I have decided to make another blog that focuses more specifically on my de-transitioning from male-to-”female” transsexual, back to being a man. This is the first part of “my story.” I’ll post the rest of it in the next couple of days. In future posts I will try to provide a little more introspection and insight into my de-transitioning process.
I’m putting together this site because I, a man, was arrogant and delusional enough for a dozen or so years to think that it was appropriate for me to try to live “as a woman.” The “gender identity” movement is on a fast track to being normalized in wealthy countries, and I have realized how harmful this is for real women. “Transgender” status is also now routinely being pushed on small children, and a rapidly increasing awareness of this is what initially motivated me to make my other blog, “I’m Not Transgender Any More,” which generally focuses on providing perspective and analysis about the harms in “transgender” and “transsexualism.” In this blog, I will focus on my personal process.
The details of my early life are a goldmine for anyone who may wish to discern psychological components in why I became a transsexual. Believe me, I’m well aware of them all. I grew up poor in a rural community, the eldest of six children. My father was out of the picture. My mom raised us, but she had tremendous drug and alcohol problems and I had a huge amount of responsibility. She had a thing for violent tough guys, and I not only witnessed a lot of domestic violence, I was subject to it. In my early teens, we moved around a lot (e.g. I went to five high schools in the first three semesters). I left home at age 15 as an “emancipated minor.”
I remember at around age 5 believing that I was going to grow up to be a lady. From age 8 I would occasionally (and of course secretly) cross-dress, checking out clothes in my mom’s closet. When I was 12 I got it into my head that I should go into the city to walk around for a day, “as a girl.” I did so, and perhaps that’s a story for another day, or not. Suffice to say that it gave me confidence.
From my mid-teens, I will admit to a certain amount of autogynephilia. Sometimes I masturbated with fantasies of my self “as a woman,” mainly just going about everyday life and being accepted as a woman, but occasionally — and this disturbed me, because due to my mom’s violent boyfriends I hated men — having men flirt with me as a woman. The fantasies didn’t get into having sex with men.
I continued intermittently cross-dressing, gathering clothes where I could, and then intermittently feeling guilty and stupid and throwing them out. There would be extended periods, especially when I was in love (with girls) in which I didn’t cross-dress. However, I always “identified” with women. I cringed when people said “he” or “him” in reference to me, or explicitly referred to me as male. My hair was always very long. It was the ’70s so it wasn’t a big deal. I totally refused to cut it short. I had a fair number of girlfriends (in succession), and I guess you could say that I was a very attractive, intelligent young man. I was a keen surfer and worked as a landscaper. I greatly enjoyed my sex life. I nearly always told my girlfriends (those with whom I was together for more than a few months) about my feelings, but in the few times I ever “dressed” with them, it felt kind of weird to be in that context.
I felt somehow that inside I was a “woman,” but I didn’t know what to do with that information. Mind you, we had no internet. It may be hard for young folks to imagine this, but nobody talked about these things. I thought I was unique in having these feelings. The public library had no book on the topic. There were a couple of books that briefly discussed homosexuality, but I mostly ruled that out. I couldn’t do so completely because I was aware of my occasional fantasies.
Then one day in a used bookshop I encountered the book version of the “Christine Jorgenson Story.” From that point, I thought I saw a way forward, but didn’t know how I would get there. It still didn’t quite add up, because Jorgensen liked men and I really liked women.
When I was 19 I started trying to learn more about “sex change surgery” in the modern day (Christine Jorgenson had been 25 or so years earlier). Suddenly, however, I learned one day I was to become a father. After a few hours freaking out I realized that I needed to “step up,” take responsibility and raise my child to adulthood. I decided that any kind of sex change would have to wait until my child grew up.
My son’s mom and I split up pretty quick in terms of our relationship, but we were amiable so we stayed together for a few years to raise our son. After that we shared custody 50/50, and from his 10th year I raised him as a single parent. I continued with my secret occasional cross-dressing shenanigans, but no-one, especially my son, ever knew. I finished college and got a masters’ degree part-time, while working part-time as a landscaper and also raising my son.
My friends were mostly women. A couple of close friends were radical feminists and I really learned a lot from them. This was when I discovered Mary Daly’s books and Janice Raymond’s amazing book “The Transsexual Empire.” In reading these books I began to realize that a medicalized transsexual life was not for me, and that I would just need to work through and deal with, as a man, whatever sense I had of myself as a woman. I realized how hung up I was on stereotypic notions of appearance and behavior, and I understood myself and my “female” feelings from a higher level of consciousness (i.e. from a perspective that took patriarchal programming into account, the medical industry, earth-based spirituality and my own psychological pain). I had also done a lot of reading in comparative mythology and depth psychology, and I was really working on a mature, realistic sense of myself. I considered myself to be a male radical feminist.
