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About me
I was an unhappy teenager who found community online and came to believe my discomfort with puberty meant I had a different gender identity. I started testosterone at 19 and had top surgery a year later, thinking it was the solution. The initial relief faded, and I realized my underlying anxiety and depression were never addressed. I stopped everything at 22 and now deeply regret the permanent changes to my body. I've learned I was just a girl who didn't fit a stereotype, and I'm working on accepting my female self.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started when I was a teenager, around 14 or 15. I was deeply involved in online communities, especially on Tumblr, and that's where I was first exposed to the idea that gender was separate from your biological sex. Before that, it wasn't something I or anyone I knew ever thought about. I watched this concept explode in popularity in real time, and it felt like it came out of nowhere.
I was an unhappy kid. I had a lot of anxiety and low self-esteem, and I hated the changes my body was going through during puberty. I felt uncomfortable and out of place. Online, I found a new framework that seemed to explain all of that discomfort. I came to believe that my feelings about my body and my interests—which didn't always align with what was expected of my sex—meant that my internal gender was different. I started identifying as non-binary.
Looking back, I think a lot of this was a form of escapism. The online world offered a clear identity and a community that accepted me, which was a powerful draw when I felt so lost. I was influenced heavily by my online friends and the content I consumed. I began to think that medical transition was the answer to my deep-seated unhappiness.
I started taking testosterone when I was 19. I thought it would solve my problems and finally make me feel comfortable in my skin. I also got top surgery a year later, at 20. I hated my breasts and believed removing them was the only way to feel whole.
For a while, I did feel better. There was a initial rush of relief. But the underlying issues—the depression, the anxiety, the feeling of not being good enough—never went away. They just found new things to latch onto. I started to question everything. I began reading and talking to others, and I stumbled upon information that made me deeply suspicious of the entire gender industry. Learning about the connections between billionaires, military interests, and the promotion of transgender ideology made me feel like I might have been part of something much bigger that I didn't understand.
The real turning point was when I started to seriously think about what gender actually is. I couldn't find a way to measure it or prove it. It was just a feeling. I realized that a woman can be masculine and a man can be feminine, and that doesn't change what they are biologically. The idea that your interests or personality dictate some internal "gender identity" started to seem completely manufactured to me. I began to see that my discomfort with puberty was just that—a normal discomfort that many kids go through—and not a sign that I was born in the wrong body.
I stopped taking testosterone when I was 22. I regret my transition. I regret the permanent changes to my body, especially the top surgery. I worry about my long-term health and the fact that I may have made myself infertile. I feel like I was sold a solution that was never going to fix the real problems, which were my mental health and low self-worth. I benefited greatly from therapy that was not affirming of a transgender identity, but instead helped me work through my underlying issues.
I now believe I was just a girl who didn't fit a stereotype, and instead of being helped to accept myself, I was led down a path that caused permanent harm. My thoughts on gender are that it isn't a real, internal thing separate from sex. We are male or female, and we can express ourselves in any way we want without needing to change our bodies or identities. I wish I had understood that sooner.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 14-15 | First exposed to concept of gender identity on Tumblr. Began identifying as non-binary. |
| 19 | Started taking testosterone. |
| 20 | Underwent top surgery. |
| 22 | Stopped testosterone and began detransition. |
Top Comments by /u/3-MeO:
OP if gender and temperament are the same thing then gender isn't real at all. you realize that, right?
normal people aren't going around classifying whether this behavior or that object is masculine or feminine. women who behave masculine were never men on the inside and never became men just because they behaved a certain way or liked certain things. the same goes for men regarding femininity and feminine things.
gender as a concept separate from sex was completely manufactured by gender theorists in academia. if you have no way of measuring the internal feelings that constitute "gender" then those feelings are nothing but feelings. by comparison, even depression can be recognized on a f-MRI brain scan because the reduced neuron signalling can be measured with electromagnetism. there is no structure or function that changes due to a person's gender feelings unless that person artificially medicalizes their body to simulate some of the opposite sex's characteristics.
i truly do not understand how so many people think that a girl who behaves like a boy sometimes and likes a lot of boy stuff must actually be a boy on the inside somehow despite there being absolutely no way to measure that internal feeling. it's just a feeling. we have lots of feelings that can be very diverse. feelings are not what makes a man a man or a woman a woman. it baffles me how so many people have been convinced or convinced themselves that their internal feelings somehow alter what they physically are in the measurable, material, real world outside our heads.
yes, OP. from these pics i'd say you don't have to worry about it at all. i wouldn't even consider those boobs. when i went through puberty i had gynecomastia and just a few years later it was all gone. i bet you'll be totally back to normal in just 2-4 years and as long as you don't get fat no one would even think you had gynecomastia let alone anything close to real boobs. honestly, i doubt a gay man would be bothered by what your chest looks like now very much if at all.
