by GNC-centric
GNC-centric is a detransitioned dysphoric lesbian. She lived as a trans man for most of her teen years in Canada. For many of those years she attended book readings and lectures on gender and LGBT events, and studied queer ideology. She now uses social media to speak critically about the harms she witnessed and experienced as a member of the transgender community.
She can be found on Twitter @gnc-centric
Foreword
Many readers may be familiar with Morgan Page as the creator of the Planned Parenthood Toronto workshop “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women” in 2012. I never heard about this before meeting gender critical feminists after leaving the trans community, years later. I honestly don’t remember anything like that topic coming up while I was in the youth group, although it may have.
I am writing this years after my experience, so there isn’t a ton of detail. I am avoiding using any names, save for Morgan Page, the leader of the youth group I attended. I am using “she” pronouns for Morgan since that is what I used when I knew her; to do otherwise feels disingenuous. This specific group (Trans Youth Toronto) doesn’t exist anymore, although The 519 in Toronto now has other groups for trans youth. Morgan Page no longer works there.
I first met Morgan Page in 2012 at a conference for Gay-Straight Alliances from high schools in the greater Toronto area. Though I’ve since detransitioned, I identified as trans at that time, but I didn’t know any trans people in real life, only online. Morgan was a super nice, friendly person and invited me to the youth group she ran at The 519 in Toronto (LGBT Community Centre). Most of the time, the Trans Youth Group attendees were majority MTFs and “nonbinary” (NB) males. There was an upper age limit (somewhere between 21-25) but it was a pretty small group, usually fewer than 10 people; so when people aged out they just stuck around. I guess others learned that the age limit wasn’t being enforced because more and more older (30-40 year old) MTFs started to join.
I remember one day, there were three MTFs over 40 who were hitting on the teen FTMs, very explicitly. It was obviously making us uncomfortable, but almost no one ever said anything, only changed the topic or tried to engage them in a conversation away from us. The only time I remember them being asked to leave was when Morgan was away and the group was led by an FTM substitute.
The 519 LGBT Community Centre, Toronto
It was very common for the group to discuss the logistics of sex before and after SRS, kinky sex, and erotic fanfiction. I remember Morgan asking the three teens in the room, including me, if we were comfortable talking about this, but obviously we weren’t going to say no now that the conversation had already been started by these older people. I know of at least three FTMs who entered into relationships with older MTFs while in this group, all of which seemed very unhealthy to me. To me, FTMs under 18 dating or sleeping with (usually kinky) MTFs over 20 seemed very sexually exploitative. Healthy boundaries between adults and minors were foreign to this group, much like in the greater queer and trans community.
Morgan didn’t present herself as someone to emulate, but as someone to share her trans experiences with us. She spoke of her time as a teen prostitute, her SRS, her art, her writing, and her connections in the queer community. I think most of the teens saw her as someone to just give us advice and support, since she could recommend which clinics or doctors to see to start HRT and tell you what you needed to say to doctors so they’d sign off on SRS. She’d talk about what to expect after SRS. She knew the MTF side personally, but she also was intimate with a fair number of trans men so she told us about the FTM side too. At the time, to me, she seemed like the magic key to accessing all the medical transition resources I wanted. This was a trans support group, so one might assume this was normal—and it may have been for such a gathering—but in retrospect, I find elements of this concerning.
Unsurprisingly, most of the teens seemed to be there without their parents’ knowledge (as I was), but there was unquestioning support for all of them to medically transition as soon as they wanted. There was one male nonbinary who complained about how they had to perform more femininity in order for their doctor to get them a prescription for estrogen. To us in the group, this doctor was evil for trying to deny our friend what they needed. Looking back now, the only thing that made this person “trans” was their clothing and nail polish. They made no attempt to pass as female, so I understand why a doctor might have been hesitant.
One of the most memorable experiences I had there was when I was 16 and had brought my 15-year-old non-trans female friend with me. We were hanging out, talking about the usual stuff, when Morgan mentioned she was going to be a judge at the Porn Awards that night and invited my friend and I to go with her for free. We said no—I knew right away I would probably see penises, and that would make my dysphoria worse. At that point in my life I had only seen porn once, and since then had only talked to porn actors and cam girls in the queer/trans community online. I honestly thought it was all empowering and fun. Still, my gut reaction was “no,” thank god.
