Part I: Gender Dysphoria & Shame I had what we would consider early onset childhood gender dysphoria; a self-conception of being a boy despite a body that contradicted that. I don’t think I was born with it though; I think it was a response to restrictive female gender roles and a sense that boys had a freedom that shouldn’t be withheld from me. I was a tomboy who grew up in a conservative Evangelical Christian environment and was regularly reminded how girls behave and dress, with the explicit message being I was acting like a boy and that was inappropriate. From my earliest memories the wish to be a boy, or the self-conception of myself as a boy, was inextricable from a sense of shame at feeling that way.
Aaron, your story is so similar to mine, except i fought through the dysphoric feelings and live a fairly weird, separate, outsider life with an awkward and often happily celibate life. It is so amazing to come across someone so relatable, of my age, yet you took a path i often desired but couldn’t philosophically reconcile with feminism. Everything you say about disgust /desire / envy regarding sexed bodies… that is/was my own private delirium, as well!
All your writing is beautiful and frank, thank you! (I am an ASD woman, btw, so i am horrified by this eugenics program against us.) Will read again and share.
I don't think there's any intentional effort to eugenics ASD out of existence, its just happening by accident when they're all presenting for transition and then saying its transphobia if they aren't affirmed. Of course I wouldn't mind if there was, the condition disables me and I think its a good thing I ended up homosexual and transsexual so that I won't have biological kids and they won't have to suffer with the profound social disability and executive dysfunction I suffer from. I think I'd choose to sterilize myself and then adopt kids if I was heterosexual 🤷♀️
No delusion detected. Amazing story! everyone should read this to see an example of a path of insight into circumstances and motivation. For anyone not just gender dysphoric /questioning. The current movement wants to have transing fast tracked legally and medically and that seems impulsive and dangerously cult like.
This woman literally believes that she's a man, and you claim there's no delusion? The difference between sane and insane is the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Mentally ill people should be treated with therapy, not surgery. Would you tell a Schizophrenic that the voices in their head are real people? Also, there is no real difference between the "current movement" and the author of this post. The end goal of trans ideology was always the creation of the medical industrial complex, and to give pedophiles more victims.
I don't know if this person is transsexual or not, sounds like social influences rather than neurology, but the point I want to come back on is that they don't say they thought they *were* a boy, they say that they *wanted* to be a boy. Big difference and one which gencrits often seem to completely ignore.
My thinking continues to evolve, since writing this comment I have come to see that much of the trans or TQ umbrella is inadvertently protecting (or promoting) mentally unstable narcissistic compulsive exhibitionist behavior which isn’t healthy or sustainable. And what is being done to children is criminal. I’ve known about the trans humanist agenda, and the sexual exploitation of children. HOWEVER. never let an ideology or stance be so rigid or black-and-white that you cannot see that there are many shades and many different reasons and kinds of people in this world. Reading Aaron’s story of self awareness is so palpable, examined and undeniably deep, I do not think Aaron is “reacting,“ but responding to the multiple factors that influenced him. there are certain people that I respect out of their intelligence and ability to explain even though they don’t owe us an explanation. I am grateful that Aaron gives voice to the aspect of gender identity that brought him where he is today. Because impulsive copycats looking for a quick fixes need to self reflect. And I do say him, because that is what I would do if I were in a room with Aaron.
Thank you for this . Your insights and writing are such an important part of this whole trans narrative. The videos from Gender Dysphoria Alliance are great. I am just sorry that the extreme trans ideology that is being pushed has meant that you have had to speak out instead of just being able to get on with your lives quietly as you were before this madness started.
I also feel so sorry for you that you were so crushed as a child by a culture that did not allow you the freedom to be a mighty adventurous natural girl. What societies and cultures have done to curb, confine and supress women through the ages is heartbreaking.
I had gender dysphoria ever since my earliest memories and I'm certain there were no social influences. I transitioned nearly forty years ago medically and never regretted it.
