written in December 2024
When I was a kid back in the early 80s, long before the Internet, I began saying I was a boy. I wasn't a tomboy or a jock [I was an unathletic nerd], but I still felt like I was in the wrong body. In high school, my best friend was a gay guy, and in my 20s through mid-30s, my friends were overwhelmingly gay men. I felt more at home with them - I wanted to be one of them, and they called me "an honorary gay man". I didn't hear the word "transgender" until 2008 [I was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder in 2004 but nobody explained to me what that meant and I was offered no treatment options]. In November 2013, I came out as transmasc, and in early 2014 started living as male; by the end of 2014 I was using he/him pronouns exclusively.
I'm tall [5'10"] and have naturally broad shoulders and big feet, but I didn't really quite pass without T and top surgery [large chest, binding only did so much]; I still continued to present masculine with short hair/baggy "guy" clothes/etc and wearing a binder in public. I also used a male name [Jon] and went by he/him.
From 2014 through 2024, I dealt with cyberbullying + IRL harassment related to my gender [for example, I received death threats and corrective rape threats online and I would get harassed no matter which bathroom I used unless it was family/single occupancy, I got rude remarks and "what are you?" in public spaces]; the cyberbullying accelerated in 2020 and beyond when a Big Name Fan and her friends began a smear campaign about me that eventually went pan-fandom and put me on the radar of many, many more bad actors.
I also felt extremely unsupported by much of the LGBT community - not only judged for how I perform masculinity and my inability to access care by other trans men [example: "just try harder" to find providers which is easier said than done when you're poor], but judged for identifying as an "icky" man by everyone else, because Men Are Problematic, except when people would make infantilizing "soft boi smol bean" remarks. When I complained on Dreamwidth about my debilitating PCOS symptoms and perimenopause, and how the reminders of my natal sex exacerbated my dysphoria, trans women told me "at least you have ovaries" and I was somehow being "misogynistic" for thinking this was insensitive as fuck. I had friends make thoughtless jokes about "men without dicks" and then when I'd get annoyed they'd say, "oh, I don't mean you." I got tired of the euphemism treadmill [for example, hearing that we can't say AFAB/AMAB anymore, or being accused of "exclusion" because I say LGBT+ most of the time being 1. I am an Old and the alphabet has changed so much over the last 20 years and 2. my ADD brain can't always remember the extra letters]. It was also infuriating and exhausting to walk on eggshells because of the community's insistence on being a hivemind on certain sociopolitical issues with no room for nuance or else we "deserved" a cancel mob of dogpiling and dragging. Additionally, being a gay trans man is hard enough without lacking access to T and top surgery, so it made dating pretty much impossible apart from a couple of nasty-ass chasers, and I heard a lot of disgusting things from cis gay men** about the mere existence of gay trans men, even the ones who've had T and top surgery and pass.
**Disclaimer: I don't think it's wrong to have a genital preference and/or prefer a body that doesn't have tits, people can't help what they find attractive or not in other adults, and it frustrates me that people in the trans community insist having this sort of preference is transphobic instead of hard-wiring "people like what they like". Nobody should be obligated to date/fuck anyone they're not comfortable with. What I'm talking about is specifically hating all gay trans men in general and saying gay trans men are "confused women appropriating male homosexual culture" or whatever. Also, I obviously know not all cis gay men are like this - one of the first people I came out to was a cis gay guy who replied with - quoting verbatim - "No shit, Sherlock. Honey, I knew you were a gay man the minute I met you."
Despite the in-person and online bullying over several years and the lack of support from my peers, I tried to "stay strong" and continued keeping on, because of my bodily dysphoria, even as I felt like I was fighting a losing battle with the entire world. I also worried that I'd lose friends if I "gave up" and desisted and people would think I'd become a TERF.
