CW: SA, DV, Self Harm, Transphobia
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I had been dreading seeing my roommate that evening. The night before, I had sex for the first time with someone in my bedroom.
I knew my roommate, another trans girl, and about 12 years my senior, had a crush on me. She had previously told me on more than one occasion that if I was ever interested, she’d happily have sex with me. I’d always said no - I just wasn’t interested.
I guess she overheard me that night because the morning after she was cold and distant before she went to work. It got my anxieties up.
Did she feel betrayed? Would she kick me out? I couldn’t afford to live on my own - I was making minimum wage and had been homeless before I met her. She had done so much for me to get me back on my feet. Maybe it was wrong of me to have a relationship with someone else when I knew she desired me. Either way, I had resolved to talk things over with her, let some of the air out of the balloon.
So we sat down to talk that evening.
I told her that I worried my actions would cause strain on our roommate situation and apologized for hurting her feelings. I could see anger welling up within her. After she heard me out, she let loose.
She began screaming at me, throwing her arms about and pacing around in furious circles. Suddenly she kicked out the back door of the house, shattering the glass; and terrifying me. I stayed, trying to calm her down thinking I could fix this. But she was just too angry.
She went to her bedroom, saying she was going to her gun, and that I better not be there when she came back.
I ran.
I called a friend from a nearby pay phone who came to pick me up. I told her what happened trying to process it all.
I lost my roommate, my home - everything all over again. She wasn’t supposed to be like the others. She was supportive, she knew my stories:
walking into trans support group meetings and being looked at like a piece of meat, constant propositions for sex by other trans women, even being offered to have all my surgeries paid for, being stalked and touched inappropriately, and even witnessing two former trans roommates attempt to take their own lives. She was supposed to be different, but in the end, she was the same. Her kindness was
an attempt to sleep with me, and when that didn’t happen, she became violent. I had seen this before. I feared I’d never be free of it, not while I remained a woman.
In the 3 years since I graduated high school, left home, and transitioned, I had known nothing but heartache. I knew I was trans, but
I had so many bad experiences with other trans people, it really made me doubt myself. It made me begin to fall into black or white thinking: if these women are trans, being trans must be a horrible thing. Returning home to the safety of my parents' home, who desperately wanted their son to return, was all I could think of. I just wanted to feel supported again.
So I detransitioned. I detransitioned and left the trans community.
I believed they were lecherous and filled with sexual predators. I believed they were mentally ill and even dangerous. I easily fell down a deeply religious pipeline - one that only confirmed my fears. I became anti-trans and actively sought reparative therapy while secretly praying God would end life - end my suffering.
I was miserable, but I saw no way to fix it, so I kept doubling and tripling down that being trans was a mental illness and that I was going to beat it! But I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and no future except the one in front of me. So I became a shell of myself living life so that I could avoid acknowledging what I knew was true. I was always a woman.
It would take me 20 years to finally get the courage to reclaim myself after the hurt I experienced at the hands of my own community. Doing so would cost me everything... again. My home, my family, my job, my kids. But I knew who I was - who I had always been. I resented trans people, and I hated trans women.
But I was wrong.
The problem wasn’t that trans women were predators or that the trans community was dangerous or mentally ill. The problem was patriarchy. The problem IS patriarchy. It’s the reason other trans women looked at me in lecherous ways and treated me like an object. It’s the reason so they couldn’t understand how harmful it was to leverage their power over me, a vulnerable teen. It’s the reason they reacted violently when they didn’t get what they wanted. It’s why I lost my home. It’s why I detransitioned.
It’s why we have to read so many names for TDOR.
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So I have a request for you on this TDOR. If you have not begun the work of examining the role of patriarchy in your life, how it colors your vision of the world and affects you, you are likely, unwittingly, exacerbating patriarchal culture and preserving it. Please start your examination today. We cannot defeat s-xual assault, r-pe culture, or domestic violence, without each of us first working to educate and change ourselves and then working to educate other and change the culture.
If you need a place to begin, there is an excellent channel on YouTube called “Breaking Down Patriarchy,”
https://www.youtube.com/@breakingdownpatriarchy. And if you want to continue your understanding, I’d read Bell Hooks, “The Will to Change.”
To quote Breaking Down Patriarchy,
“We are not responsible for what we inherit; we are all responsible for what we do with what we inherit.” None of us are responsible for the existence of patriarchy or the harm it has caused, but we are responsible for ending it. Let’s do our part to recognize the harm it causes in our society, to recognize the role we play in harming one another, and ultimately to overturn the patriarchy.
And if the people who hurt me all those years ago are reading this, I forgive you.
i hate it so much i just want to be happy and normal and i really need someone to tell me some positives because i just don’t see any, my life has been ruined by being trans and it’s barely even started.
Buck Angel as a straight man then trans women are real women!” argument.
