192 - Paving a Way Back for Detrans Lesbians, with Aaron Kimberly

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Mental Health

4.6 • 961 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2024

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sasha and Stella welcome Aaron Kimberly back to the show, nearly a year after her first appearance on the podcast. Aaron has undergone a remarkable transformation, returning to her female identity and embracing a new understanding and acceptance of herself. This episode delves into Aaron’s complex journey of self-discovery, shaped by her unique experiences with a rare ovotesticular disorder of sex development (DSD), her longstanding identity as a butch lesbian, and the medical, professional, and social experiences that have shaped her path.

In this episode, Aaron examines the role of the butch lesbian community that once fostered a vital sense of belonging—a community that, as she remarks, has largely faded, leaving young butch lesbians with limited support. She suggests that this shift might be contributing to the increased rates of medical transition among younger lesbians today. Her deep commitment to understanding the diverse reasons for sex non-conformity, coupled with her involvement in lesbian communities, has cultivated her interest in the cultural contexts of gender and atypical bodies, often pathologized or medicalized in society.

This is an incredibly compelling conversation reflecting on the evolving relationship between lesbian identity, butch identity, and the implications of a medicalized appearance.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Stella O'Malley, a psychotherapist in Ireland.
0:04.0	And I'm Sasha Ayyad, an adolescent therapist in the United States.
0:08.0	And this is Gender, a Wider Lens, a podcast dedicated to the shifting concepts around gender in our contemporary culture.
0:16.0	Through in-depth interviews, personal stories, and psychological exploration, we seek to open up the discourse
0:22.7	around this hot-button issue. Join us as we look at gender from a wider lens.
0:31.8	Hey Stella. How's it going on, Sasha? It's going well. It was really interesting because we had Aaron Kimberly on about a year ago, almost to the day of when we're recording this.
0:44.4	And as you'll hear, Aaron has gone through like a massive kind of transformation.
0:49.3	And we're going to use she, her pronouns for Aaron, who's returning to her female identity.
0:53.5	And she's really seeing herself
0:55.3	in such a different way now than she was even just a year ago. Erin is a brilliant example,
1:01.0	I think, of a new cohort. And there's so many new cohorts, but this one is in particular, very
1:06.7	interesting, kind of the older detransitioner. And so they, you know, some of them are like in their
1:13.9	40s or 50s or 60s or 70s and they're pulling back. And some of them have been like on testosterone,
1:19.6	not necessarily Aaron, but like Aaron has been a long time, you know, on the trans identity and now has pulled back.
1:30.0	You can hear in our conversation that Aaron's identity is very much on our mind.
1:34.8	And I can see she's kind of navigating what way do I want to go here.
1:38.9	So it's kind of she's literally in a period of transition, figuring out what's the wisest road. She's trying not to be
1:46.3	identity driven, instead trying to think what is the best road. And yet, how could you but be
1:51.9	identity driven? Like you said earlier, like Aaron is an example of true trans. If you were going to
1:58.4	believe in true trans, Aaron has all the ingredients.
2:01.9	Aaron has a DSD.
2:03.9	Aaron is a butch lesbian.
	...

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