I recently had a book on the subject published The War on Gender ~ Postmodernism and Trans Identity
I take a position against the current wave of gender ideology and identified the Tavistock clinic as problematic before the scandal became public and go into the neurological evidence.
Young people being indoctrinated in this way is the inevitable result of people like you treating your mental illness with invasive surgery. The difference between sane and insane is the ability to distinguish fantasy and reality. You are still a woman and always will be. And nothing you do will ever disassociate "the good trans people" from the ones grooming young people online into decisions they deeply regret later on in life. The reason for this is simple: if you expect to be treated like a man because of your transition, how can you deny the same privilege to others, simply for having a different reason? They followed the same rule you did. The only way to fight back against "trans trenders" is to take a stand against the entire trans ideology itself. Men are men, and women are women. Anyone who believes otherwise must be treated with therapy and other mental treatments, not mastectomies and penectomies.
You don't appear to understand that there is a distinct difference between the gender ideology which tells people they can choose to be anything they like, and neurological transsexualism which is a condition that is unwanted but which many seek to address medically. I'm not encouraging anyone, in fact I think a lot of 'transgender' people are simply suffering from social mimesis and that this involves an awful lot of what the lawyers covering the Tavistock class action call 'ideological capture'. When I began my reassignment nearly forty years ago it was a case of having to fight your way through the gatekeeping, which was good in the long run. Entirely different from teenagers getting prescribed blockers at the first thought.
You have probably encountered a transsexual or two on your path through life without even being aware of it. You are so triggered by this that you are clearly not able to actually address the situation clearly.
You have autoandrophilia (AAP) and your attraction to women is meta-attraction, or pseudobisexuality. Thanks for this article. It is more evidence for my theory: yes, you are correct in your assessment that restrictive gender roles caused your desire to be a boy - and then the shame you felt in response to that desire became sexually imprinted (because shame is a difficult emotion for a child's brain to process, and shame has a high potential to be eroticized). Because the shame is directed inwards, it creates the autosexual paraphilia. Also, the people you found who seemed like you but desisted were HSTS, not AAP.
I think you were born with it, or at least something very close to it. I found myself asking why it was that you found female roles unpalatable, could it have been because you already had a brain that had been masculinised before you were born?
I've seen the argument made that these are only 'stories' we tell ourselves, but my dislike of my sexed body was there right at the beginning and I knew intuitively that I should have been a girl.
I also have an eminent Emeritus Professor of PsychoBiology who has written to me privately after reading my book and said 'Of course I agree with you'. I don't like to resort to claims from authority for my position, but this is so little discussed that I feel I can legitimately draw upon his professional opinion. He's only been involved in neurological research since the late nineteen-sixties.....
Thank you, Aaron, for this first-person description of how it feels to be a trans man. I retired in 2019 from a private school (toddlers thru middle school) that is very alternative-friendly, and has always had staff who were in the LGBT community. Our first trans student was a kid who entered at age 3, proudly declaring "I'm really a boy, even though I have a vagina." It seemed that "Mary's" parents were just as befuddled as we teachers were, thinking that this must be a "hero worship" phase where she was determined to be like her older brother.
The "I'm really a boy" insistence continued, however, and the next year the kid returned as "Murray." The parents bought a book for all the teachers called "Your Transgender Child," (if I remember correctly), and really tried to help make the transition seamless. As a 5-year-old, Murray went to the local public school, and is presumably now in high school. I only saw that family once or twice since then, so I don't know how Murray/Mary is doing.
The hypothesis put forward in a film that family showed to interested community members was that hormones in utero at different points in fetal development influence the development of the sex characteristics of the body, and then of the brain, so that a disruption of the hormonal environment can cause the fetus to develop the body on one sex and the brain configuration of the other. Since we've been hearing for decades about more and more hormone disrupting chemicals saturating our environment (food, cleaning products, cosmetics, industrial pollutants, etc.) that piqued my curiosity about whether those chemicals might be to blame for the obvious uptick in trans identity.