Morgan’s personal life would often come up. This wasn’t a problem in and of itself, but I believe it normalized some harmful behaviour for us younger people. She would talk about when she was a teen and had a 30 year old boyfriend, then one of the teen FTMs would chime in how they had an adult boyfriend. She would talk about the drugs she did as a teen—weed, coke, poppers, etc; people would chime in about doing drugs in high school. She would talk about her time as a prostitute/sex worker, and others would accept this as a normal part of most MTFs’ lives. It’s one thing to be open about these topics so teens can discuss them without fear or shame, but another to present them as typical behaviour for trans people.
Usually, these things came up because someone other than Morgan started in on the topic. I don’t think she had any negative intentions, but most of the young people there had never been exposed to these things, and because of her, our first received message was that these were positive and mostly-harmless choices.
When I was 16, I started seeing a counselor for my family situation, my mental health, failing in school, and to help with my trans identification. This was the first time in my life I had met someone who really wanted to help me with my crippling social anxiety. I expected to learn coping techniques, not only for my anxiety but also for my dysphoria. She never gave me any advice for handling dysphoria directly. In one of my last sessions with her, I mentioned maybe using some of the techniques used by people with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. My counselor, a lesbian with an FTM partner, seemed surprised by this idea. Much like Morgan’s group, she didn’t attempt to tackle dysphoria, but merely took it as a sign that I needed HRT as soon as possible.
I was one of very few people in that group who got help for my mental health. This is horrifying considering how many of us openly talked about being suicidal and self-harming. It was a given that all the members of this group had struggled with depression and anxiety at some point. A lot of us had also experienced trauma, and many of us had ADHD or were on the autism spectrum. For some reason, none of this was ever discussed as seriously as other topics.
As mentioned previously, Morgan Page was the creator of the Planned Parenthood Toronto workshop “Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women” in 2012. And although I had never heard about this until after leaving the trans community, years later, those of us in Morgan’s youth group definitely identified as members of our chosen sex class, which is the cornerstone of the Cotton Ceiling movement: that sex-based attraction can be reclassified as gender-based attraction.
The only context in which lesbians were ever discussed was in regards to “trans lesbians”. Most of the MTFs & male NBs there would lecture the few FTMs and female NBs about our “masculine/male privilege,” explaining to us that they experienced “transmisogyny” and therefore we needed to know when to be quiet and listen. These beliefs and attitudes were essential in the aforementioned relationships between FTMs and older MTFs in the group. I remember one time I was discussing how I didn’t pass somewhere and was treated like a woman and called “dyke”, but they insisted it was just transphobia, and that I could no longer experience misogyny now that I identified as male. The idea that I might be a lesbian or that I might have experienced lesbophobia never came up. Isn’t this the perfect group mindset to facilitate abuse? Is this really the right dynamic for teens trying to discuss their trans issues, family, school, and mental health problems?
In conclusion, I believe that Morgan treated us like adults when we were only teens. She expressed unwavering support for anyone to transition regardless of their history, age, family situation, trauma, etc. The group viewed most therapists as “gatekeepers,” so she advised teens to find doctors who practiced Informed Consent. This means that many of the teens in that group started HRT without seeing anyone for their mental health first, after signing what amounted to a non-liability waiver. Strangely enough, we almost never talked about post-op complications nor the long-term negative effects of HRT, a lack of concern for which is sadly the norm in the trans community. She spoke about sex, drugs, porn, and kink as if it were a normal part of our lives because we were trans.
Honestly, my friends and I thought we might find help for our dysphoria, help understanding how trans identities and sexual orientation intersect, and yes, how to get HRT & SRS. Dysphoric and gender-nonconforming kids and teens need support groups that help address their everyday problems, without automatically being labeled as trans. In retrospect, that group was a breeding ground for predators and narcissistic trans males, with trans females discouraged from pointing this out on account of their “masc privilege”. At the end of the day, I think the members of the group internalized the prioritizing of MTFs and the silencing of FTMs, a mindset that now permeates almost all of the LGBT community.
