Potentilla is a detransitioned male who spends his days farming, making gardens, practicing herbalism, and reading Carl Jung. He is interested in history, human nature, and the occult, and greatly enjoys giggling with strangers, the utter improbability of life, taking long walks, and making music with friends. He is available to interact in the comments section of this post. Potentilla can also be reached at potentillacinquefoil@gmail.com, where he is happy to discuss these issues privately with concerned parents and people contemplating transition or detransition.
by Potentilla
I was born male and lived for the first five or so years of my life totally OK with that. As I got older and was taught postmodernism, white guilt and misandry, I started to hate my male body and wanted my maleness to be destroyed. I became suicidal and practiced self harm, including towards my genitals. I wanted to magically turn into a girl, and thus be redeemed.
Growing up, it was hard for me to conform to the norms of American masculinity. Part of this is that my dad is a reflective and empathetic man, and so my natural model is someone who himself doesn’t necessarily conform to gender norms. Nevertheless, I was ok with my body until maybe the age of 19, when I realized I’m attracted to other men and am both a “bottom” and somewhat swishy. Around 20 I had multiple crises; I moved to a gay hippie commune, I broke up with my first serious boyfriend, I did too many drugs, became homeless, and had several very confusing sexual relationships with women.
Slowly I came to believe that I was a repressed woman. It is a testament to my credulity that I could honestly assess my own life situation, and yet come to that conclusion. But that is exactly what happened. Trans let me explain away all my problems with a new and compelling narrative. This promise held enormous emotional appeal. At the time, I was living in a trans/genderqueer space where there was a cult-like atmosphere in regard to transitioning. Being trans made you an insider and conferred upon you sympathy, respect, and resources. Being merely gay was frowned upon.
For the past 10 years ago or so, I’ve “lived as a woman.” For the first 8 years of that, I was on cross sex hormones, when I began to use herbs to manage my health. I had an orchiectomy about 7 years ago. After my surgery, every punk house was open for me to live in. I had become a protected class.
Even though I didn’t pass as a natal female, being trans made my life easier to navigate socially. People seem much more comfortable with a somewhat feminine man becoming a transwoman than a somewhat feminine male owning his maleness. It is fascinating that this is the case, that it was and is scarier for me not to pretend I’m a woman.
So, I had some very compelling reasons to transition, those being:
- unprocessed trauma concerning my gender
- poor mental health and poor reality testing
- social pressure
- social rewards
- a postmodern ideology that rewards transition
I believe that the trans movement has qualities that make it very similar to a cult. I became trans for the very same reason that people join cults; and similarly to those who escape cults, I’ve found profound healing in my slow path towards detransition.
Now, almost ten years later, it is clear that I am not a woman. In fact, it is obvious that I am still very much a male, but now with breasts and mutilated genitalia. That is an uncomfortable position to be in; not only was I mistaken; everyone knows it. But his uncomfortable reality is still preferable to the intense self-delusion and narcissism that I lived in and with for many years.
The Curse of Trans
While there is a certain temptation to accept all of this as personal failings; while there are certainly many ways that I have been weak and unstable, it doesn’t feel particularly genuine to try to explain my immersion into trans as solely a personal choice and experience. To understand trans sensu lato means understanding the ways it resembles a cult. I transitioned only after heavy indoctrination into genderist ideology. Most pertinent was the pernicious “cis” and “trans” dichotomy.
I believe this binary ideology to be a very profound curse to susceptible individuals. “Cis” is defined as someone who is okay with their body as it is, while “trans” means someone who isn’t okay with their gendered body, regardless if they physically transition or not. Given this definition, most people have at certain points of their lives been functionally trans. This is usually especially pronounced at puberty, and it is horrifyingly predictable that we’re now seeing a trend of trans children, given the intersection of pubescent dysphoria and genderist ideology.
When I encountered this false dichotomy, naturally I put myself on the side of “trans” because I have a long history of hating my gendered body. Once I accepted this as true, I was locked into the certain path of claiming I was a woman. This led to faith-based beliefs that “gender is innate” and “I am a woman,” which in turn led to the blind faith that “hormone replacement therapy will solve my problems” and “I’ll be so much happier after I’m castrated and no longer male.” This was compounded by the widespread belief that transgender feelings grow worse with time and inevitably lead to insanity or suicide if there is not medical intervention.
And away I went, my mind totally taken with genderist ideology, with full faith that transitioning was the only way to save my life.
This is why I consider “trans” to be a curse. I imagine the evil trans witch standing over the gender-nonconforming children lost in the woods, reassuring them that “cis people are comfortable with their bodies and trans people aren’t. I can help you become at home in your own body” as the children follow her deeper into the woods to be transformed. What the children don’t realize is that they must pay for this with a piece of the glowing, golden ball that is in their hearts. Later, only a few become disillusioned and decide to retrieve the piece of their heart that they lost. They wander alone hither and thither in the dark woods for many years to find the sacred springs where they wash off their deception, fear and helplessness, and find that the golden ball never actually left. They are still themselves, only disfigured and disoriented by the deal they made with the evil witch. But they are finally able to leave the dark forest and again become part of the human family.
