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Reddit user /u/Basatu's Detransition Story

Transitioned: 17 -> Detransitioned: 22
male
low self-esteem
porn problem
regrets transitioning
escapism
trauma
autogynephilia (agp)
depression
influenced online
anxiety
only transitioned socially
This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
On Reddit, people often share their experiences across multiple comments or posts. To make this information more accessible, our AI gathers all of those scattered pieces into a single, easy-to-read summary and timeline. All system prompts are noted on the prompts page.

Sometimes AI can hallucinate or state things that are not true. But generally, the summarised stories are accurate reflections of the original comments by users.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious

Based on the provided comments, the account appears to be authentic.

There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or an inauthentic actor. The comments demonstrate:

  • Personal, nuanced, and empathetic engagement with others' struggles, often sharing personal experiences.
  • Consistent ideological perspective focused on biological essentialism, the harms of internet culture, and the role of fetishism (AGP).
  • Varied and complex language use, including the use of personal anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and even a sophisticated political theory argument. This is not the pattern of a simple bot.

The user's passion and strong opinions are consistent with a genuine, highly opinionated detransitioner or desister.

About me

I was a lonely teenage boy who felt like a failure as a man and escaped into the internet, where I found gender ideology. I became convinced that becoming a woman was my only path to happiness, driven by what I now understand was a fetish and a deep need to escape myself. I spent years lost in that fantasy until I stepped away from online life to finally confront my real issues of depression and low self-esteem. I learned that being male is simply my biology and doesn't dictate how I have to act or who I have to be. I now see my desire to transition was an illusion, and I'm rebuilding my life by facing reality.

My detransition story

My whole journey with this started when I was a teenager. I was a nerdy, introverted boy who got bullied a lot. I felt like a complete failure as a guy. I fell into a heavy addiction to the internet and porn, and I spent a huge amount of time in online political debates where I was constantly exposed to gender ideology. I felt enormous social pressure and what I now see as toxic masculinity made me feel like I was a false man. I started to believe that the only worthwhile life I could live was as a girl, because I couldn't live up to what I thought a man should be.

I think a lot of my feelings were tied up with a fetish, something I've come to understand as autogynephilia (AGP). For me, it was a form of escapism from the pressures I felt. I had a lot of shame about these feelings and my crossdressing fantasies, which I now believe just made the whole thing stronger because I became addicted to the anxious feelings that came with it.

I never got any surgeries or took hormones. My transition was entirely social and in my own head. I spent years online, deep in forums and communities that reinforced these ideas. I truly believed that changing my gender was the answer to my deep unhappiness, low self-esteem, and depression.

My detransition began when I finally stepped back. I realized I had to stop staying on the internet. I had to stop thinking about gender constantly. I made a conscious effort to live my life alone for a while, to figure out what was actually good for me without all that noise. I started to understand that for me, being a male only means that I am biologically male. There is nothing more to it than that. There's no specific way you have to act or be. I also had to confront why I idolized women so much and why I felt I could only admire them.

I benefited hugely from stepping away and doing this introspection. I had to learn to manage my AGP in a healthy way, to separate fantasy from reality and embrace the fantasy in a conscious, moderate way, which made its power over me much weaker. Overcoming that shame was the first and most important step.

I now see my desire to transition was an illusion. I was searching for something to make me feel good, a purpose, and I was tricked into thinking I would find it in a trans identity. I needed to find real purpose and goals in my life instead.

I have significant regrets about transitioning socially and spending so many years lost in that mindset. It was a waste of time and caused me a lot of unnecessary pain. I believe my underlying issues were trauma, depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and a porn problem, all exacerbated by being online too much. My views on gender are essentialist: you are a man if you are biologically male, and a woman if you are biologically female. These categories are based in material reality, not identity.

Age Event
14-16 Started feeling like a failure as a boy, began internet and porn addiction, exposed to gender ideology online.
17-20 Fully believed I was trans, engaged in social transition online, deep in AGP fantasies and shame.
21 Began to step back from the internet, started introspection, began to understand my male sex is all that defines me as a man.
22 Actively worked on managing AGP, overcame shame, detached from online trans communities, fully embraced detransition.

Top Comments by /u/Basatu:

12 comments • Posting since June 18, 2022
Reddit user Basatu (desisted male) explains that being a man requires only a male biology and discusses the link between idolizing women and gender dysphoria.
26 pointsSep 21, 2022
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Hi, we are struggling to a similar thing. What actually helped me a lot is to understand that, for being a male, you only have to be a biological one. There is nothing other than it, being a boy, a man etc. It’s just having a male sex. Also, it’s evident by your story how you extremely admire and love women. Like when you said: “I hated being the boyfriend. I hope we could just be both girlfriends” which is something I struggle a lot with. I want you to reflect a minute: why do you admire and idolise so much women? Why do you can only admire women?

Reddit user Basatu (desisted male) explains how postmodernist philosophers like Deleuze and Foucault created a "desire's anarchism" from Marxist theory, which he argues serves modern capitalism and transgender ideology.
13 pointsSep 26, 2022
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I think you’re an old school Marxist. I honestly respect your views if so, but it’s objectively true that post-modernist/post-structuralist views of Deleuze, Foucault and Althusser, which extrapolated the Marxist analysis in a neo-Marxist way inspired by Frankfurt’s school. You might say: “yes, but Marxism is materialistic, scientific and dialectical, while postmodernism is the opposite, nihilistic, anti scientific and anti Hegelian, but Marx thought ended up being used by academical pseudo-Nietzschean who used the Marxist paradigm of structure and of the hegelo-deterministic class struggle for creating what I call “desire’s anarchism” which is useful to modern day capitalism-and therefore to transgender ideology.