The aspect of this that really concerns me though is the alarming number of teenage girls who are identifying as trans or non-binary, however they conceptualize that. From my school, with fewer than 150 students each calendar year, ages from toddlers to middle school, I personally know four girls who came out as trans or non-binary, as teenagers, between 2015 and 2023. (That's not counting the 3-year-old back in 2011.) The youngest, now a rising freshman, has a dad who's a trans woman and was transitioning while the kid was in preschool. The oldest, now a high school grad, I never knew very well, but the two in the middle I've known since they were three, and was totally surprised when I heard from others that they were now known as "Bob" and "Peter."
My almost 75-year-old brain is trying to understand how to process this: how to be supportive and non-judgemental without jumping onto a bandwagon that may be rushing full-speed in the wrong direction. I try to imagine how to respond to these young people whom I knew as small girls, if I were to encounter them as young men. I live far away now, so that's not terribly likely, but I do still know their families.
Interestingly our developmental pathways seem to be similar. When I was a teenage boy I thought I wanted to be "a lesbian", I now feel this was my own disgust at my male body and internalized homophobia towards the thought that I could be a gay man being projected. As soon as I started my transition as a transwoman I instantly felt my attraction shift towards men, and soon declared I must have been gay all along. Not sure now if it was an "all along" thing or if my orientation changed, my sexual development was stunted so perhaps it just took me a while to figure it out. At this point, I'd only ever date a man or another transwoman (who still has a penis).
Aaron, your story is so similar to mine, except i fought through the dysphoric feelings and live a fairly weird, separate, outsider life with an awkward and often happily celibate life. It is so amazing to come across someone so relatable, of my age, yet you took a path i often desired but couldn’t philosophically reconcile with feminism. Everything you say about disgust /desire / envy regarding sexed bodies… that is/was my own private delirium, as well!
All your writing is beautiful and frank, thank you! (I am an ASD woman, btw, so i am horrified by this eugenics program against us.) Will read again and share.
I don't think there's any intentional effort to eugenics ASD out of existence, its just happening by accident when they're all presenting for transition and then saying its transphobia if they aren't affirmed. Of course I wouldn't mind if there was, the condition disables me and I think its a good thing I ended up homosexual and transsexual so that I won't have biological kids and they won't have to suffer with the profound social disability and executive dysfunction I suffer from. I think I'd choose to sterilize myself and then adopt kids if I was heterosexual 🤷♀️
No delusion detected. Amazing story! everyone should read this to see an example of a path of insight into circumstances and motivation. For anyone not just gender dysphoric /questioning. The current movement wants to have transing fast tracked legally and medically and that seems impulsive and dangerously cult like.
This woman literally believes that she's a man, and you claim there's no delusion? The difference between sane and insane is the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Mentally ill people should be treated with therapy, not surgery. Would you tell a Schizophrenic that the voices in their head are real people? Also, there is no real difference between the "current movement" and the author of this post. The end goal of trans ideology was always the creation of the medical industrial complex, and to give pedophiles more victims.
I don't know if this person is transsexual or not, sounds like social influences rather than neurology, but the point I want to come back on is that they don't say they thought they *were* a boy, they say that they *wanted* to be a boy. Big difference and one which gencrits often seem to completely ignore.
My thinking continues to evolve, since writing this comment I have come to see that much of the trans or TQ umbrella is inadvertently protecting (or promoting) mentally unstable narcissistic compulsive exhibitionist behavior which isn’t healthy or sustainable. And what is being done to children is criminal. I’ve known about the trans humanist agenda, and the sexual exploitation of children. HOWEVER. never let an ideology or stance be so rigid or black-and-white that you cannot see that there are many shades and many different reasons and kinds of people in this world. Reading Aaron’s story of self awareness is so palpable, examined and undeniably deep, I do not think Aaron is “reacting,“ but responding to the multiple factors that influenced him. there are certain people that I respect out of their intelligence and ability to explain even though they don’t owe us an explanation. I am grateful that Aaron gives voice to the aspect of gender identity that brought him where he is today. Because impulsive copycats looking for a quick fixes need to self reflect. And I do say him, because that is what I would do if I were in a room with Aaron.
