Gender Desistance, Cognitive Dissonance, and Expanding My Definition of Womanhood

There are many reasons why I explored a non-binary gender identity for the better part of seven years, many of which I touch on in my recent podcast episode, “Releasing Attachment to My Non-Binary Identity + Returning to the Medicine of Womanhood”. As I stated in the episode, I don’t regret any part of my gender journey nor do I feel any negativity towards the exploration process that I underwent in order to find my way back to womanhood. However, I didn’t speak much about why it has taken me over a year to speak more openly about the reclamation of my womanhood. I’d like to share more about that here.

First, it’s important to speak about the severity of cognitive dissonance and detachment from biological reality that I had to consistently convince myself of while identifying as non-binary. If you have already listened to the podcast episode, you hear me speak extensively about how, as a young girl, I didn’t fit into the gendered norms that little girls were expected to follow. I hated dress up, couldn’t stand tea parties, and was actively allergic to the color pink. Rather, I preferred spending all of my time outdoors climbing trees, skinning my knees, and playing football with the boys. In comparison to my two younger sisters who engaged in more stereotypically “girly” activities, I constantly felt like I was doing girlhood “wrong” (as if that’s even possible…).

This discomfort and confusion about my inability to fit into the narrow confines of girlhood continued into my adolescence and early adulthood. I never felt “feminine” enough. Never soft enough. Never sweet enough. Never accommodating enough. Never self-sacrificing enough. Never quiet or meek enough. I had too many opinions. Too many weird interests. Too many pairs of baggy pants and oversized hoodies. Too many sneakers and not enough heels. Too many books and not enough lipsticks. However, more than anything, I didn’t have any examples of what alternative models of womanhood could look like for me. I felt like a fraudulent failure whose physical biology and expansive spirit were somehow mismatched. I felt alone and lost and desperate for an explanation as to why womanhood was so impossible for me to achieve.

Consequently, when I began meeting and spending time with genderqueer people in New York City (where I lived for over 8 years), I saw an opportunity to create a version of myself that could be expansive and exploratory, radical and revolutionary, shiny and new and without any of the heavy gendered baggage that came with womanhood. A non-binary identity gave me permission to do all of the things that I wanted to do that didn’t fit into the extremely narrow and stereotypical version of “femininity” that I had been fed my entire life by cultural programming, media representation, and the capitalist system that demoted the valuable, necessary, and SACRED care work of women (specifically that of mothers and grandmothers) to unpaid domestic labor that supported the waged male labor force.

While I was deeply immersed in my non-binary identity, I truly believed that I had finally found freedom. I could wear whatever I wanted to wear. I could avoid being sexualized and assaulted (so I thought). I could shed the insane pressures and expectations of femininity and just truly be myself. The sad part about all of this, however, is that I fully believed that in order to be the most honest and true version of myself, I had to do away with womanhood completely. Womanhood was the prison. Womanhood was the enemy. Womanhood needed to be abolished, destroyed, demolished, and forgotten in order to finally find the real me.

This was a period of a lot of delusion, magical thinking, and escapism but there was also something that felt particularly creative and exciting about my rejection of womanhood. I saw myself as more evolved and more spiritually enlightened. I thought of myself as less of a human and more of an ethereal being that travelled here from otherworldly dimensions where the male-female binary didn’t exist. Thus, I was not only fighting womanhood, but also the reality of what it means to be human on this earth. What it means to be a being of this lived time and space. And, most importantly, what responsibility I hold in being a steward and caretaker of the lands and the waters that the Creator has so generously offered to me as a child of this planet. When people asked about my gender, I very seriously responded with, “My gender is faerie,” or, “I identify as a forest elf.” My inability to accept the biological fact that I was a female member of the human species left me entirely out of touch with reality which was neither supportive nor healing in the short or long term.

During this time I also suffered from severe reproductive health issues, back-to-back-to-back vaginal infections, cripplingly painful periods, anxiety, depression, and entirely unfulfilling relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners. It was as if the deeper that I went into my non-binary identity, the more pain and suffering emerged in all aspects of my life. Looking back now, I can see that this was a direct consequence of refusing to ground myself in and accept the reality of my biological truth as a woman. The harder that I fought against the reality of my body, my hormones, and my monthly blood, the more I suffered. However, instead of saying to myself, “Claire, this isn’t working. It’s time to accept womanhood as something sacred and beautiful,” I simply doubled down on my hatred of and loathing towards all things woman.

The process of coming back to womanhood was long, hard, and very painful. Over a period of 3 years, I slowly unravelled all of the untruth’s that I had swallowed and opened myself up to the possibility that womanhood was not something that I needed to fear or reject. Rather than shoving myself back into the narrow box of stereotypically “feminine” expectations, I expanded my personal definition of womanhood to include every single thing that I am. Slowly, but surely, I came to the profound understanding that everything I do, every interest I have, every item of clothing that I wear, every mannerism and way of speaking all falls under the umbrella of womanhood. More and more, I grounded myself in the undeniable truth that there is no way to “do womanhood wrong” because I am a woman in all that I do. It’s all woman. Everything. Womanhood is expansive, it is creative, it is generative, it is freeing, it is powerful, it is sacred, it is natural and normal and good.

I began to question my own beliefs around what I deemed “feminine” and “masculine”. Why did I view organization, firmness, and directness as inherently “masculine” traits? Why did I refer to softness, gentleness, and emotional vulnerability as “feminine”? If a man is in touch with his feelings and is unafraid to cry, why do we refer to that as his “feminine side”? Do tears have an inherently gendered energy? If a woman loves heavy lifting does that make her more “masculine” because she’s focused on building physical strength? Is strength, in itself, something that only “masculine” people are allowed to pursue?

