'Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.'
It would have worked. If we hadn’t brought you in for questioning, so you could not make your anonymous call. And if Fran had not stashed a safety copy of the tox report. And if Marta had not outplayed you once again. By having a kind heart. By saving Fran’s life, though it meant her losing the inheritance and going to jail. She didn’t play your game, she saved Fran’s life.
I’m a pacifist like institutionally but I’m absolutely certain that violence solves at least some problems on a much smaller level. I don’t believe in wars or nuclear weapons or military campaigns I do believe in the power of that guy who punched the nazi in the face so hard his entire media presence immediately crumbled to dust
My opinion on detransitioners is that if someone dyed their hair purple and then realized it wasn’t the right color for them I’d help them buy the hair dye to change it back.
The only time it would be a problem is if they started blaming me for “making them want to dye it in the first place” just because I dye my hair.
It would be even more of a problem if they then started advocating for restricting people’s access to hairdye just because they decided dyeing their hair wasn’t the right thing for them.
I’m going to elaborate on this a little more directly because the other day I saw an article by the daily mail that made me feel a bit queasy.
It was an article about a woman who had thought she was a trans man, had gotten top surgery and gone on testosterone, and then realized that it wasn’t actually making her happy and that she wasn’t actually a trans man. Reading this I felt nothing but sympathy, as someone who has struggled with mental illness his whole life I know how hard it is when you think something is going to “fix you” and then it doesn’t. She talks about how she saw trans people expressing joy after transitioning and she thought that it would do the same for her. I was a little uncomfortable with that line of thinking but the alarm bells weren’t going off quite yet.
But then she goes on to say that she thinks she was given access to transition care far too easily and quickly. That her informed consent wasn’t really informed. That’s when I started getting really uncomfortable. She started talking about how she thinks it’s too easy to transition and that a lot of people “don’t really know what they’re doing” when they transition. She then advocated for making it harder for people to transition. That’s when I stopped reading the article.
There is a reason a lot of trans people are uncomfortable around detransitioned cis people, and it’s because of people like the woman from this article. You can tell from the way she talks about the trans community to the way she talks about transition that she did not do her due diligence and is now refusing to take responsibility for that. She saw people talking about how transitioning made them happy and took it at face value. She thought it would be a magic fix that would cure her depression and when it didn’t she felt betrayed, like she had been lied to. But she never understood why transitioning was making these people happy.
Based on her comments about informed consent it’s obvious she also didn’t bother researching the actual transition care that she was getting. That is the whole point of informed consent, you have to do the research yourself. I mean hell I feel like I know more about how testosterone affects the body than my general practitioner does because I’ve spent so much time researching it to make sure that’s what I wanted. It’s not the trans community’s fault that she didn’t educate herself, it isn’t like the resources aren’t available.
To me all of this is indicative of a larger issue. It isn’t just about transition, it’s about the way society as a whole treats mental health. Mental illnesses have been commodofied and healthy coping mechanisms have been abandoned. People think that watching tiktoks about depression are a stand in for therapy. Trauma is worn like a badge of honour and the mere idea of unpacking it is seen as ableist. People build communities around suffering and then act surprised when people get hurt. Nobody is expected to take responsibility for their own mental wellbeing anymore so nobody knows how to.
That woman transitioned because she thought it would magically get rid of her mental illnesses. She saw trans people finding relief after finally being able to live in a body they were comfortable in and misunderstood what was going on. She was viewing them through a lens of her own suffering because she didn’t see the difference, she assumed her experiences were universal. When it didn’t work out she decided that trans people must have been the issue and not her own ignorance.
It’s the constant refusal to take responsibility for your own actions that really bothers me as both a trans person and a disabled person. Getting better takes work and you have to be ready to fuck up and feel bad sometimes. Getting to the root of your mental illnesses and doing something about them is hard and uncomfortable and exhausting but it’s worth it. Quick fixes aren’t real and there are no magical cures. Transitioning is a journey of self discovery, not just a medical treatment. We will keep seeing detransitioned people acting and thinking like the woman above unless we change the way people talk about and treat mental health.
And that’s that on that.
Actually I’m not done. I want to be as explicit as I possibly can right now:
Trans people existing and being happy in their trans bodies isn’t “making” anyone do anything. Us being ourselves isn’t “pressuring” anyone. Trans people being nice to you on the internet have no control over what YOU do with YOUR body.
If you are mentally ill and find some comfort and solace in the trans community then I’m happy for you! I’m glad you found kindness! But if you have such a surface level understanding of us and our experiences that you think transitioning is a magical cure that suddenly gets rid of all of our mental illnesses over night, then sorry but that’s on you. Transitioning makes many trans people feel better specifically because it treats their dysphoria. If your mental illnesses aren’t related to gender dysphoria then yeah, transition isn’t gonna fuckin help! You cannot blame trans people for your own ignorance. There are more than enough resources available for you to educate yourself, not just about trans people but about mental illness too. Trans people aren’t responsible for educating you, even though many of us will if you ask!
