Detransition, Baby

Reese is one of the main protagonists of Detransition, Baby. The narrative jumps between Reese in the present day and her past romantic relationships. A trans woman living in New York, Reese is originally from Madison, Wisconsin, where she works as a waitress before meeting her boyfriend Sebastian in her early twenties and moving to New York. Reese has a series of troubled relationships with emotionally absent and abusive men, and a romance with Amy that reemerges in a new form of potential intimacy when now-detransitioned Ames asks Reese to co-parent with him and Katrina. A caring woman who mentors and mothers younger trans women, Reese offers stability to others but does not find it easily for herself.

Reese relies on her romantic relationships to affirm her gender identity and attractiveness, sometimes with harmful results. She begins a relationship with Stanley, a married man she meets on a website geared towards men who fetishize trans women. Though Stanley is domineering and controlling, Reese stays in the relationship because she interprets Stanley’s abuse as a confirmation of “how badly [Stanley] wanted her” (57). However, Stanley begins to get violent with Reese, causing her to question their relationship. At a picnic for trans women, Reese meets and becomes enamored with Amy, a younger trans woman who has only recently begun transitioning.