Why People Abandon You When You Transition
I’ve been thinking a lot about why so many people rejected me when I transitioned. Not everyone, of course but enough to notice a pattern. Some drifted away quietly, others cut me off with dramatic flair, and a few turned bitchy and cruel.
When I really sat with it, I realised there are only two real reasons. Revulsion for what I am. Punishment for what I’ve done.
That’s it. Two buckets. Everyone who walked away from me belongs in one or the other.
But then I thought: maybe that’s just my conjecture. Maybe I’m oversimplifying. So I decided to check what psychologists and sociologists have to say. Turns out, I wasn’t far off the truth.
1. Revulsion for what I am
This is the gut-level rejection. The recoil. The “ugh.”
Psychologists call it stigma. Erving Goffman, in his classic book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963), described how when someone violates society’s categories — by being disabled, gay, trans, whatever, people treat that identity as “spoiled.” Contaminated. Less than.
In the moral psychology world, disgust is one of the most primitive emotions. Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory shows that people who prize “purity” respond strongly to perceived violations. Transness, for them, is coded as impure. And disgust is powerful — it leads not just to recoil, but to shunning.
There’s also what’s called courtesy stigma — the idea that stigma rubs off. People fear that if they stand too close to you, they’ll get tainted too. That’s why some so-called friends ghost. It’s not that they hate you personally — they’re just terrified of what you represent.
2. Punishment for what I’ve done
The second reason isn’t about what you are, but about what you did. Transition feels like betrayal to some.
This maps neatly onto betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1996). When someone relies on you to play a particular role — husband, wife, son, daughter, mate — and you suddenly change that role, they experience it as a violation. A broken contract.
Family systems psychologists put it another way: every family has “homeostasis.” Stable roles. Transition destabilises it. And some people respond by lashing out, as if punishing you will somehow restore the old balance.
This is why you hear lines like:
“You lied to me.”
“You tricked me.”
“You ruined everything.”
That’s not reasoned analysis. That’s punishment.
3. The Rationalisations
Of course, people rarely say “I feel disgusted” or “I want to punish you.” They rationalise it. Psychologists point to a few common flavours:
Fear: fear of stigma by association. “What will the neighbours think?” That’s just revulsion dressed up as self-preservation.
Grief: some frame it as “losing” the old you. Kenneth Doka calls this disenfranchised grief — mourning a loss that isn’t really a loss. Grief often curdles into either anger (punishment) or withdrawal (revulsion).
So yes, there are different costumes. But underneath, it’s still one of the two big drivers.
The Truth of It
So in the end, if you’re someone who backed away from me and some of you are reading this right now, every single article, like clockwork, know this: I’ve already categorised you.
Either you recoiled in revulsion, or you tried to punish me. And here’s the kicker: neither reaction is about me. Both are about you.