“It is the ultimate dissonance.”

My conversation with a woman who transitioned back in the early 1990s

Helen Frankenthaler

How would you like to introduce yourself?

I’m Ava. I detransitioned from female-to-male-to-female. I’m 54 years old, married to a man who I have been with for 25 years. We met when I considered myself to be a “gay” FTM and adopted two children while living as a “gay male” couple. I was only out as a transman in my early transition, but lived stealth as a trans guy for about 20 years before my detransition. I truly consider myself to be a woman now. However, because of this experience, I still feel like I exist somewhere outside of “normal” gender expression.

Tell me about how you came to identify as transgender in the first place. Where did you first learn about the possibility of transitioning? What made it appealing to you? What experiences did you have coming out to friends and family and seeking transition-related interventions? Did you have any doubts at the outset?

I was a stereotypical tomboy, and people frequently misgendered me as male as a kid. I enjoyed it and fantasized about being male throughout my childhood. There was an erotic, autoandrophilic quality to the fantasy. I started trying to pass deliberately by binding my breasts, packing, and wearing mascara on my upper lip hairs. The only language I knew for this was “transvestite.” As a young adult, I came across a book in a queer bookstore about gender non-conforming people throughout history and across cultures. The last two chapters were about passing women and modern-day FTMs. I believed this was the answer to explain who I was. I started to identify as “transgender.” This was in 1991. There wasn’t social media then. However, I was able to find a support group advertised in the back of a printed newspaper.

Friends and family challenged this identity for me. They said things like, “You’re too beautiful to be a boy,” “You’ll never pass as a man,” “Are you sure?” and “What if you regret it?” I was very insistent and militant about my identity and gave my loved ones an ultimatum to either accept me as a male or never see me again. They gave in and supported me—albeit weakly.

I transitioned medically in 1992. This was during the Harry S. Benjamin Standards of Care and under the DSM-III. The gatekeeping was stricter. My assigned therapist held the belief that my trauma needed to be worked through before he would approve hormones. He also believed that my bisexuality was an indicator that my identity was not yet sufficiently “resolved.”

I thought this indicated that he was a homophobe and someone with a flawed view of human sexuality. So I went around him and found a therapist recommended by the gender support group. I presented a sanitized version of myself without the trauma history. The therapist wrote a recommendation letter for me after my third meeting. I never saw her again.

I had already received 3-4 doses of testosterone from FTM friends on a DIY basis, which the therapists didn't know about. I had very vague and shadowy doubts (how could an honest person not have doubts?), which I easily swept aside. I was totally enamored with my FTM friends and wanted to be like them.

What was it like to live ‘stealth’? In what sense did transition ‘work’ for you? What did it mean to you to ‘feel male’?

I probably did not “pass” at first, but if I did, I was mistaken for a 15-year-old boy. I know this because I could ride the bus for the Youth fare even as a 22 year-old. For the first two years, “passing” was all I cared about. I bound my chest very tightly and policed my voice and mannerisms heavily to the point that I was constantly uncomfortable and, in hindsight, probably unnatural. After a couple of years on testosterone, I finally had a double mastectomy, my facial hair, voice, and chest all looked masculine, and I found “passing” very easy and natural. I felt more adjusted to my role as male and less insecure.

I was dating women and men, but I noticed that being sexual with women made me start to feel like I was an oppressor. The only way I can describe it is that testosterone made my sexuality more carnal and aggressive. I did not feel ethical about directing that energy toward women and it would psych me out during sex. Men who I slept with seemed to not care about being objectified and seemed to relish it. So I gradually migrated to being sexually active almost exclusively with men.

I went through a phase of a few years when I was incredibly “out” as trans and did a lot of advocacy and speaking engagements about trans issues. When I met my husband, I decided I wanted privacy, so we moved to a city where we didn’t know anybody, and I decided to live “stealth.”

The total time I lived “stealth” was roughly 20 years. I found it isolating. I didn’t feel connected to women anymore, but I felt separate and fundamentally different from men. Being assumed to be male, I was exposed to hearing misogynist and sexist remarks from guys about women. Men felt entitled to speak that way because they had no idea there was a biological female among them. But these things were isolating for me because I wasn’t male, and I was physically and historically socialized as female. Plus I had feminist sentiments from my time in college.

Sometimes I would want to pursue intimate friendships with women, but I was afraid. When I was nice to women in public, I noticed that they usually put up barriers. It occurred to me that because of the way other males behave, I was probably coming across as having creepy motives when I really didn’t.

When I did make friends, it felt really terrible having to edit out my history whenever I talked about life before I was 22 years old. I felt dishonest. Whenever I would have the impulse to tell anyone about being trans, I would think about all the times I misleadingly implied that I was always male. I was afraid they would think of me as deceptive. I had been deceptive. I was concerned that I lacked integrity and that they would see this and it would harm the relationship.

I held feminist points of view, but I felt unable to commiserate with women on issues we have in common because I held the fear that they would see it as a “man” “mansplaining.” For instance, when the Me Too movement happened, I wasn’t able to share about my sexual assault because it was a platform just for women, and I didn’t feel like it was appropriate for a “man” to use that platform for support (even though by that time, I knew in my heart that I am female).

