22. A

A, 37, USA

“The entirety of my life, female has meant 'other'. I could tell you that 'I've felt like a boy since I was 4', but this cannot be extricated from the fact that I've lived, from the moment of my birth and a pink hat was stuffed onto my head, in a culture that bombards us with extreme gender stereotypes.

I preferred toys that were animals instead of doll-type toys because of the overtly sexist way that denoted 'female', but the monikers still snuck their way into my wheelhouse as well. "do you want the duckling with eyelashes or the regular duckling? Did you want the pony that was just a regular pony or did I want the one that had lipstick?"

I wanted to be a regular person. I did not want to be other, and as far as I knew, I was not "other". I was a person, and I lived as such until that monumental occasion where we began to be split up for 'the puberty stuff'.

As my friends that were boys progressed, they got to learn about cool stuff, what they could be, what they could learn. For me, it was always 'when you grow up and have a husband and have children...' I thought, there's been a mix up, I'm supposed to be with the people learning about cool stuff. Husbands and children had nothing to do with me.

But it was everywhere. Women all over magazines. Women clinging to men as if they only existed as his aesthetic accessory. That weird thing where men do that 'bug-eyed take' at a 'hot woman' on TV. People staring, STARING at teenager's bodies. It didn't even matter that my family was actually pretty gender non-conforming and not sexist because every day, I left my house and went elsewhere. I was approaching 13, and suddenly found myself surrounded by sexually-charged peers, and plummeting towards my abject misery, the designated title of 'teenager', which to me meant the loss of my personhood, and the start of being sexualized as a piece of meat against my will.

On the day before my 12th birthday, I drew a crying stick figure on my math test with a speech bubble saying 'it is the last day that I am allowed to be a person'. I still think about it, to this day. I think about how nobody said a damn thing to me about it. I wonder what they thought?

Inevitably, I turned 13. I dreaded the day. The first thing someone asked me was "how does it feel to be a teenager?" I burst into tears.

I was 13 when I started getting sexually assaulted. I was right about everything, and I couldn't stave it off, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn't starve away my breasts or my period. I couldn't fight the eyes away from me. I couldn't run from the constant "so do you have a boyfriend yet? Do you want to have children when you get married?" Husband, husband HUSBAND. I DID have things that I aspired to be, and each day that I trudged through, a little bit more was chipped away until finally, I was sitting in the career counsellor's office, and I could not see more than a day at a time into my future. If I had to get married, have a husband, have children, all I could see was a black void because that WAS NOT happening. I barely cared about anything anymore, because I had to start thinking about how I would end my life when I graduated and the void hit. I was earning college credits in high school as I was in advanced classes, and I found myself wishing that I could transfer those credits to someone who was meant to live and have a future.

I actually came across the definition of transsexual in an encyclopaedia some time prior, and locked the definition away in my brain as something that seemed forbidden. But the void, barreling ever closer, burst that dam. I had just gotten internet access, and with trepidation, I typed it into the search bar. What ensued was what I thought to be my salvation. I plunged everything I had into it, because the other option was to die.

How well my story plays into the narrative, when it's an encrypted tragedy. People make the grievous error of attributing transitioning to saving me, when what I REALLY needed was FEMINISM, and insight into that I was A LESBIAN.

But that's still over a decade away, as 21 year old me literally drops out of school, and flees the country to join some ramshackle crew of trans youth that mirror my struggles, an insular bubble of youth inflicted by severe forms of body dysphoria, dysmorphia, and a slew of co-morbidities. My anxiety blossomed, my inhibitions silenced and we plunged into medicalization together. Solidarity! I occupied these environments for the next 10 years. Putting the effort into 'passing' was tiresome, and I had to shun some of the things I liked, but was it worth it? Of COURSE transitioning seemed to solve my problems, which stemmed from how women are treated simultaneously as garbage and decorative objects. Of COURSE I was happier, as long as I left it at that!

Occasionally I would feel strange, some things about transition wouldn't add up, one of the other FtMs would say something incredibly misogynistic, etc, etc, etc but I would sweep it away into the furthest recess of my mind because to challenge them, to challenge this, was well, it was to challenge EVERYTHING. And when I finally did that, I did not expect the people in my queer communities to turn on me in the ways that they did. I surreptitiously attempted to search for information on detransition, and coming up empty handed, decided to accept my fate, the sunken cost fallacy. I was unable to handle the pressure, and went back under, remaining trans identified for many more years.

The final realization that woke me from my self-deceiving slumber was an astounding blow. But I'd finally seen it. I couldn't go back to pretending. I lay in my bed with my hands pressed over my face, the rest of the house lit by the other trans occupants of the house screeching and screaming at each other into the late hours of the night. 15 years had gone by, and here I was, locked in a state of arrested development with a bunch of other mentally ill individuals, with crowds of people CHEERING US ON. But this was never how any of us were getting any better. I needed out. I needed help. I looked up 'do people detransition?' again and this time I found thousands upon thousands of us.

I still shake as I type this as I think about the multiple times I've nearly lost myself to the innocuous, poisonous entity that is misogyny that infiltrates nearly every nook and cranny of our society. I think about how I was given a placebo, a placeholder for myself, until grasped in the darkness for something deeper and reclaimed my sex, and with it ripping my sapphic nature back from whatever metaphorical claws had stolen it from me. I will never let anyone take it from me again.

I'm so happy to love women, and to finally have started loving myself as well. I am no longer running, I will stand here and fight with you.”