1) The point is to be read as male (subtext: when dressed in public and desexualised).

My transition isn’t about everyone else’s asexual relationship to me. Much as gender is a social construction, it’s transphobic to tell people they don’t need X medical step of transition because no one who sees the person (dressed in public) would “know”.

a. Knowing my medical history shouldn’t undo the understanding that I’m male.

b. I don’t live all my life in public, wearing both a top and bottom. Constructing my life to do so (certainly, I could have gone that route) would have augmented my dysphoria.

c. Most importantly: I need a functioning relationship to my body. I didn’t have that when I’d only had chest reconstruction and been on T a while.

2) The dysphoria you feel pre-transition is the maximum amount of dysphoria you’ll feel.

It’s not a universal truth, but the longer a trigger went unresolved or inadequately managed, the worse the dysphoria it caused. A tangent on this falls under lie 3.

Pre-medical transition I wasn’t sure I’d get any surgery. Having been sold on lie 1, there were good odds hormone therapy would resolve all my issues as I had a small pre-op chest. Back then, my main dysphoria triggers were my voice and the soft features of my face. Those were both addressed quickly by T. But the more my voice and face changed the more my chest and other dysphoria triggers came to the fore. Initially the dysphoria around my genitals was mostly triggered by sex, especially once I figured out a way of packing that enabled me to swim (or do anything else, effectively). But over the years, it became harder and harder to pee. Part of it was wanting to be able to pee standing in public washrooms for safety, but (TMI in 3, 2, 1…) it also became more and more triggering to feel wetness until I wiped afterwards. Feeling wetness between the folds eventually turned voiding into a mentally taxing process worse than any dysphoria I ever experienced over my pre-T voice or face.

3) Transition assures a straight forward increase in happiness.

Since my dysphoria morphed and increased over time, testosterone and chest reconstruction resolved some dysphoria triggers, which provided immense relief, but the evolving and increasing nature of my dysphoria meant that I remained distressed and depressed. The dominant simple narrative of “and then I started medical transition and everything got better from then on” rendered me deeply ashamed that I wasn’t getting happier. It felt as though admitting my mental health was as fucked as ever (if not worse), even as I understood that it was a result of dysphoria morphing, would be interpreted as “transition regret”. Net result: I kept that shit inside and it consumed me. This got amplified by the increasing amount of horizontal hostility insisting someone as “privileged”* as I was (to be 18+ months on T and post-chest reconstruction) was suppose to get out of trans support spaces/groups and/or belt up about my shit and give way to those questioning gender or earlier in their process. I never understood this nonsense that to support those further along was somehow done at the expense of those earlier on. Abiding by the silence imposed by so many felt like I was contributing to the mythos that others who would reach this point in transition (for those who have a similar transition journey) would wind up experiencing the same crushing realisation of lies 1 & 2.

* The privilege is in not experiencing dysphoria to start, not in needing to incur scar tissue, disruption in one’s life, cost and the rest of it to address it.

4) Disclosure is the only way to live authentically and honestly.

Non-disclosure isn’t internalised shame or lying by omission. I’m not “really” my past. My present is real, authentic, and best framed and located in the present. Disclosure is about sharing a part of my past. Sometimes in certain contexts that’s relevant, but the rest of the time, it isn’t.

An imperfect parallel: I really was hard of hearing in early childhood. I’m really not now. Yes, knowing about my HoH history helps contextualise my auditory processing difficulties. But if/when I’m not having difficulties grasping sound (mostly speech but not exclusively), no one’s told me I’ve lied by omission (or must be ashamed of my HoH childhood) if I don’t mention (or not right away) that it’s near impossible for me to discern differences between certain sounds, and can really struggle to understand what someone’s saying until I know the topic. When my brain “fills in” the sounds it didn’t grasp if I know the subject being discussed (and thus match the sounds to words within the subject’s lexicon), I’m not doing it to “mask” my HoH past. It’s how my brain functions today. Similarly, my present gender performativity and body isn’t a mask over my past. It’s how and who I am now.

Another imperfect parallel: English really isn’t my 1st language. I’ve long ago become fluent in it. The ease with which I read, write and speak in English isn’t “less authentic” because I learnt English as a tween. I don’t need everyone who interacts with me to know it’s not my 1st language. There’s a better odd of that coming up in conversation than my medical history, just that reflects more the odds that childhood pop culture references, culinary skills, preferences, proverb usage, etc are more likely to come up than the history behind my thicker vocal chords, facial hair and scars.

4)b. disclosure is mandatory or the better way to do activism.

Disclosure can be a powerful part of advocacy work but it is by no means the sole or necessarily the better way to proceed. If my lived experience was the start and most pertinent thing I brought to my advocacy work, I’d be obsolete to activism. All my evaluations for surgeries and hormone therapy occurred under Standards of Care v6 and other since revised or abandoned guidelines. At least 2 of the surgeons who operated on me have since cease providing transition related surgeries. The procedures I had to follow to update my name and sex marker on government ID have been replaced. I was involved in advocacy that improved these things, but I didn’t stop there. There’s more work to be done.

I can’t bring lived experience from the current systems and their limitations, but I have experience drafting recommendations, knowing where they need to go, experiencing making a convincing case, etc. In some instances, I can weather transphobia better than someone in a more vulnerable place. The more at peace I became with myself, the better I got at challenging myself to advocate for more or differently vulnerable people because I’m no longer in the thick of distress, struggling with worry that enabling people in different situations to access what they need might negatively impact my goals.When I advocate for people with different experience and needs than my own, I do it because it’s the decent thing to do, I believe in what I’m advocating for, and I’m seeking to amplify their message, not take up space to bring up my relationship to said people, as though it bares enough relevance to bring value to the advocacy. It doesn’t add value for me to disclose, instead there’s a chance it’ll take away by diverting the attention from the intended message.

5) transition is akin to dying and being reborn.

No, transphobia causes that feeling and it’s cissexist to frame transition as such. I didn’t die, there’s nothing to grieve.

Yet another imperfect parallel: due to an unaddressed pathology, I was underweight for a long time. Now that I’m not, I don’t grieve the unhealthy thinnest I was. I cherish the additional health, strength and increase confidence. Similarly my family should had celebrated the additional health and increased confidence that came with transition rather than weep the death of unfounded projected expectations for a future that would have maintained my misery if not resulted in suicide.