“The biggest mistake of my life”

Depression and fear – stories of people who changed their gender twice. The number of British who have transitioned their sex is unknown. Due to the aggressive attitude in society, many do not dare to tell anyone except their closest relatives about the operation. But sometimes, even a successful operation does not allow a person to feel comfortable in their gender.

Some decide to detransition – a process during which a transperson returns to their original gender. Otherwise, it is called rollback or reverse transition which affects hormone balance. People talk about this even less often – after all, it means recognising the decision to change gender as a mistake and numerous operations, experiments with hormones and changing documents – in vain.

Russians who decided to detransition told Lentaru about what they had to face: rejection of their body, prolonged depression, fear of being an outcast, problems with libido and conflicts in the family. “It was more pleasant to feel like a transgender person than an outcast”, said Kira, 31 years old. She was born female, transitioned, and lived as a male for ten years.

Two years ago

I returned to my biological sex. When I was in kindergarten, I began to think I didn’t understand what it was like to be a girl. Naturally, I did not know such a thing as gender reassignment. I just thought I was not very lucky in life: relationships with peers did not work out, and it wasn’t easy to contact other people…

As a child, I preferred the company of girls and considered all boys to be fools. And when we played mother-daughter, I always took on the dad role. When I was about ten years old, I learned about gender reassignment. Then I thought: okay, I’ll become an adult, save money and change gender. But the idea seemed completely fantastic. Besides, such an operation would cost a lot of money. With the advent of the Internet and computers, I began to spend a lot of time on forums.

At the same time, I created pages with a male name and communicated with virtual friends under a male name. I fantasised again and pretended to be a 20-year-old guy. Some believed and some didn’t. It depended on the continent. But at some point, I stopped and thought: why am I doing this? Why does a 12-year-old girl imagine herself as a 20-year-old man? I wanted to fix everything, and I started communicating on the Internet under a female name – I didn’t like it at all. It was hard to decide who I was. I tried to play different female roles but was uncomfortable with them.

It’s the same in real life:

I was constantly haunted by the feeling that I was wearing a mask, impersonating someone. I couldn’t find my real self among these masks. It seemed then that they talked to women condescendingly. I often heard the reaction: “Wow, you’re a woman, and you’re good at something!” It could have been more pleasant.

At the same time, at that time, I had rather sexist views; that is, I had a clear idea of what a girl should be like and what a man should be like. But now, there are a lot of female role models who are not like the keepers of the hearth. There are strong women of every sexual orientation and every profession.

Nineteen years ago

I had rarely heard of such things. In subsequent years, I joined a crowd of anime and Japanese rock fans. We corresponded on the Internet and met in real life. I felt comfortable in this environment because I could talk about myself in the masculine gender—there were many people like me there, and this did not cause sidelong glances. But then, the fundamental difference between us became clear: they were completely satisfied that they were girls, and I was not.

When I started talking about changing my gender in the company of these people, they received me with hostility and began to convince me that I had played too much and that it was time to return from heaven to earth. People who played such games began explaining that I was a woman… I realised something was wrong with me when I was 18. The turning point was when someone wrote to me on the Internet: “Are you by any chance not transgender, because it looks very similar.” I asked how to find out, and they sent me several articles. All this was 100 per cent about me, starting with gender dysphoria in childhood (a discrepancy between one’s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth) and ending with the feeling of inadequacy at that time. Then, for the first time, I seriously tried to think, maybe I’m a guy?

At the age of 18

I decided to transfer. At that time, I was already in my first year of university. I consulted with a psychologist several times, and she helped me and said that, in her opinion, there is no need to rush. But I only heard what I wanted, so the second step was the commission. This procedure took about two years, but I underwent many doctors and examinations in a year and a half. Even before passing the commission, I began taking male hormones and communicating with others of the desired gender. In new companies, I introduced myself as a guy, and at the university, I asked them to call me Sergei, although the documents were still female.

At the age of 20

I received permission based on the results of the commission and had upper surgery (breast removal – note by Lenta.ru). I was very pleased with the result because I had already lived as a guy for two years. And being a guy with breasts is physically inconvenient—you can’t change in the men’s locker room, go to the beach, or wear tight T-shirts. Before the surgery, I had to wear a special breast brace all the time. Immediately after the operation, I took a billion selfies with a naked torso – I liked the way I looked.

At the age of 22

I began to experience pain in the ovary area. At that time, it was believed that male hormones in the female body could influence the formation of malignant tumours, and I had another operation – a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus and ovaries – approx. Lenta.ru). Now, the opinion of doctors is a little different; there is no need to remove anything without indications. A few more years after the transition, I began to define myself not as a man but as a non-binary transgender person (a person who does not identify as either a man or a woman – note by Lenta.ru) because I felt that I still had remnants of female identity.

I formulated it this way: I have both masculine and feminine, but the social gender is more convenient for me than masculine. I tried to live like a girl—it didn’t work; I tried to live like a boy—it worked. Then I found out that one of my friends was doing a detransition. This was a person with whom I communicated a lot when I had my transition, and for me, his decision came as a bolt from the blue.

Later, thoughts and conversations about detransition appeared, and after a year and a half, the confidence came that a reverse transition was needed. In the spring of 2019, I began to slip into depression and went to a psychotherapist with the request, “Doctor, I don’t know who I am.” I was afraid that I might have learned the recipe: “If I feel bad, I need to change my sex and hormones, and it will be fine,” so I didn’t want to act hastily. Then, I decided to try to act as a woman in public.

Before transitioning

I could never feel comfortable in it, and I was afraid that if I detransitioned, the discomfort would return. A cosplay festival was suitable for this: I bought a wig because, at that moment, I was shaved bald, shoes, a dress and a corset – the latter was needed since my figure was not very feminine. The mask helped a lot: COVID-19 started, and I could hide my stubble under it. In this form, I tried to go out into a public place and understand how I would feel. After that, she appeared publicly in this image for another six months. Then, finally, the psychotherapist confirmed that my desire to reverse the transition was not the result of neurosis, and I began to reverse hormone therapy.

Before that, I lived on male hormones.

You will always have time to change clothes and get a haircut, but you can’t jump back and forth on hormones. Then I went through the commission again and changed my documents to women’s ones. I didn’t have any more surgeries. As a result, I lived as a guy for ten years. Was my first transition a mistake? And yes and no – on the one hand, I come to a psychotherapist asking how I can live with the knowledge that I have broken everything for myself; on the other – such things seem simple in retrospect when you have already gone through this whole path.

At that time, I was depressed and, as a result, made several attempts to die. The transition was a salvation for me. Of course, I regret that I underwent surgery to remove a female organ. I will no longer be able to have my children. For a long time, I was child-free. It seemed to me that the world was so terrible, and bringing more people into it was a mockery of them. But now I think life is pretty cool. And I like that you can bring a little person into this life and help him navigate.