The Detransitioners

 Dear Friends,

I hope you had a good Stressmas. I think I did. I don’t know why I get stressed out by the holidays but I do. I feel like I have to spend time “doing stuff” that I normally would never do in the name of being festive and having fun. But it always ends up working out just fine.

Thank you all for reading & enjoying my “Holiday Series” about the state of the LGB & TQ peoples. I know you have found it as fascinating as I do. And today I’ll be talking a little more about The Detransitioners.

The first thing I want to say about The Detransitioners is — if people who have medically transitioned feel the need, for whatever reason, to detransition, I AM OK with that. I don’t worry that it will make the trans community, or me personally, look bad. I don’t care. If  transitioning to the opposite gender is not working for someone, then what they do about it is their own decision to make.

Super femme in 2004

I think I’ve been subconsciously preparing for the day when detransition stories on youtube (&Tumblr) outnumbered the “yay look at me 5 days on T!!” stories. I never wanted to come out and say that I didn’t believe that everyone who was transitioning in the mid-10s was actually trans. That would’ve made me an unholy gatekeeper who was transier-than-thou. And honestly I knew that if trans trendering was really a thing, it would reveal itself soon enough and get sorted out in the social medias for everyone to see.

I could see that it was primarily a youth-driven phenomenon. Sure we like to blame it on Caitlyn Jenner’s stunning Vanity Fair cover, but I think she mainly made it safe for people my age & older to come out. I totally blame Tumblr for the foothold medical transition took in youth culture from 2010 on…

…when I began my transition I was told I could find not just info but a whole trans commune(ity) on TUMBLR!! So I went there, and lo! it was a topography of the most beautiful, sculpted, cosmetized, PASSING trans folk you ever saw! It was all very shallow and I could tell it would not be the place for me to get any advice or companionship. However…I could see that if I had been my 13-14-15 yr old self in the age of Tumblr, I definitely would’ve been seduced.

June vs. Sep 2008

The thing is though, I knew way before the age of 13-14-15 that I was “in the wrong body.” [And I know that phrase has no favor in the community, but that is exactly how a child would describe it. The latest criticism from the right is “You wouldn’t say a disabled child was born in the wrong body!!” But I’ll bet many disabled children lament being born in the wrong body while they are coming to terms with their situations. Plus, I viewed femaleness as a deformity (probably because I was told it was)]. Anyway, the “trend” when I started my transition was Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria that usually presented at puberty. A child who had never voiced or displayed gender non conformity in early childhood was suddenly beset at 13-14-15 with feelings that gender issues were the cause of their depression.

And I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s experience here. There may have been some very valid gender issues going on with these kids at that pubescent age. But hormones and surgeries aren’t the only solutions to gender issues. There is a middle ground and there should be other options. I think therapists are still just learning how to handle ROGD because in the last decade they’ve been bombarded by it. And of course there are unethical therapists out there who have an agenda or an alliance with capitalist medicine. But I don’t think gender therapists on the whole are horrible people who want to experiment on your children for a buck.

Going for androgynous chic in 2009

In the weeks that I’ve been doing this Holiday Series, the number of Detransitioners has grown. At first I was seeing mainly FtMtF detransitioners, but more and more MtFtMs are going public. I still maintain that a small percentage of these detransitioners could be right-wing activists trying to stir the pot, but I believe most of them are sincere. One thing that does sadden me is that many of these detransitioners do adopt a right-wing political stance upon realizing their mistakes. This highlights how politicized gender identity really is (ie, is “detrans” the new season of gender?)

I have yet to hear a story where a young person was actively coerced by a mental health or medical professional to “just try the hormones, they’re good for you.” These kids were willing participants in their transitions and most of them admit it. Even Keira Bell specifically sought treatment for her own feelings of gender dysphoria.

But as they begin the process of detransitioning I hear a lot of these people say they did feel pressure from somewhere —whether it was their politics, their peers, or the social medias — to alleviate their depressive symptoms through gender transition. Some of them feel taken advantage of by mental health professionals when they were in a vulnerable state. Some of them say they were seduced by the success-only, beautifully curated community on Tumblr. A large percentage of female-born transitioners cite pornography — or the overall misogyny of internet culture— as their motivation for no longer wanting to identify as female. The male-born transitioners are often so insecure in their masculinity they feel that life would be “easier” if they were just female.

And a lot of these kids get pretty far into their transitions before realizing “Hey, this isn’t for me.” Testosterone can change a girl’s voice in a matter of weeks. A good many FtMtFs on youtube confess they are heartbroken because they’ve lost their singing voices. A lot of these kids go through with surgeries they come to regret, including hysterectomies and vaginoplasties. Plus synthetic estrogen and testosterone are not without risk. Estrogen causes blood clots and can exacerbate auto-immune conditions. Testosterone increases the production of red blood cells, which can cause stroke (and which is why I go to the blood bank every few months to get rid of all those RBCs!)

Fluid in 2012 (ballet vs. Gerard drag)

What can we do to help people who have realized their choice to transition to the opposite gender was a mistake? Or better yet, how can we keep people from making that mistake in the first place? The responsibility really does lie on the shoulders of mental health and medical professionals, but as a happily transitioned adult, I feel like there should be something I can do or say to keep people from going down the wrong path with their bodies, their identities, their fertility. I don’t want to be a “gatekeeper” but I do think that there is a difference between someone who’s known since early childhood that they were “in the wrong body” and someone who gets ROGD from something they saw on the internet.

And this is not to say that 4-yr olds should be given puberty blockers. [Our favorite TERF Exulansic (Sexual Antics) speculates this will be happening in the near future. I say nonsense. You’re going crazy on me, Mr Sexual Antics. And I thought you were the smart TERF.] Gender identity issues that present at 3-4-5 yrs of age should be handled with as much care as those that present at 13-14-15. But what is that care? Who will care enough to do the right thing? Parents? Doctors? Teachers? Gender therapists?

