Rediscovering 2nd Wave Feminism & Resisting Right Wing Co-option of Detransition Narratives

A conversation with Max & Kitty Robinson, author & editor of Detransition: Beyond, Before, and After.

Image credit: Lori King, Michfest 2015

“Transition is a choice, a strategy to navigate a woman-hating, lesbian-hating world. We do ourselves no favors by ignoring the oppressive, sexist context within which this choice occurs.” — Max Robinson

A conversation with Max and Kitty Robinson, lesbian feminist activists, members of the Are You Asking Why collective, and author and editor, respectively, of the book Detransition: Beyond, Before and After about developing radical feminist consciousness, collective theory-building and empowerment from the perspective of detransitioned and re-identifying women.

Are You Asking Why

Katherine: I want to start by asking you about the Are You Asking Why collective.  A few weeks ago, I talked with Beaver, one of your spokeswomen, about the collective, but I’d like to learn a bit more. Can you talk about your origin story; how and why the collective was founded, and what the group is working on now?

Max: We came in a few years later, but many of our friends were involved in the earliest organizing around detransition. For most of transgender history, there was very limited acknowledgement that anyone ever stopped transition. Our friends worked hard to provide peer support to each other and create thoughtful, nuanced materials about the meaning they had made of their experience. Some recurring themes include rediscovering a sense of bodily integrity after the physical changes of transition, exploring the diverse factors that motivated our individual transitions, and developing positive feminist understandings of “women” as an expansive category that does not strain to include women like ourselves who look different or have been through less common challenges.

As the topic received more attention, the right increasingly took an interest. The writing and likenesses of various detransitioned women were featured in conservative clickbait, homophobic nonfiction books, and more; it goes without saying that they never asked permission. They present us as previously untarnished little girls who were misled into ruining our God-given bodies for male consumption, visually and through reproduction. We were wretches and negative examples.

This was unpleasant for everyone, but it was especially disorienting and violating for the women involved in the initial trailblazing, who were generally motivated by a desire to understand their own lives and make it easier for others to have the chance to do so, too. It was never about providing fuel for homophobes to use in anti-LGBT policy. Seeing a conversation they had started, to a significant extent, veer in a direction they never would have chosen, was alarming.

At this point, the concerning sparks of detransition being weaponized against LGBT people have long since become raging fires. Detransitioners have always been a small slice of transitioners, but the more of them there are, the more of us there are, too. Many of the detransitioned women from our circles suspected that right-wing interest in our stories would become increasingly common as detransition entered the public consciousness.

We also knew as women who are mostly lesbian, radical feminist, and left-wing, the right would be on the hunt for better tokens than us: straight, preferably conventionally attractive, conservative women who had been through this experience. The straight detransitioned Republicans did indeed materialize, and they are busy testifying to various legislatures in favor of conservative policy intended to fuel culture wars that consolidate power for the right.

We may not be as well-funded, but it is important to us to challenge the right’s presentation of detransition. We are also extremely alarmed by the amount of generally leftist feminist women who see the right as their ally. Are You Asking Why is a collaboration between a number of detransitioned women, but the energizing force is definitely from the women involved who participated in some of the first organizing on this topic. At this time, we’re focused on building the website and looking for further opportunities to challenge sexist interpretations of detransitioned women’s work.

Consciousness Raising

Katherine: Kathie Sarachild has said that second-wave consciousness-raising meetings collected the data and fermented the ideas that feminist writers then developed into basic theory for the movement. Consciousness-raising also provided analysis for effective action and organizing. I’m interested to hear about your experiences with consciousness-raising, and whether it’s fair to say that, similar to the second wave, your CR groups helped develop the ideas for the Are You Asking Why collective and your book?

Max: Absolutely, yes. Intentional consciousness-raising discussion online and occasionally at our events was a huge influence for me, and for many others as well. Seeing my experiences through a feminist lens provided a clarity I’d never had before. My book would not have been possible without the detransition community context that I was in at the time I wrote it.

Kitty: I agree, the book really was such a product of having the wonderful and effective process of CR modeled for us. We also made our own attempts at creating CR groups specifically for female people leaving the current trans and queer-identified subculture we’d been a part of, something that was called “radical queer” at the time. When we decided to speak out about our newfound radical feminist beliefs, it caused an uproar in the insular queer social circles we were a part of, with many condemning us, and quite a few women coming to us in private saying they felt the same and weren’t sure how to navigate it. We made private online support groups that led to a lot of discussion, real life meetups, connections, and helped us all move through the very confusing and frightening time that is leaving trans ideology.

Kitty: These groups ended up splintering more because some women detransitioned and some did not - remaining FTM/non-binary, or detransitioning for a time, and then going back to queer identification and culture. Sometimes they went quietly and with no malice towards those of us who stayed feminists, and sometimes they vehemently and insistently decried us and feminism. It was very interesting to read (and hear word of mouth!) that in earlier lesbian feminist and radical feminist community, this splintering and public denouncement was also common.

