I have a few problems with the way detransitioners (specifically ftmtf detransitioners - I can't speak on the mtftms) are perceived, by both sides of the proverbial football field. On the one hand, I feel the way some trans rights activists discuss our issues to be incompassionate and rather cold. To be seen only as a screeching harridan doesn't gel well with me. On the other hand, I find some gender critical feminists regard us only as a mutilated monolith, wounded dolls robbed of beauty. I find detransition to be a much wider experience, our hills and valleys uncharted, our life experiences and perspectives unexpanded on. I feel like those who don't want to hear us out try to quiet us, and those who amplify our voices speak over us in service of their own agendas. This is why I'm posting this here - I think I'd rather speak to those who want to listen, rather than pound on the doors of those less likely to care. I have a lot to say though, and my writing style is quite flowery, so please read through the whole thing if you have the time. If you don't, that's fine too. I'll leave a TL:DR at the bottom :)
I came out to my family as a trans man at the age of 16, over Christmas in 2020. The experience didn't leave a good taste in my mouth. Me being trans wounded my relationship with my parents quite severely, specifically between me and my mother. The numerous lockdowns caused my social skills to deteriorate heavily, and I think on some level I lost touch of what was normal - not in terms of my own gender, but rather I found it difficult to exist in the wider world. Between 16 to 18, I transitioned socially but not medically. For the record, I'm about 170cm tall, and as a teenager I was quite overweight with a high pitched voice and a large chest, so it was a challenge for me to pass as male. My mother bought me my first binder, which made me feel more at ease. I think this moment laid the foundations for our relationship to heal and grow, as this showed me that even if she didn't necessarily agree with my decision to transition, she would still support me.
Speaking more on the relationship with my mother, I genuinely adore her. I'd give her all of my organs if I could. I know she's on Mumsnet, and she'll probably recognise me from my username and my personal anecdotes. I hope if she reads this and gets to this part, she'll know how much I value her. To me, we are a clay pot. We were shattered by turbulence and cold wind, pieced back together with liquid gold, to shimmer anew. We are, as the ancient Greeks postulated, one soul seperated into two bodies, stitched together at the hip. Wherever I go, she follows. Wherever she goes, I follow. Obviously we don't follow each other to work, of course. I mean in a more spiritual sense. Like when you're a kid and one of your grandparents passes away, your parents will tell you "she's looking down at you, she's in your heart!". I consider it my greatest boon in life, that I have her in my heart while we're still together in life. The only reason our relationship could ever be like this was because she supported me while I was Will. Despite the turbulence I caused, she still supported me. She stood by me, even if she sometimes thought I was making a mistake, or I would regret it. If she had outright refused to accept me, if she had lorded her right to refer to me with she/her pronouns and called me my "deadname", we would still be apart. I owe my life to her, not just because she gave me life, but because she allowed me to use my life to make my own mistakes, and learn from them.
Mammy, if you're reading this, rwy'n dy garu di!!!!
This is why I am so adamant that trans people be respected for their names and pronouns by those close to them. If they really are trans, that's how they should be referred to. If they're making a mistake, they'll eventually realise it. But if they see things like I do, they'll be eternally thankful that they were given the space to make those choices. Of course, there will always be those people who say "everyone let me make this mistake! no one stood in my way!". To which I say, if you're an adult, why should anyone stand in your way? When you're an adult, you make your own choices, and you face the consequences, good or bad, for those choices.
Regarding medical transition, I called my GP the month I came out to my family, and asked them to send a referral to the Tavistock. Ten months later, the doctor's office called me back and said the GP had written up my referral but had left it in the desk drawer and forgotten to send it. I do truly believe anyone who claims medical transition to be an open door is simply wrong. I waited another three years for my first appointment, and quickly became more and more unstable. The amount of hoops you have to jump through for medical transition is simply incredible. Perceive a million hoops and then perceive a million more. While I do believe hoops are necessary, I believe their placement is more relevant. i.e. more hoops for private care, less hoops for people relying on the NHS.
I got a part time retail job at 18, and with the money I earned, I was able to pay privately for testosterone gel via GenderGP. For the record, these are the expenses for private care:
- £50 per month for the testosterone itself (i was on gel but this could differ for shots) (i can't forget to mention it was an extra £12 if you wanted a paper prescription to give to your local GP)
- £30 per month for GenderGP subscription
- £60 for the initial appointment
- £35 for every follow up (these were spaced 3 months apart)
- £35 for a name change document from one of their therapists (i paid this price to get my name changed on my passport, only for the passport agency to tell me it was unviable)
I was on hormones for about a year and a half. The total cost just for the testosterone itself was nearing £400, and it would have been more if I didn't ration it out as I did. I don't want to imagine what the real cost is, with all those other expenses included.
Some changes I noticed were interesting. I slept through my first few days on T, averaging about 15hrs of sleep each night. Thankfully this stopped after two or three days, and my energy came back. My voice dropped two octaves over the course of the next six months or so. I found it invigorating. I work in the city centre, and there's a lot of construction going on nearby. The amount of construction guys coming in who'd call me "love" "sweetie", or god forbid telling me to smile more, I'd look prettier. With my new deep voice, I'd simply ask them if they were eating in or taking away, and they'd immediately apologise. Presenting as female now, I can't imagine anyone apologising for it now. No one told me to smile more when I was perceived male. My attitude to customers has not changed an ounce. It seems to me that men are allowed to be grumpy.
As I'm sure is TMI for many people, I experienced what some call "bottom growth", but is actually more aptly called "front growth". Sadly I can't walk through a door on Tuesday and my ass follows me through on Friday morning. This began at about two months in, and continued until about four months in, at which point it sort of stopped growing. If you look at the nail bed on your pinky finger, that's about how large my clitoris is. It's about as thick as your pinky finger too (of course, depending on how large your pinky fingers are). I have no issue with this. I think it's pretty cool. Plus, I don't think it's big enough to be some weird thing that I would have to announce on a dating profile.
