The Assimilation of a Young Lesbian

I recently discussed my detransition with a friend of mine. Inevitably, the conversation turned to access to hormones and surgery almost right away, and my friend was adamant that young people should be allowed to transition. “The alternative, living as gender non conforming,” she said, “is too much to ask of a young person. Why should they have to be so brave?”

Her concern resonated with my own experience with medical transition. By the time I started identifying as trans in my late teens, I had received enough homophobia that it had become a burden. Even though I did not think of it as a motivation for transitioning, I imagined that I was leaving my struggles behind. I dreamt that I would no longer get into the frequent conflicts over my expression with strangers and teachers, and I was looking forward to this freedom. “How could anyone miss that?” I thought. My friend is herself a butch woman in her forties. Maybe she feels similarly.

Transition offers people who struggle with their bodies a solution. It allows masculine women, effeminate men and others who stick out from the crowd to blend in and find safety in a society that’s rigid in its gendered expectations. It gives the promise of integration – no more pain, no more rejection.

But what happens when we are given the option to walk out on life’s challenges?

From the outside, my medical transition looks successful. My body masculinised, my mental health has been stable all the way through, and I slipped right into the social role as a man. But even though I was happy with all the external factors of my life as a trans man, there was a bothersome voice in the back of my head, reminding me from time to time that there is a thing called lesbian, and that I could have been one.

No one should have to be brave because of their sexuality and gender non-conformity, but in the world that we live in, some of us do. Some of us have to be brave, but we will grow with the task, both in strength and in numbers, and we will change things along the way.

In a world ridden with transphobia, how can I claim that it takes more bravery to defy the norms of gender than it does to be trans? My friend sensed it, and I think what she was getting at is this:

Taking on a transgender identity solves the largest problem non-conforming people have, namely the constant conflict with their surroundings. Not by magically making friction disappear, but by externalising it, separating it from the individual, and placing it elsewhere. The concept of gender identity offers an explanation to point at, offering relief both to the person who sticks out like a sore thumb, and also to the confused onlookers. Transness is presented as innate, something the individual cannot control, and therefore something the individual cannot be blamed for. Instead of blame, a transgender person is therefore dealt compassion for his or her difference. Where the butch woman was previously seen as choosing to defy and subvert, the trans man has no choice, he simply is by nature. This is a comfortable position for someone who is tired of feeling like “the problem”, being able to point at something and say, “Aha! It’s not me who is the problem, it is my transgenderism! Let’s solve it together, with social and medical measures!”

During my years living as a trans man, I saw myself slipping further and further away from the lesbian life I would otherwise have lived. The best word I have found to describe the experience is assimilation. Assimilation for me meant pursuing sex with straight women, alienating myself from my own sexual body, and denying myself to have meaningful experiences with other women as a woman. Assimilation also meant the atomisation of a lesbian community. I became frustrated, feeling like there was a barrier between myself and women’s collectives. I was frustrated that I was not invited in, and when I was, I still felt trapped behind the barrier, unable to break through. My gender identity, the same thing that had lifted my otherness off of my shoulders, put up a glass wall between myself and other women.

Worst of all, assimilation meant going through the world behind the face of a man. Testosterone changed my appearance and gave me the mask of a man. That was, of course, my goal with transitioning, but where did it lead me? I distanced myself from my past, and erased my personal victories as a woman. When I transitioned I had already overcome several cultural barriers as a teenage girl. I had a girlfriend, gained respect from teachers and peers in school, refused to wear makeup, did well in sports, stood my ground and debated both boys and adult men on political issues, and did not hide my lesbianism. When I became a man in the eyes of others, these victories did not matter anymore. They were not relevant to my being, because I was a man. However, as a woman, they had been the cornerstones of my being, the ground on which I had defined myself and how others saw me.

I had grown into an unapologetic young woman, and I owed that to feminism, but by becoming a trans man I robbed women of the role model I could have been. By removing myself from the pool of women, I singlehandedly shrunk the definition of what a woman can be. This is one of the few arguments that I had actually encountered before my transition, but I did not take it in. I was not able to, because I was not ready to sacrifice my own dream to feel safe, to sacrifice a way to blend in. Looking back I feel a sadness over this, a sense of defeat. I am disappointed in myself that I wasn’t strong enough to carry the burden of breaking womanhood’s expectations.

At the same time, detransitioning has restored a hope in me that I did not even know I had lost by reconnecting me to my womanhood and to other women. And to feminism. As a man, I was no longer the victim of misogyny, but a potential perpetrator. Trying to be a good “ally”, I performed introspection in order to rid myself of any masculine misogynist bias against women, always took a step back to let other women speak, and modified my own behaviour to obliterate the possibility of being an arrogant man who takes up too much space. I, a young woman who had once fought to find my voice, silenced it because men are too loud. I was a female man doing emotional labour – women’s labour – on behalf of men. There is no end to the irony.

As a medically transitioned lesbian, I feel robbed of the opportunity to be strong. Faced with a challenge larger than myself, the escape route did not appear to me as a possibility, but as the only real option. I did not know that I could have lived through the challenges of rejection, self-hate, doubt and isolation, and come out on the other side as a more secure person.

I did not comprehend it, and I think no medical doctor is equipped to truly appreciate the socio-political implications of transitioning a lesbian into a man. Transition is so much more than a medical procedure, and needs to be treated accordingly.