In the 1970s when I was insisting that I was a boy, I was taken to psychiatrists who wanted to convert me by forcing the issue of femininity. Play with the dolls! Wear the pink tutus! And by the time I was 8 yrs old I was broken in, realizing that my outward gender presentation ought to match my biological sex, or life would be a problem for me. It was not a happy realization, and it didn’t CURE my gender dysphoria, it just made me a mean, sarcastic little girl and young lady.

First binder! 2015

I don’t know any parents or doctors who would recommend that method in the 2020s. I know more parents are accepting of gender non conformity in their children these days. Boys don’t HAVE to play football to be the apple of their fathers’ eyes, and girls don’t have to be obedient little princesses to please their whole families. But I remember being told I was a tomboy, which still meant I was a girl, and I was like, Nope I’m just a boy-boy. I think there are ways to tell whether your child is just happily flouting gender boundaries or whether there is a deep problem with gender identity.

There is a looming movement from the right to convince us all that young children who express the wish to be the opposite gender will grow out of it. That by puberty, most of these children will embrace their at-birth sex and begin living their biological destinies. That these children are NOT at risk for suicide/attempts any more than the average teen/young adult.

And it may be true that a gender dysphoric child will begin to conform to gender norms at puberty, mainly because the peer pressure to do so is so great. Maybe because the pubescent flood of hormones dictates it. I know that’s what happened to me. Between the ages of 8 — 16 I did NOT want to be seen as some pervy outcast (which is exactly how I would’ve been seen in the 1980s). I didn’t want to be different from my peers. So I made it a project to be the perfect definition of girl/daughter/sister.

At 17, I became more of a rebel. It was like I remembered who I really was. I fought against gender boundaries as well as other societal boundaries. It was exciting and liberating for awhile, but the year I turned 20 I had a major relapse into the sort of gender dysphoria I had as a child. Actually it was way worse because I was a young adult trying to navigate a world that saw me as less-than. A sex object. A gender object. I was overtaken by depression so huge that I tried to kill myself by drinking a cup of Drano. I stabilized in my 20s by becoming more a part of the LGB community. But at 30 I had yet another wave of severe gender dysphoria and contemplated suicide again.

2016 — 1 year on T and going for the man bun while watching Rudolph

Obviously I lived to tell about my dysadventures. But plenty of gender dysphoric kids do not live to tell. Let’s not forget the story of Leela Alcorn. Her depression was so big she threw herself under the wheels of a truck. 

It will definitely take a village to get this all sorted out — loving parents, caring medical professionals, more trans adults who understand the risks and implications of transitioning. For me, it was always weird to seek help from professionals who did not have first hand experience with gender dysphoria.

2017, 2018, 2019 not a trace of face hair

well…maybe a trace here

So now we have a mini generation of Detransitioners on our hands. They will be able to teach us as much as those of us who are happy with transition. And if some of them even decide to Re-transition, that’s umm….fine with me. It could happen. It wouldn’t be ideal, but I’m ready for that too.

**************** 

Just wanted to close with some personal updates. I told you I had my first colonoscopy and there was some drama. I guess while I was under the anesthesia I inhaled some vomit. I don’t know how there was vomit in my stomach because I hadn’t eaten for 24 hours. All I can think is that I didn’t expel all the liquids I drank the day before the procedure. Everyone was telling me how empty and pure I would feel after pooping out the entire contents of my colon. But the morning of the procedure I still felt like a bloated fishbowl full of Gatorade and magnesium citrate.

So I woke from the anesthesia with my lungs full of fluid. I could barely breathe. They gave me an oxygen puffer til I had 100% oxygen flowing again. Then they sent me home, where I felt sick and coughed up big globs of green mucus for days. It took about a week before I felt normal again. So much for a “routine procedure.”

Also wanted to let you know that I’ve had so much fun doing this series that my New Year’s resolution is to do more blogging and art in 2022. I needed to take some time off from it but I’m ready to get at it again!

And finally, the happy old man in 2021

Coming next time, Part 5 of this series in which I’ll talk some more about The Autogynephiles!

TERVISH WHIRLING

 Hi Friends,

I’m back w/ episode 3 of what is shaping up to be a “Holiday Series” on the state of LGB  TQness from the inside and the outside.

Without further adoo-doo I want to introduce you to a Triad of TERFs whose voices rise above the rest. They’re critical! They’re smug! They’re special! And they’re always right because they have all the facts you could ever want on gender!  Please welcome —

Kellie-Jay Keen

TT Exulansic

     and

KAREN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, one of our TERFs is indeed a Karen. Karen Davis to be exact. I have given you the real names of these women in case you want to experience them for yourselves. However, when I write about them down below I will be using cutesy little nicknames for them, and I will also be misgendering them, just as they insist on doing to the trans folks they talk about.

 

Let’s start with Mr. Keen, whom I will heretofore refer to as HOSEY HARKER:

Hosey Harker is a British TERF whose smugness is matched only by his technical inabilities. I’ve had to stop watching his videos because it’s embarrassing to see him fumble with the technology, bobbling his blond Monroesque head saying “Oh my, what am I doing?” Plus all he does now is thank his army of haters for their cash donations and beg everyone to buy his merch.

But let’s start at the beginning. Hosey Harker was a progressive left feminist until one day a trans woman showed up at the feminist rally Mr. Harker was attending and dared to say things that didn’t align with Mr. Harker’s idea of what a feminist should be. Now this trans woman may or may not have been out of line. She may or may not have been an autogynephile. She may or may not have been wearing “woman face”, which is how Mr. Harker describes trans women who wear too much make up and sexy clothes w/out bothering to shave or get surgery, making “womanhood” into some kind of drag farce.

