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Detransition, Baby QUOTES

Detransition, Baby QUOTES

1 " He still misses her in a way that talking about her, thinking about her, remains dangerous to indulge in - as an alcoholic can't think too much about how much she'd really like just one drink. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

2 " That's who is now, he reminds himself, someone who makes decisions, who doesn't let life just act upon him. Wasn't that the big lesson of transition, of detransition? That you'll never know all the angles, that delay is just form of hiding from reality. That you just figure what you what you want and do it? And maybe, if you don't know what you want, you just do something anyway, and everything will change, and then maybe that will reveal what you really want. So do something. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

3 " Sometimes the wonder over the object of a crush is indistinguishable from the simple relief that you are still able to leap into one at all. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

4 " She's the type to turn hardship into hardness, like a shield for people she loves. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

5 " Why does she deserve to be so angry? What has she truly lost? Quietly, to herself, she answers her own question: I have lost a child.
The statement jolts her. She hears in her own voice a latch sliding into place. She says it again, phrased slightly differently, I have lost my child. Is it grief she feels? Is grief even a feeling to which she is entitled? "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

6 " Jealousy is like a hangover: When you are in the midst of it you want to die, you are poisoned, useless. Nothing stretches before you but an expanse of ashes and regret; yet despite the intensity of your suffering, no one feels sorry for you, no one cosigns your fury. No sympathy for you! Look how wantonly you indulged! Of course it hurts, but your suffering is nothing unique, everyone has suffered like that, so get ahold of yourself, show some backbone and discretion, for god’s sake. Don’t go making any major decisions. Jealousy and hangovers, as common wisdom goes, are temporary. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

7 " Just because she saw that the vagaries of capitalism, patriarchy, gender norms, or consumerism contributed to facial dysphoria didn't mean she had developed immunity to them. In fact, a political consciousness honed on queer sensitivity simply made her feel guilty about not having managed to change her deeply ingrained beauty norms. Call her a fraud, a hypocrite, superficial, but politics and practice parted paths at her own body. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

8 " The moment elongates like pulled taffy. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

9 " We are much stronger and more powerful than we understand. We are fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone forged from rage and trauma. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

10 " The moms I knew when I was little didn't have to prove that it was okay to want a child. Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It's assumed why. The question cis women get asked is: Why don't you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn't have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I'm not cis. I'm trans. And so until the day that I am a mother, I'm constantly going to have to prove that I deserve to be one. That it's not unnatural or twisted that I want a child's love. Why do I want to be a mother? After all those beautiful women I grew up with, the ones who chaperoned my classes on field trips, or made me lunch when I was at their house, or sewed costumes for all the little girls that I ice skated with — and you too, Katrina, for that matter — have to explain their feelings about motherhood, then, I'll explain mine. And do you know what I'll say? Ditto. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

11 " Many people think a trans woman’s deepest desire is to live in her true gender, but actually it is to always stand in good lighting. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

12 " Yes.” Reese nods. “I mean, they go through everything I go through as a trans woman. Divorce is a transition story. Of course, not all divorced women go through it. I’m talking about the ones who felt their divorce as a fall, or as a total reframing of their lives. The ones who have seen how the narratives given to them since girlhood have failed them, and who know there is nothing to replace it all. But who still have to move forward without investing in new illusions or turning bitter—all with no plan to guide them. That’s as close to a trans woman as you can get. Divorced women are the only people who know anything like what I know. And, since I don’t really have trans elders, divorced women are the only ones I think have anything to teach me, or who I care to teach in return. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

13 " She knew that no matter how you self-identify ultimately, chances are that you succumb to becoming what the world treats you as. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

14 " All my white girlfriends just automatically assume that reproductive rights are about the right to not have children, as if the right and naturalness of motherhood is presumptive. But for lots of other women in this country, the opposite is true. Think about black women, poor women, immigrant women. Think about forced sterilization, about the term ‘welfare queens,’ or ‘anchor babies.’ All of that happened to enforce the idea that not all motherhoods are legitimate. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

15 " I got to a point where I thought I didn't need to put up with the bullshit of gender in order to satisfy my sense of self. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

16 " The past is past to everyone but ghosts. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

17 " She’s suggested, in the way that naive cis people do, with a hint of self-congratulation at their own broad-mindedness, that it seems like trans people are starting to be everywhere, that maybe gender doesn’t matter that much. In his reply, he can’t help but let loose an old defensiveness on this topic. “I think it’s the opposite,” he says too sharply. “The whole reason transsexuals transition is because gender matters so incredibly much. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

18 " IF YOU ARE a trans girl who knows many other trans girls, you go to church a lot, because church is where they hold the funerals. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

19 " Trans women are juvenile elephants. We are much stronger and more powerful than we understand. We are fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone forged from rage and trauma, armed with ivory spears and faces unique in nature, living in grasslands where any of the ubiquitous humans may or may not be a poacher. With our strength, we can destroy each other with ease. But we are a lost generation. We have no elders, no stable groups, no one to teach us to countenance pain. No matriarchs to tell the young girls to knock it off or show off their own long lives lived happily and well. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby

20 " motherhood is just some vague test designed to ensure that everyone feels inadequate. "

― Torrey Peters , Detransition, Baby