This story is from the comments by /u/GNC-centric that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User 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 a bad-faith actor.
The user's posts are highly detailed, emotionally nuanced, and internally consistent over time. They describe a complex, personal history with gender dysphoria, a social transition, and a subsequent detransition to a GNC female identity. The narrative includes specific, lived experiences (e.g., medical issues, family dynamics, online grooming) that are difficult to fabricate convincingly. The user also demonstrates self-reflection, changes in perspective, and offers advice that aligns with common detransitioner concerns, such as critiquing medicalization and exploring underlying trauma. The passion and criticism directed at the medical and trans communities are consistent with the genuine anger and harm that some detransitioners experience.
About me
I never fit in as a girl, and my discomfort with my changing body and a shame-filled home life made me believe I was a trans man. I was groomed online and consumed a lot of content that convinced me transition was my only solution. I lived as a man for years, but the closer I got to passing, the worse my dysphoria became because I knew I would never actually be male. Now I’ve detransitioned and am learning to accept myself as a butch lesbian, seeing my femaleness as a simple physical fact rather than a social role. My journey taught me that my need was to heal my trauma and internalized homophobia, not to change my body.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started when I was really young, but it all came to a head around puberty. I was always a bit of an outsider, with ADHD, and I never fit in with what my family expected from a girl. Being told to “act like a lady” felt disturbing and wrong. I also struggled with anorexia, and the idea of using testosterone to reshape and control my body seemed like a dream solution. When I was 14, I found transition videos on YouTube and started talking to trans people on Tumblr. I became absolutely sure I was trans and lived as a trans man from age 15 to 19.
A huge part of my discomfort came from my body developing. When my breasts started growing, I went to my doctor because I thought something was wrong. She just told me I was growing up. Getting my first period was terrifying; my mom didn’t allow me to go to sex ed, so I woke up in a pool of blood with cramps and thought I was dying. I was completely alone that morning. It turned out I had a microperforate hymen and ovarian cysts, which made my periods long, heavy, and painful. My parents dismissed my pain and dragged me to school anyway.
My home life made everything about being female feel shameful. I wasn’t allowed to say “pads” to my mom; I had to call them “special things.” I had to wrap them so no one could identify them in the trash. I couldn’t let my dad or sister know when I was on my period. Everything felt taboo. Being cat-called for my chest and my body at 14 made me feel horrible about being female.
I had intense physical dysphoria. I fantasized about carving out my uterus and still sometimes do. I wanted testosterone and top surgery, though I never started T. My genitals felt like a black hole of emptiness and pain. Looking in the mirror, I wanted a flat chest. Even after I detransitioned, I’d get annoyed when dysphoria popped up. I’ve learned that hating these parts of me means hating myself. The closer I got to passing as male, the worse my dysphoria became because I realized I would never actually be male. The most severe dysphoria I ever had was a kind of hallucination where I felt like I had a penis, and then I’d have a panic attack when I realized it wasn’t really there.
A lot of my feelings were influenced online. I watched transition timelines, videos on how to pass, how to get a doctor to give you HRT or surgery, and videos explaining trans and queer ideology. I followed a lot of popular gay male YouTubers. Somehow, I almost never came across anything about lesbians. My only frame of reference for male bodies was from horrible porn, fan art, gay romance novels, and porn from trans people on social media. When I was 17, I had a close male friend and asked him so many questions about what it was like to have a penis. The more I learned, the more I realized I would never experience that.
I think internalized homophobia played a big role. The idea of being a female in any sexual setting was too upsetting. I couldn’t imagine myself as a female with a male or a female with a female. Denying I was female and making sure I never had a female partner felt like the only way to avoid acknowledging my female sexuality. I was never attracted to men, but I felt it was inevitable that I’d end up with one due to compulsory heterosexuality. I didn’t experience real attraction to a woman until I was 18. Before that, I confused my obsession with becoming a man and with male bodies for attraction.
I was also groomed online. I joined trans Twitter at 14, and that’s when it started. My Twitter friends shared porn publicly and joked about it. I followed adults who were escorts or cam girls because I was told it was part of trans culture and empowering. I was exposed to sexual material every day. Public flirting led to DMs about my gender and dysphoria, which quickly turned sexual. I sexted with older males—some trans women, some non-binary, some allies—because I thought it made me mature and I liked the attention. By 17, I had a Fetlife account and called myself a sub. I thought I’d find a dom to please because I didn’t think I could ever like anything sexual myself. An older man in his late 30s became my long-distance dom, supposedly to save me from worse fates. This grooming was rampant, and I’ve seen it happen to so many others in the community.