It was hard for me to raise a son. Because my father had not been around, and because all the men in my young life had been violent irresponsible idiots, I had no idea how to be a father, and really just made it up as I went along. I made a ton of mistakes. I said a lot of stupid things. I did provide a home with his own bed every night of his life, and made sure he had sufficient food and clothes every day. I made sure he got braces on his teeth, the latest shoes, and all the usual things kids want. As I say, though, I made a lot of mistakes. When my son was a teenager (and you know how teenagers can be), we had angry screaming arguments. One day, though, my son kicked me and broke a few of my ribs. He hadn’t meant to kick me that hard, but he was unrepentant and thought it was pretty funny. I decided he needed to move out. He was 17. I paid his rent in rooms he rented for the next year.
To back up for a moment, there was a period of a couple of years when my son was a teenager in which I was the subject of a criminal prosecution. A few years earlier, I had delivered some drugs from a drug-dealing friend to someone that turned out to be a federal agent. My friend later got busted, and although my part was admitted by the government to be tiny, they still prosecuted me. I got out of it without a scratch, but as you might imagine, this was an incredibly stressful addition to my already insanely stressful life and responsibilities.
Anyway, my son moved out, and I lived alone for the first time in years. As I say, I had been through an extraordinarily difficult period. I was no longer in touch with my feminist friends. I lived in the suburbs and did freelance work from home. I was really depressed and my doctor put me on antidepressants. What I really have (because of early life) is PTSD, so I ended up taking a very large dose of antidepressants. I was still depressed, though. I just felt really out of my body, emotionally numb, hopeless. I was cross-dressing at home. I didn’t think very deeply about anything. I didn’t want to surf, go for walks or do anything. I felt extremely bleak. I felt that my “little spark of life” was very small. I was isolated from all my friends (self-isolated).
It occurred to me that my life felt so empty and bleak, perhaps I should leave it behind. I didn’t want to kill myself because I knew it would hurt everyone I loved. I decided to see a therapist, almost as a last resort. In our discussions, we talked a lot about my “transgender” feelings. We seemed to talk about this a lot. My therapist was supportive, and validated me in having such feelings. I began to feel slightly better, mainly in the context that I was validated in feeling that inside I was really a woman. In fact thinking about “the inner woman” [sic] was about the only thing that made me feel better. I thought about this a huge proportion of the time, and looked at/gathered info from all the transgender web sites of the late ’90s.
I encountered Dr. Anne Lawrence’s web page and read some of his writing about autogynephilia. This concept rang a bell for me, as it was undeniable that I felt this to some degree, but at the time I felt so dissociated from myself, beaten up, broken down that I didn’t want to think about it. There were several vehement critiques against Dr. Lawrence and autogynephilia, written by true-believer hardcore autogynephiliacs, and I allowed myself to be swayed by their arguments.
The thing about autogynephilia is that it can become obsessive, a fixed idea. I am sure my therapist didn’t understand that, if she had even heard of the term. Nor did I, at the time. Once I felt OK about my cross-dressing and notions of myself “as a woman,” recognizing myself in that “identity” became an extremely important aspect of my life.
I thought, well, maybe I should live as a woman, see what happens. “Transgender” seemed to be emerging into the mass culture. I didn’t want to do anything surgically, or even (at the time) to take real hormones. I wasn’t into guys and didn’t think I needed a fuckhole to nowhere. I was also still cautious because I remembered some of what I had read in Janice Raymond. Besides that, I had learned through my research online that the “gender reassignment surgery” was super-invasive and potentially very dangerous. I was incredulous that not only were transgender people obsessed with having such extreme, unnecessary surgery, but doctors were giving it to them.
I began to take herbal supplements that contained estrogenic compounds, but were not actually estrogen. Nothing changed physically, but I thought I felt better. I felt fortunate at age 39 in not having lost any head hair at all; in having very little facial hair and almost no body hair; and being rather “small-boned.” One day I simply put myself together “as a woman” and went downtown to buy some groceries. Nothing seemed any different, nobody said anything or looked at me funny. From then on I just started living “as a woman.”
