My ex trooned out around 2010. It’s funny looking back because their playbook has been the same for 15 years at least. This person told me about terfs, John Money, how technically he was my first “lesbian” experience even though I didn’t know it at the time (I thought he was joking, but now I see he was dead serious.) He was REALLY into Tumblr (jfc these people are carbon copies of each other.) He turned to camwork too, but I don’t know if that was part of the fetish or if his family cut him off from all of their money.
Still, I thought, “Being a woman kinda sucks sometimes, if you wanna get street harassed walking home from work, I guess you mean that shit.” Another thing I found semi-convincing was a study about how MTFs don’t experience phantom limb sensation as often as regular men who have lost their penises. Like okay, maybe their bodies
are miswired somehow, fuck do I know? I didn’t take a deep dive into the topic because I didn’t find it that interesting and besides, it’s such a rare disorder, it’s not like I was ever going to meet another person like him, right?
I really underestimated the sexual component of it. In my defense, I’ve never watched porn on purpose (I once innocently searched “Scooby” on Twitter. Turns out Velma really likes BBC. I was just looking for a news story about a lost dog.) I vaguely knew about 4chan but had never visited, and the worst I ever did online was steal music (with dial-up, so I feel like I paid for it with my suffering instead.) Of course I’d read at least (1) history or true crime book, I knew what evil horny men are capable of doing. But this other world of AGP, sissy hypno, forced feminization, dyke conversion, the works—just
entirely different reality from mine, not on my radar at all.
I did ask him once if he’d get surgery but he told me it was like 40 grand and sometimes you lose sensation. Oh, and he used to talk about how sad he was about being “barren.”

I remember pushing back on his ideas because it all sounded like stereotypes to me, but he insisted it was Heckin’ Different, because some guy tried to turn a boy into a girl this one time and it failed.
He snapped at me one day over something dumb and I just blocked him, I’m not gonna put up with some grown man in pigtails being rude to me. (Seriously, why do they think they look good in pigtails?) No huge loss, we were already exes and all. I’d tried hanging out with him once after he trooned out, at the mall with a mutual friend of ours, but it was just weird as fuck seeing this man looking like he just robbed Claire’s and Hot Topic. I kinda wish I’d stayed their friend though because I’m curious to know if they ever got the surgery after insurance started covering it. Probably not because he’s clearly AGP, but some of those MFers talk themselves into it anyway, so who knows?
I’m glad no one super close to me has trooned out. It looks like absolute hell. I feel bad for the wives especially, this guy gave NO INDICATION that he was like this. It’s a pretty easy subculture to miss if you’re relatively normal or too busy to be online for long. Sure, he liked nerdy shit and was probably autistic (his parents were old as balls.) He said he’d felt like this since he was 4, but never mentioned it
once during our year-long relationship, so who knows if that’s even true. Sorry this is long as hell, I hadn’t thought about this guy in years and kept remembering more shit. I really had no idea that this was going to metastasize throughout the world and he provided me with the blueprint of the cancer 15 years ago.