When I detransitioned at 19, I realized I needed to learn to accept my female body as it is. I started seeing myself as a gender non-conforming female—a butch lesbian. I wear the same clothes as before, just without a binder. I still use my chosen name. Finding other lesbians and detrans women has helped immensely. I’ve had to work on radical self-acceptance, using techniques from therapies for body dysmorphic disorder, DBT, and CBT. Being a nudist in private helped me come to terms with my body. Exercise like martial arts helped me feel more connected to my body and value its usefulness over its appearance.
I don’t regret exploring my gender, but I regret not addressing my underlying issues first. I had severe dysphoria, but transition didn’t fix it; it made it worse for me. I know transition helps some people, but for me, it was an unhealthy coping mechanism for trauma, internalized homophobia, and other mental health issues. I think young people deserve to know that transition isn’t the only option and that they should explore all paths, including therapy to address underlying problems, before making permanent decisions.
I don’t believe in the cis/trans dichotomy. The only thing feminine about me is my anatomy. I don’t accept or perform traditional roles of womanhood. Femaleness doesn’t need a spiritual or social connotation; it’s just a physical fact. I’m a female, and that’s okay.
Here’s a timeline of my journey:
Age | Event |
---|---|
14 | Found transition videos on YouTube and trans communities on Tumblr; became sure I was trans. |
15 | Began living socially as a trans man. |
17 | Had a close male friend; asked detailed questions about male anatomy; realized I would never have a penis. |
19 | Detransitioned; began identifying as a gender non-conforming female (butch lesbian). |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/GNC-centric:
Fist thing I’d like to say is, you’re extremely young to be handling these medical decisions that have lifelong consequences, I’m very happy you’re not rushing into T.
YES! Stop lupron!! The side effects will only get worse as time goes on, stop hurting your body! If you understand this, go to your Dr and tell them “avoiding puberty is not worth permanently ruining my body” or something. The pain your experiencing may be permanent at this point, but the sooner you’re off, the better chances are for your body to heal. With your joint pain, its possible that off of lupron, natural puberty will help with bone growth, possibly helping with your joint pain. I’m not a medical expert, but I know the longer you stay on, the worse it gets.
Female and male are biological reality. Nothing in your mind will change your anatomy. So asking if youre female or male is the wrong question. You are female, but do you have such severe dysphoria that trans ID is your only option? Its not a trans v cis thing, its a “i have dysphoria, will living as trans make it better or worse?” Over the last few years, since my detransition, I’ve observed that the ppl most happy in transition are the ones who acknowledge their birth sex, and are taking medical steps to alleviate sex/body dysphoria with the understanding that this is a superficial change. My dysphoria was at its worst when I went from IDing as trans or FTM to “i am a male” bc I’m not physically male, so every time I saw my body its like a slap in the face. Its impossible to become male if you were born female, so you’re literally trying for an impossible goal. If your happiness or peace of mind is predicated on “one day I’ll be male” you’re setting yourself up for disaster, as I’m sure most detrans females in this sub would agree. That’s how I saw the world for many years and I was just chasing something impossible.
You need to acknowledge your biology, bc that is the thing that is distressing you. Something I find alarming is how many young trans ppl never come to terms with the fact that you will only ever be a medically masculinized female or a medically feminized male; your birth sex is with you no matter what you do. Running from it is futile, you have to confront it, to figure out what’s going on.
Haha that was more ranty then i expected sorry.
DO NOT GO TO A GENDER THERAPIST. Literally their job is to see someone and be like “yes youre trans, go transition and you’ll be happy” from everyone ive talked to, they almost never address underlying issues. If you have stuff going on that’s messing with your ability to fully work through your dysphoria, its those underlying issues.
Over the last few years I’ve come to some conclusions about dysphoria and therapy and I have some advice for you:
- the symptoms of dysphoria could indicate a multitude of things, it doesnt mean transition will make you happy
- since dysphoria is a cluster of symptoms, the only way to see whats actually the dysphoria is to treat anxiety, dysmorphia, trauma, etc and see what’s left. This can take years, but its worth doing.
- if your dysphoria is social, it can almost always be dissected and understood with the help of a good therapist (one that will actually challenge you and ask questions, not just like “oh well guess you’re trans” thats a waste of your time, you’ve already had that feedback before)
- you need to figure out how severe your dysphoria is. Think of eating disorders, not everyone with an eating disorder is being sent to the hospital for a feeding tube, thats very extreme. For EDs, there are coping mechanisms, out patient programs, multiple therapeutic, non medical treatments. If you dont have the most severe dysphoria, do you need the most severe treatment? (medical transition)
- most ppl with regret look back and think, “if only I’d tried to address my dysphoria with therapy, maybe I would never have needed HRT/SRS” so take your time and try doing that now. Again, you need a therapist who will look for answers beyond “bc gender” bc thats not useful information for you at this point. Try to isolate symptoms and build coping mechanisms. If lupron is supposed to help and it isnt, what makes you think T will be any different? You need to have a handle on your dysphoria whether you medically transition or not. I know for some, HRT actually worsens dysphoria, if thats the case for you, you need coping mechanisms.