Thank you for posting this. It unfortunately validates everything I feared about my child going down this path and exacerbating already distorted judgment and vulnerability to exploitation from autism and ADHD with the impusivity and inability to detect others intentions from those conditions. Why arent HRT prescribers required to screen for those conditions??!!!
Thank you for sharing this, GNC-Centric. This group you went to sounds like a group of male sexual predators, not a youth support group. I’m so glad you were able to come out of that and see it for what it is.
The “LGBT” community in Toronto in general is just like that. Even the Dyke March long ago stopped being a march for lesbians and is now a march for people of all genders and orientations who believe in liberal ideology. The March is full of support for legalizing prostitution, which has nothing whatsoever to do with lesbians and is detrimental to women in general, and also requires participants to believe that men can be lesbians if they say so, which is nonsensical and homophobic. Now that the Pride festival has been taken over by people such as this I don’t know how any lesbians can even stomach showing up. I’ve been wanting to organize against this for years but I have very few allies and no power to stop those in positions of power enforcing this.
My best wishes to you GNC-Centric—keep being your brave and awesome self!
I had just the feeling you had, purplesagefem: a group for predatory men, not dysphoric teens. Thank you for sharing your story, GNC-Centric.
“Isn’t this the perfect group mindset to facilitate abuse?”
That is a terrific point. What better way to make it easier to abuse someone–intentionally or otherwise? The Devil’s greatest trick, and all that.
Thank you for sharing your experiences.
There is a lot of points in this post that I find extremely validating. The most prominent of them being the unsettling/exploitative nature of trans/queer “sex-positivism.” I am a detransitioned lesbian, as well, and during my time as a member of the trans community (read: cult) I have always found myself disturbed with the way members in my youth groups discussed sexual topics. There was never any talk regarding the exploitation of female sex workers (many of them being minors), the misogynistic attitudes of sex work patrons, or the pressures in our society (patriarchy)–social and economical– that drive young women to sex work. No, it was always a chance for the transbians to swap tales of “lesbian” conquests like a bunch of men (I say again, MEN) in a locker room, bicker about rejection like “incels” or discuss their kinks and fetishes. A large number of them began as submissive-leaning males before transitioning and claimed that their submissive sexual behaviors were an indication of their burgeoning womanhood. But was hard for me to argue with them, back then, since being a dysphoric youth made me see my own forward-leaning tendencies and assertiveness in social situations as an indication of my manhood. Needless to say I feel quite differently, now.
I’d say my peak trans (and peak sex-pos) moments came this past summer. I discovered radical feminism and had an MTF ask me on a (supposedly) lesbian dating app if I would urinate in his mouth and make him swallow it, since this was a “kink” of his. I dumped the app and decided it was time that I speak up about what’s really going on in the trans movement. From where I stand, all I see is a narcissistic circle jerk for transbians that’s sucking in young lesbians and turning LGB liberation into some big queer ouroboros, going no where and doing nothing; undoing, in fact, all that our lesbian forebears have done to aid in the liberation of women and LGB people.
This comment has turned into more of a rant than I had intended, but it is the way that the trans community, and MTFs, specifically, treat topics surrounding sexuality and sex work that sets me off the most. For my whole life I have stood firmly against sexual violence, and now I am seeing a supposedly feminist movement promoting (encouraging, even) pornography, prostitution, sexual degradation/subjugation, and objectification as if they have no greater, symbolic significance or attachment to the patriarchal institutions to which feminism is meant to be opposed.
My question is, when will “third-wave” feminism finally wake up from Dionysus’ spell?
I don’t think 3rd wave will wake up – I think they are basically a stain on our history, a period of time in which feminism ceased being feminism, given that 3rd wave centers men and their desires.
And what you say, that I’ve pasted below, is the most wonderful and “pin-pointing” sentence – feminism was about fairness and equality, most definitely about women NOT being sexual objects, and trans have just brought fetishes and perversion into the world of feminists (and lesbians).