I thought, well, maybe I should live “as a woman,” see what happens. I didn’t want to do anything surgically, or even (at the time) to take real hormones. I wasn’t into guys and didn’t think I needed a fuckhole to nowhere. I was also still cautious because I remembered some of what I had read in Janice Raymond. Besides that, I had learned through my research online that the “gender reassignment surgery” was super-invasive and potentially very dangerous. I was incredulous that not only were transgender people obsessed with having such extreme, unnecessary surgery, but doctors were giving it to them.
I began to take herbal supplements that contained estrogenic compounds, but were not actually estrogen. Nothing changed physically, but I thought I felt better. I felt fortunate at age 39 in not having lost any head hair at all; in having very little facial hair and almost no body hair; and although I was normal male height (and thus somewhat tall for a woman) being rather “small-boned.” One day I simply put myself together “as a woman” and went downtown to buy some groceries. Nothing seemed any different, nobody said anything or looked at me funny. From then on I just started living “as a woman.” I decided on a female name for myself.
Soon I had a visit with my doctor. She was surprised, but we talked for a long time and while cautious, she seemed supportive. We were mostly trying at that time to find the right dosage of the right antidepressant for me. I had been taking a really gnarly one (“Effexor”) that slightly elevated my mood, but as I say, really made me feel like I wasn’t in my body. I had a sort of plastic smile and fake-cheerful persona.
[About a year later, I began taking estrogen. By this time, I guess from the herbs, or maybe because I had gained some weight, I had some fat in my breast area. My breasts didn't look female breasts, it looked more like I had gynecomastia. I also had a thyroid condition, so that may have been part of it. I really can't remember whether I asked for the estrogen or my doctor suggested it. I know that she was concerned about the effects on my liver and kidneys of the estrogenic herbs I was taking. I'm going to ask her about "who suggested estrogen" when I see her next week. It was probably me. Anyway, I began taking estrogen.]
The reactions of my friends and family, when I would meet up with them and they’d see the new me and learn my new name, ranged from strongly supportive to cautiously supportive: “if you’re sure it’s the right thing.” No-one pushed back or suggested that I needed to step away and think about this on a deeper level. As I say, I was out of contact with my old feminist friends, who would have steered me right.
My son was living overseas by then, and we hadn’t been communicating on good terms. I thought I’d wait to tell him when next I saw him. Before long one of my sisters told him. He was upset and after a couple of e-mails we didn’t communicate for a few years. Later we got back in touch and saw each other and I explained my process to him. He was never happy about it but he accepted me as I was.
As I was working from home, I didn’t need to “come out” at work. I did need to change my ID etc. It was remarkably easy. I had understood there to be sort of a “Catch-22,” in which you couldn’t change your gender and name on your driver’s license until you had done so on your Social Security account, and vice-versa. Instead, the young woman at the motor vehicle department simply smiled and made the changes.
Freelance work was drying up with the dot-com crash, and I needed to get a job. I set my sights on a prestigious local university’s medical school. This university was located in a nearby city. A research assistant job came up. I interviewed “as a woman,” they liked me and I got the job. I moved into the city to be close to work. I was 41 years old. I envisioned myself as a middle-aged lady, settling into a quiet routine, a well-worn path between work and home, growing old gracefully and without much fuss.
I had laser treatments to remove my facial hair. After five treatments it was completely gone. Every couple of weeks or so a little straggler still shows up somewhere.
I guess you could say my transition was sort of “stealth,” in that I seemed to pass quite well, and in most ways I moved easily in women’s spaces. I never announced that I was transgender; I never talked about it with my friends or colleagues; I didn’t join up with any transgender organizations or activities in the city. At the same time, while I had a pretty good “female” voice, I didn’t use it all the time at work; I just used my normal voice, which is fairly soft anyway but is obviously still a male voice. (Outside of work, friends and family, I used my somewhat softer “female” voice.) All of my colleagues certainly knew my status, though we never talked about it. They treated me as a normal female colleague. It was really easy for me. My whole life was going easily.
I was a real loner and only kept in touch with a couple of friends from the old days. I had no sexual or romantic relationships. I was not friends with any other “transgender” people and I strenuously avoided aligning myself with or joining the “transgender community” or “GLBT groups.”
As the years passed, my career was going remarkably well. I needed to travel overseas for various scientific conferences. It took a little doing, but I got a one-year US passport marked “female.” I was able to renew this for several consecutive years. They wouldn’t grant me a normal 10-year one unless I had the sex change surgery. I figured that I’d probably need to keep renewing it, which seemed silly — would they rather give me a normal male passport after several years with a female passport?