- explore your dissociation, why you dissociate specifically. You shouldn’t be on hormones or PBs at all if you are dissociating and you dont know what triggers it. (That’s why you see a therapist before you get hormones but therapists don’t actually do their jobs anymore in this field)
It is very possible that you are depressed bc of the lupron. Equally possible that the physical effects of the lupron are some kind of wake up call for you, that this is not as simple/easy as you may have been told. Its definitely worth noting that T is known to cause/increase depression, anxiety and psychosis (it says on the box) so hoping that once you go on it, something like dissociating might go away, is unrealistic. I’m not sure how it works tbh, but maybe if lupron is making you depressed, T might make you depressed as well? Ask your Dr about that, for sure, bc that could really mess with your qualify of life and you deserve better.
Sorry if this came off as kinda rant-y, I’m just concerned bc youre so young. Also if any of this feels harsh, I’m sorry, but I’m trying to give you the dose of reality you’re unlikely to get from your Drs/Therapists, one I had to learn for myself the hard way.
Best of luck with your dysphoria and coming off of lupron 💕
Transphobic means anything these days, pls be specific. We have the most empathy possible for trans/dysphoric ppl, right after someone who is currently trans.
A lot of us see that many ppl who are accessing HRT/SRS or who are IDing as trans, have serious underlying issues that are being unexplored, while they are blindly told transition will help them feel better. This makes a lot of detrans ppl question the efficacy and long term effects of medical transition, esp long term (10+ years) and esp wrt ppl who aren’t well screened. This is the most transphobic view some of detrans ppl hold, and after they’ve been failed by the medical community, its logical that they want to make sure others don’t experience the same as them.
This person has decided to detransition. Stop feeding the delusion that ppl are born with the wrong sex brain or the wrong gender identity Respect the position that the OP has defined as their own.
Ps. If you did a survey of a bunch of “genuine trans” ppl, I bet you $1M at least 1/2 of them have some kind of trauma in their childhood. What makes someone a True Transsexual is literally just if transition fixes their problems, a lot of ppl use transition as an unhealthy coping technique for varying types of mental health problems. Just bc transition gives someone a sense of control over their life/their body/their sexuality, doesn’t mean they’ve solved their real problems or that they are true transsexuals I and many others have known trans ppl who felt better after transition but eventually committed suicide. This poster wants to confront their body issues head on, that is what most therapists would recommend, were it not for the diagnosis of “dysphoria” (which we all know, is so ambiguous as to be useless.
This is hard because I was so stuck in trans ideology that I'm sure a lot of it would fall on deaf ears or be taken as an attack.
I have no idea about my parents. I often wish that they would have told me they thought I was gay, my mom told me once she knew when I was little and I'm just like "why didn't anyone tell me?" I was very distant from my parents when I was a teen. They were never very invested in my emotional wellbeing or mental health so I never talked to them about my sexuality or gender identity.
I would have told myself:
- hang out with some lesbians, regardless of how you feel you relate to them
- learn about female anatomy because regardless of identify, you live in a female body
- don't get into sexual situations online just because you feel obligated to please the other person
- be critical of how much porn and phallocentric sexual material you expose yourself to and what effect that has on your psyche
That's just off the top of my head... if I think of something else, I'll add it
Thanks for your question 💕
There is NO scientific proof that validates the idea that when ppl transition their quality of life is improved for more then 2-5 years, then its an insane increase in suicidality. We know that prepubescent dysphoria desists after natural puberty in 60-90% of youth, and that when they start puberty blockers, they are almost certainly destined to live with dysphoria the rest of their life.
How are WE the anti-vaxxers? Have you ever read any studies about the long term wellbeing of transitioned ppl??? You’re the one leaning on ideology while ignoring science.
I joined trans twitter at the age of 14, and thats when my grooming began.
First, a lot of my twitter friends shared porn pics/gifs/vids publicly. They talked about it and joked about it and would tag their fetish or whatever in their bios.
Second, I started to realize I was twitter friends with a lot of adults who were escorts or cam girls or involved in the sex industry somehow. They would RT their Sex Work Twitter onto their main twitter and I eventually followed a bunch of them bc I was told they were empowered and this was part of trans culture.
I was being exposed to sexual material everyday, regardless of my feelings about it, bc I was told this is how mature feminists/queer ppl acted.