“For my whole life I have stood firmly against sexual violence, and now I am seeing a supposedly feminist movement promoting (encouraging, even) pornography, prostitution, sexual degradation/subjugation, and objectification as if they have no greater, symbolic significance or attachment to the patriarchal institutions to which feminism is meant to be opposed.”
I noticed the same thing with the PFLAG groups. Definitely over time people started pushing boundaries in terms of what they would discuss and advocate for, to the point that I began to feel pretty uncomfortable. Looking back at it, it does seem like an effort to get people to lower their boundaries. I can’t even imagine how much more pressure there would be on a young person in a “peer support” group; at least with the parents people had SOME notion that they were supposed to be protecting the kids.
I am soooo glad I grew up when I did.
The women’s movement was in its heydey and the “public square” was abuzz with messages telling women they could do anything, be anything they wanted to be. Activities and “things” (toys, clothes) weren’t supposed to be about sex anymore, but about personality. Certainly not everyone was on board, but their (while probably more numerous, by this time considered regressive) voices didn’t have much power compared to the positivity and strength of the women’s movement.
We didn’t have a whole lot of examples yet of women making it, but we believed and we worked for societal change. Women wanted the perks and privileges men had, it most definitely wasn’t about wanting to BE men. Back then a big push was to help women learn to be assertive because it was new to most women, so there were lots of assertiveness training groups (and it’s hard to change your own life let alone the world without being assertive lol). Basically, the “public square” reinforced women’s empowerment.
In terms of lesbians, it was simple. Women who loved women. No one thought being assertive meant they were men, and there were no men in dresses trying to infiltrate. There were lesbian bars, and groups holding lesbian events.
And there was the music – lots of lesbian singers, putting out lots of records, touring the country. It’s seemingly all mainstream now, like the Indigo Girls, but back then women sang of “women’s lib”, of loving other women, it was all positive, beautiful, and powerful (Meg Christian, won’t you please come back?!).
I’ve spent the last 3 years or so shrieking in my head, “how did this all happen?”, “how did all our gains get tossed out and forgotten?”. It.blows.me.away. I still don’t have the answer, but I really do think it has to do with trans, which pushed into women’s studies programs and changed them to “gender studies”. From academia then into the wider world. “Penis power” is back, baby. Oh, boy.
Anyway, what I see now is a world where women have achieved SO much. They are astronauts for heaven’s sake!!! They’re in the military, they’re so much more in government (although not 52%!), they’re racing cars, they’re chefs (not “cooks”), they’re doctors, they’re veterinarians, they’re leaders of countries!!!! And yet, we have women thinking that assertiveness means you must be a man, believing again in the old sex-stereotypes prevalent before MY time. In a time when they have ALL these examples in the world of women doing everything and anything, of women with all different types of personalities.
What’s different? Well, I can see the “public square” is now different. Now it’s social media. And while apparently girls and women can find lots and lots of anti-woman, pro-male, pro-trans propaganda, all the positive pro-women messages *I* grew up with are seemingly now mostly absent. My generation didn’t have a lot in the way of real-world examples, but we believed. Now our young women have lots of proof women can be whatever they want, but they no longer believe.
So, we have to work to destroy this strange pro-trans movement to save women, children, and lesbians. But at the same time, we have to keep reinforcing the old messages, that being a women is the most wonderful thing, we can be anything, we can do anything! I think what this reveals most of all is that even when we have achieved the greatest levels of equality and fairness yet (and of course I’m speaking of the first world), we will always have to be on guard, always have to push out the pro-women messages, even if it’s in a time when it seems superfluous. While “not all guys”, it seems obvious that there will always be a large faction trying to stay on top, to keep women inferior (they’ll even say they’re women to do it!).
We need to have as large a presence in the new “public square” as the anti-woman forces have. What seems SO obvious to us older women is just lost on the younger women, social media seems to blind them to what they can see all around them. I’m really thinking messaging is the key, because as I said, we didn’t have the examples in the world, but we believed in ourselves and the empowerment messages were all around. We had “the message”. Today’s young girls and women don’t – they have lots of examples of women achieving, but they just have the anti-woman, pro-trans message – and that apparently is more powerful.