Thank you for this . Your insights and writing are such an important part of this whole trans narrative. The videos from Gender Dysphoria Alliance are great. I am just sorry that the extreme trans ideology that is being pushed has meant that you have had to speak out instead of just being able to get on with your lives quietly as you were before this madness started.
I also feel so sorry for you that you were so crushed as a child by a culture that did not allow you the freedom to be a mighty adventurous natural girl. What societies and cultures have done to curb, confine and supress women through the ages is heartbreaking.
Dope writing as always, Aaron.
Thanks for this. Excellent insights!
Amazing writing and story, Aaron. Your voice is so important x
I had gender dysphoria ever since my earliest memories and I'm certain there were no social influences. I transitioned nearly forty years ago medically and never regretted it.
I recently had a book on the subject published The War on Gender ~ Postmodernism and Trans Identity
I take a position against the current wave of gender ideology and identified the Tavistock clinic as problematic before the scandal became public and go into the neurological evidence.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Gender-Postmodernism-Trans-Identity/dp/1914208811/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30RJ7RPMXPI22&keywords=the+war+on+gender&qid=1654197847&sprefix=%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1
Check out my Substack and I'm Cosmic Claire on YT, Bitchute and Rumble. If you'd like to do a podcast I'd be very happy.
https://substack.com/@cosmicclaire?utm_source=user-menu
Young people being indoctrinated in this way is the inevitable result of people like you treating your mental illness with invasive surgery. The difference between sane and insane is the ability to distinguish fantasy and reality. You are still a woman and always will be. And nothing you do will ever disassociate "the good trans people" from the ones grooming young people online into decisions they deeply regret later on in life. The reason for this is simple: if you expect to be treated like a man because of your transition, how can you deny the same privilege to others, simply for having a different reason? They followed the same rule you did. The only way to fight back against "trans trenders" is to take a stand against the entire trans ideology itself. Men are men, and women are women. Anyone who believes otherwise must be treated with therapy and other mental treatments, not mastectomies and penectomies.
You don't appear to understand that there is a distinct difference between the gender ideology which tells people they can choose to be anything they like, and neurological transsexualism which is a condition that is unwanted but which many seek to address medically. I'm not encouraging anyone, in fact I think a lot of 'transgender' people are simply suffering from social mimesis and that this involves an awful lot of what the lawyers covering the Tavistock class action call 'ideological capture'. When I began my reassignment nearly forty years ago it was a case of having to fight your way through the gatekeeping, which was good in the long run. Entirely different from teenagers getting prescribed blockers at the first thought.
Adults can do whatever they want with their bodies tho.
Yeah, but if they do gross stuff with their bodies, they shouldn't subject me to such a gruesome sight. I do not consent.
Is anyone waving their surgery scars in your face?
They want to, at least. But anyone who crossdresses in public should be locked up for public indecency.
You have probably encountered a transsexual or two on your path through life without even being aware of it. You are so triggered by this that you are clearly not able to actually address the situation clearly.
Sending admiration and respect from Michele in Melbourne Australia. Your articles/story need to reach so many young people.xx
Aaron, you’re the best. So grateful for your and Aaron Ks work. Thank you.
You have autoandrophilia (AAP) and your attraction to women is meta-attraction, or pseudobisexuality. Thanks for this article. It is more evidence for my theory: yes, you are correct in your assessment that restrictive gender roles caused your desire to be a boy - and then the shame you felt in response to that desire became sexually imprinted (because shame is a difficult emotion for a child's brain to process, and shame has a high potential to be eroticized). Because the shame is directed inwards, it creates the autosexual paraphilia. Also, the people you found who seemed like you but desisted were HSTS, not AAP.