I was not at the meeting and I don’t have the facts. I have to rely on what Mr. Harker has said about it. 

Unfortunately, around this same time, a couple of things happened in the UK that brought negative attention onto the trans community. Karen White, a trans woman who was an inmate at a woman’s prison, raped other inmates whilst there; you can read about it here—

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison

Aside from the obvious tragedy resulting from this bureaucratic error, another thing about this Karen that stood out to me was that she — stood out. She had a history of prior violence; she seemed “off” to her psychologist, ie different from other trans patients; she was jailed for a very violent crime and probably should’ve been confined from the rest of the prisoners whether she was in a men’s or women’s facility.

Another thing that happened in the UK around this time was the case of Keira Bell. Bell was a depressed and dysmorphic teenager who sought help from Britain’s Tavistock Gender Clinic. This clinic operates on an “affirmative care” model, which means that anyone who walks through their doors must have gender identity issues significant enough that no questions are asked — they are immediately “affirmed” as the opposite gender and practically pushed into treatments like hormone blockers, HRT, & surgeries.

Bell went through all the “trans rites” I mentioned in my previous blog and she still was not feeling that she fit into society any better as a male. You can read here about the lawsuit she brought against the Tavistock clinic, and how the initial ruling in her favor was overturned recently —

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/249026/keira-bell-uk-woman-who-regrets-teen-gender-transition-sees-court-victory-overturned-on-appeal

Anyhoo, back to Mr. Hosey Harker. He really felt that his lifelong identity as a feminist was being hijacked by not only autogynephilic trans women (and in Mr. Harker’s mind it seems all trans women are autogynephiles) but by those doctors and lawyers on the left who enable them. So now he is a right wing gatekeeper of feminist politics, his central purpose being to define the word WOMAN.

I ask you dear readers, what do you think the word WOMAN means?

(and you can be as snarky about that as you want. But then give it some serious thought and see what you come up with.)

Obviously a woman is an adult human female, as Mr. Harker and the dictionary agree. But what is a human female? Someone who can give birth? Not all human females can do that. Someone with XX chromosomes? For the most part this is true, but there are female-identified humans who have variations on this chromosomal combination. It’s hard to draw the line, even medically. It’s much harder to do so legally. 

But Mr. Hosey Harker seems to think defining womanhood is as easy as misgendering transwomen and wearing a black T-shirt that states in bold sequin lettering “WOMAN = adult human female”

Of the three TERFs I’m profiling here, I think Hosey Harker is my least favorite, because he doesn’t seem to have the intellectual capacity of the other two. He seems very emotionally strung out about his “special women-only spaces” being taken over by this cavalcade of perverts that don’t really exist. Are there autogynephiles out there who put on “woman face” just to assert themselves into women’s spaces? Yes, a few cases have been documented. But this is not a fair representation of trans women on the whole, and I’m sorry that the few known cases have frightened Mr. Harker so badly and that he is so emotionally fragile about his womanhood that he’s now a hateful TERF with a big loud lipsticked mouth, shouting about who qualifies as female and who doesn’t.

 

So now let’s talk about Mr Exulansic, whom I will heretofore call PP Sexual Antics:

Mr Sexual Antics actually seems like an interesting fellow. He is a speech pathologist and knows lots about voices and vocal maladies and why trans people talk in “tranny voice”. He has extensive medical knowledge, beyond just voice stuff. He knows a lot about THE SURGERIES, and can rhapsodize in fluent medicalese about why it’s not a good idea to take a scalpel to the pelvic floor of anyone, or what long term effects hormone blockers can have on the entire endocrine system (gender hormones are not the only hormones flowing through our human meatsacks). Mr Sexual Antics also studied languages along the way and is very clever with the word play — touche Mr SA !! Good one! Ouch. Anyway…he entertains while he makes his salient points.

Another very important thing about Mr Sexual Antics is that he once suffered from gender dysphoria. He is a rare specimen who succumbed to conversion therapy — I’m not sure where or how — but he had a psychologist who was not gender-affirming, and questions were asked and realizations were made, and poof, Mr SA’s gender dysphoria was cured and he was content with living the rest of his life as a woman, bypassing the option of becoming a lifelong hormone patient. Good for him! I am genuinely happy that he found a solution for his gender dysphoria that didn’t involve being medicalized for a lifetime. Except maybe he will be on anti depressants forever?

Mr Sexual Antics seems like a rather bitter person. He became a presence on youtube, TikTok and Twitter, he claims, to strike out at the medical professionals who are ruining the lives of young people. He is contemptuous of the gender therapists who use the affirmative model. He is livid at the surgeons who carve up healthy genitals only to have to repair and revise their work over & over. This seems pretty noble to me — to place the blame for negligence on the professionals who act negligently. Fair enough.

But Mr. Sexual Antics is also pretty hateful toward the young trans people he purports to care about. He mocks their videos. He misgenders them. He thinks every trans person should be converted by therapy rather than be on hormones forever. He thinks gender dysphoria is just depression gone wild, and kids are too stupid to realize this for themselves and give themselves over to the medical monsters who want to capitalize on them. He snickers when a trans kid is on his/her third surgery & still maintains no regrets about it.

Mr Sexual Antics is particularly obsessed with Jazz Jennings, whom he sees as the ultimate sacrificial lamb to the trans medical machine. Not to mention the media machine.

I have followed the story of Jazz’s life since she was a 6-yr-old being interviewed by Barbara Walters. Because when I saw that interview I saw me as a 6-yr-old, desperately wishing for a second chance to be born as a boy instead of a girl. I saw the look on little Jazz’s face and saw the same deep sorrow that I felt about my gender at that age. 