Reddit user Basatu (questioning own gender transition) advises a 14-year-old to leave trans forums, do introspection and therapy, and explains that dysphoria often weakens with age.
12 pointsAug 18, 2022
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Do introspection, reflect, if you can (but I doubt since you’re 14) do therapy. Leave all the sub/YouTube channel/forum etc. About gender. Try to know why you feel gender dysphoria, why you want to be a boy. Remember that your brain is still developing, and that often gender dysphoria get a lot weaker growing up. Good luck.

Reddit user Basatu (questioning own gender transition) explains how escaping the internet and re-evaluating life helped him avoid a transition mistake, advising to seek non-toxic masculine role models.
10 pointsAug 10, 2022
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I understand how you feel. I am a nerdy, introverted and bullied a lot boy, that fell down in an addiction to internet and porn, and really into the political debate, which make me feel in contact with gender ideologies. My advice: stop staying on internet. Stop thinking about gender. Try to live your life lonely for sometimes, to value what’s good for you. Then, try to have some different examples. I think the web is damaging a lot of young boys with ultra-masculine role and a cruel mentality. See other boy models, like musicians, artists, writers, that aren’t extremely masculine. Stay strong my dude.

Reddit user Basatu (questioning own gender transition) explains that trans identity is an illusion and advises finding purpose and genuine happiness through life goals instead of seeking gender euphoria.
10 pointsAug 12, 2022
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I think you’re just searching something funny to do, to be. Something that make you feel good. Trans identity doesn’t make you feel good, it is an illusion. Try to live a better life, with some purpose, some goal to achieve, try to create your life, do to things that make you feel really good, and don’t find this feeling of euphoria in gender.

Reddit user Basatu (desisted male) explains how to cope with sexuality-related gender dysphoria by overcoming shame and consciously moderating fantasies to weaken its power.
7 pointsOct 14, 2022
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I can share my experience.

The first thing to do is overcoming any shame you have. Shame is a strong feeling and won’t only make you feel bad, but could also make your agp stronger. Bc we get addicted to anxious feelings. Second, try to embrace it in a healthy way, i.e. without feeling possessed by it. So, divide fantasy from reality and try to embrace the fantasy in a conscious and moderate way. This will make it extremely weaker

Reddit user Basatu (questioning own gender transition) discusses gender identity, questioning whether discomfort with gender roles and dysphoria necessarily means being trans, and suggests it could be a coping mechanism.
6 pointsJun 18, 2022
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The only message that I could gave you is: be what you want to be. Remember that a lot of girl actually like masculine clothes, and that doesn’t make you trans. The fact that you have dysphoria about not being feminine as other girl isn’t causal. I think that the fact that you like to be called in a masculine way is related, in a certain way, also to it. I notice that when people doesn’t feel their body or their character as similiar to the other people of their assigned gender, they can create a mechanism of identify to the other gender. That’s obviously a my theory, you can easily don’t care about it. Anyway, I wanna ask you another thing: why you’d start to questioning your gender identity? I think this is important.

Reddit user Basatu (desisted male) explains why they believe gender is a social construct rooted in survival and biology, not an innate identity.
6 pointsSep 29, 2022
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I disagree. Our life is inherently based on surviving, and in a desert island the concept itself of gender wouldn’t exist. Gender is, in facts just gender norms, if we talk in an essentialist ways (and in nature we live always in an essentialist way). But gender norms were mostly created when we became civilised. Before, we yet had some kind of gender norms, but they were just essential tendencies based on biology. Men had to hunt and search food just because their body was physically stronger than the women’s one. We didn’t have any type of dysphoria at the time, neither we had any idea of the possibility that you might be a woman or that you might became one. Surely the thought could pass in the head, maybe you can also find it nice, but you wouldn’t thought of becoming one, you would just go and hunt.

Reddit user Basatu (questioning own gender transition) discusses social pressures and AGP as factors in why some men transition longer than women before detransitioning.
3 pointsJun 20, 2022
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Imo I think that male rarely accept their problem, because of more social pressure to be a strong masculine man. So, a lot of agp men transition to female just do satisfy their fetish for an escape to the “you’re not a real man since you crossdress/have agp fantasies” so tend to be a trans woman for more time. While females accept easily the fact that they have a fetish and detransition, also because the social pressure about gender role isn’t so high. Obviously not all detrasn people have transitioned for a fetish, but there are a big part who did it.

Reddit user Basatu (questioning own gender transition) explains their view that biological sex, defined by chromosomes and sexual characteristics, determines being a man or a woman, classifying exceptions as illnesses.
3 pointsJul 31, 2022
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Isn’t a question of identity. You are a man when you have XY chromosome, which comports having some primary and second sexual characteristics. You are a woman when you have XX chromosome, which comports having other primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Yes, there are syndromes, in which someone with XY chromosome have female sexual characteristics, but they are ILLNESSES. Not going to discriminate someone, but changing the concept of man and woman for someone having some illnesses is mad.