A Slight Pivot...Funk Style

Rebranding My Newsletter "FunkyPsyche", Saying Goodbye to "Detranny"

I started this newsletter 6 months ago, after I realized my tweet-threads were getting overwhelming. After primarily writing essays which elaborated on my popular ideas about gender and identity, I started publishing content about my other interests, and the happenings of my artistic persona, Funk God. On Twitter, I started building most of my audience through my infamous detranny account, where I sparked interest discussing detransitioner’s issues from my lived experiences, often traumatic. The account was controversial, and a few months in I limited replies and interactions with my posts to only people who followed me, reducing emotional tension and distractions from healing.

I always labored over how I should portray myself while discussing details of my most personal trauma history and healing fluctuations, wanting to reveal understanding and illustrate, however painfully, difficult truths to others, but especially myself. I switched to private mode for a few months, losing many followers in the process, but feeling uninhibited to process the fearful forces of change as I neared the conclusion of my 7-year-long undergraduate college experience.

Anticipating graduation, the freedom and burden to start “my career”, and tiring of the hyper focus on gender and detransition, in May I decided to change my Twitter handle from the legendary detranny with its political and gender critical implications, to funkypsyche, a more integrated moniker for stories of self. My irritation and frustration with being an outspoken, public detransitioner and feeling obligated to stay in that gender-drunk and dizzy space showed me that I was outgrowing the need to rehash my detransition story and rage against the tranny/detranny machine. I had healed, more than I often give myself credit for, and despite my appreciation of laying claim to such a username, wanting to change it and pivot my self-image proved that I was moving beyond my past self and trauma.

Now that I am 2 weeks out from graduation, and having the freedom and burden to “start my career”, I am turning greater attention to Funk God, and with it, improving my self-attunement skills in understanding my core wounds and needs. Beginning to move over the mountain of healing I am heading down across the valley of post-postgender survival and beholding a fertile crescent of funk power. With this comes a welcomed shift in creative output as I hone in closer to what I can accomplish as an artist, storyteller, and wounded-healer.

As in shamanic tradition, I have a duty to tell stories, share wisdom, and uplift the community through art and appreciation of the absurdities of the world, the offbeat synchronizations that I call funkiness. I can think of no better phrase for what I am, do, and seek, than “funkypsyche” which is why I am rebranding this newsletter under its headline. I want to explore the funky psyche through writing and creativity, to use my experiences to make sense and meaning out of chaos and assist others with it.

I perhaps didn’t need to write an entire dramatic post about changing my Substack name to another funk-based title, but its shift is worthy of acknowledgment as I make strides in my healing and collect the rocks which will be stepping stones to thriving, and I want to share that with all of you who have brightened my spirit and become part of this funky tribe in this insane, but groovy, time.

So, R.I.P detranny, and may the funk be with funkypsyche as I aim to write and create more content exploring existence through art, psychology, culture, recovering from, and embracing the human condition.