Many feminists are concerned about the way transgender ideology naturalizes patriarchal views of sex stereotypes, and encourages transition as a way of attempting to escape misogyny.
In this brave and thoughtful book, Max Robinson goes beyond the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the transition she underwent and takes us through the processes that led her, first, to transition in an attempt to get relief from her distress, and then to detransition, as she discovered feminist thought and community.
The author makes a case for a world in which all medical interventions for the purpose of assimilation are open to criticism. This book is a far-reaching discussion of women’s struggles to survive under patriarchy, which draws upon a legacy of radical and lesbian feminist ideas to arrive at conclusions.
Robinson’s bold discussion of both transition and detransition is meant to provoke a much-needed conversation about who benefits from transgender medicine and who has to bear the hidden cost of these interventions.
Absolutely incredible. Thank you Max for thoughtfully articulating the experience of being a detransitioned lesbian, thank you for your honesty regarding transition and gender ideology, thank you thank you thank you.
Definitely not worth your time. Read instead the essays of Ky Schevers, a former gender critical detransition activist who moved in the same circles as Robinson, on the nature of the movement: https://aninjusticemag.com/detransiti...
Detransition: Beyond Before and After is riddled with factual errors and doublethink, deeply hateful, and sloppily written. It's from a series of books that are painfully under-edited and salaciously attempting to capitalize on transphobia, fear of vaccines, etc. - whatever THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU THE TRUTH!!11!!! conspiracy theory is big at the moment.
It's extremely unclear who the audience for the book is intended to be - the author purports to address trans men but constantly peppers them with petty insults and willful ignorance of their experiences.
One clear example of this is that the author persistently claims that all trans men are women attracted to women. Even if you insist on misgendering trans men, this is just not in touch with reality - the most comprehensive US surveys that we have put the percentage of straight trans men (what the author mislabels "lesbian") somewhere between 15% (the 2015 US Transgender Survey) and 25% (the 2019 National Transgender Discrimination Survey). A clear majority of trans men are not straight.
Another is the claim that people who detransition do so because they come to a realization that the truth is they are their gender assigned at birth. This is not the case - the research shows that most do so because of transphobia and the difficulty of accessing good transition care, that most people who stop medical transition do not come to identify as cisgender, and that a large number of those who detransition later resume transition when they are able to do so more safely.
(To be clear, while they are a minority of those who detransition, there certainly do exist people like Max, who come to believe that transition was a mistake and they misunderstood their gender identity when they pursued medical transition, and these people deserve respect, care, and support. Today that respect, care, and support is more likely to come from the trans community, who share many overlapping challenges with detransitioners and are supportive of complicated gender histories, than from the gender critical activists who use them as political pawns and speak of them as subhuman, deformed mistakes. There are people who have detransitioned in many majority-trans social scenes who are welcome and valued, and it's not hard to find trans folks that have stopped hormonal interventions (fitting the social science definition of detransition) but who still consider themselves, and are considered by everyone else, to be very much trans, including several prominent trans writers & theorists. I have never experienced any social pressure toward medical intervention, or judgment toward people who change their mind about it, from any trans person (like, I can believe it's out there somewhere on the internet, but it's incredibly rare). But detransitioners are forever suspect in gender critical circles because the trans feelings that TERFs regard as delusion may return at any time and may never have really gone away. Anyone who thinks that think trans people are weird and gross is also going to think a detransitioner is weird and gross. In any case, the existence of those who detransition is certainly no good reason to deny healthcare, legal rights, and dignity to trans people.)
The book is full of defensive sentences like "I am entitled to describe my world as I see it, and I respect your right to do the same. We’re all entitled to our own understanding of the cultural moments we live in." when the author makes claims that she seems to know are false. She makes it clear that she is not interested in seeing reality if it could disrupt her position in the gender critical movement.
I am very sad that Robinson had such a bad experience with transition. There are parts of her story I saw myself in. I agree with almost all of what she says about how deeply misogyny affects us and constrains our choices, despite believing her analysis of transition to be completely unsupported by evidence, and only possible in the context of widespread hatred of trans people. I find myself rooting for her and hoping that we will be in solidarity someday, despite the fact that she advocates for policies that would do grave harm to me and many people I care about.
Robinson wishes that she had more role models of gender-nonconforming lesbians before she made the decision to transition, and I agree with her *so* strongly that the world would be better if everyone had access to seeing and understanding more varieties of gender non-conformity. There are plenty of women with more stereotypically masculine traits than plenty of trans men, and it's a tragedy that homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny hid that fact from Robinson and contributed to decisions she regrets.
I hope that she is able to find some peace and leave behind her role as a tool of bigots.
Robinson is a brilliant writer and theorist; I mean really, the logic in this is just pristine. If you consider yourself any kind of feminist, her work is an absolute must read. I have a hunch someday this will be taught in classrooms.
