"I have a retraction to make. Last year I tweeted this in response to #GetTheLOut in London. Today, I walked with them at Manchester Pride. I know you are angry at us for being 'TERFs', but I wasn't there with hate in my heart. Please listen to us, just for a minute. 1/
Today, the more you shouted at me that I was a cnt, the more you told me to fck off, the more I cried and trembled - the higher I raised this banner.
I will not stop protesting against a movement that teaches children they are (or can be) born in the wrong body. 2/
I know this movement teaches this because I was a victim of it. I've always been scruffy, gender non conforming, truck loving, short haired, soft butch. And, as a teenager, like almost all girls, I hated my breasts - this new part of my body that suddenly drew male gaze 3/
New hips, new shapes, that now made me an object. I was no longer able to run around in mud and have fun, instead, I had to think about crossing my legs, covering my chest, not provoking the men three times my age. Not 'distracting' the male teachers with my shoulders. 4/
At the age of 12, maybe 13, I told my best friend I fancied her. It spread around the school quickly. I was kicked out of the changing rooms for PE and had to change alone in the toilets. The other girls started to like boys - they'd text them, hold their hands in the corridor 5/
And I desperately wanted a girl to look at me the way they looked at those boys. I cropped my hair short, wore cologne, took science subjects for GCSEs. Every role model I had was a man - Albert Einstein, epidemiologist John snow. I had posters of them. 6/
And then someone said something that changed my life. "Could you be a boy born in the wrong body?"
Yes. Yes! This was it - it's exactly that. I have a boy brain! That's why j love science, and guns, and mud, and trucks, and mechanics, and cars, and girls. I am a boy. 7/
That is why I hate my body! I was meant to be a boy. I had the answer. Everything fell into place, and I knew shaving my head, tightly binding my chest, and changing my pronouns was how I could find peace at last. I just needed to pass as the man I knew I was 8/
My doctor confirmed my gender dysphoria, and I knew with certainty that I would have a mastectomy when I turned 17, and then phalloplasty. It's all I thought about, all day every day, and I ordered illegal testosterone gel to help get ready for my transition. 9/
My 17th birthday came and went, 18 came and went, never having the funds or the time between my studying to have the treatment I wanted to 'fix' my body to 'match' brain. 10/
And then I started university. Science distracted me. I stopped correcting people when they said she, I stopped wearing a binder so I could breathe properly in class. 11/
My gender dysphoria never went away. It's still here. But I accepted I could never really have changed sex - I would have something that resembled a penis, it would hurt, I would have to pump it up from a balloon in my leg. The masectomy would cause nerve damage. More pain. 12/
But most importantly, for me - transitioning because I was taught by men to hate my female body, transitioning because I didn't 'feel' like a woman, was propping up the gender binary. 13/
It's time to tear down gender.
It's time to change society to fit the gender non conforming.
It's time to stop teaching children that they can be born wrong.
We're here.
We're not 'queer'.
And we're not going away.
#detransitioner "