[There are many opinions out there about “who is really trans?” “how can someone know from such a young age that they are not a boy or a girl?” “what criteria do professionals look for when diagnosing a person as Trans?” There are people who believe that gender dysphoria must be present — that it is the very condition that marks the need to medically transition. There are others who believe that dysphoria does not need to be a factor — a person just needs to feel euphoria about being the opposite gender. The people, like me and Jazz, who knew from the time they could talk that they were in the wrong body, are sometimes dubious of the people who experience Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). It’s not just the surgeries that are still in their experimental phases — it’s the whole ideology around gender that’s not quite understood by anyone, really. By a few very insightful people, maybe. It’s all very complicated and there is no right answer…yet.]

Jazz has grown up on television, which I have no doubt is the greatest contributor to the mental health issues I’ve watched her struggle with. Mr Sexual Antics seems to think it has more to do with puberty blockers (Lupron) and an over-involved family dynamic. Mr SA says that Jazz’s mother has Munchausen-by-proxy, and that she is the one who pressured Jazz into transition and surgeries, so that she could reap all the sympathy and admiration that comes with having a trans child. I totally agree that Jazz’s mom is way too involved in her daughter’s private life. But I totally disagree that she pushed Jazz in any way. I think she supported Jazz in her identity as a girl, and kind of let Jazz lead the way (which has also been criticized by many).

Also, I believe that the sadness that comes with being gender dysphoric at such a young age never leaves you. You can take hormones, you can have surgeries, you can dance, you can do art, you can do sports…but somewhere inside you lives that prehistoric sorrow of being born wrong. It can be managed, it can be molded & directed & channeled any which way, but there are times when it’s just going to flare up, where it will be recalled by old neural pathways you thought you’d paved over. And I think that’s what Jazz is experiencing right now.

Just for the record, Jazz started puberty blockers at 11. She had been depressed many times as a child, and continued to have depressive episodes throughout her teens, even after starting HRT. Shortly before her 18th birthday (which I agree is too soon) she had her first gender confirmation surgery (vaginoplasty). It was all televised, including the doctor visits where they determined that the puberty blockers had stunted the growth of her male genitals enough to be a problem for constructing proper female genitals from them. There was footage from the operating room. There was footage of doctors advising her to go off the estrogen to allow for some growth of the male genitals. There was footage of a few doctors advising her to wait on the surgery until it was a little more fine-tuned. But Jazz chose to go right ahead and have experimental surgery in June of 2018. She didn’t want to go off hormones and risk any facial hair or deepened voice.  So the surgeons did the best they could with what they had to work with.

The smuggest post op photo I could find --Back at ya terfs!

And there were complications. And more surgeries. I think she had a total of three surgeries to get a functional and aesthetic vagina. And she was on pain medication. And she was on bed rest. And she had to dilate herself three times a day. And she had to apply to colleges. And she got into Harvard but wasn’t sure she could go because her surgical wounds were not all the way healed, and she was still on medication, and on TV, and on & on & on…Do you see what I’m saying? Wouldn’t anyone be depressed and anxious in the face of all that? I would! In fact I did go through a period of depression after my (single) top surgery. It’s a big deal, and then it’s over…and you kind of come crashing down from it.

It surprises me that PP Sexual Antics can’t account for all that emotional turbulence, and tries to paint Jazz as the poster child of her mother’s Munchausen syndrome and the surgeons’ predatory egos. PP SA was himself gender dysphoric at one time — is he just feeling a little jealous? He calls the medicalization of trans people a “church” and a “cult” but I think he was just converted by a different “church” whose believers embrace “harsh scientific truth” as their God and don’t allow for the more diaphanous aspects of human nature.

Anyway, I don’t hate PP Sexual Antics as much as the other two TERFs. I allow for his smugness because he really is as smart as he thinks he is. But sometimes being too smart, too factual, closes you off from your humanity. It’s a delicate balance — I love science, and facts, but I also know that there are bits of being human that are indefinable, that defy scientific scrutiny or factual pedantry.

Farewell, Mr PP Sexual Antics. Enjoy your time in Twitter jail.

Woo-hoo, now it’s time to talk about KAREN, whom I will refer to as Ziwe’s Kanundrum:

Oh what can I say about Ziwe’s Kanundrum??? Well I’ll tell you this — he is a black TERF named Karen. So much kanundrum!

Like Hosey Harker, ZK pretty much thinks all trans women are autogynephilic perverts. But like PP Sexual Antics, ZK is a fairly educated, talented, funny person. He is a music teacher who plays guitar and keyboards and writes some clever songs about being a TERF.

It’s harder to argue against or discredit TERFs (terves, as ZK calls them) when they are witty and charming, and when they are friends with other reputable intellectuals like Ute Hagen.

I’m not sure how ZK and Ute Hagen became friends, but I imagine it was through the academic pipeline. I remember Ute Hagen giving a theater lecture at FSU when I was a student there so many years ago. So these two creative academics are good friends and make videos together. And it so happens that Ute Hagen is a “trans widow”. That means that her husband of many years suddenly came out as a trans woman, and he was indeed of the autogynephilic persuasion. Sadly, he insisted on Ute participating in new and strange sexual configurations that were never before part of their marriage, and which were really against her will. She finally had to admit that their marriage was over, that there was no “working things out” with her husband, and what he was doing to her was toxic and abusive.

“Trans widowhood” is common when one partner in a relationship comes out later in life, well into the marriage, and the other partner cannot adjust to the change. Not all of these situations involve autogynephilia however. Perhaps through his association with Ute, ZK formed the opinion that the vast majority of trans women are homewrecking, wife abusing perverts. 