After I experienced severe to-my-face transphobia during a week inpatient in June 2024 and subsequently had to start going to regular appointments for therapy/meds + physical health issues and dealing more regularly with the public out here in 'Murrica, I began seriously considering desisting for safety reasons. I also had a cold hard dose of "you will never pass" reality when during my first session with my current therapist [who is otherwise great], he incorrectly assumed I was a butch trans woman. At that point, I began to ask myself the difficult question of "why am I still doing this?"
My decision to desist was finalized by the results of the 2024 election, where it became clear over half the country hates trans people and the left was just fine blaming us for why Harris lost, so after eleven years I have returned to living as female IRL. My life is already on "hard mode" being chronically ill, without facing yet more meatspace harassment and risk of whatever's coming for transfolk in the next several years, and no I can't "just move", I have no options to move to a blue state, nor do I have any options to leave the US altogether due to financial hardship + other countries not being willing to take disabled people [my one option for leaving the US is Israel, which I would rather not do].
I honestly thought in 2013-2014 that things would eventually get better for trans people, and I was... way, way wrong. In hindsight, I wish I had never come out and had kept my boyfeelings to myself because social transition without the ability to also medically transition complicated my life in mostly negative ways, and in some ways it also made my dysphoria worse because I didn't pass trying my absolute hardest and on top of that I was shamed by other trans people for "feminine" interests like cooking, writing fanfic, etc, so I always had a bad case of feeling not "man enough" and like an impostor. And as I feared, I've been ghosted by a few people upon telling them I desisted even though I tried to do it in the most sensitive way possible and made it clear I'm still an ally, and it really fucking sucks to realize that some people *only* cared about me when I was living as a trans man and now see me as "just a straight woman", one of "the cishets" and not worth associating with.
Since desisting and having to be girlmode in public again, and not having many trans friends these days and avoiding trans discussion spaces online altogether, I've had some uncomfortable realizations about my identity. Yes, I would still be more comfortable if I had a beard, a flat chest, chest hair, and a penis, and was able to be with men as another man. I think there is something beautiful [and deeply erotic] about male homosexuality. However, even though I don't buy into the "boys don't cry" toxic masculinity, and from a young age I never understood why people thought hobbies and interests were more for one gender than another [like sports for men, cooking for women], it doesn't change the fact that society does have expectations about men that I will never fit into. We can say "be your own kind of man" till we're blue in the face and it doesn't matter to the rest of the world, and that probably won't change within my lifetime, especially when America is swinging back to the right. As an example: a transmasc acquaintance of mine, who had the "classic" tomboy/jock narrative growing up and since transitioning passes and lives stealth and loves sports and is very physically active and is presumed by everyone around him to be cishet, once talked about being invited to hang out with some cishet male co-workers one weekend at a cabin and do "guy stuff", and how out of place and awkward he felt. If he, with his natural macho manliness, doesn't feel like he belongs in that world around men, what the fuck does that say about me? I was born without the sports gene. I like flowers and the color pink. I listen to metal, but I also listen to Barbra Motherfucking Streisand. I have a g1 My Little Pony collection. I don't know how to do "guy shit", like for example I know jack about cars. I am deeply uncomfortable with the way cishet men tend to talk about women when no women are present, and don't want guys to include me in those conversations, nor do I want my female friends [or women in general] to feel unsafe around me.
Through therapy, I've unpacked the fact that just like I don't really feel like a woman, even though I would prefer to have male sex characteristics I don't really know how to be what society still expects of men, either, and if I had been able to medically transition, it would have alleviated my dysphoria about my physical body, which is pretty fucking awful much of the time, but I also would have traded one set of problems for another - "failing" at conventional manhood, which can be dangerous in places like where I live, full of "good ol boys"; I inevitably would have been gay-bashed around here. I really hate saying this, but I feel like the trans community pushes the narrative of "transition and your problems will be magically solved and life will be great" and that's somewhat disingenuous. Yes, transitioning can help alleviate bodily dysphoria and that's important. But being socialized female doesn't go away, and I refuse to act macho to compensate for that, and there are adjustment-to-the-world problems that stem just from that alone. This is not an easy path, and I've got too many real-life problems [like serious chronic illness] to "keep fighting" with this one thing, I don't have the mental bandwidth to try to give a shit anymore about whether or not random strangers gender me correctly or not. My dysphoria is still bad, but everything else going on with me is worse by comparison.
