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Detransition, Baby
Torrey Peters
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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.”
“She knew that no matter how you self-identify ultimately, chances are that you succumb to becoming what the world treats you as.”
“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.”
“She's the type to turn hardship into hardness, like a shield for people she loves.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We are much stronger and more powerful than we understand. We are fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone forged from rage and trauma.”
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Book Keywords:
motherhood, shield, transition, strength, love, decisions, detransition, hardships, hardness, cis-women, trauma, jealousy-quotes, trans-women