I love that for you! Detoxifying detransition
Let’s talk about detransitioning.
For a lot of people like myself, gender affirming medicine like hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is a life changing, if not life-saving treatment. Hormones, surgery and social transition turned my life around.
Within a month of starting oestrogen, I stopped taking antidepressants, despite going through a divorce, moving house, and rehoming my gorgeous rescue greyhound Dee Dee. But for some people HRT is just a bit, well, meh. Not bad, not good, just not particularly remarkable.
But why don’t we hear from those people? Why does the anti-trans lobby revel in amplifying staunch detransition advocates, who claim gender-affirming medicine is the work of the devil? Where do we find the trans allies who discovered HRT isn’t for them?
Meet Si Triller, my adorable partner and a proud non binary queer. Si transitioned FTM for a while, before discovering that being a bloke wasn’t in their future. They’ve supported my transition every step of the way, despite knowing that for them, medical transition wasn’t a necessary part of being non binary.
It’s surprisingly common for non binary people to start a medical transition- in the process jettisoning all the stuff associated with their assigned gender at birth. Then, slowly, they tiptoe back, finding a space outside the binary where they feel comfortable, but on their own terms. Does this sound like you? Then read on, it’s time to jump in!
Non binary icon Si Triller opens up about stopping HRT after 18 months of testosterone. Photo by Foyers Photography
Lucie: So, you were on HRT for a while, can you tell us more about that?
Si: I was on testosterone for about a year and a half, I accessed it through my university at the time, which was University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the USA.
Lucie: What was the process like getting HRT through your Uni?
Si: It was actually fairly easy, you made an appointment with the university medical team to talk to someone who has a speciality in gender dysphoria. And they go through informed consent with you, to ensure you know the options. They went about it from a point of view that was ‘this is your life, and your decision, we’re just here to give you facts and pathways’.
Lucie: Do you think that’s the right way for people to get access to hormones?
Si: Absolutely, because at the end of the day, it is your life, and your body. Your medical care should be up to you.
Lucie: What led you to the decision to seek HRT at the time?
Si: I was having gender questions in general. I wasn’t feeling like the gender I was assigned at birth was comfortable or right any more.
Lucie: What did that feel like for you?
Si: Kind of just a frustration with knowing that certain societal pressures are put on women, and feeling like I didn’t fit that mould any more.
“[I had] a frustration with knowing that certain societal pressures are put on women, and feeling like I didn’t fit that mould any more.”
Lucie: Could you take me through the next year and a half? What was it like?
Si: So, I started out on the shots of testosterone, and I started using a different name to my birth name. At that time, I was going by the name Silas. I started noticing changes quite quickly: increased hunger, increased sex drive, hairiness, sweatiness.
Lucie: Any emotional changes?
Si: Yeah, the inability to cry, which was the weirdest one for me.
Lucie: How come? Were you somebody who cried freely before?
Si: Very freely, I’m the ‘crying at commercials’ kind of person, just because they’re sweet.
Lucie: What like Christmas ads?
Si: Yeah exactly! And suddenly I wasn’t able to cry when I was sad or frustrated about things, which was really strange and challenging for me.
Lucie: Were there any changes you felt were positive?
Si: At the time, I was liking having more leg hair, and getting more muscle definition, and was kind of fitting more of the clothing I was wearing. I thought my body matched that a bit better. At the time I was identifying using he/him pronouns.
Lucie: Did you notice any changes day to day in how you were treated?
Si: I feel like I got less attention off of men, because I wasn’t wearing makeup and I think the changes made me look a lot younger than I was. I think I got a kind of weird treatment, going from being a young looking girl to being a baby looking boy.
Loving life as a non binary baddie. Photo by Foyers Photography
Lucie: I hear that a lot! I feel like HRT messes with people’s perceptions of age. So many of my transmasc friends wind up needing ID way into their thirties.
Do you have any funny anecdotes from the time about fitting into society as a baby transmasc?
Si: Yeah, this one time I was walking to my friend’s house, and I had a new cross-body men’s bag. Some drunk university boys were out on their balcony having a darty (day party, for you Brits), and drunkenly yelled at me “Nice bag, satchel bitch!” And I just had to take it, sad face. So that was new, because I don’t think that would have happened before as a lesbian walking around.
Lucie: So what made you decide to stop taking T?
Si: I actually noticed that the things I originally started taking T for, like feminine identity, and the girly things that I wasn’t enjoying, I actually really started to miss. I think I felt quite boring, identifying as a man, I wasn’t enjoying the clothing, I wasn’t enjoying the lack of makeup, and I felt not really myself any more. And I struggled with this for a while, because I felt like I’d already made this massive decision, and didn’t want to flipflop. This was about a year in.
Lucie: So you spent another six months, still on T, but having questions but feeling unsure of things?
Si: So yeah, I started dressing slightly more feminine that I had been, and playing around with makeup more, and then started tapering off T.
Lucie: There’s a lot of talk among anti-trans groups about so called ‘irreversible changes’, and that’s often given as an excuse for not allowing informed consent, or not allowing young adults to access HRT.
Also, in the UK, there’s talk of restricting access to under 25s, based on some loose argument around frontal lobe development (racist phrenology ringing a bell anyone?).
Presumably there were some fairly permanent changes as a result of T, what were they and how do you feel about them?
Si: There were some things that seem slightly irreversible, but they’re not a massive deal. I’ve got a bit of extra hair, but that can be dealt with by shaving, and I have a slightly lower voice than before.
“I’ve been told by many people in the lesbian community, especially masc leaning lesbians that my voice is ‘chefs kiss’, they’re jealous of it. They find it like cool.”
I’ve been told by many people in the lesbian community, especially masc leaning lesbians that my voice is ‘chefs kiss’, they’re jealous of it. They find it like cool.