Katherine: Did you read and discuss second wave feminist literature in these groups? How did you get interested in second wave literature?

Max: Detransitioned friends gave me books, and after that, we sought them out. I had no idea this stuff existed. I knew there were feminists before, but I had no concept of the breadth and depth of the work they had created.

Kitty: The first stack of books we were given was very soon after we’d decided to identify ourselves as gender critical unapologetically and it blew our minds. It included SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, Woman-Hating by Andrea Dworkin, The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond, and more. I remember just sitting there stunned reading Woman-Hating, feeling the world start to make sense. I also felt shocked while reading The Transsexual Empire and seeing the male violence and entitlement that had totally dominated my experience in trans & queer culture laid out in 1979 - years before either of us was born.

Kitty: We did discuss these texts and others in our groups, not yet aware that we didn’t need to be doing so on our own, and that women who had read them as they come out, or even the authors of the books, in some cases, were available just an email away.

The message at the core of the book is empathy & deep understanding for what all women go through, which is antithetical to the trans concept of a special suffering which sets you apart.

Detransition: Beyond, Before and After

Katherine: Let’s talk about your book. There is so much in that little volume that we could explore, but one of my interests is your contribution to feminist theory. Something I find especially valuable is how you situate the trans issue squarely within feminist analysis of oppressive gender norms and the harms for women. So plastic surgery, obsession with weight, wearing high heels that are damaging to the spine and feet, in order to conform to patriarchal beauty standards, are of a piece with resistance to conformity that might manifest as wearing a binder or having a mastectomy and taking testosterone to grow facial hair, in order to de-identify from femaleness altogether.

How did you come to realize this, and what did that realization mean for you?

Max: What really got me started on that was this driving need that many trans people, including myself while I was trans, feel to draw a distinction between transition and cosmetic surgery. They’re stupid, silly bitches- I needed my surgery. As I developed a feminist consciousness, the arrogance and sexism of this stance became astonishing to me.

Kitty: I think one really important thing for both of us, that really tied things together fantastically, was that despite Max being a butch lesbian and myself being a femme (I say these terms as a matter of practicality - what other people identify us as visually - not any particular attachment to the gender politics or traditional usage), we both had similar feelings of anguish around our sex that were diagnosed as dysphoria.

Kitty: When you understand dysphoria, (the shorthand for this distress), in a female-specific context, it’s easy to fit it among other female-specific forms of distress; women acting in self-destructive ways in order to try to combat body hatred, woman-hatred, and to escape and mitigate misogyny. The message at the core of the book is empathy and a deep understanding for what all women go through, which is antithetical to the trans concept of a special suffering which sets you apart.

Katherine: Beaver made a really interesting point (32:36) in our interview, when she said that because we had the women’s movement in the 60s and 70s, and we now have gay marriage, etc, there is this idea in the culture that we’ve moved past homophobia and pressure to conform to stereotypical gender norms. So when girls today grow up experiencing these things, they look for some other explanation, like a medical explanation, with transitioning as a possible solution.

What are your thoughts on that?

Max: I agree. The explanations we have available to us, and that are regarded as sympathetic by our peers, tend to shape how we understand our pain. My experience as a teen was that neither homophobia or misogyny were considered especially legitimate or compelling reasons to suffer. There were many obstacles to face during transition as well, but no one questioned that I was dealing with something extreme that demanded some sort of response.

Katherine: Another key theme in your book is individualism versus collectivism. For example, empowerment as collective analysis of systems of oppression and action that lifts up the group versus an individual accomplishment that is emotionally satisfying; psychotherapy that focuses on the individual as the source of the problem versus feminist analysis that locates the problem in sexist and homophobic gender norms; and “transitioners” as consumers in the medical marketplace versus analysis of capitalism and the manufacturing of desire.

I think this is an important and urgently needed course correction of feminist analysis away from liberal and 3rd wave feminism, which are individualistic orientations, back to a radical materialist feminist perspective. Can you talk about how your thinking evolved on this? Your primary influences?

Max: Second wave feminist writing, especially lesbian separatist writing, is where we learned about this. We read back issues of periodicals like Sinister Wisdom, Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, and Lesbian Ethics from the 70s-90s, which was a great way to immerse ourselves in the varied perspectives of feminists at the time. Sarah Hoagland, Julia Penelope, Janice Raymond, and Mary Daly were the most significant influences.

Strategies for gender distressed or detransitioning/re-identifying women

Katherine: Examining the transgender phenomenon through a feminist lens points towards strategies for gender distressed or detransitioning/re-identifying women that might not include psychotherapy! You’re very critical of psychotherapy in your book. 

Stella O’Malley, a psychotherapist, and co-founder of GenSpect, discounts feminism as being useful for her project of studying and treating children who identify as trans. WDI USA has created a “Desisted and Detransitioned Women’s Bill of Rights” and a caucus of the same name that advocates for the bill to be enshrined in law. Their September conference appears to have a heavy focus on transition issues.