I want to be able to fucking take a fucking piss in a public motherfucking bathroom without worrying I'm going to fucking jail because I look too masc for the women's room and too fem for the men's room, OK?
And... as much as it sucks that I have to present fem in public for my own safety, I also admittedly feel some relief at not being forced to basically dress like a lumberjack anymore [and get confused for butch lesbian when I like dudes] to try to keep fighting the losing battle of others seeing me as a man, where "butching up" to try to pass [and still not passing] felt like an act just as much as trying to live as a woman and be "feminine" for the first three decades of my life felt like an act.
When TERFs have said to me multiple times over the years, "You can just be a masculine woman," I've never known how to respond to that [other than "fuck you"] because I don't really understand how the concept of "masculine" even works outside of my brain continuing to insist "me want beard and penis." To me, it's not short hair or wearing "guy clothes" or doing "guy shit" that defines masculinity or not, to me maleness is just looking as indistinguishable as possible from a cis guy at least from the waist up, but I seem to be a minority in this opinion. As I half-jokingly told my therapist in late 2024, "My gender is autism," but I really do think the autism has made my brain weird about gender performance in either direction, because it doesn't make logical fucking sense to me why me wanting a beard/flat chest/penis/etc isn't good enough and I have to buy the whole "package" [hurr hurr] of dressing a certain way and acting a certain way to be considered man enough to everyone else. So by the standards of the rest of society, I'm coming to the realization that my gender is basically "???" or what's more formally known as non-binary, not that I can go around announcing that to the world in meatspace.
Because I would still prefer to have male sex characteristics and I continue to experience dysphoria with my female sex characteristics, and "see" myself internally/spiritually as a guy, and M/M is what turns me on, I will continue to write stories where I live vicariously through my self-insert Sören living his best queer life, until I am no longer able to do so. That is my only safe way to express the maleness anymore. I am, emphatically, still an ally and will never go on a crusade against trans rights. I still think being trans is a real thing [I have dysphoria, after all], and I support adults being able to get the transition care they need. I do not consent for this essay to be taken out of context and weaponized as a "detransitioner story" against trans people.
Online, as of November 2024 I am using they/them pronouns as my preference [since I don't feel right using he/him exclusively like I used to, under this set of circumstances], but I'm not up in arms about it. That said, because most people really don't talk about me online unless they're talking shit:
And if you want to judge me and accuse me of being a "transtrender" or say I'm a coward and "giving in" for doing what I need to do to survive, I cannot say this hard enough:
This goes double if you're having this reaction and you're under 30 and you literally have no idea what life was like for LGBT people back in the 80s-00s or worse, you romanticize that period of time. I don't owe you fucking anything.
You might be wondering why I'm talking about all of this, or why this is overly long instead of just saying "call me they/them" and leaving it at that. Well, since I got involved with fandom [in 2016] I've been known as he/him and transmasc that whole time, and suddenly after eight years in late 2024 I updated my pronouns to they/them, so there was an obligation to explain why that changed, especially so people don't get the wrong idea, like if they heard through the rumor mill I've detransitioned I don't want people to mistakenly assume I've gone TERF, or if they're new to reading my fic about trans guys and think as a non-man I'm fetishizing [rather than having had lived experience for eleven years and this being my only outlet to express myself with the way things are now]. And I have a tendency to overexplain things because of communication difficulties + not being believed about stuff growing up [and as an adult]. I could have just not said anything, of course, since this is online, but it didn't sit well with my conscience, especially when I have some friends who follow what is left of my online presence.
I honestly fucking resent that I HAVE to say anything about it, I kind of miss the days when we could separate the art from the artist, but it is what it is.