If I had gone through with a gender transition, I would have committed suicide

Can't tell you how many times I've had that thought.

Bisexuals were sell-outs, next-door to straight. And straightness was a tool of the patriarchy. So they convinced me, for several years, that I was gay instead, as if it were that simple.

Ugh, this is so fucked up and I'm so tired of hearing people say shit like this. It harms everybody.

I was being offered an escape that didn’t involve death. I was only too happy to do and say whatever was asked of me by those offering the way out.

^ ^ ^ That is EXACTLY what made me want to transition in the first place, too.

I was terrified of being gay, and suicide was the first thought that came to my mind. But I reasoned that there must be "another way out." Another way out of being gay, that is. Which is not the healthy replacement thought that I thought it was at the time. It's replacing suicide with self-harm.

There are a bunch of other amazing quotes in this article...

This system is designed for those who need a bit of guidance after a minor shock or bereavement. Not for those questioning their whole sense of being.

...Yet the origin of my pain was far deeper than this – deeper than the narratives of “patriarchy” and “toxic masculinity” and “cis-normativity”. Those were quasi-cogent ideas that served to mask my feelings rather than explain them. The reality is, I was punishing myself – my body – for having gone through puberty without my permission. I was disgusted by my own nature. I felt betrayed by it. And the betrayal was total. I wanted to escape it, kill it, obliterate it, so that it could never betray me again.

...The right labels can be helpful. But the wrong labels can be deadly.

...And we, as a society, need to dispense with this calamity of an idea that transitioning is for everyone who struggles with their identity and body. It isn’t.

Thanks for sharing!! Great article. Glad to see this in a major outlet.