You made the observation that, 10 years ago, you would have been considered a trans story and yet today you’ve detransitioned, and you had a very poetic way of describing your transition and detransition as an experience of having “built a beautiful house in a swamp with no foundation and it rotted out from underneath me in a slow, insidious way. And instead of trying to keep bailing out the muck and painting over the mold and fungus—I took my house apart and started rebuilding it again on solid ground.” Could you say more about how you came to see your decision to transition differently over time? What made you realize it wasn’t working?

My view of transition slowly unraveled. Firstly, I still had terrible dysphoria about my genitals, and I got curious about that because it clashed with my feminist values. My body is totally healthy and normal, yet I feel disgusting, ugly, and gross. Why is that? Fully half of the planet is female, I love women, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with women or their anatomy. So why do I feel this way? I finally had to admit that it was internalized misogyny and trauma driving my hatred for my female body.

I had been sexualised even before I hit puberty by grown men hanging out on the sidewalk in my neighborhood. There was a slate of serial murder/rapes in the news when I was a kid that I was terrified of. As a seven-year-old, I was playing in my front yard and an adult man kept walking by my house and winking at me repeatedly until I got so creeped out, I went inside. As a 10-year-old, we encountered a naked man in the woods who started grooming us to come sit next to him. A man stopped his car and asked for directions while stroking his erect penis. Another man unzipped his pants and ground his pelvis up against my shoulder when I was seated on the city bus. A boy offered to drive me home from track practice and stopped his car in a field and tried aggressively and persistently to coerce me to have sex and I had to beg him to stop and take me home. When I was 15 years old, a 27-year-old man made me mixed drinks at a party and I woke up to find him penetrating me. When I told a friend’s mother, she had the attitude of “these things happen” and nobody called the police. One of my boyfriend’s roommates came in while we were having sex and started touching me and trying to join in without asking me. I lived in lifelong terror of men and their sexual behavior. I also had a heavy dose of religious body-shaming sexual taboos layered onto this.

I’d been in therapy long enough to process my childhood trauma, and I started to recognize how I’d created an alter ego in a parallel universe where I could hide from men. My transition was the ultimate invisibility cloak from the male gaze.

There were other things I didn't like about my transition. My left nipple graft became infected and never adhered, so I have scar tissue instead of a nipple. I wouldn’t go shirtless, and I had terrible shame about my chest. I also got a post-surgical infection from my hysterectomy. It almost seemed like my body was rejecting the procedures.

I was having sexual complications from long-term testosterone use. I had frequent UTI from thinning of the tissues due to lack of estrogen. I had to take antibiotics every time I had sex as a preventative measure. The antibiotics messed up my GI tract. I had a spastic bladder sphincter that would not completely void my bladder, or would sometimes slightly leak if I didn’t stay seated for an extra long time after voiding. I had painful intercourse and ended up needing topical estrogen cream to curb the vaginal atrophy. Then I started seeing my thick and healthy hairline recede. I couldn’t imagine myself losing my hair. It was a consequence I had never once contemplated as a possibility. And I found I was not ok with it. That’s when I knew I was never meant to be a man.

How do you view trans identification and transition today?

On the one hand, there’s something timeless, magical, and archetypal about being gender non-conforming. Many cultures across the globe have a special respect for people who cross gender roles. I have pride that I am somehow part of this lineage.

But there’s also a widespread backlash to feminism that’s created more regressive ideas about gender roles: women should be feminine and like these girly things and have these ladylike qualities and men should be masculine and like these manly things and have these masculine qualities. Gender-based violence against women (and non-conforming males) is pervasive. Rather than helping to transcend gender norms, I feel that transition is helping to reinforce them. In other words, if you are more aligned with the signifiers of the “opposite sex” it must somehow mean you are trans rather than meaning that you are just a non-conforming individual.

I suspect that there’s also a form of transgender identity that is more of a social contagion. I believe that it’s very human to at least contemplate what it must be like to be the opposite gender. I think social media, transgender influencers, and the ease at which the medical/psychological establishment will “affirm” people, these conditions make it far likelier that a person with natural curiosity can be influenced toward transition. Especially if they are unhappy for other reasons, or mentally ill and see transition as the answer to their problems.

I suspect that true transgender identification is a mental illness. It might have a genetic, epigenetic, or biological basis (yet to be discovered), but regardless, many mental illnesses probably do too.

What did detransition look like for you, medically, socially, and legally? What has it meant in terms of how you see yourself and relate to your body?

Medically, I discontinued testosterone and supplemented estrogen (I am post-hysterectomy). I obtained a prescription to treat hair loss. I did full-body laser hair removal. I have done several rounds of electrolysis on the grey facial hairs that the laser can’t remove.

Socially, I am out to my family and any friends who knew me as FTM. I wear women’s clothes that are comfortable, not overly sexualized, and appropriate to my age. People who knew me as male think I am gender-non-conforming. I prefer to let them think this rather than rewrite my whole life history. I was hired for jobs when my paperwork still indicated I was male but I let it be known I was identifying on the job as female.

