This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account appears authentic and shows no serious red flags of being a bot or inauthentic.
The user's comments display:
- A consistent, multi-year personal narrative detailing their transition, life during transition, and the reasons for their detransition.
- Complex emotional introspection and nuanced reasoning that aligns with known detransitioner experiences, including internalized misandry, grief, and social pressures.
- A natural writing style with personal anecdotes, self-doubt, and evolving perspectives over time.
The account exhibits the passion and frustration expected from someone who feels harmed by their experience, further supporting its authenticity.
About me
I started transitioning in my late twenties, believing it was the answer to my deep unhappiness. After seven years on hormones, I realized I could never actually be female and that my desire for biological children was a major dealbreaker. I became a recluse, living a life that was only about being trans and nothing else. I stopped hormones and began the hard work of accepting myself as a male with both masculine and feminine traits. I'm at peace now, finally free from what other people think and focused on just being me.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started in my late twenties, a little over a decade ago. I was struggling with a deep unhappiness that I didn't fully understand. I now believe a lot of my initial dysphoria was actually an intense loathing of masculinity from a social perspective, and I was reflecting that disgust onto myself. The death of my uncle, who was the only decent father figure I ever had, also hit me incredibly hard, and my slide into considering transition started almost immediately after he passed.
I decided to transition and was on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for about seven years. I never got any surgeries, and looking back, I am so thankful for that. Researching bottom surgery was one of the single biggest moments where my brain just said "whoa." Learning about the procedure, the massive level of involvement, the aftercare, and the very real risk of severe complications made me see it as a form of butchery. It’s a huge procedure that creates a surgical site with zero reproductive function, and that was a dealbreaker for me.
A major turning point was realizing that I really wanted to have kids someday. I told myself adoption was always an option, but the desire to have biological children never went away. The thought of making myself permanently infertile felt like a huge loss. Around the same time, my career took off. I was working in a creative-technical field that was a boy's club, and I was the first person they hired who wasn't a standard guy. They even called me the first woman on the team, but that felt wrong. When they later hired an actual woman, I saw firsthand how she had to fight and claw her way up from childhood against social bias, while I had just showed up late and got credit for a trail she blazed. It genuinely bothered me and made me question the entire premise of what I was doing.
I became incredibly anxious, paranoid, and depressed. I was working so hard to validate this second self that I stopped leading a real life outside of work. I became a recluse, pushing away my family and friends of twenty years. I lived between New York City and Boston for a while and never visited either city because I was so withdrawn. I realized I had built a life that was entirely about being trans, and everything else that made me a person had been left by the wayside.
The process of realizing it wasn't for me was gradual. I started to understand that I would never actually be female and that I was striving after nothing. I was so wrapped up in the external validation and the identity that I wasn't doing the hard internal work. I had to accept the parts of being male that I was trying to run from and acknowledge the feminine parts of me as a guy. It was like one of those finger trap puzzles; the harder I pulled away from myself, the tighter the trap got. The only way out was to push my fingers together—to accept all parts of myself—and the tension released.
I began to detransition about five years after starting HRT. Telling my family and friends was hard. Some were supportive, a few relationships fell by the wayside, and it showed me who was really my friend and who was just there because I was trans. I’m now focused on the verbs and adjectives of my life—what I do and who I am—rather than the pronouns. Letting go of what other people think has been the most freeing thing I’ve ever done.
I don’t regret transitioning entirely because it was a necessary process that helped me contextualize what was really eating at me. It forced me to unpack a huge amount of personal, family, and social baggage. But I do regret letting it go on for so long. I worked out 95% of my issues by the third year but stayed on for another four out of... momentum? Fear? I’m not sure. The HRT may have affected my fertility, which brings me sorrow, but I accept that choices have consequences.
My thoughts on gender are that physical sex is a real thing, but society's views on gender performance are total bullshit. Everyone has a mix of masculine and feminine traits, and we should be free to express them without it meaning we need to change our bodies. I benefited immensely from non-affirming therapy that helped me work through my internalized misandry and poor self-image.
I’m at peace now. I’m just me.
Here is a timeline of my journey:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 27 | Began questioning my gender identity. |
| 28 | Started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). |
| 30 | First major doubts began; strong desire to have children emerged. |
| 33 | Researched bottom surgery and decided against it; began serious introspection. |
| 35 | Officially began the process of detransitioning, stopping HRT. |
| 37 | Fully living as a detransitioned male, focused on integration and acceptance. |
Top Comments by /u/GMWorldofMotion:
Really researching the different methods of MTF bottom surgery was one of the single biggest moments where my brain went WHOA.
