Her gender transition set her free. So did her detransition.
Adriana Del Orden started her detransition two years ago. As a lesbian, she has no regrets about the steps she took when she was younger to live as a man. Changing her gender and body over time has made her feel, in her words, powerful and magical.
“I just feel like such a power source. The transition, and then detransitioning,” she said. Del Orden is genderqueer, which means she doesn’t fit into a male and female binary. She enjoys expressing herself as a queer, masculine woman, as well as embracing her femininity. And although she is no longer a trans man, her masculinity brings her a lot of joy — especially since she was forced to repress it as a kid.
While growing up in Puerto Rico and then New York City, her parents denied her anything they deemed too masculine. She wasn’t allowed to play any sports, play with certain toys or cut her hair short. She had been telling others that she was a boy since she was 7 years old, but her identity and her expression were ignored and denied. She felt miserable. Then, at 15, she learned about being transgender through Noahfinnce, a trans British singer and songwriter. At that age, she didn’t understand why a boy sounded like a girl — so she looked it up. A door was opened.
At 20, she started hormone replacement therapy and underwent top surgery. The night before the surgery, she was at once excited and nervous. It was her first-ever surgery and it meant she could stop binding her chest and finally feel at home in her body. Working with her surgeon at Mount Sinai in New York City was comforting, especially since he showed her photos of other people of color who’d had the same procedure. That gave her a real sense of how the outcome would look. And afterwards, she felt free.
I just feel like such a power source. The transition, and then detransitioning.”
Adriana Del Orden
In a YouTube vlog eight months later, Del Orden said, “In the midst of all the anti-trans legislation that is being passed, I just want to say how lucky I am and privileged to not live in a state that does those sorts of things.”
Del Orden, now 23, said that living in New York, a place that’s full of LGBTQ+ people, has made her detransition easier. Seeing gay couples on the street right outside her front door makes her feel safer. The LGBTQ+ community and spaces are still very much her people and her home. Her gender expression has changed, but her fundamental beliefs haven’t.
“At first, I did get a couple of side-eyes, but at the end of the day, I am still hanging out in the same spaces that I was hanging out before my detransition. So it’s just like, why would I be here if I don’t like you guys?” she said. “The people closest to me did stay strong and supported me.”
She was a lesbian before she transitioned, and she still is now.
(Sydney Krantz for The 19th)
Both her initial transition as a trans man, and her detransition now, has brought out the people in her life who love her regardless of her gender expression, presentation or identity, she said. The whole experience set her free from others’ expectations.
“I really don’t blame my younger self for taking the path that I did,” she said. “It taught me a lot about myself, and it taught me a lot about the world. I’ve been mistaken for a cis woman, a trans woman, a cis man and a trans man. I feel like I’ve seen it all.”
Del Orden graduated college as a transgender man. But shortly after her graduation, she knew that identity wasn’t right for her. The trouble started when people began assuming that she was a cisgender man in public. With that perception came narrow expectations of what a man should look and act like — and narrow views of masculinity. More and more, she felt restricted in how she could express herself. She felt like she was being boxed in.
“Slowly, people started addressing me as if I was a cis man. And that’s when the box started getting tighter,” she said. Her gender identity is more expansive, and less binary, than how she was being treated. Now that she presents to the world as a woman, she feels like she can wear whatever she wants. The kind of treatment she got in public as an effeminate man was much worse than how she’s treated as a masculine woman, she said. Now, she feels much more at home in her body and able to authentically be herself.
These realizations, and the joy she feels in her body now, could have only happened through transitioning, she said. After taking testosterone, her voice deepened in a way that she enjoys. She sounds like a grown woman now, she said, not like the high-pitched little kid she felt she sounded like before.
Her body has also changed. “I still think that I would be uncomfortable in that body, had I not taken T,” she said, referring to testosterone. “It was needed.”
Fitness has kept her grounded through her initial gender transition and her detransition. It’s been essential to fostering self-love through all the changes, she said, helping her feel in control about how she looks and how she can change her body. She lifts weights and goes on runs every other day. In the morning, she feels euphoric to wake up in the body she has now.
Del Orden stopped taking testosterone almost two years ago. Initially, it was more of an accident than a decision: one day, she realized she hadn’t taken her prescribed dose in months. As she thought more about detransitioning, she went to her doctor for advice.
She asked the doctor, “I think I want to detransition. What can we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do,” she recalled him answering.
Del Orden was disappointed, sad, confused. “How could you so easily prescribe me testosterone and then not even put in any effort into my detransition?” she told The 19th. “I just felt like my doctor didn’t really care.”
Del Orden’s struggle to find adequate healthcare happened even in a city where many physicians are knowledgeable about gender-affirming care. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which sets global standards for doctors and nurses providing health care to trans patients, says that medical providers should be prepared to support adolescents who detransition. Many detransitioners struggle to find help and feel isolated, WPATH notes in its most recent standards of care.
(Sydney Krantz for The 19th)
Eventually, Del Orden found other providers within the same clinic who did listen to her and gave her the care that she needed. A patient navigator helped her set up a consultation for a breast augmentation and she started estrogen-based birth control. Meanwhile, she waited for her body to adapt and look more feminine as the testosterone left her system. She began targeted workout routines to get into the kind of shape she wanted.
“I really did not get help until I put my foot down. So I stood up for myself, basically, but it was all within the same clinic,” she said.
Del Orden started posting about her detransition on Instagram earlier this year and has since built a platform of almost 14,000 followers. She wanted to use social media to dispel myths and negative assumptions about detransition, and also just to showcase her own happiness. To her, there seems to be little to no general awareness or any acknowledgement in the media that people like her, who exist outside of the cis-heteronormative binary, can experience even an ounce of joy.
My life is pretty normal. I wake up, I go to work, I work out, I hang with my friends, I take trips.”
Adriana Del Orden
“Detransitioners are seen as something to pity or like, you’ve ruined your life forever. I don’t think I ruined my life forever. My life is pretty normal. I wake up, I go to work, I work out, I hang with my friends, I take trips,” she said. “I’m gonna go back to college, get my master’s. I’m working in social services.”
She has received a lot of love and understanding from the trans community, although she has also been met with strong negative reactions online — from both trans and cis people. As she has shared on her Instagram, detransitioners are often used as political weapons, but by no means does she want to weaponize her own story. What she wants is to showcase how she has loved her body — and herself — at every stage of life, through every step of her journey.
(Sydney Krantz for The 19th)
Del Orden doesn’t feel represented by what the Trump administration is doing and saying about detransitioners at all. She was excited when she heard the U.S. Department of Education was holding a “Detrans Awareness Day,” but when she tuned in, she was disappointed. The administration was calling for an end to gender-affirming care, not actually spotlighting the struggles of people who have detransitioned, she said. It struck her as just more transphobia and hate, something she has continued to deal with as she detransitions.
“No matter what you do in your gender journey, whether you take HRT or whether you just dress in different clothes, you’re going to be hated on and you’re going to be judged,” she said. “The hypocrisy just proves to me that no matter what I do, people are going to be transphobic to me. People are going to question my gender. And I just have to do me.”
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