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.