Two Women

Two fictional individuals, not based on any specific real people:

Ciara is a trans woman who begun medically transitioning in her early 20s. This means she had one endogenous testosterone-dominant puberty in her teens, then a medically induced secondary puberty in her 20s to adjust her secondary sexual characteristics so that she can feel more comfortable in her body. She has to fight against the permanent effects of the first puberty that can’t be undone by the secondary puberty. If she wishes to have a cisnormative woman’s voice, that is, the sort of vocal qualities typical of women’s voices, she must train herself. It’s the same sort of difficulty as mastering a musical instrument. She may have other issues as well, such as the early stages of androgenic alopecia (male-pattern baldness).

Not only must she deal with the effects of two puberties, she must also adjust socially. She is having to, as an adult, learn grooming skills that her cis woman friends got to learn as children. As the hormones readjust the fat in her body, she has to partially relearn how to walk. It’s somewhat an embarrassing process, going through puberty as an adult. She’ll never quite look like she would have looked if she only had one, estrogen-dominant puberty. The effects of her first puberty give her gender dysphoria.

Helen is a cis woman. But as a teenager, she convinced herself that she was meant to be a man, not a woman. She begged her parents to be allowed to live as a boy. They ultimately relented and some physicians agreed that she should be put on testosterone, so that she wouldn’t have to develop unwanted female secondary sex characteristics such as breasts. Her voice dropped and her face and body started becoming hairy. Then, in her early 20s, she came to the realization that she is a woman, not a man and that transition wasn’t right for her. She’s not a trans man who is simply disappointed with some of the effects of testosterone. She’s a cis woman who now prefers to have a typical woman’s body. The effects of the medically induced first puberty now give her gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is in no way synonymous with being transgender. In this case, going down the wrong path caused this cis individual to have it.

Helen must now fight the same uphill battle against her first puberty that Ciara is. She now has to train her voice if she wishes to be in the typical pitch and formant parameters of a woman’s voice society expects. She has an advantage in terms of skeletal structure compared to Ciara, but even there testosterone has encouraged her to grow a bit taller than she would have otherwise. Both of these women are in the same boat, they should (and likely do) sympathize with each other. But people who are neither transgender nor a detransitioner, will divide-and-conquer by trying to set the two as being in opposition to each other.

Many people who detransition (transition to birth assignment) will later retransition again. This is particularly the case when the detransition was due to indoctrination into anti-trans ideologies or was a form of self-harm. But that’s not what Helen is. People like Helen do exist. There are detransitioners who adopt anti-trans ideology, and the mainstream media cherry-picks these individuals to push a paternalistic, anti-trans narrative. But that is beside the point; we need to do better for both the Helens and the Ciaras of the world. And the fact that they are in the same boat is important. My somewhat unpopular opinion is that Helen is part of the trans community if she so chooses. It should be deemed as perfectly appropriate for her to be part of a trans woman’s space as she now has to deal with many of the same things that they do. The line between trans and cis is finer than many realize. David Reimer was essentially a trans man who should have been a cis man.

The abysmally bad cost/benefit of the extreme pro-gatekeeping crowd sees Helen’s woes as vastly worse than Ciara’s. Ciara’s situation is more common, but some nutty ideas, such as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” would claim that we will see an explosion in Helens in the near future. This is flatly contradicted by all data on early transitioners that exists. Even most who detransition come to see themselves as non-binary. Even without believing such an absurdity, there’s also simply more value placed on gender conformation for cis people than for trans people. Ciara’s gender dyshporia is just as real as Helen’s. We cannot take measures meant to prevent Helens that create a larger amount of Ciaras. If there is screening we can do to prevent Helens without creating Ciaras, that would be great, but the anti-trans crowd are incapable of producing such because they see being trans as inherently bad, and value a cis person’s well-being above a trans person’s. They would rather a thousand trans girls be forced to endure endless gatekeeping than to let a single cis boy to go on cross-sex hormones or even the true watchful waiting of puberty blockers.

Gender exploration and questioning are good things and can help expand empathy and even confidence in one’s true gender, whatever that is. This is why cis people who had spent time believing themselves to be trans quite often have more understanding and sympathy toward trans people than most cis people do. This is because they have some first-hand experience with some aspects of their existence. Therefore, the optimal rate of cis people exploring the possibility that they may be trans is not 0. But if we can medically reduce the consequences of going down the wrong path for a long time (which is atypical but we can’t deny that it happens), that would be better still! It would also help if we could socially reduce the consequences of social-only transitioning. As much as the softcore transphobes will say things like “it’s okay to be a feminine man” they do nothing to promote that belief and instead associate with people who see gender non-conforming as a dangerous gateway to transgenderism.

If one were to comb through the pro-gatekeeping and even pro-conversion therapy rhetoric for kernels of truth in the overarching bullshit narrative, it would be this – we need better medical transition technology. It’s improved greatly over the years, and we’ve shifted to a more humane, and libertarian, informed consent model. But it could stand to be improved further. Retransition (and detransition is retransition) is simply transitioning again. The better we make medical transitioning, the more it can be reversable. The more we can undo the effects of the wrong endogenous puberty, the more we can also undo the effects of medically inducing the wrong puberty. The answer to both Helen and Ciara’s problems is better technology and transhumanism. And, gods willing, we shall get there!