Then I learned that “gender reassignment surgery” was available to me as health benefit through my employer. I was very sure that I didn’t want the whole nine yards, but I began to think about having an orchiectomy. This seemed a much safer option. I wasn’t much bothered by any testosterone I generated, but thought it would be good to get rid of it anyway. I figured that this was my life now, and I was OK with it; I would never go back to being a man; I might as well have the orchiectomy. Also, jeans would fit better; and I would be able to get a normal 10-year passport (the surgeon’s letter can be sufficiently vague about what exactly was done). I’m only half-joking about these last two. Kind of stupid, but these were part of my rationale. So, I had the orchiectomy. Later I got a normal US passport with the “female” designation.
I traveled to various countries around the world. I never had any problems at international borders or anywhere else.
I felt conflicted sometimes about my path “as a woman,” especially after a few years into it as I went off the antidepressants and began to remember “who I had been” in my younger days. I had thrown myself intensely into my career and had pretty much left my former life behind. I had previously been very much “in my body,” a landscaper, quite athletic. I thought sometimes about what I used to know before, and how I felt now about my life. I began reconstructing the process that lead me to transition, taking into account my PTSD/depression and suicidality of the time. I had evidently used my lifelong “gender” conflict as an escape route. On some levels, I realized that my lifestyle was completely bogus but I made excuses for myself: I thought, well, this is becoming sort of mainstream now in the liberal city where I live, go with the flow. I also felt oddly “safe,” in that my life had become a simple routine of going from home to work and back. I thought: I’m not particularly happy, but if I keep things going this way I won’t have any unexpected stress. I thought: I have made some irreversible decisions; I guess I should just stay the course. Also, still taking estrogen, I was in sort of a placid and semi-dreamy state. (I use these terms advisedly — I do not mean that women are placid and semi-dreamy — I mean that when males take estrogen, we have a sort of placid, dreamy and easy-going feeling about ourselves. At least I did.)
To sum it up, my life “as a woman” was going well, 13 years into it. I was content with my life. I had “successfully transitioned.” I had “assimilated.” Although I was lonesome and not particularly happy, I was doing all right. It would never have occurred to me to go back to being a man. It seemed inconceivable.
Then I met up again after many, many years with a feminist friend. She was not comfortable with me “as a woman,” but our conversations were very good. She was concerned about the long-term health effects of taking estrogen, and advised me to stop taking it. I felt she had a point and I did so.
After a few weeks the excuses I had been making for myself no longer seemed to hold water. Without estrogen in my body, I felt that I was thinking much more critically and acutely. Males should not take estrogen. I became increasingly aware that no matter how simple it was for me to live as a woman, and no matter how invested I was in living that way, it was still a mask, a put-on, a special effect, an illusion, an act of make-believe. Beyond that, it was intensely misogynistic and harmful to real women. How could I have ignored that, especially when I already completely understood it? The fact was that I was never female and I was always male. I realized that I wanted to be honest. I wanted to be myself, and while my female persona was a key part of myself, she was still a persona. Each of us has many personae (that we deploy in different contexts with different people etc.), and it’s not a bad thing to have them, but it was becoming clear to me that primarily inhabiting this female persona was just a way to avoid pain and to avoid knowing and being my real self. Also, I was aware that my female persona (and “the woman inside” from the time before my transition) was probably sort of an “alter” persona that I developed as a result of early trauma in my life — she was to some mild degree a dissociated identity, a way of coping. I was meditating a lot on these things, and crying every day.
I discovered the radical feminist blogs of GallusMag and others. I had not kept up at all with “transgender” issues and was not at all aware of the vicious, violent, disgusting and depraved nature of the “transwomen’s” discourse with radical feminists. It made me feel bad to be associated with anything transgender. It reinforced my realizations that I was propping up a phony world.
For a little while I still thought that maybe if I didn’t “girl it up” to much (i.e. if I presented myself in a somewhat more tomboy or butch way than I had done previously), it might be a good middle way to go.
Then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks that if I was serious about being honest with myself and the world, if I really wanted to live a life that would be authentic, natural, grounded and truthful, I really needed to de-transition and be a man again. Partially honest is pretty darn close to dishonest. This was less than four weeks ago. It was really hard for me to accept this. I cried a lot. I felt that I was killing off my female persona. I really liked myself (in that persona) and was afraid of being a man again.
But as I began moving into that space, buying male clothes, presenting myself as male etc., something interesting began to happen.
