Detransition, Baby

The “juvenile elephants” appear in the third chapter of Detransition, Baby, and become symbolic of trans women’s relationship to motherhood and queer community. Ames uses the imagery of juvenile elephants in a conversation with Katrina as he tries to explain why he became alienated from the trans community and chose to detransition. Ames once read a scientific article that described how gangs of juvenile elephants were causing violence and demonstrating aggressive behavior in numerous countries including South Africa, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. These juvenile elephants had lost their mothers and other elders to poaching, leading to “a total and ongoing breakdown of elephant culture” (100). As elephants are highly social creatures that depend on intergenerational relationships, these juvenile elephants began to act out because they were an “orphan generation” (100).

In Ames’s view, his generation of trans women is akin to these juvenile elephants: “We are fifteen thousand pounds of muscle and bone forged from rage and trauma” (101). Many trans women are alienated or cut off from their biological families after coming out, and in turn form familial relationships with other queer individuals. However, Ames argues that his community of trans women are “a lost generation,” as most older generations of trans people have “died of HIV, poverty, suicide, repression, or disappeared to pathologized medicalization and stealth lives” (101).