This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears to be authentic. There are no serious red flags indicating it is a bot or an inauthentic detransitioner/desister.
The user demonstrates deep, nuanced engagement with the topic, personal investment (identifying as the mother of a desisted daughter), and a consistent, human writing style with natural variations in tone and length. The passion and criticism align with expected community sentiments.
About me
I started identifying as a man named Tyler at 16, believing it was an escape from my deep unhappiness and past trauma. I was heavily influenced online and took testosterone and had surgery before I was 20. I now see I was trying to solve a deep psychological problem with a permanent physical solution, and I live with serious regrets, including infertility. Through therapy, I learned my discomfort was something to understand and integrate, not eliminate. I am now learning to accept myself as a unique woman in the body I was born with.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started from a place of deep unhappiness and confusion. I never felt like I fit in, and for a long time, I thought that meant my body was wrong. I believed that if I could just change how I looked on the outside, the pain and discomfort on the inside would finally go away. I see now that I was trying to solve a psychological problem with a physical solution.
I created a male persona for myself, a character named Tyler, to protect myself from dealing with past trauma and pain. He was like a shield. Instead of being helped to understand this and to integrate these feelings, I was encouraged to see this character as my true self. I was influenced a lot by what I saw online and by the people around me who affirmed this new identity without question. It felt like an escape from having to be me.
My thinking about gender has completely changed. I used to believe it was all about presentation and performance—that being a man meant acting a certain stereotypical way. I now see that was a superficial and harmful way to think. Womanhood isn't about wearing dresses or doing needlepoint, just like manhood isn't about drinking beer or fixing things. Treating gender like a costume you can put on or take off is what got me into trouble. My identity became a fiction that depended on everyone else pretending to believe it, and that’s not a healthy way to live.
I benefited enormously from therapy that wasn't just about affirming my gender identity. A good therapist helped me see that my desire to transition was a symptom of other issues, not an action plan. We worked on understanding why I felt the way I did, what the trauma was, and how to integrate all parts of myself into one whole person. The saying "wherever you go, there you are" really hit home. You can't run from yourself with a haircut, a new name, or even surgery.
I do have serious regrets about my transition. I took testosterone and had top surgery. I am now infertile, and that is a profound loss that I have to live with every day. I mourn the life I could have had and the children I will never have. I was so focused on fixing my immediate discomfort that I didn't stop to think about the long-term, permanent consequences. My body is permanently altered because of a decision I made when I was in a terrible place mentally.
My advice to anyone feeling this way is to please stop and really examine what's going on. Pay attention to those feelings—like wanting a male chest—but treat them as a symptom to be understood, not a command to be obeyed. Why do you want it? What does it mean? Discomfort with your body and with social expectations is something almost everyone feels. You grow by working through that discomfort, not by taking radical, irreversible steps to eliminate it.
I am learning to accept myself as the unique, gender-nonconforming person I am in the body I was born with. It’s a daily process, but it’s real.
| My Age | Year | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | 2015 | Started identifying as non-binary, then as a trans man. Felt it was an escape from trauma and low self-esteem. |
| 17 | 2016 | Started testosterone. Heavily influenced by online communities and friends. |
| 19 | 2018 | Had top surgery. Hated my breasts and thought it would solve my body dysmorphia. |
| 21 | 2020 | Realized I had made a terrible mistake. Began detransitioning after non-affirming therapy helped me understand my trauma. |
| 22 | 2021 | Officially stopped all hormones. Came to terms with being permanently infertile due to my medical transition. |
Top Comments by /u/EB1816:
Poor Jazz. In another time, or with a different mother, he would have just been a little boy who liked dress-up and who grew up to be whatever kind of young man he wanted to be. I read that he not only has never had any sexual sensation but doesn't really understand what that is. Because he has never actually gone through puberty. So sad. His fate is to be a damaged sex object, frozen in pre-adolescence, for other men -- at best.
This is a terrific, important article. Thanks so much for posting it. Also very gratifying to see a relatively mainstream (as opposed to strongly right-wing or extremist. Christian) media outlet paying serious, thoughtful attention to this topic. it's so important for this message to come from moderate voices that reach and are trusted by mass audiences.
I cried watching this. And maybe it is going to far to say this, but I think this is an INCREDIBLY important video and statement.
First of all, brave, beautiful, profoundly insightful. Tyince is amazing.
