"Mourning the version of me that never got to exist"
There is nothing good that comes out of reinterpreting your life through this lens:
Three months in, it's starting to sink in why so many don't make it.
Before I started transitioning I was content with my life. Not really happy or sad, just sedated. Almost blissfully unaware of the body horror of gender dysphoria that was so deeply repressed.
Initially I thought I was one of those people who had no issues with my body, and was purely motivated by the gender euphoria of being a woman. After getting my hands on estrogen starting my transition I'm realizing that's definitely not the case. I've had some of my highest highest [highs], but also some of my lowest lows in the past three months.
I've been spending an increasing amount of time mourning the version of me that never got to exist. Maybe in another life, she started transitioning before male puberty and could live a happy life. I feel like it's a never ending treadmill and no matter how much progress I make, I'm never going to escape the pain of not having been born a cis girl.
Six months ago, his Reddit posts were all about audio engineering. Four months ago, he started experimenting with gender instead. He went from being “content” with his life and having “no issues” with his body to contemplating suicide because of the body he’ll never have. He’s just 26 years old.
At the outset (again, this was just four months ago), he said he wasn’t sure what gender “even is.” He describes autogynephilic fantasies: he imagines himself having sex as a woman. He describes being “euphoric” when he “feels girly” (genuinely not sure what “feeling girly” means, though I have a guess what the euphoria refers to). He starts posting to r/traps, a sexually explicit subreddit for trans-identified men, asking who wants to “gag on [his] goth mommy girlcock?” He cheers on his fellow MTFs for “serving cvnt.” He says he doesn’t feel bad until he puts on a “femme” outfit: “Then I feel all the other dysphoric things I hear other MTF girls talking about.” He credits trying on his girlfriend’s clothes, “Cyberpunk anime,” Abigail (Oliver) Thorn, and Contrapoints for his trans realization, though one rather suspects porn had a hand (pun intended) in it, too.
He wanted to see a therapist before starting estrogen (just for a “vibe check”) but the scheduling didn’t work out. Like so many men who go trans, he’s a software engineer who hates his job and dreams of a future free from the burdens of employment, though he’s rather fuzzy on how this might come about. He works “99% remotely” and seems to spend his free time playing video games and arguing about trans issues on Reddit. He seems to be politically radicalizing alongside everything else. He’s attracted by talk of violent revolution and the need for self-defense. He trades in “trans genocide” rhetoric.
Over the course of a few months, he’s gone from wondering if his attraction to “girly” things made him trans or a woman in any meaningful sense of the word to claiming that he has an “estrogen dominated body that is equally as biologically female as any other woman” (“and I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings pookie”). He expresses the belief that if a [man] “started HRT before puberty she would have a body entirely indistinguishable from a non trans woman.” He disparages “standard issue starter vaginas,” which can’t possibly compete with the “deluxe luxury designer vaginas” men can acquire later on. It’s a brash and brittle display of self-confidence.
Underneath, he’s falling apart—fast. He talks about “mourning the version of me that never got to exist.” “Maybe in another life” he would have been happy, but not in this one. He recognizes on some level that transition will never get him there: he’s not on a journey—he’s stuck on a “never ending treadmill.” No one tells him he can just step off before it’s too late.
Sex researchers like Michael Bailey and the people pushing hard on the "autosexuality" and "all straight teenage boys with gender dysphoria have AGP, no exceptions" types are all adamant that porn cannot induce AGP, that it only uncovers AGP already present in the male. Perhaps everyone needs to consider another option - that saturating oneself in porn, gender ideology, and radical politics uncovers a genetic predisposition for hyper-focus, obsessive thinking, and rumination that is so intense it can take over someone's life. We know this type of cognitive style exists - we've seen it throughout history - and that its effects on the individual often depends on what topic he hyper-fixates on and his ability to keep it in balance with other aspects of his life. When I read things like what this young man is writing, I don't think he needs a gender specialist; I think he needs a therapist who specializes in obsessive thinking and addiction. These men shouldn't be encouraged in this type of thinking that causes them so much suffering and harm.
Eliza, you are a master at dredging up disturbing stuff from the internet.
Reading his words reminds of me of people who seem normal in every way, but then, for no apparent reason, slide into psychosis. I've read of many instances of people slipping into madness for no apparent reason, and this guy sounds like he could be one. I'm also struck by how he is cultivating his own obsessions -- indeed, people who slide into psychosis often do so via obsessions. There is something about the human mind that seems to be given to obsessions.
At times like this, I have to pat myself on the back. Although I think I have a sharp and creative mind, I have never been what you might call "mentally adventurous". A mentally adventurous person might be someone who takes up drugs and prostitution and then swears off of them, become then a born-again Christian. In contrast, my sensible liberal personality was well developed by my teens and just became more set as I got older. Now, as an old person, I'm not even slipping into conservatism, which old folks often do. I am the same sensible, liberal-yet-realistic person that I have always been. I often feel like I am boring; but after reading this article, I am suddenly grateful to have been a beacon of consistency for 60+ years.
About this fellow, it seems that he was bored and dissatisfied, so found something to be excited about (transitioning). Again, relating that back to myself, I was always a person who felt that I was just managing to survive from day to day. I always felt a little threatened by the world, but never bored. It seems his boredom led him down the trans rabbit hole.
There is some expression about boredom that I've forgotten ... something like "boredom is the devil's playground". Ah, it's from the Bible: "An idle mind is the devil's playground."