Last week I attended Genspect’s Bigger Picture conference in Ireland and had a great time; almost as soon as I got home, however, I got really sick and have had a miserable couple days. I can’t even count how many times I’ve blown my nose since I woke up at 4 AM this morning. If this post seems a bit scattered, that’s probably why, and I might write a followup if it occurs to me that I forgot anything important.
The climate in Ireland was perpetually pleasant, never too hot or too cold. It rained often, but only a little bit at a time; the rain would sometimes sneak in a little sprinkle when I was inside, so that the ground was always just a little bit damp. I drank a lot of Guinness, which I’ve never really liked, and which I didn’t like any more for drinking it in Ireland. I had the best burger of my life at Murphy Brownes Restaurant in Killarney. I bought a mug at a Lord of the Rings-themed café and bar called The Shire. I saw a bunch of cows.
My favorite panels were Joe Burgo’s and Eliza Mondegreen’s, the last two of the conference.
Joe talked about how young men often experience autogynephilia as a psychological defense against shame: shame of being male, shame of not living up to male expectations, shame for the feelings engendered in them by their testosterone-fueled sexuality. Listening to him helped me articulate a possible psychological mechanism behind the bizarre way formerly shy teenage boys often become way more openly (sometimes aggressively) sexual after identifying as trans, one which I think is closer to the actual psychological workings of the teenage (or new adult) autogynephile than it just being how they were born, and which builds on what I described in Rapid Onset Autogynephilia:
“I’m worthless” → “Worthless people aren’t allowed to have desires” → “Women aren’t worthless” → “Women are allowed to have desires” → “If I were a woman I would be allowed to have desires.”
Eliza talked about the way doubt is discussed in online trans communities, particularly how it’s dismissed: by labeling it “internalized transphobia” or “intrusive thoughts” and providing reassurances that doubt is actually evidence one is trans: cis people, after all, don’t worry about their gender. It reminded me of an informal ritual I’d sometimes see in trans circles, where if one person brought up feelings of doubt, everyone else would echo it by talking about their own experiences with doubt, making them feel like they weren’t alone. The message was “we’re all in this together, we’re all just like you, having doubts is just what being trans is like—so you don’t need to take them seriously.” I even had conversations with other trans people where we’d talk about the role autism, or bullying, or sexual abuse played in our transitions, sometimes even going so far as to admit we wished we’d never transitioned in the first place—but somehow always maintaining the doublethink we needed to go on believing that we were trans, that being trans was good, and that we should keep on taking the meds and getting the surgeries.
A psychoanalyst I spoke with, whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten—next time I go to one of these things I’ll take notes—introduced me to the term “psychic retreat,” which I think is a very useful term and one that we should use a lot more often when we’re talking about what drives people to transition. To the best of my understanding, a psychic retreat is a narrative someone hides behind so they don’t have to confront a reality they find unbearable, protecting them emotionally but preventing psychological development. Transition provides a ready-made psychic retreat, the walls of which are shored up by hordes of others both online and in real life who are occupying the same position—including the very therapists whose job it supposedly is to help people find their way out of these kinds of mental traps.
Most of my best conversations were with other detransitioners, and a lot of these were really helpful for clarifying my thinking with regards to certain aspects of detransition. One in particular which I think is important to share is a particular mental trap I think it’s very easy to fall into as someone detransitioning, one which I myself have been struggling with. It looks like this:
“I transitioned because I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I was wrong… but thanks to my transition, now there really is something fundamentally wrong with me.”
A lot of us transitioned to escape ourselves and put on the mask of someone else: the mask of someone more confident, more capable, more comfortable. And for a lot of us, the placebo worked, at least a little bit. Before transition I was a super-shy fourteen-year-old who was scared to even talk to girls; after I started identifying as trans, that anxiety disappeared, I became self-assured and gregarious, and I started dating my first girlfriend within about a month. It was a total shift in my behavior, brought on by a shift in my self-image.
As we return to our old selves, we need to be careful not to fall into old patterns and pick back up unhelpful beliefs about ourselves that we put down when we cast away our former identities. We might be damaged, but as long as we’re alive we’re not destroyed.
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Thanks for this, Steven. I'm glad you understood what I was saying.
Psychic retreat fits my 30 years on ex-husband (father of our 2 sons) and his retreat from fatherhood after our younger son was born. The older one, turning 3 a month after his brother was born, acted up a bit, the usual after the birth of a younger sibling. My then husband had a great deal of difficulty containing his anger at our normally well-behaved firstborn. His own father was violent, probably exhibited obsessive-compulsive behavior and might have been on the autism spectrum. I can say this as a trained teacher of children with special needs, looking back on my former father in law's habit of reloading the dishwasher after others "didn't do it right" and after reflecting on my ex's (and his younger sister's) reminiscences of their father hauling them out of the car and using his belt to spank them. Vainly, I tried to get my then husband to go into therapy with a trauma specialist after I discovered his cross-dressing diaries. There were three of those sketchbooks, with details of his interactions with men, his resentment of me and his irritation with our son, the length of which indicated that the secret life went back into the months of my second pregnancy. Diagnosed as "transsexual" in his first appointment with the "sexologist" in 1993, he fell right into the mystery of the secret life, expecting me to hold down the fort with our sons and tolerate his escapades. I decided no. I was vilified, reviled and shamed by him and his therapists. Please start asking trans widows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg0vezEPRJA&t=1s