Tumblr users are now sharing 'detransitioner kink'

by Kitty Robinson

My thanks to Kitty for permission to repost this disturbing post. I do advise you to heed the warning at the beginning.

Content warning: this post contains text-based descriptions of graphic and disturbing sexual content. I strongly encourage detransitioned readers to be cautious as this is targeted specifically towards a very painful and intense experience that it is extremely upsetting to see fetishized.

I’ve taken to searching “detransition” on Tumblr at least once a day. I know this is an unhealthy habit but now that I’ve decided to stop ignoring the phenomena, I am having trouble looking away. Imagine you are a Tumblr-using trans person considering detransition. You learned a lot about trans identity and politics on Tumblr, so why should it follow that checking out posts about detransition should be any different? You type it into the search bar and hit enter.

One of the first posts is by “tokenxtransxtraitor”, a “queerish trans feminine she/her in her early thirties” now “only using he/him” describing a detailed fantasy of ignoring a detransitioned woman’s tap out indication she cannot breathe during a rape fetish sexual encounter. He says “I think about how incredible it would feel to plead not guilty.” Imagines his sex life in jail. And then, “I empty my balls into her guts like any other man would.” The message is clear — his manhood has been affirmed by this act of violence, and her womanhood confirmed by her violation. Tagged: “detransition kink”.

If you continue to scroll, you will see a wide variety of the most pornified, disturbing sexual degradation very quickly. A blog with a description that states “hi im a 18 yr old ftm!” posts a screenshot of a testosterone presceiption being canceled, then a low-light video of a syringe being emptied messily into a Walmart-bag lined trash can — “no more testosterone!!!!” The next post is a faceless selfie tagged “r4peb4it”, “misgender me”, and “detransition kink”.

“Pls send detailed descriptions of how exactly you would detrans me to be a pretty obedient tradwife👉👈” is one post. “Looking for a terf girlfriend to detrans me and make me realize I was just a confused butch lesbian” reads another. “love how ftm girls will just throw themselves at any dom who would show them affection. real men don’t do that.” An anonymous asker sends,

“Low key wanna message you and get you to tell me personal details about you like your real name, your address, your parents name maybe, that way I could then blackmail you out of this delusional fantasy game of pretend you won’t stop playing.”

“please correct me out of my silly delusions”, the blog runner replies.

From a quick check of the blog descriptions, the majority of the female people posting in the tag are in their teens or early twenties. Many of the male people posting are older, late twenties to thirties. One particularly alarming post is from a 45-year-old dad. “If you weren’t born when I graduated college (98), definitely hit me up.” There is a heavy focus on sex that risks pregnancy, the sexualized degradation of being forced to be a feminine woman, and rape.

This vein of post is the majority of the results for a simple search for “detransition”, sorted by most recent posts. With the way the Tumblr search algorithm works, any post that contains “detransition” in it, whether in the body text or tags, shows up. These blogs are not flagging themselves as for adults only, but even if they were, this is seriously unacceptable. There are detransitioned people (of different political groups, mostly radical feminist) posting, but they are being drowned out by this deluge of disturbing explicit sexual content.

Those of us who are desisted/detrans know the emotional intensity of beginning to question if you’re really trans. It is an incredibly vulnerable state, messy and ugly. It is uniquely disturbing that on Tumblr, where many people were introduced to trans ideology and identity, anyone curious about detransitioning must wade through this kind of content. To me — it genuinely feels like a public health emergency.

There is precious little work warning of and exposing the sexual harm done within small internet subcultures, such as predators who lurk in pro-eating disorder online spaces and prey on young women & girls struggling with ED, or the sexual predators running amok in the poorly moderated, child-populated playground of TikTok , but I hope to see more and more of it in the coming years. There is a generation gap that widens more every year — the ability to understand and keep pace with the many forms of sexual harm happening online, and of course, the sexual harm that happens offline with the behaviors learned on the internet.

Why is this happening? I only have guesses. We know that porn use is escalatory. So too, many radical feminists would argue, engagement with BDSM is as well. When transition is tangled up with fetishistic sexual desire, it follows that eventually that desire will reach a limit. When your sexuality is about transgressing boundaries and becoming more and more extreme, sometimes a wall will be hit.

