On the Other Side (of “transition”)
By Gina Lee
When I embarked on my “transition” from female to male in November of 2010, my overarching desire was to travel to the unknown. I prayed repeatedly with every single fiber of my being: I want to go to the other side. On its face, this mantra reads as a death wish. Indeed, the other side represented something ethereal, non-corporeal even. But these words symbolized for me a suicide of another kind: physical transition to male. I even saw this journey as a noble quest, a mission that my soul was commissioned to fulfill—a mission that would occupy the next 13 years of my life.
Fourteen years later, as I deconstruct my writing from April 2011, another story emerges—a story I would have refused to believe until now. The truth is, I was asking to travel to the other side of my pain, the pain of my past—a past that was stored in my body. And the other side meant the freedom to be myself, unfettered. That a stanza from Hamlet’s soliloquy inspired me would have given a rationally minded person pause to look deeper into the underlying causes of the gender dysphoria they thought they had. But I was not rational at the time of the writing. I had already taken flight, as it were…
The following lines point to the truth, as I see it now:
…the death of my former self, Gina: Therein lies the suicide, plainly spoken.
…the conditioning received from family, culture, and society, and thus internalized: This statement speaks to the idea of woman as a false construct because, at the time, I believed I was a man. But the underlying truth of the statement is, I didn’t feel free enough to express myself. I didn’t feel free to love another woman or, more specifically, to express that love physically. Deep down, I had internalized the view that it was not okay to love another woman on a physical level, even though this view went against my nature.
…Her body became a prison, a symbol of shame: This line speaks to the hate I had for my body. It points to the memories I was not ready to address—the physical and psychological trauma my body had suffered over the course of my life, and from which I sought desperately to escape, just as a prisoner would seek freedom from their locked cell.
…see me for who I am: This line is perhaps the most significant–and ironic–of all. I believed (erroneously) that because I was a man, I would finally be seen as such. The truth is, I was seeking to be seen for who I already was, sans all the expectations placed on me as a woman, but more importantly, not just seen by others, but seen—and accepted—by myself, as a woman who is scarred, a lesbian, and someone worthy of healing from her past.
…It took me my whole life: Yes, it did. It had been since age ten when I confessed to a girl that I was supposed to be a boy, because I had a crush on her. The truth is, I wanted to “come out” as a man, because it would serve as a façade behind which I could hide. I would then be free to love a woman as more than just a close friend.
…My conscience pushes me forward to that unknown territory: This was the mission, the noble quest to be and to live as the man I thought I was. The truth is, it was not my conscience that was pushing me forward, but my own self-will.
In conclusion, I have yet to know the undiscover’d country, whether it be the afterlife or healing in this life. However, I do know that those 13 years of my life were not for naught, because the undiscovered country still lies here in my body. This time, though, I’m not leaving.
Gina is an older detransitioner who is working on her memoir entitled “This Body of Mine.” Her personal essays can be found on Substack @thisbodyofmine.
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