At first I was extremely uncomfortable. I had taken all the polish off my nails, so they looked like shit. I wasn’t wearing any of my jewelry or make-up. I had my hair organized more like a man’s style and I didn’t like it. I realize that these considerations are superficial patriarchal expressions of “femininity,” but I just mean that I felt very awkward leaving the house. I had a sort of androgynous get-up on. When I first went shopping for men’s clothes I went to an “off-price” department store. The clothes were so ugly and banal that I just couldn’t bring myself to buy anything. I had a few moments when I questioned what I was doing. I went home and cried some more.
The next day I glumly went to a different store and tried again. To my surprise, I thought, well, this would look good on me; and I guess this would too. So I spent a bunch of money there on men’s clothes, as well as at another store. I ordered a couple pair of men’s boots online, for next-day delivery.
Trying on all the clothes and shoes at home, I had to admit that I looked
I had been framing a question in my mind: Would I be able to “pass” as a man? But then I realized that it wasn’t about passing. I was already a man, no matter what, and whether or not other people said “ma’am” or “sir” to me, I was still male and it was their trip if they thought I was female, not mine.
So I began just going out and about in everyday life, as a man. I felt strangely relaxed and comfortable. This persisted for several days. In fact, I even felt somewhat empowered, not because I was now a man and could fully take advantage of male privilege, but because I was simply not trying to camouflage the fact in every aspect of life that I was a man. Everything was easier, more honest and straightforward. As a “woman,” I had passed easily, but it is undeniable that through comportment, voice and make-up etc. I had constantly made efforts, every hour of every day, to prevent people (apart from colleagues, to whom I spoke in my normal voice) from ever figuring out I was male. Now I didn’t have to think about this.
“Clothes don’t make the man,” and there were many times when I forgot to recognize myself as a man. In other words, I was sometimes still talking in my “female” voice, or glancing at a mirror to check my make-up (which of course I was no longer wearing) or hair (which no longer really required any fine-tuning). Again, I mention these stereotypic “feminine” behaviors because they were a basic part of how I had lived for many years.
I neglected to mention that for the preceding several weeks in which I had been having these realizations, I had been on vacation from work (yes, I know how incredibly lucky I am to have a job with such a benefit). This was vitally useful time for me, and I had spent quite a bit of it going through this process, crying, meditating and scribbling in my journal. Now it was time to go back to work.
Just as I have never made a big thing about “zomg i’m transgender lol,” I didn’t want to show up at work and tell everyone that I was now a man. Serendipitously perhaps, I had usually been doing sort of a tomboy look for a few months before my vacation, still with make-up, jewelry etc., and “women’s clothes” (i.e. woman’s cut of jeans, flannel shirts etc.) but at least hinting towards a “guy’s” look.
Back in the office, a couple of colleagues at work have looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows, but everything remains normal, collegial and good. Pronouns are exclusively “she” and “her,” and we are still using my female name. In a way, I think that’s all right. I don’t need to force any kind of change on my colleagues. I enjoy my relationships with my colleagues and there is no need to blow everything up. I am not going to exert myself in manliness.Women wear men’s clothes all the time, many also don’t wear jewelry or make-up.
(For that matter, all my ID is female; it would be a huge hassle to change it all back – so I think I won’t. If I need to “show ID” for anything I think my smooth face and a soft version of my voice would get me through it.)
I realize that in the context of my work life, I am perhaps not proceeding with as much righteousness and “honesty” in my de-transitioning as I had hoped to do. I am still working on this. It’s not like I need to go out and embody & re-enact a bunch of stereotypic male behaviors, or work on somehow making my appearance to be more unequivocally male. I am still just myself and in most ways I am not doing anything differently. People frequently called me “miss” and “ma’am” long before I ever transitioned. Externally, my life is pretty much the same as it was before. I am just no longer trying to make people think I am female.
To be honest, I am not sure yet what to do about the restroom issue at work. I really don’t want to start using the men’s room. This would be upsetting to me and to my colleagues. For the moment, I have used the women’s restroom. I have not used any restroom in public spaces since I began this de-transitioning. It is sort of horrifying to think of using the men’s room again, but eventually I’m going to have to do it.
Anyway, I know that I am still hung up in many ways about clothes, appearance, “femininity,” “masculinity,” etc. I am working on all this. It has only been a short time and it takes a while to work through it. There may be some bits among these introduction posts that are somewhat contradictory.
Thanks for reading this. Future posts on this blog will focus on my ongoing de-transitioning process.
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