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Some of what I did as a detrans woman seems so wacky now. I found another detrans woman online, we talked about our experiences, read some rad fem/ gender crit blogs, read 2 articles linking transmasculinity to dissociation and trauma, one of which was written by a playwright,...
...and then decided we knew the "real root causes" of transmasculinity and how to "heal from it". Ideology mixed with desperately wanting to stop suffering is a hell of a drug. And so many people went along with us, especially older lesbians concerned with "lesbian erasure".
So many people are willing to believe theories about trans people that have little evidence to back them up. Like the idea that transmasculine people transition due to internalized misogyny, where's the proof aside from testimonials of detrans women, many of whom are rad fems?
Like of course lesbian feminists who believe that transmasculine people are self-hating women are going to be very nice and supportive when a bunch of detrans women show up and say that their theories were right all along. We got emotional support, they got to feel vindicated.
A nice little feedback loop gets set up. Detrans women get support, status and a place to belong among lesbian feminists who are scared of "losing young lesbians to transition". The older lesbians get to have their beliefs confirmed and feel like their culture could survive.
Now I look back on a lot of things I used to think and they seem so unreasonable because of how little evidence there was to back it up. But when I look at what I got from believing and saying what I did it starts making more sense.
Eventually, I want to write a piece about how the detrans women's community got started because I did play a big role in the beginning and knew a lot of important figures. It's pretty surreal looking back on that time of my life now. I'm still making sense of it.
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