This is the new frontier of fetishistic desire around transition — mixed up with genuine emotion, hatred of being a woman, desire to be a dominant man, sexualizing the pain, fear and confusion around a desire to stop transition. In some ways, this is the natural path of sexually confused teens and young adults growing up in a porn culture, consuming violent sexual messages since childhood. It is a queer kink subculture ripe for grooming, abuse, and sexual harm.

If history is an indicator, the presence of this subculture on Tumblr is an indication of its eventual spread. There is a small presence on Reddit. A search for “detransition kink” on twitter yields few results, but that’s how it started on Tumblr as well. The posts have been present on Tumblr for a few years but recently have become constant. You can block several detransition-based kink blogs in one day and the next day there will be more. It is exponential. The nature of these internet subcultures of sexual harm is that all members of it feed off each other, day by day, growing the community. The purpose of this piece is not to ask how this can be stopped — it can’t be. It’s too late.

What we must do now is figure out ways to face the reality of the situation and combat them best we can. Reporting is not very useful on Tumblr. Even when banned on one blog (which is rare, considering the text-based nature of most of the blogs, which is far less likely to be taken down than images, gifs, or videos of a sexual nature), it is very easy to make another.

In late July 2022, I started a blog (simply titled Detransition — you are not alone) which will aim to post 2–3 posts a day that will show in the “detransition” search. This will not drown out the 5–10 (and steadily increasing) a day from fetish blogs, but the goal is to break up the nonstop degradation.

Certainly it is disturbing to think of non-fetish readers encountering the sexualized posts, but the people currently involved are also in an unhealthy and concerning situation

A compassionate post from detransitioned lesbian Tejuina expresses it well:

“I’ve long been horrified at the turn the detrans tags took in the past couple of years. in what seems like the blink of an eye, they went from being full of women talking about their experiences to being full of people fetishizing detransition. I despair for anyone just now realizing they want to detransition and not knowing where to turn — twitter is an absolute mess infested with conservatives and voyeurs, and finding detrans content on tumblr now entails going through post after post of people eroticizing forced detransition.

but I think too of the people writing these posts, the people who might only allow themselves to fantasize about detransitioning in the context of kink. people who might be too afraid to see themselves as women again, people who feel like they can’t make the decision to detransition themselves and need someone to force them into it. people who may have thought acknowledging their full humanity meant they weren’t women and who therefore think returning to womanhood means they need to be dehumanized.

I hope they realize they don’t need anyone’s permission. I hope they realize, no matter whether they choose to detransition or not, that you can exist as a woman without eroticizing your own suffering and humiliation, that you can be a woman without being subservient to a man.” (x)

I highly encourage any Tumblr users or advocacy organizations to regularly post in the detransition tag or search result. With the way the algorithm works, only original posts are included in the search results, not reblogs. This means we would need a steady stream of original posts to drown out the current majority of fetish posts.

I truly regret ignoring this issue for a year or two. It is extremely difficult to deal with emotionally. The posts are viscerally upsetting, and the knowledge there is largely nothing to be done except make it clear there are other pathways to be taken if the person so chooses is hard to stomach. Upon starting the Detransition blog, I was contacted by a young woman wanting to help add posts. She said she was very glad something like this started, because when she started detransitioning a few months ago “all I saw was nonstop porn and it was so terrible. I felt so alone.”

I do not want any other person considering detransition to feel like this.

I would also strongly discourage scrolling for the sole purpose of mass reporting or blocking if the content is going to upset you, especially as a detrans reader. You do not have to martyr yourself by exposing yourself to this content. If you want to help, there are other things you can do.

If you are a detransitioned person who is not okay with radical feminism or being gender critical reading this, I challenge you to also start your own blog and post your resources in the tag. I am going to make it a point to post a variety of resources, some more neutral than I would generally engage with. It’s essential people considering detransition have options. You do not need to subscribe to any particular political group to explore detransition or to change your mind about your transition. And you do not need to descend into a subculture of abuse and degradation trying to make the pain and self-esteem issues go away.

I also invite readers to submit resource posts and personal stories on the blog. The more pathways out of detransition kink (or simply around it!) available, the better. I’ve already been contacted by a few people who want to help, and I know together, we can face this problem and address it. Those exploring detransition & desistance deserve better.