“Removing my completely healthy uterus is my greatest regret.”
Michelle Alleva’s Story: Detransition
I was 21 years old the first time I was asked if I’d thought about my gender.
I had recently emerged from a controlling relationship and spent a lot of time trying to find myself. I’d had difficulty with interpersonal skills my whole life, and my mental health had suffered ever since I had enough self-awareness to recognize that my peers didn’t seem to like me.
As a young adult with newfound freedom, I started looking into sexuality and, eventually, gender. It was 2009, six or seven years before transgender exploded into popular culture, and nearly all of the information I got came from Tumblr and LiveJournal.
In less than a year and a half, I went from questioning to injecting hormones. I became convinced that being transgender explained my entire life. I was bullied as a child because other kids ”°knew”± that I was different. I hated wearing dresses and make-up because I wasn’t a girl. My sexual experiences had been unsatisfying because I was being seen as a woman when I wasn’t. Everything made sense, and I was eager to stop living my miserable life as a girl.
I was prescribed testosterone via informed consent. Under this model of care, one’s identity is affirmed and there is no process of differential diagnosis. I needed a couple of letters ”one recommending testosterone and one confirming I was competent” and to sign forms acknowledging the risks of cross-sex hormones.
For ten years after that, I believed that ”transgender” was an innate property that I would always have. Everything I read online told me so, and my medical professionals seemed to agree. Only my family members seemed hesitant to accept my new identity at face value. Even so, my mom was present at both of my transition-related surgeries: a double mastectomy and partial hysterectomy.
Seven years after being prescribed hormones, I had a psychoeducational assessment and was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, and major depressive disorder. I had symptoms of post-traumatic stress. I even had a learning disability and a ”slow processing speed.” Despite this, my identity was, again, affirmed by professionals and not considered something to look further into.
Online, I existed in an echo chamber of social justice activism, but I didn’t see that as a bad thing. I was conditioned to excuse antisocial behaviour and repeat mantras that could not be explained logically, but I truly believed that it was for ”justice,” even if it left me unable to tolerate anyone who disagreed.
Between online false authorities and real life medical ones, I was never exposed to the idea that my worldview might be wrong” until my roommate detransitioned. As he explored why he mistakenly thought he was trans, my own reasons came into question. My childhood peers knew I was different, but was that because I was a boy or because I was impulsive and emotionally reactive? I didn’t want to wear makeup or dresses, but maybe that was because I had a sensory processing disability? Maybe my sexual experiences were bad because I wasn’t attracted to men?
It became obvious that transition was not the panacea it is treated as. My relationship to gender and to my body has many nuances. And with that knowledge came the awful realization that everything I’d done to myself over the past decade was for nothing but a false belief” and worse, that there were likely thousands of others going through the same thing.
I will live the rest of my life without breasts, with a deepened voice and male-pattern balding, and without the ability to get pregnant. Removing my completely healthy uterus is my greatest regret.
Detransition is not a panacea, either. I still have disabilities. I still struggle with my mental health. I still have habits that need to be unlearned. But now who I am is grounded in empirical proof, and that has brought me a kind of stability that I haven’t felt in years.
