I'm responding here to this piece, and also reflecting on your new piece on "Detransition and the Art of Letting Go" (https://medium.com/@ryanemily/detransition-and-the-art-of-letting-go-20563fb32926) because both crossed my feed this week.

I'll say, first and foremost that if you are finding happiness through detransition then I am very happy for you for that! I am firmly of the belief that the only person qualified to decide if someone is trans and ought to transition is that person themselves. Likewise, only you can know the right path for your journey through life, and if detransition is the thing that brings you peace and happiness and freedom, then I celebrate it.

This message isn't intended to criticize your personal journey, or question your choices, or the validity of your identity. However, I see you saying things that I often only encounter in contexts that are quite hostile to trans people, and whether you intend to or not, much of what you write here is both transphobic and also inaccurate.

For one thing, you talk about how you "never heard alternative perspectives" on transition, and you suggest that gender affirming approaches to medical transition led you to make choices that you now regret. If that has been your experience you have been some combination of very fortunate and very unfortunate.

Unfortunate, because medical transition wasn't the path to happiness that you hoped it would be for you.

Fortunate, because you somehow managed to transition while living in a world that does nothing but tell trans people that we SHOULDN'T transition. Fortunate, because you apparently managed to transition without encountering the gatekeeping, hatred, disgust, and skepticism that many of us experience every time we dare to try and voice our feelings of transness.

Perhaps it's a generational thing (or not...I don't know how old you are). I'm 42, and it took until I was in my mid 30s to start to consider that I might actually be trans, despite a lifetime of desperately wishing I'd wake up in a woman's body. Despite a lifetime of wishing for just one thing when blowing out my birthday candles, or dropping a coin in the wishing well. At no point did I encounter anything other then doubt, resistance, and caution from people when I expressed my desire to transition.

"Couldn't you...you know...TRY to be happy living as a man?"

I tried. I tried and I tried and I tried. For decades I tried to just be happy allowing the world to see me as a man.

Transition was a last resort, after exhausting everything else I could think of. In a culture as rife with transphobia as ours is, transitioning is almost always viewed as a last resort. It's always met with skepticism. I don't know where you got the idea that the only option we are given is to transition, because nothing could be farther from the truth for most of us.

And to be frank, many of the alternatives you describe sound like conversation therapy (https://sadbrowngirl.substack.com/p/a-trans-history-of-conversion-therapy). They sound like the things that were done to trans people by doctors, parents, religious leaders, and teachers to drive them to desist in their attempts to transition and instead "just be happy" with their bodies the way they'd been born. This was the default medical model for transition for decades, and it NEVER WORKED. The trans folks who managed to live lives as themselves throughout modern history did so as an act of defiance and rebellion, and they were in the minority (https://theconversation.com/trans-kids-in-the-us-were-seeking-treatment-decades-before-todays-political-battles-over-access-to-health-care-157481). Many more of us died, or never lived openly, because of this idea that the "proper" treatment for gender dysphoria was to "cure" it, or "manage" it. There is a long tragic history of trans people who were subjected to torturous procedures in order to "make certain" that there was no alternative to transition that might work on them. Many didn't survive the gatekeeping, sterilization, endogenous experimental hormone therapies and lobotomies that trans folks were subjected to, all because cis people decided that they had the right to decide who was trans enough to get to transition.

It's only been very recently that we're starting to see the medical world grudgingly and slowly shift to an affirming model of care for trans patients that relies upon informed consent instead of gatekeeping and conversion. This shift is one that is long overdue, and it's grounded in the undeniable evidence, from thousands upon thousands of trans people, that transition and gender affirmation allow us to live happier lives.

Your reasoning seems to be that dysphoria is a symptom of "underlying mental conditions". You propose that we "not allow people to succumb to their suffering" and suggest that transition is a way of validating people's feelings of gender dysphoria. Your argument is , which is both pathologizing, and incorrect. By perpetuating the narrative that being trans is ultimately about "managing dysphoria" you overlook the equally important phenomena of gender EUPHORIA, and social transition. This is harmful because it situates transness in dissatisfaction with one's body - a narrative that leaves out many trans experiences, where the desire to live differently, and the joy of that life, eclipse any physical dysphoria. For many of us, body dysphoria is the smallest part of our experience of our gender. In my case, the social euphoria of moving through the world as a woman is by far the greatest part of my transition, and while I very much enjoy the physical changes that transition has wrought on my body it's primarily because they facilitate my social transition. Furthermore, your emphasis on medical transition and dysphoria excludes many trans people for whom medical transition isn't possible or desired, and many nonbinary trans folks.

Reading your writing, I can't help but think that the "consequences" and "tradeoffs" of transition that you invoke all come down to the increased experience of discrimination, and the social costs of being transgender in a world that is often hostile to trans people. This argument - that people treat transgender people badly, and therefor if you're trans you should avoid transition in order to avoid bad treatment - is profoundly misguided. It's the equivalent of saying "women get raped by men, and so women need to never wear clothing that will incite a man to rape them." It absolves the people doing harm of wrongdoing, by insisting that their victims restrict their behavior in order to remain safe. I find this position morally untenable, as it validates and affirms harmful discriminatory behavior, rather than challenging and correcting it. Allowing transphobia to prevent us from transitioning just perpetuates transphobia.

So, while I don't take any issue with you personally, or with your own gender journey, your writing is perpetuating perspectives and ideas that have caused immeasurable harm to trans people throughout history. If these views are becoming more scarce, it's because they have been repeatedly disproven. If the narrative of affirming care is becoming more prevalent, it's only because so many of us had to suffer on the road to reaching this point. Your personal journey is not license to spread misinformation about transition, or to advocate for harmful conversion therapy.