download "ublock origin" for chrome OP. it will block all ads everywhere. you even get free youtube with no ads. it's currently blocking all of reddit's ads for me as well right this very second. however, there's nothing comparable for mobile phones so you may just be SOL there.
but... why did it trip you up? and how? i legitimately do not understand.
what made you think that someone's masculinity/femininity and the masculinity or femininity of their hobbies and interests somehow granted them an immaterial and unmeasurable gender identity that may or may not align with their biological sex?
do you remember when you were first exposed to the concept of your gender being a different thing than your sex? who taught you your gender identity can be male, female, nonbinary, etc. regardless of your biology, and what made you believe that made more sense than the simple notion that we're just male or female and we can feel and behave however we want but our bodies are still just male or female?
again, i really just want to figure out what the lynchpin is that makes some people believe so strongly in gender identity while a lot of people have no experience with the concept of gender at all and simply accept their biological sex without thinking much of it. why do some people think so much about their gender in the first place?
i have noticed the same and not only do i believe your theory is correct OP, two of my best friends came to the same conclusion alongside me and you. we were all on tumblr during the glory days and we watched this stuff blow up huge in real time out of nowhere. no one was talking about "gender" being different from sex at all in the 00s.
if you're not afraid to traverse a truly mindbending rabbit hole OP, consider starting with this wikipedia article about the career of the "first transgender billionaire" (a biological male of fucking course) in american history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Pritzker#Business_career
the pritzker family of billionaires is very suspiciously tied up in a lot of transgender-related fields of commerce. it even seems to have this weird relationship to the military-industrial-complex. compare the timeline described below in this excerpt from the article to when trans-identification began skyrocketing among young people. the timing is all very concerning to me, but maybe i've just been reading about too many conspiracy theories lately with all the craziness in the world.
"In August 2013, Pritzker released a statement to individuals associated with two business and philanthropic organizations that subsequently received wide media coverage, indicating the change from "J. N." to "Jennifer Natalya" to reflect her status as a transgender woman, making her the first and only openly transgender billionaire.
In 1995, Pritzker created the Tawani Foundation, and in 2003, she founded the Pritzker Military Library, both dedicated to the understanding and support of the "citizen soldier."[8][9] In addition, Pritzker serves as Chairwoman of the Board of the Connecticut-based private equity firm Squadron Capital LLC, in which she has been identified a principal investor.[9][when?][8][better source needed][14][better source needed] Finally, Pritzker has served as Special Projects Director for the National Strategy Forum,[when?][15] as Chairman of the Board and co-owner of National Security Ltd. (1988–1995),[verification needed][16][better source needed][3] and is active in number of further philanthropic enterprises.[clarification needed][3]
In 2016, Jennifer Pritzker was presented the Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, for her contributions to the advancement and education of issues around sexual identification.[17]"
no i can't other than the example i provided in my other post. but consider the fact that margaret sanger, the woman who founded planned parenthood, was an out-and-proud eugenicist who had PP clinics put in black neighborhoods. and now black people have abortions at a vastly disproportionate rate compared to the other races. they're 15% of the population but account for a third of all abortions--that means that it's factually true that their proportion of the U.S. population is quite literally multiple percentage points shorter than it would be if margaret sanger hadn't worked so hard to enable them to kill their babies before they get legally recognized as people as quickly and painlessly as possible.
so if she could do that and get away with it in plain sight, why is what the OP said completely impossible? i've talked about this with my own friends because we've seen how much pain people who regret medically transitioning go through because of the physical affects and how common sterilization is--or the ruining of their ability to meet someone they would and could have children with.
OP, i'm genuinely not trying to be rude here, but who is the "we" you're referring to? the vast majority of people aren't forcing men or women into any particular behavioral patterns because this is the 2020s not the 1820s. there are no rigid categories men and women are expected to fit into. no one is enforcing traditional gender roles with laws or even social shaming so what is "society" doing to make rigid categories for us?
if you don't conform to traditional gender roles how does that mean your gender is misaligned with your sex? if a transgender woman behaves completely masculine on the outside, but they say they've always internally felt like a woman, then is their gender male or female? their sex is biologically male, but prior to coming to the realization you came to in your OP, did you actually believe the way a person behaves and feels is their gender such that he would still be a woman because he says he's always felt that way? and how do we know when someone is telling the truth or not?
i really want to understand other people's experiences of what "gender" is, because from what i can see everyone in the transgender/gender-nonconforming communities on the internet seems to have their own personal definition of gender, and a lot of them disagree vociferously as to what gender is and how it's defined and measured.