The content on this page is a summary of my story followed by selected excerpts from a chapter in my book describing my experience with gender dysphoria.
Click here for the summary
Click here for the book excerpt
My story summed up:
At 25, in 2005, I started testosterone to live as male. Eleven years later, in 2016, I stopped. I never pursued surgery and never felt at odds with my physical sex—my gender dysphoria was entirely social. There’s a reason for this, which I’ll explore in future articles.
I bypassed the standard three-month therapy requirement (HBSOC, now WPATH) by opting for informed consent. A single visit to an FTM therapist in San Francisco secured my letter for hormones. He made the call at his discretion, verifying my childhood history with my mother.
Before that, I tried getting T through a low-income, sliding scale San Francisco gender clinic, but they had no openings. My second attempt involved trying to sit through three months of therapy at the Billy DeFrank Center in San Jose, but one session—crammed in a tiny closet with a gay man I didn’t connect with and a loudly ticking clock (there’s a joke in there somewhere)—was enough. With no car and a three-bus journey each way, I decided to take a different route. I asked around to find therapists who wrote letters on the first visit, sent out some emails, and went to the first one who said yes.
I transitioned at a time when trans people acknowledged biological sex, those who denied biological sex were outliers, and most trans people took responsibility for their choices and did not feel entitled to gendered spaces uninvited.
There was a sense of respect and communication, and we knew that the people in our lives would be transitioning with us. We took it easy, we were gentle and understanding of other people’s struggles to accept our changes, and acknowledged what others were going through as we transitioned. “Trans” was not an identity, and even when someone was “out,” the goal was to pass and integrate into society. I transitioned on the job and have never had a negative experience with my transition…
… until going off testosterone cold turkey almost killed me by throwing me into what I now know was an adrenal crisis. After experiencing a series of stress triggers, I couldn’t function for about seven years, was mostly bedridden for almost two years, and now I am finally becoming functional enough to do my laundry, wash my dishes, and get through the day.
I am not a detransitioner. Transitioning worked for me. I didn’t have to change anything about my life to make it work. Other than a physical body, I was never connected to any form of a female existence to start with. Transitioning seamlessly created the masculinization I needed to function in the world as a masculine person. I do not believe anyone is born in the wrong body. It was a strategic decision that drastically improved my life. I have never had any regrets, nor have I questioned my decision.
Testosterone physically elevated me to the healthiest I have ever been in my life. Gender aside, taking testosterone fixed my adrenal insufficiency, I dropped 240 pounds of fat, I got strong and fit, and was truly living for the first time in my life.
I went off testosterone when I intuitively felt it was time to allow my body to rest without putting any exogenous substances into my body. I still live as male, am read as male, and that will not change. However, as an OG old school trans person, I can see clearly that the majority of people transitioning today, especially kids, are transitioning for the wrong reasons and that is why we are seeing thousands of detransitioners and desisters. These people are gender-non-conforming individuals who are typically same-sex attracted and are being manipulated into transitioning and have no idea what they are getting themselves into, and the doctors aren’t being honest about this experimental space.
I created this website to share information, studies, interviews, testimonials, and more to help people understand what’s really going on, why these kids are being transitioned, why informed consent no longer exists, why strict gatekeeping needs to be reintegrated into the process of medicalization, why medical transition is more dangerous than doctors are admitting, how we got here, and what we can do about it.
Excerpts from my book:
Cats are agile little monsters. They aren’t always graceful—sometimes they faceplant off a windowsill—but they can smoosh themselves into impossibly tiny spaces with precision. Put a sweater on a cat, though, and it will turn into a floppy sack of existential despair.
A sweater hijacks a cat’s ability to navigate the physical world. One minute, they’re an elite predator; the next, they’re rolling off the back of a couch like a sausage.
We laugh. The cat plots our death. But make no mistake—the cat is experiencing trauma.
Cat in a sweater. That’s exactly what I felt like growing up. I felt awkward in social situations and was often too anxious to speak. I was uncomfortable 24/7, like my entire existence was wrapped in a blanket made of itchy wool I couldn’t get out of.
I didn’t fit in with my female peers and felt completely misunderstood and invisible every second of every day. I’ve been told everyone feels this way during childhood, but trust me—my sweater was extra itchy. I was awkward in ways that most people can’t imagine. I was rocking a triple threat: undiagnosed ADHD, undiagnosed Asperger’s, and I was what society calls “transgender” (I just didn’t know it).
What the Heck is a Vagina and Why Does it Control My Life?
So, about that whole “vagina” thing. I’ve owned one all my life, but didn’t know what it was until I was 17 years old. I never had any reason to believe I had a hole in my body. I didn’t see it, I didn’t feel it, and as far as I was concerned, it didn’t exist. When I figured it out, it wasn’t thanks to my extensive (and apparently useless) sex ed classes. No, my girlfriend “discovered” it for me.
Despite numerous anatomy lessons in school, I was genuinely shocked to learn I had a hole in my body down there. I mean, I knew “girls have a vagina” because that’s what I was told, and apparently I was a girl, but since I didn’t feel it, I thought a vagina was something that magically appeared when a woman got pregnant. You know that joke about how men can’t find the clit? I couldn’t find mine. I knew there was something there somewhere, but didn’t think it was accessible. I thought it was on the inside of my body.
