A few years ago I went to a palm reading. The oracle said she had a hard time reading my future, because it was cloudy and unsure. All she could see was a butterfly—interesting, I thought, given that butterflies are often used by the “trans” community, using its metamorphosis as a metaphor for their “sex change” or “transition”.
Every year I like to start off with a song at midnight on New Year’s to echo into the new year something I really want to happen. This year was “Rip Out the Wings of a Butterfly” by HIM—I knew something vibing and major would happen, but I wondered what would I be willing to sacrifice—should I want to—to make that (or those) change(s).
For the past six months or more, as it tends to wax and wane, the “gender dysphoria” has reappeared and hasn’t relented. Feeling emasculinated every time I couldn’t do something even simple, beating myself up needlessly. Way jumpier than usual. Depression unceasing. Stress eating so much that my workouts at the gym aren’t reducing my weight loss. Reduced executive function. Apathy. It’s been getting so bad at work that it’s interfering with my ability to perform even the simplest of jobs.
No, suicide ideation hasn’t occurred this time around. I have developed enough self-awareness to nip that in the bud, and exercises to counter if I recognized a trigger that could lead to that. As I remember from an old ad campaign from decades ago, “Don’t make a permanent solution for a temporary problem.” I am accepted at home, at work—no need for a safe space.
I am in the process of de-transitioning. I am no longer a “man”—I am now proudly again a queer, butch lesbian and woman.
It wasn’t one particular moment that led up to this. Nothing in particular that I read that led me to reverse course. It’s just that the “treatment” that was supposed to end the “dysphoria” has just prolonged, if not worsened, my mind-body disconnect.
Regardless, I would still have eventually obtained at least a bilateral oopherectomy because I had PCOS, which resulted in such painful and heavy periods that I had to wear tampons with maxipads, and change them hourly. Maybe the hysterectomy, too, because I would’ve eliminated the chance of ovarian cancer, but worsen my chances of uterine or cervical cancer (and often, in the US at least, the two are just done together to reduce or eliminate cancer for both). If I had to, still claim I was “trans” if the insurance company wouldn’t cover it.
Maybe I just finally got tired of all the radicalization and bullshit, and despite trying to use “transsexed” and “transsexual” to distinguish myself from the community, I just don’t want to be identified or associated with ”trans”-anything anymore.
As much as I tried to “identify” as a man, there’s a simple reality: I was born female. No amount of chemical castration, surgical mutilation, or changing legal documents will change that. My chromosomes are XX; my body was designed to run on estrogen; I was born with female reproductive organs; any “dick” I’d get would just be a hanging meat sack (nothing like a congenital penis on a biological man), and god forbid if I got hospitalized, I’m sure the staff wouldn’t know what to do with me.
I was also a hypocrite with dating; I wouldn’t date a “trans woman” because of their bulge, nor a lesbian because I didn’t “identify” as a lesbian or woman, but I demanded that straight and bi women give me a change despite not having a dick. Said that to be a “woman”, biological men would have to undergo vagioplasty, but let trans men who didn’t get “dicks” off the hook because of the “poor science” in phalloplasty.
As far as I’m concerned, other than one Dr. Richard Hellman from Mount Sinai, whose letter I needed to obtain my hysterectomy, not one person in the entirety of my transition decided it was a good idea to see if there were triggers that wanted me to address first, before undertaking a “sex change”. I was honest about having been raped, traumatized from two years of conversion therapy, and suffered other forms of homophobia/lesbophobia and misogyny. I had a noted history of mental health issues, from post-partum psychosis to bipolarism and generalized anxiety disorder. I binged whenever I ate to cope with stress. So despite my history of traumas and issues, why did everyone else agree to just push me to take powerful steroids and undergo the knife?
Because it’s all political and propaganda based on a hypocrisy and contradiction. Anybody who does anything rather than just give unfettered access to hormones and surgery is automatically labeled “transphobic”—this is why we have so many “anti-trans” bills being pushed in the US, why there’s increasing backlash against anything “trans”-related. Not just because biological men are taking advantage of women in sports, but because when a “medical organization” allows for kids as young as 14 to undergo surgery—that’s a major red flag.
Transgenders also push a major-ass hypocrisy: if you’re “gender variant” (based on outdated stereotypes that most Americans don’t seriously take anymore), you’re really “trans”. They insist there’s a difference between how you dress and how you “identify”, yet at the same time they have pretty much equated the two. In the 60s and 70s, when punk and rock had their lead singers cross-dress in all kinds of matters, it was exactly that; today, the kids call themselves “trans” and/or “non-binary” if they even paint their nails and wear black eyeliner, because it’s not something most men do; or we have girls calling themselves “trans boys” because they’re tomboys and show interests in typically boy-centered activities, while still demanding access to women’s only spaces, colleges, festivals, and resources. (I still won’t sue the state of New Jersey for kicking me out of a woman’s homeless shelter for saying I was “trans”; only went to it because it was the only shelter that accepted kids, as none of the local men’s shelters did.)
Transgenderism sounds more and more like a mishmash of self-doubt, confusion, body integrity disorder (because they want to chop off or mutilate otherwise perfectly healthy organs), radicalization, cultural appropriation of third-gender categories from other cultures, radicalization, and not understanding the long history of androgyny. Basically delusion.
If “gender identity” and sexual orientation are two completely separate issues, who do transgenders always insist on attaching themselves to groups that were originally founded for protection of same-sex marriage and relationships? And if LGBs insist on it, they’re labeled “hate groups”.
Kids can’t get tattoos, buy smokes or guns, obtain an abortion without parental consent—but if a parent objects to their kid identifying as “trans” and getting hormones and surgery, they’re labeled “transphobic” and charities out there (if not the state itself) will help the kid run away from the parents, obtain a court order to become the “guardian”, and help the kid medically “transition”, because refusing is considered “child abuse”—when in reality, parents are just hesitant to push a kid into undergoing something that is potentially irreversible at such a young age! Kids all too often don’t know what they want to study, they’re just starting to figure out who they are as an individual, there’s all kinds of peer pressure—and transgenders expect people to believe that they know they’re “trans”.
Men deciding they’re women and demand access to their bathrooms, changing rooms, sports teams, and hard-to-come-by resources. Women deciding they’re men but demanding they can still attend dyke bars and women’s colleges but expecting to be exempted from selective service.
As for me, I will begin a third legal name change early next week, to “Charleigh”—can’t be a proper butchie without having a feminine name that I hate, but instead use a boyish nickname instead on the daily.
Dress however you want, but don’t think it makes you another “gender”. Sex is immutable. And if the idea is to break down gender stereotypes, why the need to be another “gender”?
It’s all bullshit, hypocrisy, and narcissism—and I’m done with it all—and I finally have an excuse to watch The L Word.