ZK is a bit of a bully. He sings his TERF songs loud and proudly, he misgenders and provokes and insults the bodies of the trans women who populate youtube and twitter (most of whom are not representative of what an average real-life trans woman is). He likes to take down the white male pervs with his astounding musical ability and wit.

The worst thing about Ziwe’s Kanundrum is that he is so blinded by his own splendor he fails to see the HUGE picture all around him — that far from being all white male perverts, trans women are usually just nice ladies who come in all shades of pink, brown, black, turquoise and ochre. That far from always being the perpetrators of sexual abuse/violence, trans women are usually the victims of such violence. He may be shocked to discover that there are trans women as smart and talented as he is, who don’t spend their days putting on “woman face” and traipsing into locker rooms to expose their “peens.”

SO…that’s all I will say about the Triad of TERFS. I did not include the most famous TERF of all — JK Rowling — because she is pretty boring as TERFs go. Her stance may be much more damaging due to her high visibility but she only strikes occasionally on Twitter and I don’t want to give her any more “air time” than she already gets. 

As for Dave Chappelle — I really don’t think he is Team TERF. I think he only has half an understanding of what a TERF is. I think he is a former transphobe who recognizes that he was woefully under-informed about true trans experiences. I do think his friendship with his token trans friend fostered in him a desire to be more tolerant. I think like most straight men, his fear of trans women came from an overtly sexual place. We all know straight men are terrified of being duped into anything that resembles homosexuality. And that’s what trans women represent to a lot of straight men. Just like TERFs think trans women are autogynephilic pervs who want to invade their spaces, straight men think trans women are homosexuals who want to trick them into doing gay stuff.

I thought I could wrap up this “Holiday Series” in 2 or 3 episodes, but I do feel I have more to say about Detransitioners, Autogynephiles, Surgeries and the Conservative Movement within the trans community. I’m chronicling all this stuff not just for yall’s entertainment, but for my own enlightenment. I can get way too complacent about the state of things in my own little bubble and I need a reality check on occasion.

P.S. I had my first colonoscopy this week! And it was not without some drama. I may tell you all about it in the next episode. HERE in the Octopus Diary.

TRANS TURBULENT AIRLINES

 Hello Friends,

I’m back to continue my deep expose on the current state of the LGB  TQ community. The recent Dave Chappelle comedy special set the table for a huge discourse on issues surrounding trans women in particular — what kinds of jokes are transphobic? [answer: mostly the ones told by non trans people]

who is more marginalized, black folks or trans folks? [answer: black trans folks]

what was the true nature of Dave’s friendship with trans comedian Daphne Dorman? [answer: token trans friend]

What did it really mean when he said he was “Team TERF”? [answer: I am still transphobic but I’m trying to understand things]

Friends, I’ll have to admit that for the past couple of years I was cruising along not even thinking much about “trans issues” at all. During the year that I hid my face under a mask, something magical happened. I finally grew some facial hair — enough to earn “passing privilege” and to forget a time when the horrific slur “ma’am” was hurled at me everywhere I went, even if it was not meant to be hurtful. Some weight gain and some hair loss also contributed to my overall masculine presentation. I was thrilled, and because things were going so well for me transition-wise, I ass-umed all was fine in the community at large.

WELL, I WAS WRONG!!! There is a lot of shit hitting the fan, and some of it is of valid medical concern. Some of it is of valid social concern. And some of it is just pure transphobia rising to the surface because these valid medical and social concerns have started popping up.

I will give an overview of some of the turbulence affecting the trans community, and then I will give direct attention to some of the very special TERFs I have encountered.

First of all, it turns out that a lot of the people who were coming out as trans in 2015 are not really trans. Even back then I thought, is it possible that there are this many transes?? I mean, when I was a kid I knew, like, 2 people who were gender non-conforming, including me. And even we would never admit that we felt the need to live as the opposite gender full time. But in 2015, it seemed like a sizable portion of the human race had been secretly harboring feelings of gender confusion/dysphoria. And it was mostly young people. Kids, teenagers. Not as many people my age were transitioning, but they were out there too. And I felt pretty excited about this — a kind of I-am-not-alone euphoria to counteract the decades of I-am-so-alone dysphoria that had plagued me.

And most of the kids and adults who came out c. 2015 were choosing to medically transition (hormones, surgeries) as well as socially transition (wardrobe, name and pronoun changes). Not only that, but they were being celebrated for their bravery, their self-knowledge! Their journeys seemed like “success only” stories (I felt like I was the only person who wasn’t having a successful transition).

I first heard the term “Detransition” early this year. I saw it on some random youtube channel that had a transphobic tone to it so I didn’t pay much attention. I’ve known people who had to stop their hormone treatments for health reasons, but they still identified as trans. After the Chappelle special, as I was searching for info on Daphne and other trans comedians, I found a slew of “Detransitioners.” These are mostly young folks who were born female, transitioned to male for a period of time, then stopped testosterone treatments and returned to identifying as female. They sometimes call themselves FtMtFs. There aren’t as many MtFtMs going public, but there are a few of those out there too, and they tend to be older. I was surprised to see how many of these detransitioned kids were making youtube content. I know it’s possible they are “plants” from the neo-con universe, but it doesn’t seem like that is the case. They seem very sincere in their confusion and regret. [Keeping in mind that transgender people make up only about 13 % of the world population, these detransitioners make up only 5% of that 13%, but detransitioning was not something that was being talked about in 2015, 2016…].

So…more on detransitioners later. Now let’s talk about Autogynephiles.

A dubious psychologist named Ray Blanchard came up with a typology for transsexualism in males. One type is the homosexual male who is so effeminate he might as well just get castrated and live as a woman. The other type is the heterosexual fetishist who gets turned on by himself as a woman.

