Resilience or terror?
As red states restrict or ban pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for gender-questioning youth, the trans community goes to some very, very dark places.
On Reddit, this poster asks: “If you were forced to detransition, would life be worth living?” The responses—numbering in the hundreds—are alarming, ranging from heartbreaking—people who fear life wouldn’t be worth living without transition—to terrifying (“Do they want suicide bombings? That’s how you get suicide bombings”).
It's extremely hard to explain to people that I could have 'survived' without knowing the normalcy I was missing, but after knowing there is truly no going back (and, even so, I was eternally cycling my eating and anxiety disorders to a degree that was only going to cause more damage or lead to something Terrible one day anyway).
I find being alive passively delightful now, but the fear of losing this and going back to the eternal gray fog has absolutely made me consider what I would do if HRT was taken away, and it involves un-aliving myself strategically.
Two things:
If someone's trying to kill you, it's self-defence to kill them.
Underground networks in the masses smuggled meds for queer people with HIV in the 80s and 90s. It works.
I’d say no too, I couldnt take living as someone else for another day let alone the rest of my life.
They can take my meds from my cold dead hands.
So yeah, I'd rather die than detransition.
Them: “It’s not genocide, what a silly exaggeration!”
Literally everyone in this thread: 💀
I have detransitioned before, and if it were forced on me again I would be desperate enough to not care what happens to me and angry enough to redefine the word violence.
It is highly likely that I would (a) try to kill the people making that happen or (b) kill myself
Yeah def a for me because b is what they WANT. My life is worth defending. If you are going to die anyway why not do it defending something special and worthwhile? Like your life? Even the very resistance posed by real THOUGHT of option a would keep many opressers and their quiet sympathizers at bay
Nope. I told all those close to me, that if it can here aka ontario Canada. I will end it all without a second thought. I will not live as a man & if they think I will bow to that they have another thing coming, I would rather die at my own hand as a woman, then live tortured, enforced to be a man. Death is better then torture.
No, reddit would ban my answer
I started transitioning after a downward mental spiral of a decade after repressing my identity to appease those who would rather have me emotionally dead and physically alive than just allowing being able to be myself.
After everything I broke down and in a desperate feeling of self preservation I learned to prioritize myself so I can live as who I should have been allowed to all along and in such a short time my life has turned around and I’m much happier than before.
If I was forced to be medically transitioned that would essentially be identity death and I strongly believe that I wouldn’t be able to survive that ordeal, to finally have a place in the world and to lose it after everything I worked for would kill me in so many ways before I would probably do it myself.
Oh fuck no. I transitioned because it was that or k*ll myself, and if I had to go back to that I absolutely would. You don't find peace and happiness for the first time in a lifetime of discomfort and pain and just cope if you're forced to go back to that darkness.
If the gov't wants to force me to detransition and life isn't worth living anymore.... I hope they're ready to face those consequences of what I'm willing to do in retaliation. I have no reason to live because I'm being actively attacked by those who think they're untouchable?
If hrt was taken from me, I would take as many transphobes down as I can before i die, I would have nothing to lose, and they should be terrified of people who have nothing to lose because of them.
Do they want suicide bombings? That's how you get suicide bombings.
no, I would straight up unalive myself and probably everyone responsible too
My life is barely worth living as it is, and I've been on hrt for a decade. Take away hrt and I'm going straight to the back corner of the garage for my diy pipe shotgun
Lets just say that the shrieks of pain and terror you'd hear wouldn't be coming from my mouth 🫢
I would rather die than go back.
Only a few commenters manage to resist the community’s apocalyptic tones, like the handful of commenters who vow to keep living out of spite (and hey, spite works!). But even then, the resistance is only partial: these commenters buy into the community’s dire and irrational assessment of the situation: that legislators who ban surgeries and hormones want trans-identifying people dead. (“Yes. If not for any other reason, because I've got people to outlive, including the people pushing a genocide on us. Spite's a powerful motivator.”)
This is what you get when a subculture makes victimization and threats of violence (directed at the self or against others) central to the group's identity. Mythologize suicide and martyrdom and you will create suicides and martyrs.
The medical profession has a lot to answer for here, too. Tell patients—in contravention of the evidence—that cosmetic interventions are life-saving and you will create terror at the thought of delays, restrictions, and bans on such procedures. It was hard not to laugh at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health conference when a renegade band of self-identified ‘transfemmes’ crashed the opening night and demanded access to “life-saving breast augmentation and laser-hair removal.” But it’s not funny when you realize some people actually believe this and feel desperation at the idea of going without.
It’s easy to get used to the trans community we’ve got and lose sight of how a healthier, saner trans community would respond. But let’s imagine.
Let's say you're a trans activist who believes in generations of 'transcestors' and wants to reassure 'trans' kids (no such thing as transcestors or 'trans' kids but let's pretend) in the situation where pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for minors are banned. The humane thing for a trans activist to do in that situation is to say: Trans people have existed for generations, including long before these interventions were available, and they were OK and you'll be OK, too. People who transitioned in adulthood would talk about how they got through adolescence without shutting down their pituitary glands or customizing their endocrine systems. They’d promise: It gets better. In other words, a healthy community would inculcate resilience in the face of hardship.
Instead, we see activists taking another tack entirely: terrify the kids. Make them think they're doomed to kill themselves—unless the state beats them to it.
These are not people who have the best interests of distressed kids at heart. But many of them have been indoctrinated and terrified themselves.
This is phobia indoctrination. It's "terror, love, and brainwashing" 101. This is cult stuff. Not human-rights movement stuff.
Thanks again, Eliza for your unique contribution to this fraught topic.
I had been thinking about the issue of trans genocide recently, because one of my favorite podcasts, the Fifth Column -- which has mostly sidestepped the trans issue -- responded aggressively to the controversy over the recent GLAAD/NY Times contributors letters. They made note of the rhetorical claim that the NYT was denying trans people’s right to exist, which of course sounds deranged. Kmele Foster commented that they were going straight to putting trans people in ovens.
I have been wondering how much this rhetoric is literal fear-mongering that trans genocide is intended, and how much is figurative. It seems to me that any questioning of trans identity appears to TRAs to be a kind of genocide, because it raises doubts about the reality of trans identities. It reminds me of Peter Pan -- if you don’t clap your hands, Tinkerbell won’t exist (for the record I clapped my hands, but hey, I was three years old).
In other words, the trans genocide rhetoric is a reflection of the fragility of trans identity claims. It requires the assent of the broader society. If that assent is lacking, trans people feel they won’t exist. Of course, this also morphs into fears of a literal genocide.
What do you think of this idea?
Not hard to deduct that the writer is a male. Threats of suicide bombings, taking as many transphobes with him as he can, getting his diy pipe bomber out of the garage - it's all ready and waiting!... Synthetic testosterone seems to be doing no good to the young women who take it, but males, even on estradiol, are still far more aggressive and murderous. When are the police and courts going to arrest and prosecute the REAL hate speech culprits?