TWIBS: Tiger Reed Tells All
“Whistleblower” Jamie Reed’s transmasc beard husband has decided he’s detransitioning, and I guess that’s our problem now.
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
UGH.
Hey, you guys remember Jamie Reed, right? She’s the Washington University Transgender Center “whistleblower” (can the whistle truly be blown if your claims are unsubstantiated and later proven to be false?) who may have breached patient privacy protocols when she was published in The Free Press. Reed later provided a sworn affidavit to Missouri’s far-right attorney general Andrew Bailey, who used her testimony as pretext for an investigation into the clinic.
Assigned Media has reported on Reed a lot. I mean, a lot. Sort of a crazy amount, now that I think about it? I mean, she’s just so newsworthy… in the worst kind of way, obviously.
Throughout much of her time in the spotlight, Reed has deflected accusations of transphobia by using her supposedly transgender husband as a shield. I won’t lie to you, reader: I have always quietly believed that Reed was flat out lying about her husband. I suspected he either wasn’t trans, or possibly did not exist at all! She doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to honesty, and “I’ve got a transgender husband” isn’t exactly a novel defense.
It turns out I was wrong, though! Was wrong. Now I’m right: Jamie Reed doesn’t have a transgender husband, because he… uh… detransitioned?
That’s right, The Free Press has gifted us with yet another Reed family bombshell: Jamie’s once transgender husband, Tiger Reed (no, really), has announced that he’s detransitioning so he can once again live his life as a lesbian woman.
In his self-exposé, Tiger talks about how Jamie was “widely attacked by activists” after her publication in The Free Press, and that he was scared for the safety of his family. I won’t claim to know Tiger’s heart of hearts, but it seems to me that transgender people and our allies aren’t the ones threatening to bomb innocent people. Food for thought, Tiger!
Tiger brings up the fact that Jamie frequently used him as a shoddy bulwark against accusations of transphobia, but that Jamie’s publicity “threatened” him because he felt that there was growing evidence of the inefficacy of gender-affirming care, a ludicrous statement that he justifies by citing… the Cass Review.
Do I even need to open that can of worms at this point?
Tiger says that he understood hormone replacement therapy and top surgery “would bring profound physical changes,” but that nobody prepared him for “the emotional consequences of transition,” or how he felt about himself and the world. I would suggest that nobody can prepare you for a completely subjective shift in self-perspective and life outlook.
He says that one of the earliest effects of testosterone, for him, was losing his ability to cry. Once a frequent cryer, Tiger’s tears were replaced with “a rage that would come out of nowhere,” which I would chalk up more to experiencing puberty for a second time than some latent evil of sex hormones, myself. Later he underwent a double mastectomy, but says he immediately grieved the loss of his breasts.
Tiger says he felt like an impostor, no matter how much people encouraged and validated his decisions, and that transitioning failed to bring the “sense of comfort and inner peace” that he had hoped to find. He laments that, while much of his gender-affirming care was covered by health insurance, none of his detransition care will be; things like body hair removal and, possibly, breast reconstruction.
To conclude his story, Tiger insists that gender-affirming care “relies on vulnerable people’s impatience,” going so far as to suggest that the elevated rate of suicide in unaffirmed trans youth is a fiction. He cites the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, here, a far right anti-trans medical disinformation group. Unbiased research proves that our youngest community members are at risk, now more than ever.
I would be lying if I said there’s nothing Tiger and I agree on. We both agree that detransitioners deserve more support, though I believe the brunt of that support is owed to detransitioners who have chosen to detransition not because they feel they’ve made a mistake, but because society or friends or family have pressured them to detransition… which is, of course, the case for most detransitioners.
I don’t know what the future holds for Tiger Reed, who says he plans to “[taper] down” his weekly dose of testosterone… but I do know what would be very funny. Do you guys remember KC Miller? He was briefly viral nearly two years ago to the day for insisting that, despite his own satisfaction and plans to continue taking testosterone, he felt young people were being rushed into medical transition.
T for me, but not for thee, if you will. Think about it, Tiger!
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
