47. Emma
Emma (34) Sweden
“My story is not one of abuse, sexual trauma from childhood, or unaccepted homosexuality. My identifying as trans was a result of navigating the world as a female who struggled with norms, expectations and gender roles put on women—and seeking out a social setting characterized by dogmatism and straight answers at a time of personal fragility.
Learning about feminism in my early twenties lit a fire in me: I finally had words to speak out about my experiences, big and small, of being sexualized, used, restricted, hurt, for being female. Then people started talking about gender identity, and that if you feel dysphoric about your sex you might in fact be trans. It seemed to explain everything: every moment of feeling like I didn't quite belong, like I wasn't like the other girls, why I had always felt a connection to tomboys in books and films and wanted to be more like them. I had felt uncomfortable about being a girl ever since puberty. By my twenties I had developed deep gender dysphoria.
Within a year from first hearing about these concepts, I received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria through the gender clinic, and identified as non-binary. Not once during the evaluation did anyone suggest that my dysphoria could be a reaction to what it’s like being a woman in this world, and that there might be other ways of healing my self-hatred and internalized misogyny than disrupting my body with synthetic hormones and cutting off my breasts. My identity was affirmed as sacred truth, with medical transition as the only solution.
In 2021, after six years on testosterone, I went through a long isolated retreat. It took that very deep dive into my self and psyche to begin unravelling my relationship to womanhood, and to who I am beneath all those masks and alterations—beneath the identifying. In the autumn of 2022, I finally opened the door to questioning my trans identity. My whole world and self-image shattered around me, everything came flooding in through the cracks the moment I allowed it.
I realized my trans experience was about dissociation from my body, and began the journey of accepting that my female nature is what it is, and that my job is to find peace in being a woman and having a female reproductive system, not running away from it. I still experience dysphoria, but have decided to deal with it by radical self acceptance and healing, instead of trying to fix an inner problem by external means.
My trans identity came out of a social context where it was more or less promoted to me, encouraged and reinforced every step of the way—and where questioning it was anathema. My detransition, on the other hand, grew from within, when I distanced myself from the thoughts and thought-policing of others.
Detransition is what happened when I stopped fighting my nature, and allowed my body and self to return to its state of rest: as a non-conforming, rebellious and weird woman. “