Another trans woman I knew in real life had had major complications after hers, I saw people who had had bottom surgery talking about their own challenges and complications, and I found myself just thinking more and more "why am I exploring how to carve up perfectly healthy tissue just because it makes me feel bad to be perceived as a guy. What's going on here, because if I'm going to risk that and go through that...let's take a beat here?" (and then the work began)
Heart's out to everyone who suffered a medically complicated result or only realized their headspace was janked up afterward. (and IMO, the only way to have healthier transition outcomes is to acknowledge and support when those outcomes aren't positive or people opt-out)
> I hate it because of the lower life expectancy,
By most studies about a third to half-ish of the life expectancy gap is behavioral - don't engage in risky or detrimental behavior and you can close up some of that. Also, just being honest, those extra years are typically when a fuckton of geriatric physical and mental declines frequently kick in - my grandmother might have lived longer than my grandfather but pretty much all of her bonus years were garbage battling with the onset of dementia. Longer lives aren't always necessarily good.
> considered more disposable,
The contexts are different but 99.9% of people are treated as disposable in this world. Watched someone who's worked her ass off at my employer 25 years just get shown the door just because they didn't want to pay a veteran employee and also probably subtle age discrimination. Hell, the entire pay gap argument is about the presumption that women's work in the office/workplace is worth less than a man's; disposability to the core.
> nobody gives a shit about your feelings,
If I had $5 for every man I've known during transition who was only pretending to give two bothers as a pretense to get in my pants I wouldn't have an overdrawn checking account right now. I've watched women's opinions and thoughts routinely dismissed and devalued. HOW many horror stories are there about women's concerns being dismissed by doctors. Yeah,
> can't be open about your emotions
I was crying at work after a bad shift one day (during transition) and got yelled at by my boss for being too emotional. Had a dude coworker literally put a hole in the wall in rage and no one ever said a word to him.
> always seen as a potential threat,
So, you aren't wrong here; it's something I've struggled with too. But on the other hand, just being honest here: Dudes have done a whole whole whole lot through modern and classic history to earn that reputation.
> can go bald, can get all gross and hairy.
Head hair: Finasteride, Dutasteride, Minoxodil, transplants, accepting it. Also although less common, women can go bald to. Also, what if you got cancer tomorrow and had to do chemo. There it goes.
Body hair: Shave it, wax it, pluck it, laser it, there are a TON of options here.
> these are issues with how society externally treats men.
At it's core it's an issue with the degree to which YOU care about SOCIETY. I know a LOT of this convo from my own therapy after 7 years of HRT, electro, etc. Learning to just give less of a shit has been the single most utterly freeing moment of my life. Brother-in-law is a stay at home dad. Doesn't make him any less of a man. Society gives him shit or he gets a weird look when he's with my nephew? Stranger can get fucked. Plenty of guys just absolutely do not want to deal w body hair and get rid of it somehow. Don't engage in behaviors likely to get you dead faster. Be the change you want to see. Or, for the stuff you've already been through, if that brought you more peace, you do you.
But detrans or retrans or no trans or trans, letting what other people think or believe carry undue weight on your life will encumber whatever you decide to do or how you present yourself. Cis guy or trans woman, the first three decades of my own life were spent absolutely beholden to what others think. And as for the rest? There are absolutely workarounds. Just like there are workarounds for certain parts of being biologically male if one transitions.
As someone else whose gender identity issues have roots in familial issues, manipulation, etc. my heart really goes out to you dude, and I'm sorry you had to go through that. It is so, so utterly horrible to have a parent project their own nightmares onto your life. I am absolutely convinced that were I being raised in the last decade instead of the 90s and literally anywhere other than a rural southern small town, my mom would absolutely have done the same thing no hesitation. (Ironically she wound up hating my transition, not because of the gender aspect but because it broke her control over my life)
Undoing the damage that that misandry did to my life and self-image has been a long and difficult process but slowly (took about five years from the realization to detransition) though surely, it's been worth it.
Since transitioning I have become isolated socially. On the surface
friends act like they are supportive, but I’m not included or invited to
events anymore. Family is more or less the same way. I have not found
friends in the LGBTQ+ community.
I relate to this SO hard, and as I've detransitioned it's been interesting watching the "veil" sort of lift on a lot of those relationships. Some have strengthened, some have fallen by the wayside.
I think doing it in the first place was a great thing as it let me unpack a LOT of personal, family, cultural, and social baggage, and let me individuate myself as a person for the first time -- but I also think I held onto it way too long (7 years, even though I worked out 95% of my issues in year three). At least grateful I held off on surgery.
Since you've had surgery, I recommend just finding what makes you feel the most whole and integrated and *you* and just owning it, whether that be continuing on with a female presentation (and you've hit acceptance as to the medical and biological limits and realities of transition) or a detransition towards a more masculine presentation (functionally, with some of the same issues and considerations as trans men, just being natal male but having come back the long way around and with complications.
Either way, you're supported and as the comments show, there's folks here for you dude.
Purely speculation, but I feel like people who detransitioned who either had, or at least wanted, bottom surgery, ultimately found themselves frustrated/defeated by the limitations of the surgery - sometimes aesthetically (heaven help those poor folks who had a botched one), sometimes in terms of sexual performance, sometimes realizing the obvious limitation in reproductive function (ie: none), and sometimes due to frustration with maintenance and upkeep (dilation, etc)
It's a whole lot of work for a surgical site with zero reproductive function, potential complications with aesthetic and sexual function, and there's an elevated risk of medical side effects that add up.