I can honestly say I don’t know any trans women who would describe themselves as either.

But apparently the latter type exists, and they are hijacking the whole trans rights movement with their male privilege!! They are taking over women’s spaces, and erasing the whole idea of what it means to be a woman! They are insisting that (biological) women define themselves with new language like “uterus havers” because transwomen are women even though they don’t have uteruses!  They are the force of evil known as Autogynephiles!!

They are the ones who would dress as women to get into the women’s restroom, or the changing room at the gym. And yes, there are documented cases of this happening, unfortunately. There was an autogynephilic transwoman in the UK who got sent to a women’s prison and raped someone. There have been several reports in the US of autogynephiles undressing and exposing their pre-op anatomy at women’s gyms or other women-only spaces. There are accounts of autogynephiles who troll lesbians for not wanting to have sex with them — dick & all. That’s transphobic, they say! Their main goal, it seems, is to play the victim and to make cis women feel uncomfortable.

Again I feel like I should state that I’ve never met any trans woman who fits this description, I’ve only seen/heard about them on the internet, so I am going out on a limb to suppose that they constitute a small percentage of the already small percentage of people who are trans. But they do exist, and that is cause for concern in some areas.

But more about the Autogynephiles later…let’s talk a moment about surgeries.

As a trans man I am familiar with the “trans rites” that constituted a successful FtM transition c. 2015. They included starting HRT (which I did on 12-7-15) a legal name change (which I did on 4-13-16) and “top surgery” aka double mastectomy with nipple grafts (which I did on 10-4-16). Notice I fulfilled my trans rites checklist very quickly — all within a year, and all because I was able to afford all this transformative magic (never forget the privilege!) I say that somewhat cheekily, but I am very grateful to have been able to do all these things rather expediently. It doesn’t happen that way for many trans identified people (and I have my theories about that being the origin story for the whole non binary movement, but we’ll get to that later).

The point is, once I made the decision to transition, I was helped down this path by a team of affirmative medical professionals who questioned me very little. I was under the care of a therapist who hooked me up with an endocrinologist and a “top surgeon.” I was with the therapist and a support group for a year before I made the decision to medically transition. I was 46 years old when I started the “journey.”  Most of the people I met on my way were much younger than me, and they were moving through their trans rites even faster than I was (ie, they didn’t spend a year in therapy first).

Notice I haven’t said anything about “bottom surgery” — which is the surgery everyone means when they ask “Have you had THE SURGERY??”  For FtMs in 2015 bottom surgery was not really part of the package (pun intended). Being on testosterone brings about some magical changes in the lower regions, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned in blogs from that era, and also there are some pretty life-like prosthetics you can buy to use at the urinal. Personally I felt no great need for “bottom surgery.” 

But it seems nowadays, more and more young trans men are opting for Phalloplasty. There is a better, less invasive surgery called Metoidoplasty, which makes use of the natural growth of the clitoris, severs a ligament to let it dangle free and look relatively like a micropenis. This used to be a satisfactory option for most trans men who wanted a little more enhancement down there, and I never heard of any long lasting complications or trouble healing from a Metoidoplasty.

Phalloplasty is a different story. It is a very complicated procedure that does not guarantee great results.

But let’s back up and talk about my own “top surgery” for a minute. I never once heard it called a double mastectomy with nipple grafts. It was always “top surgery” and it sounded so flippantly flamboyant! Everyone was thrilled to schedule their top surgery, including me. In Oct of 2016 I had been on T for 10 months but still did not look or sound very masculine. I was afraid the surgeon would take one look at me and decide that I was not a good candidate for top surgery. But that didn’t happen. I was a paying customer. No one questioned anything.

So I had the surgery and it all went well. I was surprised however by how , uhhh, surgical it felt. It was just top surgery, right? Elective? Cosmetic? I was not prepared for the level of pain and discomfort I felt. Basically I was sliced from the back of each armpit all the way across the chest, with each breast being fully removed, and the nipples traced by a scalpel and grafted back on somewhere higher than they had been.

There was much more healing to do than I was prepared for. They sent me home only hours after the surgery and I was barely able to straighten my spine into full standing position. I felt like I was splitting open. And then I had to get in a car and be driven home. That was scary! I thought, if we so much as bump into anything I am a goner. 

After about 8 weeks of healing I finally felt somewhat normal. I still felt like there was a piece of barb-wire yoked around my chest, right where my nipples had been. In fact, to this day I feel like my chest is tied up tightly with string. One day in 2020 after I finished running, I fell back on my bed and threw my arms up over my head and felt the most acute sensation of flesh ripping. In the days following I saw little pinpricks of blood all around the scar tissue. It has now been 5 years since my surgery and my scars still itch like crazy sometimes. My grafted on nipples itch a lot and I can’t scratch them directly because it’s too sensitive & tingly & weird. So I scratch all around them for relief.

I know this sounds like I’m complaining, or regret having the surgery. But that isn’t the point I’m trying to make. I do NOT regret having a double mastectomy with nipple grafts. I am thrilled about it actually. I could fill many more pages with how much I hated having breasts and how weird it felt to have bags of flesh dangling around & brushing up against my clothes every minute of the day. That I really hated!! I can live with itching and string. 

But I cannot, can NOT, CAN NOT, imagine living with those sensations in my genital area. I cannot imagine having to heal from scalpel wounds and stitches down there. I can’t imagine how much, and for how long, the itching of the scar tissue would affect that region.

I’ve unfortunately heard of so many young people going under the knife —for phalloplasties and vaginoplasties — and having terrible complications. In fact I haven’t heard any account of a phallo- or vaginoplasty that was without complication. These surgeries are not really ready for mass consumption. They are still extremely experimental. The things these kids go through after surgery is beyond anything I’d be willing to suffer. There is an especially cavalier attitude toward vaginoplasties —you cut the dick off and bam! instant woman. That’s how it is portrayed in movies, that’s how it is joked about by idiots. But ask any trans girl who’s undergone a vag-plasty and she will set you straight and hopefully smack the shit out of you for being so stupid.

