Detransition, Baby: An Honest Review Chapter 1

I will start each review with a plot summary. I will try not to give spoilers for future chapters. Then I will comment on the aspects of the story and characters that I find relevant to the gender discussion. This means that in addition to my initial listen to the whole book, I will be listening to each chapter two more times. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice. 

Summary of Chapter

We are introduced to Reese, a 35 year old transsexual woman. Reese is on a ‘date’ with her “Cowboy”, a married man who is HIV+, a result of a previous affair with a different transwoman. While riding to pick up takeout, Reese thinks about her attraction to married men and the new sexual thrill she’s discovered by having sex with an HIV+ man. She compares the potential risk of contracting HIV to the possibility of pregnancy that women face. She has even taken to calling her PreP prescription ‘birth control’. Reese thinks about the fact that as a transwoman she can not have a baby, yet she desperately wants to be a mother. While picking up the takeout she receives a call from her ex, Amy, asking to meet.

Next we meet Ames and Katrina. Ames is a detransitioned transwoman and Reese’s ex-girlfriend Amy. Now living as a man again, Ames is Katrina’s lover. Katrina is a 39 year old divorced ‘cis’ woman, Ames’ lover and also his boss. Katrina shows Ames the doctor’s results verifying that she is pregnant. This is surprising to both as Ames had said he was sterile. Neither are sure what to do about the pregnancy. Katrina doesn’t want to be a single parent, and Ames does not feel comfortable being a “father”. After questioning, Ames admits to being a former transsexual and that he was told the HRT would make him sterile. Katrina does not take this news well.

Ames meets Reese in a park. He tells Reese of a plan for him, Katrina and Reese to raise the baby together. Reese is wary of this idea, especially when Ames admits that he hasn’t said anything to Katrina yet. He points out that this would be a way for Reese to be a “mother” like she desires. Reese agrees to think about this offer.

Analysis

Reese muses about her attraction to married men. She also mentions that thinking of her interactions with men as affairs rather than relationships allows her to fulfill the men’s kinkiest desires. It’s a fairly common idea that transwomen find married men attractive because they are seen as masculine and ‘straight’ since they are obviously attracted to women. Reese’s date is only referred to as “her Cowboy”, a rather masculine stereotype. Descriptions of Reese’s sexual interactions with this man put her in a submissive role. Her ‘date’ is the stereotypical idea of a man that wants to have sex with TW but not a relationship, not to be seen in public with us. So within the first pages of the book, one of the main characters is basically established to be a living sex doll for men’s fantasies. I know that’s the type of representation I want.

OK, the comparison of HIV to potential pregnancy is just vile. I can’t believe people read this and said “This is a good look”. The whole fetishization of pregnancy like this is awful. Why does Reese, a TW have an empty birth control container to put her PreP in? 

Reese sees not being able to have a baby as having womanhood kept from her, similar in tone to those that  claim ‘if we could have babies, you couldn’t say we aren’t real women.” Reese also makes some BS Sex and the City analogy, about how women have four paths to fulfillment: partner, career, baby, or artist, and that those paths are blocked for all but the most stealth and luckiest of TW. Once again, thanks for the high opinion of us, guess I must be something super special.

Ames/Amy keeping a major portion of his life secret. At least Katrina was justifiably mad. Ames got his HRT without therapy, through informed consent by a doctor who treated transwomen because they were ‘so happy’ to see him, as opposed to his other patients (presumably’ cis’ women)

Ames’ struggles with the idea of fatherhood for the same reason Reese craves motherhood, the ultimate validation of maleness.

One interesting note is that Reese was further into her transition when Amy met her. That in a way Reese was both a lover and mother to Amy and that Reese ‘molded’ Amy into what she wanted. Creepy enough to think about in the novel, but I wonder how often that happens within the community.

Ames recalls an earlier run in with a detrantioner back when he was Amy. This person was viewed with pity and revulsion. The explanation of why people detransition is the standard ‘life is too hard as trans’. Ames admits to being drawn to transwomen, like an addict, basically torn between the transwoman he was and the man he is now.

Not a lot to say on Katrina other than the sexual relationship with an employee, one in which the dominant role sex holds is a turn on for both her and Ames. Only other thing of note is that her divorce wasn’t the result of her miscarriage, but what she terms the “ennui of heterosexuality”, a weariness or boredom of her heterosexual relationship and its appearance. Reese also makes comments when meeting with Ames, mocking the heterosexual couples in the park . Apparently there’s no sin greater than being seen as a boring cis/het.

The fact that Katrina reacts badly to learning that her lover was a “former transsexual “ and that Reese initially calls Ames out on the insanity of suggesting the three of them raise Katrina’s baby together is about the only positives I can come up with.