At the time, I didn’t know my nervous system ran on low-bandwidth electrical wiring that was full of short circuits, resistance (energy blocks), and trauma. I didn’t know certain parts of my body, including my vagina, operated on airplane mode most of the time. Every time someone raved about how amazing sex was, I thought they were overhyping it, like avocado toast. Back then, you couldn’t pay me to put anything inside my v-hole; all I felt was discomfort and pain.
Why am I oversharing about my vagina? Good question. Because despite being a complete stranger to me, my vagina somehow had the power to dictate everything about my life without my consent. For starters, it created the expectation that I’d automatically play a girl in the drama called life.
“Girl” was a role I didn’t understand or relate to at all. Telling me I had to “be a girl” was like asking me to play the part of Mater, the rusty tow truck from Cars. It made no sense. Sure, if “being a girl” meant “stand still and exist on this planet with a vagina and ovaries” I could do that. Absolutely. But socially? Forget it. And yet, despite being invisible, this single body part dictated the interests I was supposed to have, the toys I was supposed to like, the clothes I was supposed to wear, and how everyone interacted with me.
Because of my vagina, everyone in my life interacted with me based on some bizarre fantasy world they cooked up in their heads. They created an imaginary version of me that liked pink, wanted to look cute, and would one day marry a nice man, have 2.4 kids, and enjoy every second of motherhood while tending to a garden in a sun dress.
No matter how much I protested, no matter how clearly I stated my interests and goals and opposition to having kids, It was like talking to a brick wall. “You’ll change your mind one day, you’re still young. Just wait and see.” And “you’d look so pretty if you wore a dress, grew your hair out, and stopped trying to look like a boy.”
Well, here I am, 44 years later, still not interested in any of that shit.
Every time someone interacted with me, I thought, “Who are you even talking to?” Because it sure as hell wasn’t me.
People were more invested in convincing me I was a girly-girl waiting to bloom than, you know, actually supporting the person I was. It was like they thought if they threw enough girl at me, I’d eventually cave and start gushing about girl things.
Instead, my closet became a graveyard for everyone’s misguided efforts. Cute socks, sweaters, stretch pants (puke), and girly underwear piled up in my closet and I would have died before wearing any of it. I would have gone out in a blaze of glory before wearing anything with frills, shape, or bright colors. And thanks to me, Goodwill stayed in business for years with everything I donated, like body hair trimmers, nail kits, cosmetics, and all the other useless “girly” junk people thought I wanted.
I dodged girly invitations left and right. Hair appointments, sleepovers, spa days, and anything remotely associated with the words “girl’s night” and “pamper yourself.” How about go fuck yourself? I didn’t want to feel beautiful. I wanted to be left alone. It was as though every single interaction I had with people was an attempt to get me to do a girly thing, wear a girly outfit, or argue with me about why I was doing a boy thing. I was constantly bothered and nagged to do things I would rather die before doing. If that was what I could expect for the rest of my life, I wanted out.
When I looked at other girls, I was perplexed. Even in grade school they were always fussing with their hair and nails, testing new lip gloss flavors, prancing around to show off their new skirts, and screaming when they saw a spider. Meanwhile, I was in in the corner digging holes, trading baseball cards with my buddies, and collecting snails like some kind of dirt-loving gremlin.
Yeah, you could say I was a “tomboy,” but it was more than that. Tomboys are still tethered to some kind of girlhood. They know the language, even if they aren’t fluent. I didn’t even have access to the world of “girl” and had no interest in figuring it out.
I wasn’t just a “masculine-leaning girl,” I was someone whose entire personality, interests, and way of being aligned with the male gender, except I owned a vagina. And I didn’t even consider it a problem until the constant, relentless exhaustion of being treated like someone I wasn’t finally burned me out.
When I was a little kid, the boys accepted me without question. No debates, no awkward questions. At the beginning of each school year, my short hair and boy clothes had my classmates convinced I was just another dude ready to play with Hot Wheels and talk about dinosaurs. And each time, the illusion was shattered when my teacher ordered all the boys and girls to line up separately. But it didn’t matter. The boys had already decided I was cool, and the girls didn’t’ want anything to do with me. It worked out in my favor.
I had everything in common with boys, but girls were an enigma to me. Trying to fit in with them was a lost cause. And they felt the same way about me. They knew I wasn’t one of them. Sure, we shared the same anatomy, but when you’re a kid, little girls don’t bond over shared body parts. They bond over mutual interests. And we had none. Zero. While they were busy braiding each other’s hair and playing house, I was making forts, pretending to be He-Man, and playing baseball. When you’re a kid, your peers don’t care about your genitals or chromosomes. Camaraderie is built on shared interests, not biological sex.
Let me repeat that for the people in the back: Being accepted as a boy or girl when you’re a kid is purely social. It has nothing to do with your body and everything to do with what you bring to the table. You can be “one of the boys” without owning a penis. Boys only care if you know the difference between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and don’t ruin their game of tag with weird girly rules.
That all changes when puberty crashes the party and drops a turd in the punch bowl. That’s when people suddenly start obsessing over who belongs where based on anatomy. Before that, it’s just about who wants to build a fort and who wants to gush over Justin Bieber.
Since puberty hit me at 3-4 years old, and I never developed sexual attractions to people, I was sideswiped when puberty hit everyone else and the boys pushed me aside. It was as if the rules had changed overnight and I never got the memo.
-Excerpted from my book, the title will be revealed when it’s published.