33. Raven

Raven Mack, 31, Wisconsin USA.

“I can’t pinpoint the first time “transgender” came to be a thing in my world. But I do know that as soon as it did, everything changed for me. I quickly hopped down a rabbit hole. I was intrigued, and something in me could not leave it alone. These women (trans identified women) had stories that could have been my own. They felt exactly the way I had felt, and they were as starkly different from other women as I felt I was. And what impressed me the most was that a lot of them were able to transform themselves into “men” after taking hormones and having their breasts removed. As someone who often daydreamed about being male and spent most of their time lying to people on the internet telling them I was male (“catfishing”), this was monumental. Maybe I could find a way to stop living in my head/virtually. Maybe I could have a real life.

I felt I had finally figured out what was “wrong” with me: I was actually meant to be male. It was relieving to know that I wasn’t actually a flawed female. I simply wasn’t a girl. Problem solved. There was no going back from there. I was on hormones within a year, changed my name legally, and changed all of my documents to say I was male. I couldn’t shake the feelings of doubt, but I charged forward because it seemed like the answer was that I just needed time to adjust to my new reality. The adjustment never happened. The excitement and “euphoria” of my new life plummeted pretty quickly. The mixture of this disappointment and my drug use left me stagnant and riddled with anxiety.

I eventually became very distraught at how disconnected I still felt with my body. I decided I would try to accept my body as it was and put identity to the side. I thought of myself as being “non binary” for a small period of time and allowed myself the freedom to just be. No boxes. And most importantly, no hormones. I had physically and mentally felt like absolute shit for years. Testosterone made me feel great at first, but it did not last more than a few days before I came crashing. By the end of my seven year run on testosterone, I had high blood pressure, strange symptoms no one could pinpoint, thighs that were always sore from injections, nearly constant cramping in my uterus, a fistula on my brain, and a slew of anxiety inducing mental health issues that were never addressed. I was not okay, and I finally fully realized it once I was off hormones for a couple months. I’d also had a double mastectomy (“top surgery”), which left me with ghost pains, grief at the loss of my breasts, and inability to breastfeed the baby girl I later birthed.

As painful as it was to realize the serious damage I’d done to my body, it was also really freeing to finally accept my female body. After I figured out how to do that, embracing myself as a woman was easy, and beautiful, and gratifying even. I felt like I had just woken up suddenly. As slowly as I came to this place, it felt very sudden and jolting. How could this have happened?

I started looking for other “detransitioners.” And there were more than I expected. Among those who had “detransitioned,” and those who supported us, many were radical feminists. Their experiences and the analysis that they shared were directly in line with what I had felt and experienced. Which, in short, is that: Women’s oppression is entirely based on our bodies. Misogyny, homophobia, and (in my case) racism, played crucial roles in the decisions I made.

I didn’t make the choices I made because I thought my hobbies were better suited for men or that women were inferior. I didn’t know how to stay alive in a body I didn’t feel I was present in. I didn’t know what to do with how much I hated myself and this seemed like a rational way to start my life over again. The real solution would have been to get to the root of why I couldn’t accept myself. Why was my body such a source of discomfort?

To be born female is an overlooked oppression. We talk about it, but it’s glossed over.  Having a female body in a society where people with female bodies are hated, mocked, murdered, objectified, belittled, abused and tortured simply for existing is traumatic. I had dissociated completely from my own body to escape the trauma of being on the receiving end of hatred. I wanted to be a full human being, not a thing under constant scrutiny. The female body in which I lived was intertwined with shame, hatred, and pain. I wanted it to end. My experience was a direct consequence of my oppression on the basis of my sex. As soon as I realized that, I could finally begin to allow myself to heal and give compassion to those past versions of myself that didn't know any better.

It’s been three years now, and I’m still healing. I have a lot of work to do on myself that I put off for the last decade. But I have more clarity than I have ever had and more compassion for myself. I’m doing things that I never would have thought I could do. I know that none of those things would have been possible had I not stopped taking hormones. It’s the best thing I did for myself. If you’re a woman who is thinking about detransitioning, breathe some life into the idea…ask yourself a lot of questions, get to the root... Write about it... Meditate on it... Let it unfold. Don’t listen to anyone but yourself.”