Seeing Myself in the Stories of Other Conversion Therapy Survivors

Originally published on Trans Safety Network under the title Ky Schever’s experience with ideologically driven detransition

Back when I was still in the detransitioned radical feminist community, I watched the Miseducation of Cameron Post with another detransitioned woman. That movie is about a teenage lesbian in the US who’s sent to a Christian ex-gay camp after she’s caught messing around with another teenage girl. Part of what they do at the camp is look for “root causes” of being gay and try to find “what’s behind” their feelings, what kind of trauma or other experiences supposedly caused their “same-sex attraction disorder”. The gay kids have to fill out a worksheet with an iceberg on it; the tip of the iceberg represents being gay, and the larger section of iceberg underneath the water is supposed to symbolize their real underlying problem. Their gayness and/or gender nonconformity is supposed to be a “symptom” of this larger problem, usually unresolved trauma or experiences in childhood that supposedly interrupted their “normal” development.

Feeling Regret About My Detransition and Past Activism

I’ve been feeling a lot of regret about my past actions. I feel as though I lost about six years of my life. I think back over that time and think about all that I wish hadn’t happened, how I wish I hadn’t done this or that, or that I’d gone about things differently. There’s quite a few people I wish I’d never met.

I wish I’d never participated in the radical feminist detrans women’s community. I wish I never got involved, that I’d worked things out on my own and turned to my friends for support. I regret my role in creating that community and how I worked to spread its theories and “alternative treatments” for gender dysphoria. I regret the time and energy I invested in transphobic detrans activism.

Risks/harms of ideological detransition/“alternative treatments for gender dysphoria”

Several months ago, I decided to write out the negative effects of my detransition and came up with the following list. I divided the list up between what I experienced while detransitioning and when I came out as trans again, after deciding that detransition hadn’t worked for me.

Notes from A Meeting of Transphobic Detrans Activists from 10/3/2016

The following are notes from a meeting between four female detrans activists, Devorah Zahav, Carey Callahan, Cari Stella and myself (then working under the name Crash), that took place on October 3^rd 2016. I found these notes while going through old emails looking for something else and decided that they were worth sharing to give an idea of what kind of organizing and projects transphobic detrans women have pursued.

Tell Amazon to Stop Selling PEC’s Anti-Trans Conversion Therapy Book

On April 7, an anti-trans organization called Partners for Ethical Care released a book called Desist, Detrans, & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult by Maria Keffler, one of the organization’s co-founders. This book is currently being sold by Amazon, among other online retailers. The book accuses the trans community of being a cult indoctrinating vulnerable young people and promotes conspiracy theories about a “billion-dollar gender industry” preying on children. It claims to “[provide] a roadmap to help families navigate the treacherous terrain of gender indoctrination, and bring their children back to reality and safety.” In other words, it’s a conversion therapy manual for transphobic parents, claiming to provide them with psychological techniques for coercing their trans children into “desisting”.

Early Correspondence Between A Detrans Radical Feminist and the Founder of FourthWaveNow

Denise C, the founder of FourthWaveNow, corresponded with detransitioned radical feminists before she started her Tumblr and WordPress blogs. This correspondence took place between December 26th-27th 2014. Denise started her blogs in March of 2015.

Below are emails between Denise and Devorah Zahav, the detrans woman who blogs as Redress Alert. Zahav is a very important figure in the radical feminist detrans women’s community. In addition to writing a popular and influential blog, she engaged in much detrans organizing and activism, including helping to create the first online spaces for detrans and re-identified women and organizing the first in-person gatherings. She played a very influential role in creating the detrans radical feminist community and spreading a transphobic feminist interpretation of detransitioning and detrans womanhood.

Telling the Whole Story: A Closer Look at the Detrans Women in When Children Say They’re Transgender

Orginally posted on Health Liberation Now!

Many articles about detransitioning present an incomplete and misleading view of the detrans community by failing to address the beliefs and politics of its members. An example of this is Jesse Singal’s Atlantic article When Children Say They’re Transgender which features three detrans women, Max Robinson, Carey Callahan, and Cari Stella. Robinson’s and Callahan’s stories are told in much greater depth than Stella’s, who is briefly mentioned and quoted. In the article, they are presented as women who used to think they were trans, transitioned and later came to detransition and believe that they had underlining issues that they wish had been explored. They are cited as a reason for requiring more psychological assessment before allowing people to transition. While the article mentions that there is a growing community of detransitioned women, it doesn’t mention that many in this community believe and promote transphobic radical feminism. All of detrans women featured in the article were at least sympathetic to transphobic feminism if not enthusiastic proponents of it. All of them knew each other, promoted each others’ work and engaged in organizing and activism. Additionally, they all have connections to anti-trans organizations such as FourthWaveNow and some have worked with anti-trans researchers and conversion therapists.

The Reality Behind the Story I Told: What My Life was Like When I was Interviewed for the Stranger

Back when I was still a detrans woman, I was interviewed a few times by journalists for articles on detransitioning. The article that drew the most attention and the strongest reactions from people was a piece written by Katie Herzog that appeared in The Stranger. Many trans people and their allies found the article offensive and transphobic and reacted to it in outrage. Many wrote critical responses.

I want to talk about what was going on in my life when I was interviewed for The Stranger article, because the impression it gives is very incomplete and distorted in large part because of how I represented myself when I was being interviewed for it. I want to uncover the parts of my life that I kept hidden and explain why I represented myself as I did at the time. I am aware now that I was engaging in a lot of deception but that’s not how I saw it then. I was playing a role that had become second nature at that point and presenting what was supposed to true about myself. I was presenting a public persona for the benefit of the community I belonged to.

My Views on Transphobic Detrans People

I want to be upfront with how I view detransitioned people who believe in transphobic ideologies. When I was detrans, I hid my real views on trans people because I didn’t want to suffer the consequences of being openly transphobic. I rationalized what I was doing at the time but now I recognize that I was being dishonest and manipulative. So now I want to be honest, even though I know my views will offend many detrans people.

I believe that many, perhaps most detrans people who believe in transphobic views are self-hating trans people engaging in conversion practices in order to repress who they are. At the very least, I believe transphobic detrans people have been indoctrinated into a hate group and encouraged to frame their experiences in a way that casts doubt on the reality of trans people and the effectiveness of medical transition.

Detransition Awareness Day: Inconvenient Truths and Community Building

Originally posted on 3/12/21 on Health Liberation Now!

Apparently today, March 12^th is Detransition Awareness Day. Today is supposed to be a day for informing people about detransitioning in the name of creating more and better resources. Well then, here are some things I want people to be aware of concerning resources for people who detransition and why they’re in the state that they are today.

As someone who played an important role in creating one of the first communities and support networks for detransitioned women, who worked in that community for close to seven years, I have a lot of regrets now. I and others in that community made many bad, misguided choices that lead to the formation of a detrans community that is better at radicalizing people into transphobic ideology than it is with helping people access the resources they need to live a good life. We created a community that often encouraged people to use their trauma to attack the trans community and trans healthcare rather than helping people heal and get on with their lives.