I’m open to the idea that some individuals need to transition to live their authentic selves. There may very well be folks who genuinely and beautifully find themselves in transition. That being said, though, I believe it is inevitable that these stories of self-discovery through sex change, no matter how true they are or beneficial to the individual, contribute to the destructive myth of the trans/cis binary. I don’t want to generalize too much from my own experience, but I also strongly believe that transition does profound harm, even when it does help. People have the right to transition, but I also believe that the entire gender identity movement has become unfathomably destructive, especially to gender nonconforming young people who, for the most part, would almost certainly otherwise be homosexuals. There are areas of subtlety which I’m not sure how to explore in this regard, and they are beyond the scope of this essay.
Sense of Self
During the time I believed I was a woman, I enjoyed every step of transition, because it gave me an identity. I didn’t know who I was and a transgender narrative gave me a handle to understand myself. Rather than needing to take care of the wounded parts of my self, I created an entirely new persona, and I played that part every moment of every day.
This worked as a great solution for a time; I did a good job playing that part, rather than living as my authentic self, and was thus shielded from the vicissitudes of the world. This is of course textbook narcissism, which makes me wonder if trans is as much a cult of narcissism as a cult of gender.
With time however, my authentic self was nonetheless nurtured by my experiences and I began to become more genuine. This transformation had three parts:
1) Leaving the Trans Cult
After a nasty breakup, I left a queer land project and LGBT community where postmodern Marxist ideology was very dominant. I constantly self-censored to fit in with the group. My own political leanings tend towards Burkean conservatism, so I was more or less lying to myself and others. I attended mandatory sensitivity training which had the feel of a political indoctrination meeting. Almost every day, I ritualistically confessed my guilt as a white person in conversation with my peers, and they did the same with me. Over time I began to feel an actual intense guilt. And with that, I began to wake up to the fact that this sort of politic was bad for my mental health.
So after my nasty breakup, I left this queer community and got a live-in job at a farm. My coworkers there were much more free thinking, and I began to find it easier to think for myself. That year I worked 55-hour weeks and read about 60 books (including Spengler, Odum’s Ecology textbook, Marcus Aurelius, Homer, and more). This study, and the new milieu with new friends, allowed me the opportunity to learn that I’m strong and capable living on my own, and my worldview was massively expanded.
2) Going off Hormones
About 9 months after leaving the trans cult, I stopped taking hormones, and began taking herbs, and studying them, to maintain my health instead. I could pursue a passion that connects me to my inner self while showing me that I’m not dependent on maintaining a trans identity to meet my own health needs.
I’ve also developed skills which have helped many other people. In turn, I saw people valuing me for something deeper than my identity. I am very passionate about plants and have been my entire life. I am also open and spiritual in my psychological orientation. This makes the study and practice of herbalism deeply rewarding to my authentic self, and helped me become strong enough to escape from living mostly out of my trans identity.
3) Detransition
After leaving the queer land projects, I fell into several other social milieus where thoughts were heavily policed. By this point I had already stopped believing in the idea of transition, but kept up appearances for social benefit–and that social benefit was huge. Certain people would hire me because I was perceived as trans. I could find places to live with queer folks largely on account of my identity. Living in these environments, which were well stocked with self-appointed thought police, was bad for me, and I began contemplating leaving. Near the end of this time I developed debilitating chemical sensitivities, and decided my best bet was to live with my parents for a time. At that point, the entire trans narrative dissolved, and just as quickly, my chemical sensitivities became very easily manageable.
Some Closing Thoughts
Over the years, I’ve known dozens of trans people. Most had reasons that were less convincing than my own for transition, and as we’ve seen, my own justifications were rather feeble. This leads me to believe that, by and large, trans is a disingenuous ideology that is a current mass hysteria. It is also clearly something of an unintentional eugenics program against gender nonconforming folk. The entire enterprise makes me feel sick. It has become trendy to commit oneself to lifelong hormone therapy and surgical mutilation. I was not able to correctly appraise the situation at the time I became trans and deeply regret the decision now.
Going a little deeper, trans is profoundly sexist and actually creates less diversity in expression. I went from an authentic, studious, awkward, somewhat feminine man to performing full time as a trans woman. Eventually my authentic self reasserted itself, and now I’m slowly moving towards more integration. The trans narrative does much more than merely normalize mental illness; it creates mental illness. I would have never transitioned if I hadn’t been wounded by postmodernism and then given an escape hatch in trans. The narrative made me crazy just as much as my own predisposition made me vulnerable to it.
My sense is that no one wants to hear the voices of detransitioners until it is too late. My sincere hope is that some people who are considering transition, as well as parents with “trans” children, might read my essay and choose a brighter path than that of transition. Please learn from my mistakes and consider other options. Most dysmorphia goes away with time. The entire trans narrative is a sinister mental trap which is profoundly harmful. There are infinitely better ways to deal with the universal experiences of dissatisfaction and desire to be someone else.