It just breaks my heart every time I hear of a girl wanting to be a boy.
Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. You show great insight.
Thank you for sharing your story! I am amazed but not super surprised that these older trans are crossing the boundaries of girls who have little self esteem and are depressed and have a hard time saying no to older trans people. As a parent of a trans identifying teenage girl, this was the issue and unfortunately, it was all a big secret. Being older puts you in a position of more experience and power so it’s easier to push and then eventually cross personal boundaries in the form of sexual abuse. I believe it is a lesson for all parents to watch carefully and monitor where their trans identifying daughter is headed to school, to college and socially. I also believe GSA should be banned from school campuses completely, especially high school when their identities are young and still forming. College is where most of them are found where the parent is no longer standing in front of their child to protect them. It is the perfect opportunity for girls to be used and abused and they are desperate to be close to someone and have a group of friends. I have been personally polling parents of trans identifying girls and there ALWAYS seems to be an older teacher, an older psychologist or an older trans female pushing them along and taking them away into this horrible cult.They often provide resources (housing, money, free counseling) on how to become trans and get away from those abusive parents (who only kept them safe, paid for higher education, loved them from the beginning). The fact that they are told to dump their families for not agreeing or conforming to their new identity as male (yuck, why?) should speak cult to these young females. Instead, there is a dangerous excitement that leads them into the rabbit hole – maybe just see what’s in there and then they get snared and feel like it’s impossible to get out. Their professors are cheering them on as well! LGBT groups are often embedded in the art colleges as well – serving as monetary sponsors to all the events.
When I was in college and then in the professional world, I was constantly being hit on by older lesbians. I was not lesbian, but I was friendly and didn’t have a problem with that lifestyle. I was super friendly to everyone and I believe that openness was seen as an invitation at times. I just liked to get to know people and as a recruiter, I met all different types of people and was trained to be accepting and to look for the skill set first and not the person’s appearance or sexual orientation. The assumption that these older FTM’s have that these kids are open game for them is just disgusting and is the worst type of trafficking I have ever witnessed. The worst part is, once the trans community rejects them, they have severed relationships with those that love them the most and then also body parts. They can often become the broken women in our society- for a time until they rise up and SPEAK OUT. The world had better stamp this out – we need these women in society who are often deeply talented, deep thinkers and they deserve better.
I think you may be confused? There are no older FtMs talked about in the original post. There are predatory older *MtFs*.
There is no connection to the lesbians who hit on you (and by the sounds of it were *not* predatory, just interested.)
Nobody should be telling young people to dump their families. In my experience, people who come together out of shared politics really like each other at first because the sense of validation is exhilarating, but as time passes and the realities of day-to-day life take over, these superficial relationships evaporate and there is no material support left. A person experiencing difficulty who needs help from their family is only going to get real help from their biological family, not from their group of political friends. I don’t think that young people can see this coming down the road—they feel invincible and they’ve never had a major hardship like going through a divorce or losing wages from being injured. I think a sign of a responsible adult role model would be telling people to not alienate their family members unless there is legitimate abuse going on. Simply disagreeing with someone’s politics and life choices is not abuse—these are things that change over time and disagreements will come and go. They are not that serious and they aren’t a reason to disown people. Everybody will find their family members frustrate them sometimes—this is normal! But that doesn’t mean they won’t be there for you when you’re down.
Thank you for posting this. It’s a very difficult read, but so important. I think the charity / health / not-for-profit sectors extend a huge and dangerous amount of trust towards anything with a trans sticker on it, assuming certain people and approaches are trustworthy without ever checking out properly what they are doing – even when there are vulnerable kids involved. Everything about this situation screams “grooming” and worse, but you know some well-meaning person at city hall or wherever probably gave that group a grant, believing they were providing “expert support” to young people. It’s horrifying – and weirdly reminiscent of the attitude people took towards church based youth groups until the 1980s (and we know how that turned out!!!).