The questions continued on. The threads continued to unravel. The spiral led me deeper and deeper into my understanding that by attempting to escape from womanhood, I was actually solidifying and buying into all of the nonsense gendered stereotypes that had been so oppressive in the first place. Eventually, what I began to understand more and more was that being firmly grounded in womanhood and all of the innate strength and power that comes from that identity was the most radical and revolutionary thing that I could do to combat gender-based oppression. To be fully woman in all that I do. To not hide. To release shame, pain, anger and self-loathing. To finally be able to truly say, “Holy shit, I LOVE being a woman! This is fucking awesome!” THAT is the truest revolution and the most sacred homecoming that I could offer to myself.

However, with this renewed sense of peace and stability that I felt in my return to the medicine of womanhood, I knew that it would be a delicate and controversial thing to share about. I had essentially shaped my entire life around a non-binary identity for almost seven years. The vast majority of the community that I had built in New York City was with genderqueer people (non-binary/trans/gender variant/all the other terms). I had been adamant and vocal about how I did not want to be seen as a woman. I had policed other people’s language and had completely changed the way that I spoke in order to never say anything that would get me cancelled. I erased the word “woman” from my vocabulary entirely. And, now, after all of that…I was just going to…take it all back…?

I had fears that people would call me a TERF. I had fears that people would say that I was never actually “gender dysphoric” (which makes no sense because there’s no way to genuinely “test” for gender dysphoria…it’s an entirely personal experience that can’t be measured or quantified). I had fears that people would say that my act of gender desistance was causing harm to other genderqueer people. I had fears of being cancelled. I had fears of losing community and friends. Quite simply, I had many, many fears about my experience and embodiment of womanhood being rejected…again.

I had also read and listened to countless stories of gender desisters and detransitioners who spoke at length about how re-identifying with their biological sex left them vulnerable to severe cancellation, doxxing, harassment, and varying degrees of violence at the hands of the very people that they once considered to be their closest “chosen family” and community. I was absolutely terrified of what would be said about me if I chose to be open about returning to identifying as a woman and it kept me silent for over a year.

However, during this period of silence, I did a deep dive into the lived experiences of other gender desisters and detransitioners (particularly those who are biologically female) and found many similarities between my gender journey and theirs. For example, many of these women had suffered from sexual abuse (either in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood) that triggered their gender dysphoria and pushed them away from wanting to identify as female. Many of these women were neurodivergent, with a large majority of them being undiagnosed as autistic until their teen or adult years. Many of these women were lesbians or bisexuals who were grappling with internalized homophobia. The more that I learned, the more that I understood that these women, like myself, had learned to see womanhood as the enemy rather than as the missing part of their peace and self-acceptance.

The reason that I have decided to speak about this now is because I think that it’s good and healthy for us to be able to hear different narratives, stories, and versions of “THE TRUTH”—especially when they differ from our own. I think it’s valuable to hold space for the lived experiences of gender desisters and detransitioners. I think it’s important and necessary for us all to get a lot more curious about the current gender affirmation model of care and to take a closer look at the short and long term consequences of social and medical transition—especially when it applies to the health, development, and fertility (or, rather, infertility) of children and adolescents.

I’m speaking about this now because I no longer believe the statistic that only 1% of people choose to detransition. I have heard far too many stories from detransitioners who have dispelled that myth for me. I’ve heard countless stories from women who grieve and mourn their inability to breastfeed their future children due to the fact that they underwent a double mastectomy when they were 18 years old. I’ve heard countless stories from young women in their mid-twenties who suffer from vaginal atrophy and clitoral hypersensitivity from years of testosterone injections that make sex extremely painful and entirely unenjoyable. I’ve heard countless stories from women who suffer from severe kidney damage, heart conditions, and plethora of reproductive health issues due to their use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. I’ve heard countless stories from women who have no idea as to whether or not they will ever be able to get pregnant with and birth their own babies after years of messing around with the natural hormonal blueprint of their complex endocrine system. I’ve heard countless stories of women who will suffer and grapple with the fact that they will never be able to have children at all because they got their tubes tied or underwent a full hysterectomy in their attempt to change their gender and no longer be a woman.

I’m speaking about this now because my return to womanhood has been one of the most healing experiences of my entire life and that is something that I want to shout from the rooftops! It took me 27 years to finally come to peace with the reality of womanhood. 27 years to finally feel at home in my body. 27 years to finally understand the true beauty and innate wisdom of my female biology. 27 years to love myself, all parts of myself, as the woman that I am.

I’m speaking about this now because I know how many women absolutely hate their breasts and their wombs and their hips and their blood. I know how many women are suffering with their physical, mental, and emotional health. I know how many women are struggling to embody healthy relationships with their personal experience of womanhood.

I’m speaking about this now because it’s important to show other women that womanhood is safe. That it is beautiful. That it is sacred and special and powerful.

I’m speaking about this now because it is important for me to be an healthy example for young girls who are attempting to navigate their own transition into womanhood. To show that whoever they are and whoever they want to become is perfect and enough and that every single part of them can be celebrated and cherished as a normal aspect of girlhood/womanhood.

I’m speaking about this now because I am no longer scared to be a woman nor am I scared of everything that comes with that identity. I have found freedom and expansion in womanhood and I am FINALLY at peace. If I can share even the smallest sliver of that peace with those who are still suffering in their relationship to womanhood, I can rest easy knowing that my own years of suffering were not for nothing. In sharing my story, it is my prayer that the love that I have found for myself can ripple out and offer hope and healing to those who are currently standing where I once stood.

ART CREDIT:

https://co.pinterest.com/pin/649362839993647271/