Interesting article about Detransitioning.
It’s hard to exist in an image-obsessed, binary world full of misinformation and deep prejudice. I know it.
Life
Bury it deep
“You want to know how I feel inside… pretty much all the time? Remember that scene in Stuart a Life Backwards where he’s screaming, with the blood and the helicopters?”
“Yeah?”
“Like that.”
“Uh… that’s not good.”
“No? I guess not.”
What happens?
“What will happen when they find out you’re a woman?” they ask.
“What will happen when you find out I’m a man?” I think to myself.
Am I ok? Am I not? Am I ok? Am I not?
Sometimes I don’t even know why I started this blog if 90% of the posts are private.
Hang-ups
Happy birthday to me.
I swear I’m not going to spend the next 40 years in the closet.
I swear that I’m going to get over this knee-jerk, offended reaction I feel every time someone mentions drag kings. They’re not out to diminish the struggles or realities of trans guys. My offence is my own problem, and I have to get the fuck over it because it’s not cool, man. Not cool.
Asshole?
Beware: rambly post ahead.
I often tell myself that I would have made a terrible guy, had I been assigned “male” at birth. That I would have been totally macho and shitty towards women. That I would have been one of those guys who just “didn’t get” feminism. That I would have been a total asshole.
You know why? Because I was all those things anyway, even though I was saddled with a female body. And I got away with it like no man could ever… because I was considered female and therefore “allowed” to. Not always, of course. People called me on my shit. But not often enough. Why? I guess it’s because people expect women to be really shitty to each other in creatively shitty ways.
Oh god… and the mom-shaming.
I was never kidding when I said I would take a punch in the gut over having to go to a women-only event. Of course, I’ve had fun when I went… many times. Of course, it’s not as dramatic as I make it out to be… but the underhanded/passive-aggressive comments directed towards me are actually the least of it. It’s the sense of not belonging. Of being in a “safe” space that is not meant for me. That I am an interloper. That no matter how hard I try to “pass,” I still feel like a square peg. Women, to me, were always They, and They scared the crap out of me. I couldn’t figure them out, and when I tried to figure out how to be more like them, they got really shitty towards me in return. Could they tell I was different? Was this normal behaviour?
And so part of me really wanted nothing to do with women and woman-ness. And, as I mentioned above, I retreated into macho-asshole thoughts. Who cared about feminism? It had nothing to do with me.
But then I gave up—I gave in and listened to my dysphoria. I decided that it wasn’t too late for me. That I could start presenting as male… online first, then work up to physical transformation. And I started to examine my feelings towards women now that I no longer had to mimic them. And I started paying attention and really learning about women and their struggles. I started listening to them in a way that I never could when I was pretending to be one of them, in a way that never reached me when my walls were sky-high and a mile thick. I could see all of my experiences in a different light when the pressure was off to be one of them.
So… would I have been an asshole had I been assigned “male” at birth? Probably. Every guy is, without knowing it, because of the way society is set up. Like… think of this quote by Atwood: Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
It took me being on the inside, trying my hardest to “pass” as female, to experience things that actually, in hindsight, make me a better person… stuff that I was too preoccupied to understand at the time but now make sense.
I get it now. I mean, I don’t get all of it. No one does… and there is major room for improvement, which I plan on working on for the rest of my life. But, I think I am a better man for having been a woman. I really do.
The Invisible Boy
Once upon a time, there was an invisible boy. For a long time, he didn’t even realize he was invisible because he was only a baby, and babies don’t know much. His little brother was a boy too, and they loved playing Star Wars and Indian Chief and Walk on the Ceiling together. Then, one day, he noticed that everyone saw a boy when they looked at his brother, but they saw a girl when they looked at him.
Why couldn’t they see him?
He tried to tell his mom that he was there, but she couldn’t see him.
He tried to tell his dad that he was there, but he couldn’t see him either.
Then he tried to tell his grandmother, his friends at school, and his teachers, but everyone saw a girl when they looked at him.
That’s when he realized he was an invisible boy.
“You have to wear dresses.”
“Girls don’t do karate. They do ballet.”
“You have to skate like a girl!”
“No baseball! Take jazz dance instead.”
“Stop acting like a boy.”
“I don’t care that you wanted a Transformer for Xmas. This doll is just as nice!”
“You’re not a boy.” “Yes, I am.” “No, you’re not.”
“You’re not a boy.”
“You’re not a boy.”
“You’re not a boy.”
“You’re not a boy………….”
By the time the invisible boy was seven years old, he was very tired of trying so hard to be seen. So, he looked at himself in the mirror for a long time, thinking.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll pretend to be a girl, but the joke is on them because I’m really a boy… and maybe, just maybe, one day, someone will see me for who I am and, I won’t have to be invisible anymore.”
Years and years went by, and sometimes people did see glimpses of the invisible boy hidden inside the girl shape, but some of them got angry at him, and some of them were confused and said it was impossible. Still, no one really saw the invisible boy, even though he was there, right in front of them.
A funny thing happened: he started seeing others who had been invisible when they were children but who weren’t anymore. There were glamorous women who were once mistaken for boys and dashing men who had been hidden inside girls and all sorts of wonderful variations in between.
So, the invisible boy looked at himself in the mirror for a long time, thinking again.
“Fuck it,” he said. “It hurts too much to continue pretending I’m a girl, and I don’t need someone else to see me for who I am to make me visible… I just need to be myself, and I won’t be invisible anymore.”
What’s in a name?
This is where it starts.
Call me Max.
My name is Max.
I’ve always been drawn to the name Max. My first memory is of Maximillian, the robot from Disney’s The Black Hole.
Then there was Maxime, my father’s friend’s son. He was tall and blond. I wanted to be him. We watched Predator together in French.
I lost my virginity to a Max.
Maximus… I like the Latin meaning: greatest. I am great. I can be great. I want to be great.
The desert wasteland and the mad man. Mad Max. I am mad… in both senses.
Furious. Torn apart from the inside by wrath and rage and resentment.
Crazy. Barely holding onto sanity at times. Lost in my own head. Apart from the world.
The name fits, and thus I have chosen it as my own.
My name is Max. Maximillian, to be exact.
There. I’ve said it. And that is a big step.
My name is Max. My pronouns are his/him/he. Call me Mister. Better yet, call me sir.
That feels damn good.