The detransitioning voices refusing to be culture war pawns

Words: June Bellebono

“What if you regret it?” my mum asked when I first told her four years ago I was thinking of transitioning. There’s care in that question, an encouragement to interrogate my level of certainty, a parental hope that her child won’t face disappointment, a wish that this journey won’t be one that’ll bring distress. And yet, despite the care, I found myself annoyed, at the implicit, of what was behind that question, that tone – that, if I was to regret it, that’d mean this decision was wrong.

My journey of transition did end up not being the one I’d anticipated and, two years into it, it came to an end. There’s many reasons for it: the developments on my body feeling more foreign than healing, (trans) womanhood feeling more limiting than freeing, masculinity feeling less intimidating than it had in the past – the list goes on. It was a difficult decision to come to, and make peace with, but, really, also, a pretty straightforward one: what once served me, what once felt right, no longer did. Ultimately, I just can’t look back at my transness with resentment, and will forever cherish the lessons it taught me, on autonomy and the fact my choices on my body should always trump the State’s, on legitimacy and why I should have agency over my identity and how I should be addressed, on community and how deeply we can show up for one another.

"Conversations on detransition end up lacking nuance, in favour of easy weaponisation in order to win an argument"

The realisation that I wasn’t trans, at the time, felt way more terrifying than the decision of transitioning initially felt; not as much in its day-to-day (being read as a gay man is a lot easier than being read as a trans woman) but for its implications: detransitioning as a politicised subject, one, often presented, as antithetical to trans liberation. Voices from people who have detransitioned were/are few and far between, and all the loud ones, in a fucked up pro-trans vs anti-trans world, seemed to side with the anti-trans, detransition being seen as “proof” that invalidates trans existence – a senseless statement, most trans people are happy with their decision to transition and don’t go back on it. Because of that, for those in the community, the possibility of detransitioning feels hard to accept and is therefore often dismissed as a reality. Conversations on detransition end up lacking nuance, in favour of easy weaponisation in order to win an argument.