But enough about THE SURGERIES for now. We will definitely talk more about those later. I can see this blog is getting super long and I haven’t even introduced you to the Triad of TERFs I want you to meet so badly. My god you will hate them…or love them maybe, if you’re hate-reading this blog. But they do deserve a mention in all this mayhem.

So I will mention them. Next time. In the Octopus Diary.

Farewell for now…

What's Black & White & Trans All Over

 Hello My Abandoned Little Blogspace & All the Popeyes Peeping In,

I’m back! Just in time to wrap up this frenzied and fruitful year with a big red Xmes*/Chihuanikkah ribbon! When I say frenzied and fruitful I do not mean halcyon and pear-shaped — I really mean frenzied and fruitful.

By now you know that I began this year with a horrific pharmaceutical side effect called akathisia, that we made the rash decision to not only sell our house in Sarasota but to haul our asses all the way back to Tony “Moonchild” Egler’s incipient horizon, and that somewhere in between I managed to have a chapbook published by Alien Buddha Press and you can still buy your copy today**. (I also have some poems that will be published at different venues starting very soon. I’ll keep you posted on FBhook)

Pretty exciting, ha? Sometimes I want to shout “Make it Stop!” because as you know I like sloth-paced living best and this has been more of a tasmanian dust-devil trajectory.

But what I actually came here to discuss in this very serious space are some of the frenzied & tasmanian developments within the LGB  TQ errr, community[?]  First though, I will answer a couple questions you had regarding akathisia —

1) How can you tell if you’re just really depressed & anxious, or if you’re having a reaction to your medication?

I sort of explained this in the last blog, but it’s been awhile…You can tell if your normal depression/anxiety symptoms get dialed up to 111. Beyond anything that is bearable. You can tell if you are taking any of the medications I mentioned (anti-psychotics, benzos, anti-nauseates) and you just keep feeling worse and worse. You can tell if you feel like your skin is crawling, like your spine is being nibbled by rats and you keep twisting & turning and rocking to stop the ticklish/agony of it. You can tell if your brain is a non stop nightmare zone — senselessly horrific scenes rapidly forming in your head all day. Rapidly. Speedy, unstoppable scrolls of terror. Not just a bad thought here, a sad thought there…but floods of anguish that can’t be reasoned through. The subjective and objective will blur and these nightmarish thoughts will translate into regrets about your whole existence that cast you as some kind of monster or demon who deserves to feel the way you do (and that was the tricky part — I thought I was having valid realizations about what a terrible person I was, and how everything I did in my life was a terrible affront to humanity, especially those closest to me)

Here's the only art I did in 2021 (and I did it on Jan 3rd, so a whole year ago almost) Quintuplets' Supper on the Tour Bus w/ Barefoot Mom

Some of the terrifying thoughts I can remember having throughout the winter of ’20/’21 were of my house suddenly conflagrating and my pets getting burned alive. Knowing that if I didn’t run into the fire to save them I was a terrible selfish person. Hearing their cries of pain and death and not being brave enough to burn with them. Also had a strange fear of all the glass objects in my house — from kitchenware to decorations to windows — seeing them as animate beings that would shatter if I came too close to them and try to embed their tiniest shards into my skin so that it would take painstaking effort to remove them. 

These are not thoughts that I would willingly torment myself with, even if I was very depressed & anxious. It brings to mind what (I’ve heard) happens with postpartum depression. I kept wondering to myself, Why the fuck do I have p.p. depression at my age/gender/childlessness level??

2) What actually causes it?

The uncontrollable movements/thoughts that characterize akathisia come from flooded dopamine centers in your brain, coupled with depleted serotonin centers. It happens to people with schizophrenia/bi-polar/Tourette’s who are on these anti-psychotic medications for a long time, or if they try to stop them. It’s kind of a round robin of side effects being worse than the diagnosis, going off meds, experiencing symptoms of diagnosis, going back on meds that will eventually make your skin crawl. Caring, experienced professionals are needed to recognize and help manage these precarious balances. 

It can also happen with recreational drugs like cocaine. Key is knowing your own mental/emotional playing field well enough to recognize when suicidal ideations feel like electrical cattle prods rather than well thought-out end-of-life solutions. 

[Not advocating suicide here, but I respect those who make the decision to end their lives, if it is indeed a choice to escape insurmountable circumstances]

Which brings me to my intended topic regarding the LGB  TQ’s… starting with

DAVE & DAPHNE

By now we’ve all seen the latest Dave Chappelle comedy special and have our own opinions about how transphobic it was or wasn’t. I posted my own response to it on Facebook, along with an array of responses from the trans community (as it exists on Youtube). And if you’re one of those people who had to cry out about Well, why was the part about child sex abuse in the church glossed over? OR Why didn’t the joke about Space Jews cause a huge riotous protest? I’ll explain —

a) the punchline about Dave loving to cum in the priest’s face was a triumphant punch UP against the church & its conclave of pedophiles. ‘Mmmmkay? 

b) the joke about the ’Space Jews’ was met with a lot of groans from the audience. But I’ll bet this was Dave’s way of punching up at rich Hollywood executives (we’ve heard forever that Hollywood is run by old Jewish guys)

c) the bulk of the show was not about Dave’s complicated relationship with priests or Jewish people. It was about his complicated relationship with the LGB  TQs

[I’ll explain later why I keep separating the LGB from the TQ. There is a rift in the community and it is happening between those particular letters. I also don’t include the I or the A because intersex people largely don’t want to be lumped under the umbrella of sexual/gender identities. Intersex is a medical condition and most intersex people lean into the binary one way or the other by puberty. The A can mean Asexual or Ally —and asexuals, largely, are turned off by the overt sexualization of the whole LGB  TQ movement. Allies are allies and can be offended on our behalf (or not) but are generally cisgender, heteronormative folks.]