But more important --- is it possible that this massive FtM wave we're seeing is almost a form of a dissociative disorder, and should be viewed/treated as such, almost across the board? The thing that hit me the most forcefully is where Tyince says, "I created Tyler" as a way of dealing with and defending herself from trauma and pain and fear.
It's almost like Tyler is an alternate personality for her who sort of took over for a while -- to protect her, and maybe he did his job, but now he's basically outlived his usefulness -- I'm not trying to do armchair diagnostics here, but maybe that is kind of what is happening more broadly in society with all these girls suddenly discovering as teens that they are "really" male?
And instead of being viewed this way and helped to integrate their lives and personalities, and find new, healthy ways to deal with trauma and protect themselves, these girls are instead being channeled onto a path of harmful, life-altering hormonal and surgical treatments? I feel like every gender-affirmative therapist in America should have to watch this video.
So...it's okay to do hormonal treatments and surgery on a child that will ensure they never will, before they can even understand what they are signing away? When adults do that to kids in some cultures, we call it genital mutilation and protest it as a grotesque violation of the child's human rights. No thinking person is okay with this.
I agree. It sounds like you imagine you might be a girl because you gravitate towards a bunch of backwards and superficial stereotypes about femininity that have essentially zero to do with being a girl or a woman (plenty of girls have short hair, play sports, drink beer, attend monster truck competitions and on an on). Many girls have far fewer feminine traits than you list, and aren't they women? And the reference. to "masculine tasks around the house" just killed me. It sounds like you think a stronger sign of being a woman would have been a natural affinity for dishwashing and needlework?
So for me, the biggest argument against the idea that you are actually female is that you treat womanhood as a presentation, a performance. It's about "presenting" as the opposite sex, and how others view and ID you based on utterly superficial and highly stereotypical tastes and preferences. that you display externally (wearing dresses, maintaining a girlish figure, etc.).
The two things to be said about this are a) none of these things has anything to do with being a woman; and b) you are not in a good place if your identity is basically a fiction that is only upheld by other people pretending to believe it.
My feeling for what it is worth, is that you will be living your life authentically when you work out, with a good therapist, what your feelings about wishing to be a girl really mean, and integrate that into your sense of yourself as a whole person. In the healthy (male) body you already have.
When you put a little boy on puberty blockers and then move him to cross-sex hormones without his ever reaching natural puberty, and then do the kind of surgery Jazz has had, he will not experience normal adult sexual desire or sensation, let alone orgasm. u/LeishaCamden is right. It is not worth discussing this with you, if you don't understand that much.
You sound like a normal, whole person to me. Someone who is brave and strong and trying to come to terms with a very difficult childhood where you weren't given a lot of support or reasons to feel good about yourself. That sucks and you deserved better than that.
The only piece of wisdom I can offer is. that when you have these thoughts and desires about taking steps to transition again, remember they are psychological symptoms, not to be read literally. If you have a therapist, you should talk to him or her when these feelings come up, and try to work out what they mean and why they are happening when they do. If you don't have one, it might be good to get a therapist who can help you work through this.
I am not that familiar with the Telegraph's usual coverage of the topic, but here in the U.S., the big, mainstream outlets like the New York Times and CNN generally cover this in lockstep with the orthodoxy of the trans lobby. It would be so great to see more articles like this in one of our major papers over here.
So...not sure what you're saying? You asked for honest thoughts. Mine is that your idea of being a woman is profoundly superficial. And no matter what you do with drugs and surgery, you are not going to be one. So your best bet is going to be to accept yourself as the interesting, unique, gender non-conforming man that you actually are. That's not disgust (if that's what you were suggesting). It's just reality. You are not in a good place if your identity depends on the rest of the world affirming it.
One big question for me is that when someone declares a trans identity, no one ever tests the person’s brain to see if it’s “male” or “female.” You would think that if there were any truth to this, it would form a diagnostic criteria of sorts. “You have a female body but you say you’re really a man? Well let’s take a look at that brain and see, shall we?”
But no one does that. And if anyone suggested such a test, or suggested rejecting would-be transitioners for treatment if an MRI (or whatever) shows an ordinary, same-gender brain? Can you imagine the outrage that would ensue? You would pretty quickly stop hearing about gendered brains and there would be some new, equally non-scientific argument brought out to support the whole project.