To my own experience, as I came to terms with the limitations of surgery and letting it really sink in that functionally it just wouldn't be the same thing, it quickly became "Do I even want this", and as soon as I said no, it became a question of "so what am I really doing here, then" and so now I'm planning to detransition because if I'm keeping the male reproductive parts, for me I can't sit there and call myself female, and for me I'm better served long term, emotionally and medically, making peace with myself rather than continue with medical intervention.
Detransitioning is a “very invalidating term for a lot of people who are trans and gender-diverse,” Rafferty said.
If your identity and sense of self is so fragile that an entirely different, other person saying "nah, this isn't for me" and stopping? just completely and utterly just shuts you down, there's WAY the hell else going on than just gender dysphoria
Disclosures: I am absolutely not a doctor (always wanted to be, though) and I'm in the process of detransition (reverting from female back to male) but wholeheartedly still support people in their own transitions.
Aspirin is an anti-platelet medication and one of it's secondary uses is to both prevent potential clots (by preventing platelets from sticking together) and breaking up existing ones. Combined with the physician advice to remain in the general area for monitoring (certain types of travel can worsen clots, as well) and the symptoms you describe it feels a very safe bet your physician is concerned about clotting and potential complications.
So first and foremost, follow their instruction. Because even if you enjoy presenting female and like the effects of hormones, blood clots are very serious and potentially fatal complications. To be around to be cute later, it's important to be proactive about your health now.
Even if you detransition, you can get chest hair and facial hair zapped off or lasered off. There is absolutely nothing that says you have to have any body hair whatsoever as a man - it's a bullshit societal norm, nothing more. I'm neutral towards face and legs, but if chest/back hair returns I'll probably get every last one zapped. Personal preference.
And obviously as a female attracted male it's going to be easier to find a long term relationship with a woman than as a transgender female seeking same. It's OK.
And whether this complication passes and you stay with it, or you decide to desist and let your own physiology reassert itself (I couldn't live with the risk of medical complications relative to the tradeoff, but that's just me), the people who matter in your life will still be there for you and support you. Promise.
I recently lost a NB friend due to my fears of their health (both mental and physical) surrounding transition.
There are a lot of side effects from prolonged HRT use, the various surgeries themselves, etc. that I think the broader trans community turn a blind eye towards but are very serious. Honestly just the risk of DVT issues alone over the long term with Estradiol is kind of alarming. Also, sorry you lost your friendship with your friend to this.
Thanks for the super kind words overall though. Appreciate it. Like, mentally I know that the people who really care will stick with me, hopefully (unless I turn into some kind of asshole or jerk), but emotionally it's just one of those things that's hard to work past.
Why flinch?
With pronouns, What is it about those that causes you to react that way? Why allow a word that is just a referential construct of language to hold that level of sway and influence over your emotional wellbeing? You're flaired detrans, so what is it about being referred to referentially with a male identifier that's triggering you? Acceptance of yourself is important and one step to having that healthier sense of self is working through.
A reminder that someone referring to you as he, him (or for the detrans female folks she/her) isn't a value statement about you as a human being.
Doubling back to your name now - is there something about being referred to by that name that's uncomfortable to you? One of the things I'm making peace with right now in my own journey is that when I do the legal name change portion I am STRONGLY looking at going with a name other than the one I was given at birth.
I couldn't be bothered if someone calls me he or she or whatever at this point. It's just a referential - and anyone doing it maliciously is just showing themselves as prejudiced and I won't be letting that live rent free in my brain. But my original guy name? Nah. Because for ME there was and is so much baggage, both internal and external, associated with my life under that name that I don't think it's reflective of the person I've become - both a person who is understanding of the physical reality of the human body AND someone who post-transitions is sufficiently different that who I was as a person when I was that name no longer exists. Transition or no.
If your original name is triggering like that, take an earnest look at why. If it's something that can be worked through, and you want to do that, go for it. And if it's something that you're like "this just isn't me", you can totally change your name (again).
The work is in really delving into the why of that reaction and, without falling into wishful thinking that doesn't quite square with physical reality, find yourself and claim that space.
Honest answer: The State Museum (Morrill Hall) on the Univ. of Nebraska campus is actually a sensational national history museum if you're into that sort of thing. Some wonderful fossils (incl. one of the largest preserved mammoth skeletons ANYWHERE), and they've got this interactive thing showing evolutionary relationships between thousands of species over billions of years of evolution. Omaha also has a stunningly good zoo/aquarium.
(And yes, if you're a sucker for fresh air and farm country and some are, obv. the place has that in buckets. But even if you're not, the two largest cities offer enough to do to fill some time.
I don't think it's a region of the country I'd deliberately set out to move to, but the couple of times I've stopped over for the night while traveling, I've found things to do without much effort.