Why Transphobia Teaches Us to Be Terrified of Regret

What if you start to change your gender and regret it?

Photo by the author, Tucker Lieberman

Regret is a cardinal sin of capitalist culture. Capitalism is so terrified of what we might do with our regret that we aren’t taught to notice it. We have trouble recognizing regret when we already feel it. Thus, we rarely talk about what regret really means, when it’s appropriate, and whether it’s OK to feel it. Capitalism wants to stave off our potential regret about Certain Things (like whether we ought to drive automobiles in daily circles during climate crisis) and redirect our attention toward Other Things (like whether some people might temporarily believe they’re trans and then change their minds).

Sample Situations

Productivity lifehacks ask you to wake up and accomplish a dozen things before dawn. Probably you pay a monthly subscription fee for the punishment of being told to do this. And then you neglect to follow the advice. Or maybe one day you do wake up before dawn, and maybe you’re productive and satisfied with the choice you made that day. But maybe—here’s another possibility—you’re up early, you stab at some items on your to-do list, and you’re miserable. What is the point of doing boring tasks in the dark? you wonder. Do any of these “tasks” really need to be done? And you go back to sleep. You might not spend money on self-help for a while.

Another situation: We’re told we should spend money at the mall—or, these days, the online mall — if not for ourselves, then for others to whom we owe gifts. And probably we do go to the mall. Once in a while, we think to ourselves: I didn’t need to spend that money and buy that item. Maybe we don’t go back to the mall for a while.

Now, broaden the question. The world demands we follow certain paths: go to a certain kind of college, get a certain kind of job. Most of us toe the line to a greater or lesser degree. A few of us “drop out” entirely, with or without a safety net. Then we don’t go to the mall because we have no money. We don’t worry about “lifehacking” certain tasks; we do them our own way, joyfully or needfully or both, in our own time, or else we drop them as they no longer serve any function in our lifestyle. So we’ve dropped out. And then what? Beyond the…