Why I'm LOUD About Detransition

A disclaimer on why I'm so open about my trauma

I knew as early as kindergarten that I was different from other people in some indefinable way, that I naturally stood out just by taking up space, though I didn’t understand why. Because of this, I did my best to repress myself and hide so that I never had to confront being exposed as someone who “didn’t belong.” Subconsciously, I felt like someone who wasn’t good enough to have a place around others. My teachers adored me for how well-behaved, respectful, sweet, and studious I was, but at parent teacher conferences my mom was always bemused. “Are you sure you’re talking about Laura? She’s a totally different kid around us.” That was not an understatement.

At home I was the polar opposite of the person I showed to the world. With family I was bold, brave, loud, dramatic, and inventive. I made no qualms about taking up space, rather I demanded constant attention. I performed plays, wrote songs, did fashion shows, rehearsed piano and violin concerts, wrote and read stories, had gallery exhibitions, and made drawings, paintings, poetry, and cards as gifts for my family and friends. I bossed around my younger siblings and in my small group of friends, was the mad genius generating all the plot lines for the adventures we’d act out, doing bits, and always, always, always, telling inappropriate jokes.

I was precociously funky, but my mild-mannered female friends could only put up with so much of my constant innuendos and slapstick before they’d get sick of my uncouth ways. The majority of other girls were foreign to me in their tastes for girlish feebleness, and the boys another species entirely for how obtuse and obnoxious they were. All I could do was freeze within myself and look out at the world as if through a car window, with everything happening around me like a movie I was not allowed, or destined to participate in.

To survive the non-conformity, I shut down and shut up. I realized nobody understood what I had to say, appreciated the jokes, or understood what it felt like to always have to be the relentlessly weird girl. Being funky was an enormous burden.

I could pass as “just shy” in elementary school, but by middle school my social awkwardness became unavoidable. My anxiety became so bad that I started having panic attacks and missing class for psychosomatic illness. I retreated as I always did into my inner world, writing two novels about wolves where I was the alpha who everybody in the pack loved and admired for being bold, but caring. I spoke less and less in the classroom and at free time, anticipating that most remarks I could say would be ignored, misunderstood, or only indifferently acknowledged. To compensate for my silence and alienation I wrote my novels, books of poetry, and started a website and blog. If I didn’t have a place in the world, I would just create my own, but it was a sickeningly lonely experience.

Expressing my intensity, passion, and words only half of the time while the other half was spent absorbed in pervasive insecurity, self-doubting silence and social isolation was catastrophic for me even before the trauma and mental health issues began. It was a state of suffocation that gradually ate away at my spirit, self-worth, and vitality. I felt like I was compulsorily being repressed by both my own anxiety, and the ignorance and judgement of others. To make matters worse, I began to experience severe emotional abuse and developed symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD that devolved into a suicidal trauma state which led to my subsequent gender transition and eventual detransition.

Now I’m here online, writing essays, posting daily on Twitter, doing interviews, podcasts, and making music and art not only about my experiences, but peeling away every last layer of the funked-up onion that has been my life. And I love it.

People often say to me that speaking up about detransition, questioning gender ideology, referencing my traumas, or speaking with incredible earnestness must be difficult of me and that I am extremely brave for doing so. I’m saying now; it’s not. What was brave and difficult was sitting in a lunchroom of people who were supposed to be my brethren but who I knew didn’t understand or value my words even if they wouldn’t admit to it. What was courageous was continuing to wear my wolf shirts and listen to AC/DC and write my sad unrequited love poetry while everyone around me had the energy or ability to join after school clubs, make friends, and have a moderately decent self-esteem at the end of the day. The hardest thing I’ve ever done was continue to be authentic to myself and true to my values despite grueling self-hatred, despair, and suicidal ostracization and tribelessness.

Posting retrospective details of acute personal trauma history? No problem! It’s actually a hobby of mine. I’m pleased to announce that I Officially Don’t Give a Fuck about being a loud-mouthed, incessantly passionate over-stimulated survivor of trauma that affectionately posts about the ins and outs of my wacky mortal coil. I’m loud about detransition because nobody heard me for the first 22 years of my life. That funky 8-year-old girl who wrote songs about Halloween on the swings, got into trouble for making too many jokes, but who was spiritually defeated into silence and mediocrity by isolation and verbal and emotional abuse; that’s why I will never shut up. I will never be intimidated into silence or pressured to conform or alter my funky self in order to appease people who can’t handle brazen truths about my experiences, whether they be about gender, transition, or anything else.

It is my responsibility to show my inner child that she was never the problem, she wasn’t taking up too much space, she wasn’t worthless, unlovable, broken or useless; her voice was valuable, and her energy was strong and important the entire time, she just lost faith that it was. Now that I have a platform as an adult to springboard everything off, let’s just say it’s all being catapulted into the cosmos. I’m no longer fearful of being misunderstood, mocked, ignored, or viewed in any particular way. I own my experiences, mistakes, faults, talents, values, love, and humanity in higher regard that anything that could be weaponized against me.

I recognize that these waters are shark infested and I’m like a vulnerable dolphin doing flips in the air and diving back into the depths. It is not that being a disrupter who wears neon leopard print pants and walks around with a pimp cane calling herself Funk God and going off about not having boobs isn’t at times, A Lot to Deal With, it is that I am no longer living my life based on fear of what other people think or trying to fit my star shaped peg into a round hole and being disappointed that I don’t belong. I am loud about detransition because there are many other girls and women like me who have not yet found their voice or been able to embrace their funky self.

There are countless young women who are still timid to speak and who will continue to experience a sense of learned helplessness and feel like an alien. I will only ever claim to speak for me, but I know that my words are worth listening to. Hi, I’m Laura the funkedelic and you are welcome to funk with me and the other aliens. And if someone doesn’t like it, they can go sit at another table.