I can’t actually imagine the insight and strength of character it must have taken – as a young person – to start to question that stuff and strike out on your own, with almost no one encouraging you and all the “good people” gaslighting you. The fact you had to suggest dysphoria management techniques TO YOUR THERAPIST, who still didn’t believe it could work – and she was one of the more supportive figures in your life – is beyond appalling. You deserved so much better. I hope and trust things are looking up for you now, and that you take care of yourself and limit exposure to bullying etc on social media. You’ve earned the right to a better time!
It wasn’t until I started writing the last few months that I realized how truly isolated I was and how little hope there was for me to find real help. Therapists need to have a MUCH more critical and science based approach to dysphoria. I think a lot of teens have critical minds and would wonder about the same things as me, but when your choice is to leave the community you see as being the only one who supports you, and learning to not see harms in your environment, it makes sense. Teens just want to fit into the Trans Com, so they internalize all of the over sexualizing as normal. Thank you so much for your kind words.
Emphatically this!
And even in cases where there is, or has been, legitimate abuse, if that exists alongside actual supportiveness, such as the financing of a uni/college education, or vocational training, which a young person couldn’t otherwise afford; practical and financial support over disabilities; payment for medical treatments, or therapies, which will make a real difference to the person’s life, and which they couldn’t otherwise afford, etc, then they should think long and hard before alienating their families of origin. Because, there is plenty of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and, all kinds of abuse, likely to be encountered outside of families – for example on the streets – without any of the before mentioned benefits. Because, family bonds generally soften abuse – a person is less likely to be killed by a controlling, violent relative, than by a controlling, violent romantic partner or a violent pimp. And, some of the support I mention could eventually help a lot with eventually escaping abuse from whatever source, by providing the means for financial independence outside of survival sex/romance… except in extreme cases, at the very least, a young person should be financially independent of abusive relative/s before alienating them…
Here is a website that directly goes over the contradictions and loopholes showed in trans* discourse and presents a cohesive way of understanding gender using photos and cross-cultural examples.
It is for the average reader and audience who is confused at the incoherence in the discussions and is definitely worth a read. We hope it could be shared around and bring some light.
genderexplained.wordpress.com
We encourage people to use your platforms to share the work around to get it more openly known for a wider audience to visibly grasp the hyper-contradictions of the discourse that many can feel as it itches the back of their minds but have a difficulty voicing?
This story sounds exactly like my Toronto reality too. I would note how fast things have changed. That image of the 519 is old. You can tell because there’s an emphasis on gay people and there’s a butch lesbian depicted. That mural is gone now. new mural on the updated building depicts a gay male leatherman, two very feminine women and a faceless female in boxing wraps and a baseball cap in the process of binding her breasts. I can’t find an updated picture to link on Google unfortunately. But that picture above is quite old.
In addition, if you actually venture inside, you will find mostly (all actually, the time I was last there) visible trans people behind the counter. The bulletin board that lists groups and services have “LGBT” labels featured prominently on almost every poster, but aside from the gay dads groups and one or two other gay male groups, it’s all trans services. There are literally no services for lesbians or bisexual people of any sex. None.
A nightmare.
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i’ve been dealing with gender issues since the start of puberty. it’s driving me nuts. i’m a gay male, have feminine / submissive tendencies, and i have some form of dysphoria – though i’m not sure if it’s really dysphoria or me reacting to trauma on being forced to be a masculine. i had a realization a couple of weeks back that i’ve been lied to about what being a man is. it gave me so much groundedness and peace that i don’t have to transition, because there is a way out of dysphoria by NOT engaging in it. in my native language, there a saying that translates to “don’t feed your sickness”. it’s true that some part of me feels womanly, but i don’t want to engage in all this non binary / trans stuff, because it is a rabbit hole.
i do feel like a female sometimes. if i were consistently together with activists, “affirming” people, i would have really, really, pushed with some type of transition. i would’ve fed into somemthing that could just be ignored. gender activists are making such a big fucking deal out of gender. it’s making gender issues disproportionate. all that occupies mu mind now is gender. i’m glad i opened this up and learned parts about me, but now it’s just a pandora’s box that might’ve been better left off ignored
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