That’s messed up. People are coming here to work through their complicated feelings. But let’s be honest, they’re more likely to come here, of all places, because they want people to validate their doubts rather than because people want to encourage them to go ahead with the stuff they’re having doubts about. They could just go to a trans forum if they wanted encouragement to transition. They’re likely here because they’re looking for people to say “it’s ok to hesitate, this step might not be for you”. Just wildly irresponsible to try and get anyone having doubts to go ahead.

This has made me self-conscious about my flair though. There wasn’t one that fitted really. I was on testosterone for about 6 years, then I stopped, maybe about 7 years ago. I have no interest in starting again. I’m not questioning gender, in the sense of questioning my own gender, I’m questioning gender in general as a system. I’m wondering whether “detrans female” would be more accurate, but I’m not living as a woman as such, mainly because my body has changed too much for it to be easily done. I’m living as a female who is read ambiguously, doesn’t identify as a gender, and has regrets about hormones. I’m still living as a type of trans person just because I’m physically stuck here. I would rather look cis but that’s not an option. So I’m definitely female, but not embracing womanhood. And I’m sort of trans but sort of detrans.

No, there’s no such thing as a male brain or a female brain. Brains aren’t even sexually dimorphic, but to the extent that some people incorrectly say they are, there’s still no male brains and female brains.

Take height for example, it’s sexually dimorphic, but there’s much more overlap than difference. So while the average male height is taller than the average female height, there’s no such thing as “the male height” or “the female height” in the sense that you would be able to identify whether someone was male or female based on their height. Similarly, even the people saying there’s differences in the brain on average aren’t actually able to categorise which brain is male and which is female.

Those differences that people thought they’d found in the past have been found to correlate more strongly with skull size than with genitals (because things move around when you scale them up and down), so there’s big person brain and small person brain (except there isn’t, because there aren’t two sizes of people, but there’s stuff that correlates on the spectrum of height). So they were wrongly attributed to sex when they were actually about size, unless you think all small men have female brains and all big women have male brains.

Additionally, neuroplasticity means that peoples brain shapes change massively depending on how they’re used. People who become blinded by an accident and have to learn braille, the part of their brain that processes their sense of touch grows. Not only do peoples brains start out wildly varying from each other, but our habits result in different parts growing or shrinking. As men and women are encouraged to do different activities there’s going to be differences in the size of men and women that do those gendered activities, but that won’t be found amongst men and women who didn’t. Brain scans are generally done on adults.

The male/female brain myth is hugely popular. Especially amongst cisgendered heterosexuals who are desperate for pop psychology articles to decipher the opposite sex who they can’t imagine are just human beings who want normal human being things.

Regarding safety, my experience is that if you’re already a bit ambiguous then it’s safest to have as few indicators of gender as possible. People compulsively gender everyone instantly, then get angry if they think they’ve been “tricked”. So if people see my stubble, think I’m male, then afterwards see my boobs, then they think I’m female but that I tried to trick them, they get annoyed. If they see my boobs first, think I’m female, then see my stubble and think I’m male and tried to trick them, they also get annoyed. Whether they think I’m a male or a female tricking them depends on what they saw first.

So the safest seems to be, freshly shaved, cover my hairline, bind, casual clothes. No makeup, no tie, etc. It’s not making a statement, doesn’t look like I’m trying hard one way or another. People who see a female first continue thinking that. People who see a male first continue thinking that. No one gets their assumptions challenged and feels messed about. I let them believe whatever they want and they’re happy.

There’s various things about me that make this difficult for me (my stubble is dark, I messed my ribs up by binding, etc), so not saying it’s easy. But my experience is that the harder I try to remove gendered cues, the less shitty people are. I still hear “he” and “she” but less anger, and they’re more likely to stick with the same pronouns throughout the interaction.

I think the trans phenomenon is the inevitable result of gender expectations being such a big deal in society at the same time as doing something strange (eg transitioning) doesn’t get you burned at the stake. We don’t have different pronouns for people from different countries or of different races, polite people don’t refer to another person as “a gay”. But rather than referring to someone as a child or a person we have the term girl and boy, man and woman, and different third person pronouns depending on which category people fall into (not the case for all languages, but for English and a lot of other currently dominant languages), as if gender is a more fundamental aspect of who they are than any other aspect. Then there’s so many expectations attached to which category you’re put in, what you’re into and what you’re like. Even if we know that’s nonsense it still affects us subconsciously. If you don’t feel like all that stuff fits then you might feel like you’re in the wrong category. Or if you’re jealous of some aspect of the other category then you might want the body associated with that.

We happen to be at a point in history where people are strongly encouraged to seek individual solutions to collective problems. It’s not a surprise that this is one aspect of that.

Then particularly people who are struggling with something and it seems like they wouldn’t struggle with that in the other gender, they’re going to be more tempted. Or if they need an extreme version of that “had a mental health crisis, dyed my hair” or “feeling depressed, rearranged my room” sort of fresh start feeling. And often that actually works for people. I’ve seen people get that fresh start, reinvent themselves, go on to live happy lives. Maybe some other kind of makeover or identity change would have had the same effect.

But yeah I don’t think people are ever “meant” to be in another body. Things are never “meant” to happen in biology, they just happen. We have our biological sex, our resulting reproductive abilities, and most of the social stuff that’s attached to that can be traced back to historical developments.