Detransition: Beyond Before and After by Max Robinson.
What a brilliant book! I learned a lot, and also found some healing for myself by reading this articulate and intelligent work.
The exploration of the experience of dysphoria, and the understanding developed, through feminist consciousness, of the author's experiences as another form of assimilation into a misogynist and women-hating society in keeping with my own thoughts, unexpressed as one who apparently has no say in the matter because I don't have the kind of dysphoria that seeks transition, and at 56 should just get back to the nursing home (as one person has attempted to insult me with gleeful ageism and obvious ignorance).
However this book, with Robinson's articulate feminist reasoning about the context of the ideology of transition, has sincerely helped to resolve most of the confusions I had felt in my own adolescence and early adulthood, back in the day before I became a (fledgling) feminist, particularly with regard to the many ways in which women seek alleviation from the distress of being unaccepted, unacceptable, not good enough, in our hierarchical male-dominated society. The pathways of gender transition or non-binary identity are just a couple of the pathways of assimilation. I see variations even in so-called evolved and hyper individualistic ideologies of sacred masculine and feminine, which rely on the same gender hierarchy but dress it up in spiritual gobbledegook to make women (and probably men) feel more comfortable about enacting the sex-roles patriarchal and capitalist relations require. What is often being ignored, or unseen, is that we are all influenced by the society and promoted interests of the corporations who have so willingly (or uncritically) adopted the gender ideology. But Robinson highlights the point that women's experiences of, and severe distress about ourselves in the context of the misogynist society in current times have been internalised and pathologised, made an essential and somehow "special" wrongness that can be fixed, rather than politicised through critical feminist analysis, women centred community, and activism for social change. I also found Robinson's critique of ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria) as a diagnosis illuminating in that it does not locate the problem of women's discomfort with woman-hating as more widespread, more usual than not. ROGD seems to simply focus on those girls and young women who follow the gender transition path, as if only they are the ones experiencing discomforts (to put it mildly) of living in a society that clearly believes the subjugation of women is essential to its functioning. Girls and women are clearly denied the knowledge of alternatives to understanding their dysphoria and their context, significantly of feminist/lesbian feminist critique. ROGD as a phenomenon seems to forget all the ways in which most girls and women seek to avoid harm in life - either by resistance (non-conformity) or capitulation (conformity), or by a combination of both.
On a personal level I got a great deal of benefit from this book, which is full of insight and food for thought. A very satisfying read. In any case I find it is always a pleasure to read the feminist work of intelligent women!
Thought-provoking! There are two threads woven together in this book that make it a treasure. The first is the author’s extensive lived experience. The second is a craaaazy sharp political analysis. The realest.
Her ability to interrogate nuanced subjects is just masterful. She digs into and deconstructs so many oversimplifications.
This book is compassionate— it’s full of fierce love for women, especially lesbians, tomboys, and trans/nb natal females. Far from belittling the decisions of girls and women who transition, Robinson holds their decisions in a broader context and takes their perspectives seriously.
I rarely read non-fiction as I often feel that I have read it all before on such issues whenever I see the basic blurbs on the covers, but this book grabbed me from Page 1.
Regardless of the heated politics around the issue, it reads as a stunning and brave personal intimate biographical narrative of a woman's journey of an experience becoming more common. Robinson's literary writing skill takes it out of standard polemic into a realm of thought and feeling I have rarely seen.
My favourite quote: "Transition is not an unconstrained choice when we are fast-tracked to medical intervention as if being female was a tumor that required immediate removal to save our lives."
This book is such a balm. As a detransitioning woman grappling with the ins and outs of this journey, it’s invaluable to read the experience of another detransitioned woman. I’m doing a deep dive into the feminist theory leftism told me to avoid at all costs, ingesting from varied backgrounds and sources, and my thirst is nowhere near being quenched. I saw myself in these pages. I saw many of my previous friends, loved ones and life visitors in these pages. Patterns I didn’t quite have a name for, things I’ve been discussing with my fiancé, discomfort from the near decade I lived entrenched in these waters and didn’t know of a better alternative around were simply there—put beautifully to page. This is a very accessible book, full of relevant citations, and the balance between personal narrative and other works was perfect. My tbr list has been significantly added to from the books cited. Thank you Max. For the love you poured into sharing your truths. Thank you for the work you do for women. 💕
Max Robinson has achieved something quite outstanding. In holding the mirror up to herself, her own history and her own dysphoric feelings and body dysmorphia, she has articulated the broader truth around lesbianism, female embodiment and sexual dimorphism so totally and completely in a world of increasing gaslighting and doublespeak.