I think you were born with it, or at least something very close to it. I found myself asking why it was that you found female roles unpalatable, could it have been because you already had a brain that had been masculinised before you were born?
I've seen the argument made that these are only 'stories' we tell ourselves, but my dislike of my sexed body was there right at the beginning and I knew intuitively that I should have been a girl.
Your distaste for your female anatomy sounds very similar to mine (in reverse) and I'm inclined to believe that this is related to neurological mapping as postulated by Professor VS Ramachandran, one of the most eminent neuropsychologists in the world. I discuss his hypothesis in my book 'The War on Gender ~ Postmodernism and Trans Identity'. https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Gender-Postmodernism-Trans-Identity/dp/1914208811/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30RJ7RPMXPI22&keywords=the+war+on+gender&qid=1654197847&sprefix=%2Caps%2C95&sr=8-1
I also have an eminent Emeritus Professor of PsychoBiology who has written to me privately after reading my book and said 'Of course I agree with you'. I don't like to resort to claims from authority for my position, but this is so little discussed that I feel I can legitimately draw upon his professional opinion. He's only been involved in neurological research since the late nineteen-sixties.....
Thank you, Aaron, for this first-person description of how it feels to be a trans man. I retired in 2019 from a private school (toddlers thru middle school) that is very alternative-friendly, and has always had staff who were in the LGBT community. Our first trans student was a kid who entered at age 3, proudly declaring "I'm really a boy, even though I have a vagina." It seemed that "Mary's" parents were just as befuddled as we teachers were, thinking that this must be a "hero worship" phase where she was determined to be like her older brother.
The "I'm really a boy" insistence continued, however, and the next year the kid returned as "Murray." The parents bought a book for all the teachers called "Your Transgender Child," (if I remember correctly), and really tried to help make the transition seamless. As a 5-year-old, Murray went to the local public school, and is presumably now in high school. I only saw that family once or twice since then, so I don't know how Murray/Mary is doing.
The hypothesis put forward in a film that family showed to interested community members was that hormones in utero at different points in fetal development influence the development of the sex characteristics of the body, and then of the brain, so that a disruption of the hormonal environment can cause the fetus to develop the body on one sex and the brain configuration of the other. Since we've been hearing for decades about more and more hormone disrupting chemicals saturating our environment (food, cleaning products, cosmetics, industrial pollutants, etc.) that piqued my curiosity about whether those chemicals might be to blame for the obvious uptick in trans identity.
The aspect of this that really concerns me though is the alarming number of teenage girls who are identifying as trans or non-binary, however they conceptualize that. From my school, with fewer than 150 students each calendar year, ages from toddlers to middle school, I personally know four girls who came out as trans or non-binary, as teenagers, between 2015 and 2023. (That's not counting the 3-year-old back in 2011.) The youngest, now a rising freshman, has a dad who's a trans woman and was transitioning while the kid was in preschool. The oldest, now a high school grad, I never knew very well, but the two in the middle I've known since they were three, and was totally surprised when I heard from others that they were now known as "Bob" and "Peter."
My almost 75-year-old brain is trying to understand how to process this: how to be supportive and non-judgemental without jumping onto a bandwagon that may be rushing full-speed in the wrong direction. I try to imagine how to respond to these young people whom I knew as small girls, if I were to encounter them as young men. I live far away now, so that's not terribly likely, but I do still know their families.
Interestingly our developmental pathways seem to be similar. When I was a teenage boy I thought I wanted to be "a lesbian", I now feel this was my own disgust at my male body and internalized homophobia towards the thought that I could be a gay man being projected. As soon as I started my transition as a transwoman I instantly felt my attraction shift towards men, and soon declared I must have been gay all along. Not sure now if it was an "all along" thing or if my orientation changed, my sexual development was stunted so perhaps it just took me a while to figure it out. At this point, I'd only ever date a man or another transwoman (who still has a penis).