Death Before Detransition? Yes.

“I am a woman” is something I  argued and defended with no negotiation and no retreat for most of my adult life. A self-made woman, of course, which meant that my womanhood was not happenstance, but intention. The estrogen, the surgery, the assimilation into the world being properly she’d and her’d without the need for pronoun badges or verbal badgering. Even as my views about gender identity ideology were evolving, I would have defended my position as someone who, despite my sex, was for all intents and purposes socially female.

Well. I was wrong. But can you blame me for being stubborn? As a child I prayed that I would wake up female. As a teenager my singular focus was cross-sex medicalization. By the age of 18 I was “living as a woman.” By the age of 19 I had accomplished sex reassignment surgery. For the entirety of my adult life I have been dodging masculinity. Along the way I have forged friendships, made and delivered promises, held the hands of the dying, watched children be born and grow to adulthood, all “as a woman.” Or, more honestly, as a transsexual. Or even more honestly, as a man whose commitment to impersonating a woman is so thorough and sincere that I tried every avenue possible to climb the last step from copying to doing and found the staircase had run out of stairs.

“Corinna” is the last 30-plus years of my life. The days I lived have meaning both to me and to the people I’ve loved (and who have loved me). It is the same for anyone who transitions with the goal of becoming someone (something?) else. Those of us who embark upon the doomed attempt to become the other sex are lifelong members of a fraternity. We have each had a dream about becoming something different. A few of us have awoken, but we have not forgotten the feelings of joy and relief believing we had escaped our fates. 

A friend who is still inside the dream asked me recently why I don’t write more positively of the trans experience. “Where is your trans joy? Where is your loyalty to your siblings?” My answer offers no reassurance. I have no trans joy. My loyalty is pure, but it manifests differently from obedience to the cause of “trans rights”. I don’t have a “man-self” or a “woman-self”. I don’t have a “trans-self”. I am my-self. Myself. I am integrated. My joy is joie de vivre; my joy is being me. I have not abandoned the sleepers: I am just following my path. It is impossible that the path I’m on is mine alone, but I believe you might walk this way, too. I will try to blaze a trail, if I can.

Lately I’ve been attracting more people into my orbit who have had the same epiphany that I’ve had: You’re destined to one day lose everything and so you don’t truly have it now anyway. Everything is temporary, especially your life. Does this sound frightening? It ought to be for anyone who values their attachments more than they value anything else. “Death before detransition!” is the defiant cry of those who have come to define themselves by their trans identities. And my reply is yes, you will need to lose a part of yourself to keep going forward. A pillar of identity has supported so many different aspects of you, the person, that you have neglected to strengthen the other pillars. Your trans-friends. Your affirming family members. The official state recognition of your chosen name and your gender identity markers. Let’s be honest now; your arrested growth into adulthood, your prolonged adolescence; all of this has rested on the pillar of trans identification. You are stunted. I am also. We are not alone.

Death, then? Yes. Inevitably. My father, 83, lying in a nursing home, delirious and frail, the result of organ failure from an unnecessary prescription medicine. My grandmother, 78, in intensive care for a week, kept alive by a respirator, until it fell upon me to carry out her wishes of not being on life support indefinitely. Death of myself, one far-off day–painlessly and swiftly, if I’m so lucky. But nearer, symbolic death. We’ve done it before, haven’t we? Isn’t that what the kids mean when they bury their deadnames? We have symbolically slayed ourselves as part of an act of transcendence. Didn’t we have the courage to completely remake ourselves? And did this not make us unto tiny gods? Hence our egos: huge, towering, confident, and my oh my, so powerful. Flawless. Immortal.

But you aren’t a god. I’m not a god. Which is not to say we aren’t miracles. We are. How cosmically odd that we have eyes to see and that we have imagination and cognition. What an opportunity. However, it’s hard to appreciate the miracle of our own existence when we’re born into a world full of confusion, pain, sorrow, loss, grief, longing, and loneliness. Identifying as trans is a rational reaction when the emptiness that gnaws at us is inseparable from the material fact of our own bodies. “What can I tell my son to stop him from transitioning?” Almost nothing, as your words cannot fill the void. Transitioning cannot either, but the parade of influencers have convinced him that there’s salvation in becoming this thing. A promise of a meaningful life. Empty, as he’ll learn one day. You are grieving, but I’ll callously remind you that your children are one more thing you must lose eventually.

Your trans-affirming school club. Your trans wardrobe. Your trans social media network. Your favorite trans celebrities. Your flag. Your plushie. Your TikTok videos chock-full of exuberant trans joy. Or better yet (i.e., more likes), your tearful TikTok tantrum detailing the most recent blow to your self-image. Why did another waitress call you she?! Could she not see the fuzz you’ve got above your lip? You have no breasts! And yes, there are plenty of men who are only 5’6”. How can she not see you’re just one more? The pillar leans. The body is scarred, but the identity is bleeding. I AM A MAN, the identity screams at a silent and uncaring universe, at a harried and inattentive waitress, at a mother who insists she gave birth to a daughter, at a body still swaddling a hated uterus and ovaries. The identity twists. It’s wracked with pain. Doubt. Exhaustion. Without trans-affirmation, the ego may shrivel and die, becoming fertilizer for the thing to replace it. Death before detransition.