What’s the difference between people for whom transition works and people who go on to detransition?
Time. Expectations. Unloading the language. Unplugging from trans spaces. Setting gender aside and focusing on the whole self. Realizing what it’s possible to achieve through transition isn’t good enough. Reconnecting with your body and nature.
I don't think there is any inherent difference between someone for whom transition will work and someone for whom transition won't. Expectation management, understanding that transition can only change the body, these things predict how well someone might live post transition. But I absolutely don't believe there is an inherent difference between say, dysphoric butch lesbians like myself and same sex attracted trans men that makes us fundamentally different kinds of people. We simply have different approaches to the same struggle.
There is no "inner self" or "deeper process of self-discovery" or whatever, trying to figure out if you are "truly trans" or not.
While I sometimes felt dysphoria and wanted a male form, I knew the male form I wanted was not achievable via HRT and surgery. Even after doing all that, I’d still be trans. I’d never be 100% the same as a cis man, and if my gender identity was so fluid (as it often is for non-binary people), then surely I was gonna experience dysphoria whether I transitioned or not. The deciding factor was that not transitioning risked fewer complications than transitioning.
The implication behind the question is that there exists a tangible state of being trans that can be measured and defined. The unfortunate truth is that there has never been any evidence of that. How do you definitively measure the verity of somebodies faith and conviction in their identity?... Over the years of seeing all these people with absolutely nothing in common to be able to point at and say "yes, this person definitely will benefit from transition", it has led me to believe that being transgender means one thing and one thing alone: a person for whom transition improved their quality of life and continues to do so. There is honestly no other criteria that links trans people together that has not also been exhibited in a great number of detransitioners… this board is full of those who are managing their lives with past or current dysphoria. Granted, the common link between us all is that we attempted transition in the first place. Would it be possible to say that we would be managing as well if we did not have the experience of a failed attempt at transition? Possibly not, it's not easy to say. From a personal perspective I believe that the management of my dysphoria had to come from me and me alone and that meant that I had to experience for myself that transition wasn't helping. Certainly I would have fully resisted any kind of therapy that tried to sway me down an alternate path.
It's hard to say there is a "real" transgender identity, immune to detransition, when the experience of many detransitioners is that our identity felt very real at the time.
If you spend a lot of time in trans circles, a bit of a "detox" from those circles to see if your feelings persist without outside encouragement
Nothing. There really isn't a true trans. I had severe gender dysphoria and transitioned. Now I am going back because it isnt enough. I want to be the true me. You can deal with gender dysphoria by learning why you feel that way and working on fixing it.
It’s hard to sum up all the factors that played into it. I think one thing that helped overall was age. When I was younger I felt violently uncomfortable in my body and in the role that I felt I had to fulfill as a woman. I’d rarely to never seen women portrayed the way I wanted to be and felt internally. (I didn’t realize that at the time, at the time I just thought I had dysphoria). By the time I was in my mid twenties I’d become comfortable with what used to feel like a horrible irreconcilable conflict. Time and age helped me see that the baggage I had about being female was just baggage and that actually nothing was wrong with my body. Also my hatred of my body was just me projecting unresolved traumas and society expectations inward…. And when I got a little older, knew myself better, and had more perspective, the gender dysphoria completely went away because it was all just symptomatic of something else. But I really can’t emphasize enough how it did NOT feel that way at the time.
For me, personally: Just because the term 'gender dysphora' seems to explain so very many feelings and experiences, spanning from profoundly abstract to uncannily specific and going back to toddlerhood, doesn't mean that grouping them all together in this dysphoric/trans framing is the right way to conceptualize myself. When I learned the term gender dysphoria it was a perfect solution that gave me clarity from only one angle, and it made my discomfort unignorably sharp… Simply aging into my mid twenties was the first big factor in reaching that place of peace, the second was thinking of female and woman as totally neutral/undefining without cultural expectations, and the third was getting in touch with the natural world, seperated from the realm of societal orgasnition - Going for runs and walks in the woods, stargazing and astronomy.
I discarded the entire idea of gender identity as I found it incredibly toxic to my life, and I'm happier the less I think about it. I can just be an individual, regardless of gender. In the end it's about what works for you. The reason people immediately jump to thinking they are trans when they experience any kind of alienation of gender-related discomfort is because that is the messaging we receive: if you feel uncomfortable in any way with a gendered characteristic, you're trans and that the only hope for you is transition. In reality it's not that fucking simple at all.
I think the current model puts the importance of the mind over the importance of the body. But really they are connected, and we must have a healthy body to have a healthy mind. And to...well. live.
One thing I'd keep in mind is that the average person is probably what you'd consider "agender". Most people who've never been exposed to gender discourse don't "identify" as a gender at all. It's like eye color--people are aware of their sex, but it's not a significant part of every person's identity.
So I would recommend framing such considerations not as "am I really trans?", but more like "what do I really want? Why? What can I realistically expect from these choices, and is it worth the risks?" Because plenty of us here could still be considered "really trans" by some arbitrary metrics. Some of us still experience dysphoria even, or would choose to be the opposite sex biologically if it were really possible. And some people experienced serious harm and regret from transitioning when it was not a good solution for them, but was pushed heavily as the only option.
That Reddit quote is the best thing I’ve read about the experience of someone who is gender dysphoric; clearly written and the outcome of long years of experience. Human in fact.
It's heartening, though also sad, to read these reflections on maturation and emergence from the toxic hothouse "gender identity" asylum by someone intelligent and self-aware. It shows how much we stand to learn from detransitioners that probably cannot be learnt any other way.