdown and a theft. If a detransitioned woman is painted as confused, it implies that she is unable to make a sound choice, and/or can be easily manipulated by an outside force as a result of her confusion. It removes her agency from her story, and casts her in a secondary, inactive role in her own experiences. It renders her story open to reinterpretation by ideologically motivated parties of all kinds (be it conservatives, ROGD moms, doctors/surgeons/psychiatrists, trans activists, people across all parts of the political and moral compass). It’s an old trick; it has been used against women for ages.

Every step of the way, I was doing my best to make careful decisions that were in my best interest. I had a boatload of problems, and when presented with my options, I used what I knew at the time to address those problems as best I could.

I made lifechanging decisions at a young age, with limited information, incomplete knowledge, like all people do. Many of those decisions are not ones that I’d repeat or recommend to anyone else. Many of those decisions led to outcomes that I am not satisfied with, even if other people are satisfied with similar results. I’m especially dissatisfied by the parts of these experiences where I enlisted the aid of outside experts, who ended up causing me more harm than help – real harm, real physical and mental and financial harm. I’m especially dissatisfied by the broader social context I made these decisions in – I’m dissatisfied by things that were outside of my control, and sometimes beyond of my awareness. None of this means that I was “confused” or unable to think critically.

Both then and now, I’ve wanted the very best for myself and those on similar paths. I yelled back then, and I yell now, because we deserve better!

We aren’t confused. We have demands. We want freedom, agency, safety, respect. We want quality medical care. We want improved, honest information made available to people. We want people to listen and actually incorporate our experiences into their workflows, learn from the things that have harmed us, so that they don’t keep happening. We want apologies from those who have caused us harm. We want peer support, actual allies, not just people looking to indoctrinate and use us. We want to be taken seriously. We want these things and more. We want so many things. We wanted these things then, and we still want them now. We haven’t stoped wanting, and therein lies the problem. Nobody likes an unsatisfied woman.

Enduring a trip to hell and back doesn’t make a woman confused, it makes her resilient and pissed off.

Well this is a new one.

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (Belgian-Dutch, 1821-1909, b. Amsterdam, Netherlands, d. Ixelles, Belgium) - Playing Cats, 19th c. Paintings: Oil on Canvas

Hello, just came across your blog. I've been on testosterone for over a year and a half, and I'm considering stopping eventually to preserve my health, even though it's helped my with my dysphoria, and I feel a lot more comfortable with my body as it is now compared to pre-transition. Any advice, since you've gone through something similar according to your bio? From your experience, what changes revert back? Thanks for your time!

Hey! This is going to be long, bear with me.

Great to hear your dysphoria is better and you’re doing well. Honestly, this course has been very good for me personally. For brief background, I always expected to stop HRT after getting permanent changes from it, because the health risks like cancer and heart disease sounded like a bad tradeoff for essentially nothing in the long run, but it did surprise me that I had to stop early due to the health problems HRT was giving me, both mental and physical.

So in total, I’ve been on HRT for four years: I took two years off it in the middle because of the effect on my mental health, and then went back on when I was more stable, switched from gel to injections and stuck to it for another two years before I started losing hair, at which point I made the decision to quit permanently. I’ve now been off for some three years total.

For changes, I was pretty far into masculinization at that point. I had increased hair growth everywhere, although by genetics I was never set to become very hairy. Also by genetics I was doomed to have shitty facial hair growth, so I only ever managed to grow a couple dozen beard hairs under my chin. My voice dropped very low quite fast, and my friends say it’s lower than most men they know, although I’m personally deaf to how it sounds as it’s always just been “my voice” to me. My body fat had completely redistributed, I was thick in the middle and my face was angular, and within my own demographic I was usually read as male. And as said, I was losing hair, particularly from the top of my head, which was most unwelcome to me personally, lol. So I made the decision to stop there.

In terms of mental wellbeing, testosterone always had a shitty effect on my anxiety and paranoia; it masculinized my depression and made it more active instead of passive, leading to anger and anxiety rather than sadness. Other than that I felt very good about myself and overall had a positive experience with T, even though it (combined with binding) caused me various unexplained health issues like trouble swallowing, muscle tension and such, which, like mentioned above, were high on the list of reasons I quit and have to be mentioned as “effects” of the treatment.

Backstory over, so, I quit T.