If you’re surrounded by a community that understands, people are gonna look at it as a positive, rather than seeing you as a femme person with a lower voice, as a ‘freak’.
Lucie: I guess this comes down to cis-normative expectations
Si: Which is exactly what I wanted to get away from in the first place. but when you boil it down to gender and what society expects, it doesn’t matter. And I figured out with this journey that I feel more comfortable as non binary.
Because I still have my feminine characteristics now. I tend to dress more femme, and wear makeup, but there’s still that masculine part of me.
Professionally my name is still Silas, even though I go by the name Si with my friends, it is a guy’s name. I have my deeper voice, and I still don’t want to fit into those societal expectations.
“Professionally my name is still Silas, even though I go by the name Si with my friends, it is a guy’s name. I have my deeper voice, and I still don’t want to fit into those societal expectations.”
Lucie: What are the societal expectations you most dislike?
Si, Oh you know, ‘You’ll always only be worth as much as your looks, and how good of a mother you’ll be’
Lucie: I’m going to address the elephant in the room. A lot of anti-trans and anti gender-affirming care advocates, will look at your experience and try to argue that ‘this is why people shouldn’t be allowed access to hormones. They’re too young’ What do you say to them?
Si: Where to even start. I think the way that they use children’s age, to say ‘they’re too young to choose’ is ridiculous, because when do you truly ever know yourself?
You are constantly changing. So to say that you have to wait until 25, because that’s ‘the age’ that things make sense, is absolutely ludicrous.
But the argument that they’re using is that other people should be choosing for you. If you don’t even fully know yourself, as you’re constantly evolving, why is anyone else going to know you any better?
I think we need to stop looking at people who’ve tried something and changed their mind, as ‘a failure’ because that’s really dangerous language to use. And just allow people the time to get to know themselves. And it’s ok if you change your mind.
Lucie: I totally agree. We should be allowed to try something, see how it feels, and it it’s not for us, what’s the big deal? But that kind of attitude doesn’t quite whip up the anti-trans sentiment that the hard right just loooove amplifying.
Si: Right! Let’s say someone gets a tattoo, at the age of 18, and later on they decide it’s actually not the right tattoo for them. They may not necessarily regret it, but they don’t want it on their body any more.
There are options, you can get it lasered off, you can get it covered up, and it’s not anybody else’s business, it’s not harming anyone.
Lucie: And to take the tattoo analogy further. What makes it worse, with denying someone gender affirming care, is that it’s like telling someone who’s unhappy in their body ‘we picked this tattoo for you when you were born, you’re having it’.
Si: Yeah, and even though you’ve told them again and again you don’t want the tattoo they chose for you. And they say ‘You need to live with this choice I’ve made for your body until you’re 18, or 25 and then you can pay the extra money to get it dealt with.
But also we’re going to make that really hard to do, and you need a psych exam first.’
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Kintsugi reminds us of the impermanence and fragility of life. By overcoming even the hardest challenges, a more beautiful and meaningful whole emerges.
Lucie: So, I want to know, are you happy now?
Si; I am, yes. I feel like there’s aspects that I still need to figure out, but everyone always has those. Overall I think I’ve found an identity that feels much more comfortable and me, and I don’t know if I would have gotten to this point without the journey I’ve gone on.
Lucie: What would you say to someone who has started HRT, but is having doubts about whether they want to continue?
Si: Don’t beat yourself up about needing an answer now, you have a whole life to figure out what’s right for you. And you can always stop for a while, see how that feels, go back if you think you’re missing it. You don’t need to pick one thing and stick with it.
Lucie: I feel our societies (UK and USA) are very fixated on permanence and stability. Like, when you change your legal sex, you have to declare this is a permanent change. There’s not even legal non binary recognition for us. Whereas in Germany, you can put X on your passport, and change your legal sex every 2 years.
I feel like there will be a lot of people under the trans umbrella who are maybe wanting to stop HRT who think ‘I can’t talk about this because I’ll be letting the side down’
“We’re allowed to reconsider our path, change our minds as we evolve as people, and get to know ourselves better.”
Si: Yeah, I think the way that it’s talked about. You know the whole argument of ‘there’s only a 1% regret rate’ it’s a statistic the trans community uses a lot.
You almost don’t want to be part of that regret. It’s not like you regret it, it just didn’t work out for you at that time. And so being part of this 1%, to me it’s felt like I’m giving fuel to the other side, and not supporting the trans community.
There’s this like stigma and embarrassment that can come from within the community, or at least I’ve internalised that rhetoric. That I’m proving the point of the anti-trans activists.
I think people just need to let other people live their own lives, make their own choices, and let them live with ‘mistakes’, and not shame them for changing their minds.
Lucie: Is there anyone you’d like to celebrate, promote or uplift?
Si: Norwich LGBTQ project, I volunteered for them for a while, and they’re a great resource, especially for younger children who have questions about themselves. It gives them a place to discuss, and be kids, and not be bullied. It’s a place where they’re not seen as being different, and they can just be themselves. They also have multiple groups for adults. They also provide an amazing low-cost counselling service.
Also go follow Casey Tanner @queersextherapy, because they helped me through a lot of my identity questions.
They are also non-binary but present femme, and have had lots of questions about their own identity and sexuality.
They also do a lot of posts about dealing with difficult conversations in couples, expressing yourself comfortably, connecting to yourself and feeling comfortable to be outspoken in certain situations.
Lucie: Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with everyone. I’m sure you will have given a lot of comfort and validation to people who are trans allies, but maybe don’t fit the binary-trans identity.
If you’ve been affected by any of the topics in this blog, or want to share your experiences, let me know in the comments! Anyone you want to hear from next? Drop me a message on my contact page, or on instagram