Amber

Amber, 21.

It all happened very easily. I started testosterone when I was 17, I had a mastectomy at 18 and a hysterectomy, including removal of my ovaries, at 20.

In my early teens I felt uncomfortable with having a female body. I didn’t like my breasts, hips or face. I didn’t fit in with other girls. When I was 14 I googled, ‘Why do I feel like a boy when I am a girl?’ I came across information about being transgender, and I thought that must be it. I started identifying as a man.

It was a difficult time. I dropped out of school and was sent to a therapist. I told him I wanted to be a man. He mostly wanted to talk about why I left school and told me I needed to get out more. He wasn’t quick to accept the idea I was a trans man. But as he wasn’t getting anywhere with me I think he gave up and decided to help me transition. He referred me to an endocrinologist.

I was excited when I started taking testosterone because I thought it would make me feel better. Unfortunately it didn’t. I was mentally unstable, but I don’t know if I would have been anyway, or if that was because of the hormones.

I still didn’t like my body, so I went to a plastic surgeon and had a double mastectomy privately. There was no therapy before the mastectomy, I just did it. I had wanted to be flat so much, but I thought I looked terrible afterwards. I have huge scars and the nipples are in the wrong place.

Despite being on testosterone, a couple of years later my periods started again. They weren’t painful but I thought that they were gross and I didn’t want to live with them. They felt like a burden. My endocrinologist recommended that I could get a hysterectomy to stop my periods. I was referred to a gynaecologist and within a couple of months I had surgery to remove my uterus and ovaries.

I felt good about the hysterectomy because I wouldn’t have periods anymore, but at the same time something felt wrong, and I didn’t know why.

Around July last year I realised I still felt uncomfortable with my body. I researched online again, and found other detransitioners. In the end, what finally helped me to accept my body and realise I am a woman, was understanding that there were other women who were like me; they’d had similar life experiences to me.

The reason I dropped out of school, the reason I was so unhappy, was because when I was 11 I was sexually abused. Looking back, I think that’s when I started being really uncomfortable with my breasts.

I also found porn at around the same age. It was mainly lesbian porn, which made me feel like being a lesbian was something that appeals to men and that women were just sex objects. At a time when I was coming to understand I was a lesbian, the porn made me think it was something deviant, a fetish. I realise now I became disconnected from my body.

I identified as a man because I wanted people to see me as a person, not as a sexual object. I saw a man as a person and a woman as a sexual object.Perhaps if there were no sexism and homophobia in the world, no one would need to change their body?

When I thought I was trans I don’t think anything could have changed my mind, but the therapy I had was useless. The therapist never brought up trauma, abuse, my sexuality, or anything. I didn’t bring it up either, but I wasn’t thinking about it, I just wanted to transition to feel better. Dropping out of school, the therapy, identifying as trans, none of it addressed my real problems.

I’m OK with being a lesbian now, I guess. I have recently met other detransitioned women. It’s a relief to feel normal around them. I feel self-conscious around other people because of my chest.

I feel ashamed of how my body is. I have lost the most female parts of my body. I think I look weird and feel like a sexless monster. I want revision surgery. I want to change where the nipples are or remove them. I also hate that I have to take artificial hormones forever, which of course has side effects and health risks.

For me, transition was a kind of self harm. I was trying to destroy the person I was.