What do you think of these various initiatives for trans-identifying and detransitioning women and children? What are some of the pros and cons?

Max: I’m cynical about the therapists who seem to be latching onto this as “their” issue. Anecdotally, many offer free sessions to a number of detransitioned women, then leverage that therapeutic relationship to pressure their patients into participating in public-facing projects that support the therapist’s career as an expert on this topic. It feels more like branding than legitimate participation in organizing. Early on, I tried collaborating with a couple of them on different little projects, and found them completely unable to engage with me as a peer. Weird!

I agree with some of the WDI Bill of Rights- for instance, expanded malpractice protections for all patients of cosmetic medicine is sorely needed. It also has many elements that concern me. WDI works with the right freely, a strategy that tends to deeply undermine feminist work. A lot of this Bill of Rights seems focused on culture war issues of interest to the right.

This document leaves no room for the existence of people who transition and stay transitioned. I think we as a society can do better than transition as a strategy, but the reality is that almost everyone who transitions disagrees with me. Where are they in this document? The language seems to tacitly support bans on transitional medicine, and bans on the expression of transgender ideology. Both strike me as elements of the anti-trans culture war the right wants to use to swing independent and moderate voters, expanding their power base in order to push more important issues.

Katherine: You write in your book:

No doctor told me that getting a troubled shelter dog and bonding with her through training, being in a loving and supportive relationship, or making many friends with similar experiences could improve my well-being so much that I wouldn’t have to pretend I was a man in order to feel okay. Nobody told me to read a wide variety of radical and lesbian feminist literature with my friends, and to discuss and debate it at such length and with such depth that it began to change our lives…

Nobody told me that getting political—becoming a feminist and tangibly living my feminism in community—could reshape the entire framework in which the distress around my sex existed (p16).

About your dog; this reminds me that one of the early founders of 4thWaveNow helped her daughter to desist, in part, by sending her to work on a horse farm. Related to this, Laura Killingbeck published an article in response to the online debate about whether women would rather meet up with a man or bear in the woods. She regularly travels alone and camps. She wrote:

When I’m out in nature, I become a body on nature’s terms, free from social context. This freedom also feels like security: I return home to my deepest self.

That resonates with something I’ve been thinking about for a long time; that is, whether getting away from the computer, from virtual space, and interacting with the natural world, whether it be animals or something else, helps to ground one in one’s physical self. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Max: Spending time in nature was hugely helpful to myself and many others I know. Transition is supposed to relieve the preoccupying sense that your body is wrong, but it often doesn’t. Experiencing our physicality in a context where we aren’t being evaluated as objects facilitates a felt sense of wholeness. Swimming in a river is kind of the opposite of existing as words on a screen.

Katherine: In sum, what do you think are the most effective strategies for gender distressed and de-transitioning/re-identifying women and girls?

Max: It is difficult to imagine anyone feeling an overwhelming drive to become male in a world where girls grow up being truly valued for their unique perspective and abilities, with no pressure to groom or style themselves any particular way, experiencing zero threatening sexualization from adults either before or after puberty, being straightforwardly encouraged to develop traits like athletic prowess or interpersonal directness- i.e., if they were not “raised as girls” in the first place. On a societal level, ending the dehumanization of girls is the most pressing issue.

I stopped transition once I had found other, more effective ways to meet the needs I had hoped transition would meet. I wanted to be treated with respect by others, avoid sexualization, dress how I wanted, distance myself from gendered adverse experiences I’d had, and escape a distracting sense of dissonance between my self and my body that I felt could only be relieved by transition.

In broad strokes, the solutions were finding social contexts where I could experience human interaction without casual sexism and homophobia permeating all relationships, finding opportunities to be engaged in my environment where I was not preoccupied by concerns about my appearance, and developing a way of understanding my emotions that didn’t leave transition, (which had not resolved them), as my only hope for a good life. The specificities of why we transition and what else met those needs well enough for us to stop needing it vary, but many of the “tips and tricks” different detransitioned women offer from their experiences address different approaches for meeting these same needs.

Kitty: When I was extremely early into the process of desisting, probably within the first few days, I had this revelatory thought which just kept repeating for me: There are as many ways to feel like a failed woman as there are women alive. Because of this, there are as many ways to address that feeling as there are women alive. The distress around our sex (diagnosed as dysphoria) is specific to each of us. What might really help one woman might send another spiraling. For this reason, it’s essential that many different detransitioned and desisted women tell their stories, write their analysis, and make their art, poetry and music.

Katherine: I know we didn’t get into everything you cover in your book, but there is a lot of food for thought in your analysis, more than we can go into with one conversation. And you’ve given us a lot more to think about here.

Thank-you both so much for your time! I believe you’ve created an important addition to feminist literature; a new feminist classic. Congratulations, and I hope to talk with you again sometime.