Anyway, the special pretty much has Mr Chappelle pitting the Black Lives Matter movement against the LGB  TQ movement (which in his mind is an all white movement? it seems?). He sees the LGB  TQs as very successful at effecting change in the world & the BLM movement as not so successful. Which may or may not be true, but totally trivializes the need for both movements to be equally successful.

 

Dave makes some pretty graphic jokes about trans women’s anatomy and way-of-being in the world. Which is not what offended ME personally — I allow for sexually gratuitous humor because I grew up in the 80s and I’m kind of inured to that explicit lowness of brow, especially from men. Yawn, I say. Dave is a straight, cis man who likes pussy and LOVES his dick. Wow! Who would’ve guessed.

What I hated about those jokes is that they demonstrated a total lack of understanding of what it means to be a trans woman. What gender dysphoria feels like…WHY a (biological) man would reject his body/social role/privilege even… to be a WOMAN (whether it’s a woman who still has a dick to whip out in front of the urinal, or one who has opted for that “impossible pussy” that just isn’t real pussy).

In my opinion, if you don’t have a deep holistic understanding of things you’re trying to satirize, you should probably steer clear of satirizing, or mocking, or demeaning these things, especially if these things are human beings.

Let’s talk about Daphne now. She was a friend of Dave’s from way back — 2006, I believe he said — before he even had his Comedy Central show. They somehow became engaged in a heckling dialogue at one of his stage shows, and Dave said he just couldn’t understand why she would want to go through life pretending to be a woman, and she replied that he didn’t need to understand why, he just needed to accept that she was having a human experience.

A comedian herself, Daphne was one who could ’suck it up.’ She was strong of spirit and character, not a petulant little snowflake who would stomp out of the theater in response to a little heckling. She even gave Dave a pass on understanding her — just believe I’m having a human experience. And Dave liked that. It freed him up to continue thinking (and joking) negatively about the trans people who weren’t so accommodating. What’s their fucking problem???

Now, I’ll have to admit that I’m probably more like Daphne than your average Millennial or Gen Z trans activist. I would rather fight ignorance with razor-sharp humor than foot-stomping insistence on conformity to the new world order. But I’ll also admit that my razor-sharpness has dulled in my old age, and sometimes all I can do is grumble Baaa, not this shit again…

…and that’s pretty much how I felt about this whole special and the fall-out from it —Baaaaaa!! Why are we still at square one on this??

What I discovered though, in trying to discern just where the public at large stood on trans issues in 2021, is that we are not at square one at all.  Somewhere in 2015 we may have all been at square one. But now some of us are at square 3,817 and some of us are at square -1billion.

So…let’s return to Daphne. She and Dave remained friends for many years. He invited her to open for him when he had a show in her hometown. She continued to stand up to hecklers like a champ. She continued to be tough & suck it all up. She defended Dave when TRAs (trans rights activists — more on them later) boycotted him and called for his “cancellation” — in 2019 I think — after his previous special, which was also very focused on the LGB  TQ community.

Then the TRAs turned on Daphne. 

And here’s where the whole thing goes pear-shaped for me. Because Daphne ended up committing suicide by jumping from a roof.  And Dave joked that it was the most dude-like thing she ever could’ve done, and said she would’ve loved that joke, and that it was the fault of the TRAs who attacked her online after she defended him…

…and I had to wonder if any of that was true. Would Daphne have loved the joke about her suicide? Was it the TRAs who forced her to her death? Was Dave using Daphne —his token trans friend! — as a shield against those he perceived to be too sensitive to suck up his brand of cis/hetero humor? Would Dave appreciate a white guy making insensitive jokes about black people just because he had a black friend? [I can answer that one — in fact Dave answered it in the 00s when he walked out of his lucrative contract with Comedy Central because of how many white people were appropriating his jokes that made fun of black culture.]

It turns out that after Daphne defended Dave in 2019, about 9 people on Twitter came after her for supporting his transphobic rhetoric. (Who knows how many in-real-life TRAs may have harassed her?) It also turns out that Daphne had a lot of other aggravating circumstances in her life — money problems, estrangement from her children, other family conflicts — at the time of her suicide.

Anyway…the special went from comedy to tragedy very quickly in my eyes. But my deep dive into the rabbit hole of post-Chappelle fall-out from the post modern trans rights movement was very …confusing in an enlightening way. This blog has gotten wayyyyy llooonnnngggg, and I know your attention spans are crying out for mercy so I will be kind and wrap it up —

 — I still have a lot to say though. Recall that Dave proclaimed himself “Team TERF” at the beginning of the special. I’ve known about TERFs for awhile now, and my understanding was that they were a minority faction of the latest feminist wave that were douche-y man-haters and their hate extended to trans women because they happened to be “biological men.”

I had no idea how douche-y and vocal TERFs actually were though, and I will regale you with everything I’ve learned about TERFs and TRAs and Autogynephiles and trans-medicalism and conservative trans bloggers and Detransitioners and vaginoplasties and phalloplasties and all the other “trans rites” surgeries and Jazz Jennings who returned to TV this week instead of starting classes at Harvard. Oh, and the rift between the LGBs and the TQs… 

…so very much fascinating sociology! HERE in the Octopus Diary.

****************

*Xmes = rhymes with Hermes (the fancy scarf designer)

**You can get my poetry collection True Stories of the Odd Equinox here