CREATIVE NON-FICTION

I Medically Transitioned for All the Wrong Reasons

But no one talked me into it or forced me to become a man; here’s what really happened

Photos of Author: Before beginning my gender transition vs. after almost a year and a half on Testosterone (along with a sunburn from hiking without adequate sunscreen)

CW: suicidal ideation mentioned in passing without details, brief mention of genitals with medical terms that could be considered misgendering

I don’t know who needs to read this story, or if they would even seek this information out from someone like me: a person who has lived through a medical transition. The person who really needs to read this the most is probably watching Fox News instead.

I guess I’m really writing this as a kind of letter to a former self, since I was the sort of person who would have been seeking these stories out. I’m also writing this as a letter to all of the confused parents of gay children who are scared that someone would force them to become just like me. I’m writing this in response to this specific mother’s fears, knowing there are lots of mothers just like her out there who are getting inundated with misinformation about men like me right now.

This Gay Boy Tried to Die. He and His Mom Are Desperate to Talk to You.

The title of this writing is 100% true. I did medically transition into manhood for all of the wrong reasons, but not in the way that mother feared. No one tried to talk me into it. Also, medically transitioning didn’t make me become a man. I was already a man long before I took my first Testosterone shot. I was born a baby boy who was destined to be all kinds of queer and to vascillate freely between masculinity and femininity no matter what anybody did to try and correct my behavior and internal essence. The doctor just couldn’t see this basic fact about me because they were too busy staring at my genitals to notice and made that call several years too soon.

Why did I decide to medically transition?

It had nothing to do with anything my doctor said. If anything, she did her level best to talk me out of it. She told me about all of the “dangerous…