Legally, I changed my name and gender marker. My current job hired me as female, but my background check was going to reveal my history, so I disclosed my prior male name anyway.

I feel comfortable and aligned in my female body. I no longer hate it or feel any dysphoria whatsoever. I feel like a woman, but I also dread being seen as an impostor. I never know if people are “respecting my female pronouns” in a reflexive way, or if I just seem like a woman to them. I would like to put this chapter of my life behind me but it is a daily presence in my psyche. It takes more energy than I would like to give it.

What insights did transition give you into the lives of men and women?

I have more empathy for the supposed lack of emotional availability of men. When I was on testosterone, I found it hard to cry, even when I wanted to. No matter how sad I was, it was very rare that I would cry more than a tear or two and even that was extremely rare. As soon as I started estrogen again, I started crying all the time. I found it flowed easily. I also saw firsthand how lonely it is to be male and to want intimacy from other men and women, but to have people constantly mistake that energy for sexual interest. I found men to be homophobic toward too much eagerness exhibited by other men, especially those that were more “gay” in their appearance or manner. My male friendships consisted of “doing things” together that rarely involved deep conversations or physical affection.

Witnessing the sexism and misogyny of men was also a wake-up call. As a woman, you get an inkling that it is there, but men tend to deny it, or blame it on other men. But going stealth forced me to witness it firsthand. Gay men, straight men, it didn’t matter. I heard and saw it everywhere.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell yourself about the experiences, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs that led you to transition?

I would tell myself and other women like me that there is absolutely nothing wrong, or gross, or less than, or ugly, or bad about the female body, or with female ways of experiencing the world, such as the ebb and flow of emotion that follows the hormonal changes of our cycles. Qualities associated with women, such as cooperation, vulnerability, nurturing, etc., are not weaknesses or lesser traits.

We live in a world that privileges the way men are and how they see and experience the world and it has taught us to feel badly about ourselves. Or has turned many of us into sex objects.

We don’t have to hide or become like them to take our power back.

Something I’ve wondered for years is whether what people call gender dysphoria is more accurately described as cognitive dissonance, so I was interested to see you make a similar observation that the cognitive dissonance involved in “literally overriding physical reality and social history” may be the source of the distress trans-identified people feel. Could you say more about that?

I think I experienced two types of dysphoria: One before transition, when I wanted to be male and hated being female. So any reminders that I was female were incredibly insulting and painful. The other, when everyone around me saw me unquestioningly as male but I knew my anatomy would never really fully be male. I knew I would never have a functioning penis in my lifetime. I knew I could never override my history. I would always be a transman, not a man. This was a kind of internal dissonance. An example that illustrates: to have a full beard and be covered in body hair and have to sit in the lobby of the gynecologist because my testosterone-induced vaginal atrophy requires an estrogen cream. To have my doctor insist on a visual exam in the stirrups—because although I can describe my symptoms—maybe she thinks I might be delusional or pulling a prank. It is the ultimate dissonance. For me, and maybe for my doctor.

Do you still experience gender dysphoria today? Do you think ‘gender dysphoria’ is a useful diagnosis or concept, or do you think there is a better way to understand these experiences?

I no longer experience gender dysphoria. One of the gifts of my detransition, is that I have fully aligned with my sex and I no longer feel resistant in any way to having a female body or to expressing my female sexuality.

Gender dysphoria that exists as a diagnostic classification that unleashes a cascading series of procedures and interventions only serves the interests of the psychiatric/medical/pharmaceutical industry and reinforces the gender hierarchy and gender roles.

I am against it. It is possible to be gender non-conforming and to become happy and adjusted to it. It is possible to be gender non-conforming and to heal or grow your way out of it. Gender misalignment is not a pathology. The suffering people feel is real, and they deserve support and compassion, but changing their bodies is not the answer. Can you imagine if we treated anorexics with diet pills and liposuction?

What experiences have helped you embrace your body? What advice would you give to someone trying to reconnect with their embodiment?

Growing older and connecting to my female sexuality helped me to start to appreciate my body. Adopting daughters helped me to see that I could not face them and tell them that being a woman is a wonderful thing but then acknowledge that I couldn’t do it myself.

Where do you find joy and meaning in your life today? What are you looking forward to in life?

I find joy in nature. In backcountry backpacking. In my kids. In hanging out with like-minded folks. I enjoy expressing myself through comfortable clothing. I enjoy gardening. I love to cook and bake. I like to read books. I like to get immersed in a good TV series. I love learning. I love traveling. I belong to a life-giving meditation community. I love lounging in bed with nowhere to be. I like yoga and group exercise. I enjoy scrolling through video feeds and seeing people all over the world dancing, joking around, doing feats of athleticism, cooking, or doing any number of weird, wild, strange, and wonderful things. I enjoy meeting a friend for coffee. I enjoy animals of any and all kinds. I like building things, making things, sewing, art, and any kind of creative activity. I went back to school again and I am training to become a therapist because I want to help other people who lost their way like I did.