I’m so tired of hearing story after story after story of someone who saw trans people being happy after transitioning, decided that surely transition would cure their depression, and then got pissed off at trans people when it didn’t work. I mean every single story I have heard about detransitioners who were mad at the trans community and felt “pressured” to transition is like that. As a trans guy who has spent a decade of my life in pyshciatric care it frustrates me.
Trans joy is not dangerous.
I am cis so if this addition is unwelcome, please let me know and I’ll delete it.
I have had severe pain in my feet when standing and walking since I was a child. In 2020 I went to a doctor who diagnosed me and told me we could try conservative efforts like physical therapy and custom orthotics, or surgery was an option.
I chose surgery. If I wanted to meet my deductible and maximum out-of-pocket, I needed to have both surgeries in the same year, or I would have to pay for both myself. So I said “ok, let’s do it.”
It’s been two full years. My pain is worse. I regret getting the surgery, it made everything worse and now I have to use a wheelchair. That was always a possibility. My doctor had me sign a waiver saying that I knew the risks. But I need to emphasize that I walked into that doctor’s office for the first time and walked out 45 minutes later with a surgery scheduled for the next week. Just like that. The surgery quite possibly ruined any hope of me walking without pain for the rest of my life, I cannot undo it, and I cannot overstate how simple it was to decide I was getting it and have it done the next week.
Nobody made me go through months of therapy to prove I was prepared for it. Nobody gave me a pamphlet of horror stories from people who had the surgery and regretted it. Nobody told me that I was being too rash or hasty about a huge decision that I might regret for the rest of my life. Nobody tried to make it harder for me to get the surgery because they regretted getting theirs.
They just scheduled the surgery.
My regret is my problem, and nobody else’s. Nobody told me I needed the surgery, my doctor mentioned it as an option. Am I bitter that I’m worse now than before? Of course I am. Would I advise people against getting the surgery? No. I would advise them to try less invasive treatments first if they could. I would advise them not to rush into surgery without considering the possible consequences. But I would also know that grown ass adults don’t need me to hover over their shoulders and give them medical advice.
People make irreversible medical decisions about their own bodies every fucking day and nobody, NOBODY, behaves as though it is some huge crisis that must be addressed. Unless the medical decision involves gender-affirming care. Then suddenly it’s everybody’s business. Then suddenly someone should protect us from ourselves.
Really appreciate the cis perspective with that comparison, its so true. At some stage, detrans people need to take responsibility for their actions. Most of them do it when they’re adults and the notion that it’s all these 14 year olds getting T and then at 21 regretting it is not true. TERFs love to make fake accounts, transphobes will always make fake Twitter accounts to push their agenda and lie.
But the thing is… so what if a small minority of people regret it. That’s life. The vast majority of people are happy with medical transitioning but since its trans people, we have to entertain the very small minority of regret as if it’s a huge problem. For every stupid cunt who writes an article about transition regret, we have a mass moral panic to prevent trans people from transitioning. They hide behind bullshit about “think of the children!” but if you look deeper, many of them want transition healthcare banned until you are 25. Some want it banned ALTOGETHER. They don’t actually care about detrans people and their suffering, they just want to use them to push their bigotry.
There was even a trans man who detransitioned because he was sucked into radical feminism and they used him to push anti trans agenda. Then he retransitioned, like most detrans people do. Mind you, they count stopping hormones as a “detransition” even if the trans person has a medical issue for why they stopped or they’re non binary & they are satisfied with how many changes they have.
this is a great post. i have 1 disagreement though
“That is the whole point of informed consent, you have to do the research yourself.”
the entire point of informed consent is that your healthcare provider gives you ALL the information. the risks, the benefits, the details of the procedure/treatment, all of it. not everyone knows how or what to research. in theory, you SHOULDN’T have to do any research. (that being said, absolutely do your research)
furthermore, it is up to the healthcare provider to make sure you’ve been properly informed and that you fully understand the procedure/treatment.
other than that, this post rules and i want to highlight this paragraph because it is bang on:
To me all of this is indicative of a larger issue. It isn’t just about transition, it’s about the way society as a whole treats mental health. Mental illnesses have been commodofied and healthy coping mechanisms have been abandoned. People think that watching tiktoks about depression are a stand in for therapy. Trauma is worn like a badge of honour and the mere idea of unpacking it is seen as ableist. People build communities around suffering and then act surprised when people get hurt. Nobody is expected to take responsibility for their own mental wellbeing anymore so nobody knows how to.