There are many parts of Detransition... that I know will always stay with me. Whilst I am a woman who is interested in medical malpractice, psychology and feminist sexual dynamics, my central gratitude to Robinson for writing this comes from the fact that she has written lesbian pain better than any other I have come across. The urge to continually attempt to redefine yourself in the prism of patriarchy, as if you can write yourself out of the cage whilst assimilating with the ones who hold the key is a central tenant of my own experience and others around me.
A truly astonishing work of personal narrative and theology.
This is one-of-a-kind. I listened to the audiobook but I found myself wanting to underline sentences all the time. She talks about consciousness raising, makes links to feminist theoretical works, and contextualises detransition in a way that will be very important moving forward. I listened to this shortly after finishing "Hags" by Victoria Smith, in my opinion both books represent a resurgence of women discussing (re)discovering and reengaging with second wave feminist texts.
what a sober mind, such an intelligent and dignified piece of text. the influence of lesbian feminist texts is very prominent in how this book is written style-wise and also how the topic is handled.
thoroughly enjoyed it as a piece of writing but the way in which robinson approaches detransition is very exemplary, she manages to talk about detransitioned women in their full humanness (if that’s a thing) and really lays out what de/transition means for those who have gone through or are in the process of it.
such novel additions to the radical lesbian feminist legacy is always inspiring and fills me with hope.
This book offers an alternative explanation of trans experiences to the "born in the wrong body" narrative. Some parts were very insightful and gave me hope that we can find a way to explain these experiences of acute distress in other ways than to claim they are "innate". I liked that gender-affirming surgery was treated as another form of cosmetic surgery and critiqued as such, placed and analysed within the larger social and political context of a patriarchal and pervasively misogynistic society. I think this makes sense, and it's a useful way of opening up discussion about the causes and ethics of medical transitioning without it equalling a moral condemnation of the individuals who go through with such procedures.
Max Robinson is a lesbian and explicitly aims to write for and about women, and as a former FTM she writes about trans men with great empathy and understanding. About FTM transition she says: "If you are in an environment that punishes violation of sex stereotypes and you have no way to change that environment, seeking transition is a highly adaptive behaviour." I found this analysis of the desire to transition as a rational reaction to a deeply misogynistic society really interesting. I also found it refreshing that her account goes beyond the trans/cis binary. She writes: "FTMs present our hatred of the constraints of sex stereotypes in contrast with women who adhere to them - as if those who comply with sexist expectations were born to do so; as if hating being treated like a woman makes you less of one."
Sadly she does not extend the same grace and understanding to trans women, instead at times falling into conspiracy-like territory. For example she mentions "lesbian fetishists" our of nowhere and highlights their capacity for sexual violence and manipulation with only personal anecdotes to back it up. This is of course a massive flaw in her critique and one that I'm extremely disappointed to have seen shared by other self-proclaimed feminists as well. There's no place for the spread of harmful stereotypes and unfounded claims of that sort in truly feminist literature.
Top memoir. She traces her journey in the transgender world as she experienced it, firstly embracing it, then moving on from it, as a young millenial/ older gen z lesbian in the 20 teens. She deftly applies a radical feminist analysis, that she gained afterward, to it. This analysis shines daylight on the closed cult ure of the transgender industry world that is overwhelmingly patriarchal and misogynistic. She points out the transgender craze is a political issue not individual pathology that needs to be medicalised away. Uses Lisa Feldman Barrett’s ideas from How Emotions Are Made in understanding the psychology of joining the transgender cult ure. She points to the use today of lesbian feminist ideas, apart from consciousness, women’s spaces. She talks about the difficulty now of accessing second wave feminist texts which are needed to show women their history and the context we exist in. Also the receding women’s and especially lesbian spaces. And the distorted, abusive dynamics that arise in lesbian communities when men identifying as lesbians seeking lesbian or bi women partners demand and gain entry. She notes that while things have improved for lesbians legally, community-wise things have regressed. Online communities are weak substitutes for real life ones and at the same time sap people of the drive to form real life ones. She makes a call to action to lesbians to organise in real life. Respect!
I would add that in her bit about lack of true consent in transitioning which I totally agree with, there is the added inability for a person below the age of 25 to consent. Also, I really hope her dog is at least a rescue..
I read this to gain more understanding of, and perspective into, detransition. Robinson’s insights deal with FTM detransition as that is her experience, and societal norms regarding the female form. She writes with honesty and conviction, and while her truth is not everyone’s, it gives much food for thought.
This is an important read. So much anti-trans bullish published by the far-right. I'm very grateful for the discussion of homophobia and misogyny. The pervasive and implicit bias of homophobia and misogyny which is strong as ever. Acknowledgement that they even exist seems completely missing from any discussion.
A smart and introspective reflection on Robinson’s own experiences with gender on a personal level as well as how gender ideology has impacted the gay community and women’s physical and mental health on a larger scale