What happened first was my hair literally just fell off all at once. Yay? This is apparently normal, based on my extensive research on male-pattern baldness prevention online; when you start taking DHT blockers (or cease injecting testosterone into your muscles), the damaged hair on your head just dies off and gets replaced by new, healthy hair. I shed like shit, I’m not going to lie, I had short hair but when I went to take a shower my palms would be covered in hair when I ran them through my head. So I shaved it all off, problem solved(?). Like promised by the Internet, my hair did grow back more healthy, and I was no longer losing any afterwards. At three years in I have a normal head of hair.

Second, my periods came back. Based on my previous experience on stopping T, periods coming back is shit, not because nobody likes them but because your body’s fucked up from the treatment. First time around I had horrible cramps for a couple months - pretty much non-stop through the entire period, debilitating and just awful, way worse than I had in my teens. Second time around no cramping but I literally just bled buckets. I had a large-sized mooncup, but I had to empty it hourly instead of every 8 hours like recommended, and I would still bleed through it. Like there was just so much fucking blood everywhere. I had to leave work for it, it was that bad. So be prepared for your periods to be fucked up afterwards. I was warned repeatedly by gynos that they’ll probably not come back after stopping T, but they always did, and after a couple months they went back to being regular and normal again. Three years after T I have a normal cycle, pretty much the same it was pre-T, with less cramping due to my age compared to when they stopped the first time when I was still pretty young.

Third, my body hair calmed down. I lost the hair on my chest entirely, my neckbeard had slowed down to the point where I don’t bother shaving it more than once in three months or so, my unibrow vanished, and my whiskers grew lighter. My arm hair has gone back to being relatively invisible. My leg hair and thigh hair is still thick, which I like. Brows still thick, which I like.

Fourth, body fat redistribution. You have to lose and gain weight for this to happen, so it may be faster or slower depending on your lifestyle, but essentially your new body fat distributes in a female pattern whereas your old fat burns from the male pattern. My waist is back and my hips are wide. Breasts are way fuller, even though nobody needed that. Face is round. I still retain some angularity to my jaw but essentially back to babyface for me at three years in.

Fifth, voice. My voice is still low range masculine,

but reaching higher pitches is much easier, and my voice overall has softened and regained range in general. Nobody else has picked up on it, but I’ve noticed, especially within the past year, my voice becoming much more versatile and in general higher and more feminine. Obviously, as imaged, this doesn’t affect the average range of my voice, but it is noticeable.

I’ve done plenty of voice training for my safety (sometimes I get questioned in female bathrooms, for example) so this is not just the effects of T alone, but here’s an example of the ease in which I can reach a passable female voice three years off T:

Sixth, TMI and sad, but I no longer have a dick. It’s gone. I’m back to square one in that field. Luckily I don’t suffer penis envy, I just really liked the growth both aesthetically and in terms of it being on my body. I really, really liked it. Safe to say I never had much to begin with, but it was quite significant in comparison to what I have now. Bye, dick. You are dearly missed.

Health-wise, I’m doing much better! I no longer experience issues with swallowing, my muscles are feeling much better especially with regular exercise, and I don’t have unexplainable physical symptoms that leave my doctors shrugging in confusion. My mental health is also excellent, but it’s worth noting this has a lot to do with external factors as well, such as escaping abuse for a major contributing factor. However, it’s also due to active practice in merging together my fractured self in terms of embracing my female reality instead of trying to live as a male in whole. Finding that balance has been a big help in alleviating the dysphoria I dealt with upon quitting T. I feel really good in my skin now, with the permanent changes T has provided me together with my healthier body, so I can safely say this has been a good choice for me overall.

Tl;dr: Post-T Edition

Things that changed for me: body hair lessened, balding stopped and hair grew back, voice became more versatile, physical and mental health improved, beard growth slowed down to fuck all, regained a round face and hourglass figure, boobs filled up, bottom growth went back to 0

Things that didn’t change: normal speaking voice is still deep as shit, leg hair growing strong, brow game bushy, still have whiskers, people keep questioning my presence in female bathrooms and nobody tries to sell me makeup, dysphoria doing good.

Overall: I’m in a good place, yo.

no offense but it’s so much better (and healthier) to try to love the body you were born with and to examine the roots of your dysmorphia instead of internalizing obscure gender identities and making those your whole personality

This may be the oldest known drawing of a supernova, found in the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan. Scholars found this odd rock art with two “suns,” and dated it to 3600 BCE, which roughly coincides with supernova HB9’s explosion.

Framing Lesbian Fashion (1992), dir. Karen Everett