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Realized recently that I've participated on and off in different spaces for people stopping transition for around 16 years. Maybe longer than that actually. I started seeking those spaces/resources out before I transitioned because I knew there was a good chance I'd only take...
...testosterone temporarily. I also had a hard time figuring out what exactly I was. I wanted to learn about the experiences of those who took t temporarily and of people whose sense of gender changed over time. I didn't think of any of that as "detransitioning".
I don't even remember coming across the term "detransition" until years later. It just wasn't a thing back then. There were people who stopped transitioning, there were people who saw themselves as trans and then decided that they weren't, but I didn't encounter people who...
...turned that experience into an identity. I didn't find people who called themselves "detransitioned" or "detransitioners" until years later. Anyways, all the spaces I found were trans-friendly and trans-inclusive. It was more about experience than a specific identity.
I hung out in those spaces after I transitioned too because I did end up starting and stopping t and continued to question my gender. Those were spaces where I could find people with similar experiences. I returned to one of them again when my sense of gender became more dykey.
This time it was nearly dead but I ended up meeting a detrans woman on there who I would later end up working with for years, helping to create the rad fem detrans women's community. That's a whole complicated story that I want to tell someday in more detail.
But here's one thing to know. That detrans woman ended up creating a lot of resources for detrans people, including online spaces and she intentionally made them different from previous spaces for people who'd stopped transitioning. She had participated in those spaces too.
She thought they were flawed because they were too trans-friendly. She thought the detrans culture we were creating was superior because it was built off a "trans-critical" analysis. The detrans women's community was built on anti-trans politics from the start and set itself...
...against both previous resources for people who stopped transition and the trans community more broadly. We also helped create the whole concept of a detrans woman, defined and described what it was and gave people the space to take it up. I've literally seen a set of...
...experiences get turned into an identity and linked to specific politics. I watched and helped to bring a whole new identity and subculture into existence. It's pretty weird to think about. There's a lot I wish I'd done differently now. But anyways, I've seen how the same...
...set of experiences can be approached and made sense of very differently. I've seen what kind of resources, culture, support systems and community result from these different interpretations. I have my own ideas about which approaches work better amd why.
It's something I want to explore and write about in more depth. Both so that people know more about the history of the detrans community & to offer my perspective on how to create better resources for people who stop transitioning, have a hard time deciphering their gender, etc.
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