Of course some people probably just want a beard, or some breasts, or to walk around without guys checking out their chest, or to be able to put their genitals into someone else during sex, or whatever. They should definitely have that if they feel like it and it’s worth the risks. It’s a shame that whenever someone wants any of that that they have to go along with the entire rest of the stuff associated with that gender, but it’s a shame any of us have to do that. We should all get to just wear the clothes we want to wear, pursue the interests we want to pursue, develop the qualities we value, etc, without worrying about what’s appropriate for our sex or gender.

Yes, you might be right. For me “female” is a statement about my biology and my socialisation more than anything else though, because I don’t think people have gendered souls. The fact that that’s the body I was born into and conditioned as is an important part of who I am, so I do want to refer to it. But also if I hadn’t had the genetic make up that meant that testosterone made my hair fall out then maybe I wouldn’t be regretting taking it for a few years. I did want to look a bit butcher, and I don’t regret that. I think I identify more strongly as “a person who wishes they had hair” than as any gender, which has shaped how I feel about my decisions. And also if being transgender meant what it meant when I discovered it 20something years ago, amongst the trans people I met then, ie very much not a denial of what people were born as, then I’d be more comfortable being trans. Personally my ideal flair to describe who I am might be “afab, sick of this shit”, but out of the available options maybe “detrans female” is a bit closer.

I’m living a similar life. I’ve been off testosterone for years, but I have quite a bit of stubble if I haven’t freshly shaved, still got a receded hairline, and wear mens clothes because it’s safer and more comfortable. I used to get read as a guy a fair bit before I started testosterone. Personally I don’t know what I’d describe my gender identity as, I’m just female and I would prefer people to know that. Ideally I would be read as a butch woman. But I know a lot of butch women are read as men and don’t make efforts (with makeup etc) to be read as women just because it’s more correct. We don’t owe anyone a particular presentation. Do whatever is easier and safer and more comfortable. If at some point you get the urge to do something else than that’s also fine.

Yup, I have the same concern. I really don’t like the term non-binary, it makes no sense, and also it implies that I think I’m in some unique position, but I don’t identify with man or woman either. I don’t like being associated with transness but the only way to distance myself from it seems to be to assert my womanhood, which isn’t an identity I’m claiming. I kind of want to see how things play out when I don’t make any assertions, which is why I can’t stand being asked my pronouns.

I remember some discussion around this regarding Leelah Alcorn, because policy dictated by suicide prevention organisations are very clear that implying that certain circumstances were the cause of a suicide heightens the risk of suicide amongst people with similar circumstances, so it’s incredibly important, regardless of what lead up to it, to not imply that this is the inevitable result.

However Leelah was very clear in her suicide note that she wanted her suicide publicised and for the resistance to her transition that she experienced to be given as the reason. She thought this would lead to more acceptance and less suicides. I can see the reasoning of course. And people wanted to respect her dying wish of course. But people working in suicide prevention do actually know better and it shouldn’t have been talked about like that.

Professional journalists mostly stuck to the suicide prevention, but there were still so many posts and blog articles and videos etc, that promoted that narrative. It stressed me out no end at the time, just the potential repercussions amongst the trans community. It’s horrible to think about.

I think you should make the letter as short as possible. People at work skim read things to get the gist of them and the more words there are the more likely they are to read the wrong ones and get the wrong idea.

So I would just make the main part of the letter one short paragraph in middle of the page in a decent sized type. Exactly what you say depends, I would say something like this:

“Dear Passport Office,

I’ve enclosed my birth certificate stating that I’m female. It’s my original birth certificate, and I never got a GRC to change to male. I would now once again like my passport to reflect that I’m female.

Thank you,

[your name]”

Maybe you’d prefer to say something else, but this is the kind of length I think you should aim for.

Regarding the strategy and the reasons for it (the “born this way” argument and the trans repetition of it), I agree, I’ve been saying exactly the same for a long time tbh, but I’m not sure about your first paragraph. I’m not sure it’s such an effective strategy. The born this way argument has been considered a nice story to tell along with freedoms being increased regarding gendered expression in general, but I don’t think it’s that useful in the long run.

In practice a laxer attitude to gender increases our freedom to transgress the boundaries of our assigned genders in general. “Trans rights” in the broadest most useful sense, includes the right to take hormones without changing your name or your clothes, getting surgery without an excuse but just because you’ve established that you definitely want it, changing your name to whatever gendered name you want regardless of anything else, wearing clothes to work that are in keeping with the dress code for either gender without a note from your doctor, and other more obviously feminist goals, etc.

If those kinds of rights aren’t what the trans rights movement are aiming for then they’re not aiming for bodily autonomy but for giving power to doctors and lawmakers. And in practice that’s so much worse for people seeking medical interventions too, because they imagine that doctors can tell them whether they’ve got a male or female brain and whether they should alter their body, when if they didn’t believe in male and female brains they might be in a better position to assess how they wanted to utilise their bodily autonomy.

I think it also makes sense to see bodily autonomy as our default state until society restricts it, and chronologically that’s how it’s been (with being gay too, which was permitted until it was forbidden and then the excuse was to bypass the fact that this was justified by it being a sin, which assumes it’s a choice. If it wasn’t considered a sin at that point then there would be no need to argue that it wasn’t a choice). If it wasn’t for the enforcement of the gender system, in this case, the restrictions wouldn’t have been made in the first place. Eg when Magnus Hirschfeld started issuing gender recognition certificates it was only because a law had been put in place previously to arrest people for fraud if they were wearing clothes that didn’t match their genitals. Without those restrictions putting various shapes of clothes or having whatever hair cut wouldn’t be an issue. Later on that law no longer existed so the exceptions didn’t need to be granted individually. But I think it makes sense to see it as a right that’s being actively restricted under those conditions rather than not yet granted.