Body hair started sprouting at about 4 months in. I have light ginger hair, but for some reason this body hair grew in pitch black and lightened over time. I have no explanation for this. It's just weird. I have hair in a lot of places. Thighs, forearms, the like. I even had a happy trail and a few beard hairs at a point. Once I detransitioned, I epilated the beard hairs away (of which there were like 10), and they haven't been back since.
Testosterone is supposed to change the way your body stores fat and builds muscle, but I never really noticed that in myself, even though I was taking the right dose. 2 pumps of gel a day, which I applied to the thighs. It smelled like hospital hand sanitizer and it was horribly sticky. I was slightly hungrier than usual for the first few months, but aside from that nothing really changed. My facial structure remained the same, I didn't lose or gain any weight, and I don't lift weights, so I didn't notice any muscle changes. Another thing people often stress is issues with fertility when on testosterone. I never much wanted to be pregnant even before I transitioned, so this is a bit of a nothing burger to me. I've always wanted kids, but I've always wanted to adopt rather than give birth myself. Of course, it's always nice to have the pregnancy option available, but it's not something I value heavily for myself.
I stopped testosterone late last September, because I noticed my hair was beginning to thin. This wasn't out of the blue for me. Apparently if your maternal grandfather is bald, you have a higher chance of being bald too. I was fully aware of this risk when I began my hormone treatment. I didn't intend to detransition fully upon stopping hormones, rather my plan was to remain identifying as a man, as I retained my deep voice and still passed as male. However, being off the hormones gave me some food for thought.
As a child, I was severely bullied and isolated at school, throughout both primary and secondary. Having a Welsh name in an English school full of English children is certainly not for the week. For the record, my name is Teleri. Substitute teachers would mispronounce it - hell, even teachers who'd known me for months would mispronounce it. Childish tittering ensued, always. Eventually, some git finally realised what alliteration was, and invented a new playground game "Teleri Touch". Anything I touched was to be avoided upon pain of death, or thrown across the playground with wild abandon, if it was light enough. I was last to be picked in P.E. I was mocked in the changing room for my weight, which only caused my weight to spiral upwards, causing a vicious circle. Which was ironic, considering I looked like one. Writing it out makes it seem childish, and it seems crazy to me that I was so affected by it. Of course, there was some sexual harrassment as well. There always is. But it had a profound impact on me. I was chronically depressed, trying to deal with it without any medication. I was self harming at 13, and only stopped recently. I've had a binge eating disorder since 8 years old, which morphed into fasting bulimia when I was 17, causing me to lose 70lbs. The nature of fasting bulimia is that it's completely unpredictable. The 70lbs were lost over two years because I "couldn't get back on track". I fasted for a week straight and binged my little heart out, leading to a three year stint in Binge Eating Prison.
This part is not to cause sympathy. That's the last thing I want. There's a non-zero chance my lovely mammy will read this, and she already knows. I have admittedly low self-esteem, and I'm not trying to paint it as if the "trans cult lured me in sob sob". Frankly, I don't think there's such a thing as a spooky wooky trans cult. I'm sharing my experiences with self harm, mental health issues, and eating disorders for a reason. Not all trans people are mentally healthy. Not all non-trans people are mentally healthy either. But neither should be denied medical care for it.
I detransitioned in mid October last year, and I find my life to be a lot less turbulent. Along the years, I slowly stopped seeing being trans as part of my identity. Rather, I saw myself as a man, with no trans qualifier stuck to the front. Coming off the hormones gave me some extra space to think about whether I really was a man, but to be honest, I'd been thinking about it for almost a year beforehand. It's the sort of idea you toss around in your mind like a salad. "Am I really trans?" "What if I'm just a feminine man?" "What if I'm just a masculine girl?" Most of the time, I'd debate with myself on whether I was a man, and come to the conclusion that yes, I was a man, and no, I didn't regret anything. Only one of those statements is false. I do not regret anything about transitioning. The only thing I regret is buying so much damn T gel. I purchased two bottles one night, and then the next morning my mother noticed my hair was thinning. I stopped it immediately. I am a very vain person, and I can't afford to have no hair.
Throughout detransitioning, my voice has gotten higher. It's still quite deep in the mornings, but elevates to a much more feminine pitch as the day passes by. I spent two years as a man with no male hormones, so I learned how to shift the pitch of my voice up and down. I have no issues passing as either male or female, depending on the situation. Some of this stuff is quite a boon. The hormones left me with a tiny bit more upper body strength, which is very helpful when I'm carrying six bin bags up the stairs at work. For reference, our dumpsters are upstairs for some reason.
I tell a lie. I do regret changing all my documents, because now I'm going to have to change them back. I really can't be fucked. But it can't be helped. And it's going to be such a pisstake announcing my detransition at work, and I'm going to get some weird questions, but I don't give a shit.
I hope this was an interesting read. I hope everyone who read it took something away from it. I hope anyone who didn't still liked my writing style. I hope my mother finds this and feels closer to me. I hope the gender critical feminists who refer to detransitioners as "mutilated little girls" take a step back and check themselves. There is nothing mutilated about me. There is nothing mutilated about any of us, and I say this with my full chest. We are all completely normal, all of us. We are all made in our own images. Throughout my life I was a wilted flower. Transition perked up my stem. Through detransition, I am blooming. I am flourishing.
TL:DR: I transitioned. I detransitioned. I regret nothing. Fuck anyone who says I should be ashamed of any of it.