Evan Urquhart

There's a dominant narrative around a set of experiences that we're currently calling detransition, and that narrative was created by people (including @reclaimingtrans) for a political anti-trans reason. It is very much like ex-gay in that way.

Creating narratives around experiences, joining people with those experiences into identity groups, and connecting those groups with politics isn't necessarily even a bad thing. If the detransition community was right in their understanding, they'd be doing a good thing.

It's bad because their explanatory framework (that trans men are self-hating women suffering from internalized misogyny who won't experience dysphoria if they confront that misogyny) was a failure. If it was right, there'd be nothing wrong with them organizing to help people.

So, when I say it's a psy-op, I mean both that it was intentionally constructed AND that it's a harmful, sexist, demeaning lie. The intentional construction doesn't make it nefarious, the lie does.

I know how complicated this is- and that's why I've backed way off the 'psy-op' language. An individual trying to understand and heal from their experiences is not a psy-op, and it was wrong for me to use language cavalierly to imply they are.

Anyway, I won't be using the 'psy-op' language any more, not because I don't think it's appropriate, but because I can't re-say all this every time I do, and without this context the impression it gives is mean and makes vulnerable people feel bad.

I do intend to continue holding adults responsible for their own decisions and politics, however. To the extent that detransitioners present themselves as victims of too much transgender acceptance I reject that framing without reservation.

As you should. I pulled some of that shit while I was detrans and now it pisses me off so much. When detrans people act in ways that cause harm to others, they need to be held accountable. If you make bad political choices you're gonna have to deal with the consequences of that.