Next came the public flirting. On an almost daily basis, there would be some kind of flirting between me and an adult Queer/Trans or one of their allies, or with other TM teens in my orbit. The flirting would lead to DMing, first about my gender, and my dysphoria, and what terminology I liked for my anatomy and the next thing I knew I was being told about how aroused the other party was. I sexted with these males (some TW, some NBs and some allies) bc I thought it made me mature, I liked the positive attention, I felt excited that I was doing something sexual! I thought this was normal, what all queer ppl did!
By 17, I had a fetlife account and was calling myself a sub. I had it in my mind that I was going to find a dom who would settle for my pathetic self and please him, since there was no hope of ever liking anything sexual myself anyway. No one ever said "hey you're young, maybe this isn't good for you" until I met Dave.
I knew Dave bc he was very publicly close friends with some TW Activists with several thousand followers. Dave was late 30s, ex military and had been a Dom in the NYC BDSM scene and told me of how harmful it was, so he instead became my long distance Dom, to save me from a worse fate of course. We sexted for about a year. He said he was bi (to validate my identity) but he was clearly straight.
This is just a glimpse of what I experienced, ONLINE, before age 18.
When well known TW activists are called out as rapists (even of other trans ppl) their crimes are swept under the rug. When everyday Queer/Trans males are called out as rapists by one of their peers, the victim is called a TERF and is cancelled. They're told even if this is true, talking about it only perpetuates transphobia so if they do it, they're a transphobe. (even if they're trans themselves). This is a community where sexual abuse/exploitation are excused/whitewashed, so the predators know they can get away with anything.
There is rampant grooming in the Queer/Trans Community. I know so many TIFs or former TIFs who've been raped/assaulted by TIMs. I know of many TIMs who were sexually exploited by older TIMs as teens. I know so many queer women and trans ppl who got started in the sex industry bc of this grooming.
In my city, I know a detrans woman who was raped as a TM by a TW they met at the local LGBT Community centre. Afterwards, others laughed saying "everyone knows that person is a creep, you should have known better" and made fun of them. Also in my city, I know a bi woman who was raped by a TW at a party for LGBT ppl from her university.
The ppl most effected by this are LGBT/dysphoric/gender confused teens; why aren't the queer/trans community clamouring to call out their predators? The gay liberation movement had to publicly, vocally and continuously call out predators in an effort to clean up their community and keep its members safe in the late 80s. Why aren't the Queer/Trans Community following their example?
ps. I don't appreciate the ppl in this thread saying all LGBT ppl are predators.
Because, as I said in the video, the concept of being a a female in any sexual setting was too upsetting to contemplate. I couldn’t imagine myself as a female with a male, or a female with a female. The furthest thing from acknowledging that I was a female with sexual feelings was to deny that I was female and make sure I never had a female partner; the least amount of female sexuality possible. I was never attracted to men, as I explained, I just felt it was inevitable that I would be with a man (compulsory heterosexuality, i linked to a PDF about this in the video description) and this is how I tried to change myself to cope with what I felt was out of my control. Being with a woman seemed totally impossible to me, until I experienced attraction to a woman when I was 18. Up till then, I only experienced “Misattribution of Attraction” (linked in the video description) and strong emotional reliance on the males who sexted with me. I didn’t realize this wasn’t attraction, until I felt real attraction. I was obsessed with becoming a man, with the male body, bc my dysphoria, which confused me for many years. The difference between “I want to be that male” and “I want to be with that male” is confusing when you’re young, especially when you’re obsessed with gay romance novels, as I was and have no real attraction to compare it with.
Thats why I made the vid; we need to talk about this bc its so common.
Im going to do a vid about FTMs who call themselves gay men but have lesbian sex/relationships with other FTMs and vice versa and how its based in internalized homophobia.
Feel free to let me know if there’s anything you think I should address in that vid, based on your experience. Thanks for your comment 😊
I kinda found it traumatic bc men expected me to rate women 1-10 with them. They expected me to spill all my female friends secrets and help them make a move to get into their pants. They would share graphic sexual stories with me, that I’m certain they weren’t sharing with their male friends, when I didn’t pass or they knew I was trans. I feel like lesbians experience this still? For almost all the time I was trans ID, I identified as a gay trans man. I think these experiences scared me away from being attracted to women even more. I didn’t come out as a lesbian till I detransed at 20yo.
I never realized how dehumanizing men were about women, until I lived among them. I know that being a lesbian is nothing like being a straight man.
This is the closest to “trauma” I ever experienced by living among men; abandoning my femalehood.
I commented asking very simple questions about teens having too easy access to HRT. They took it personally, saying i was trying to invalited their identity or something and then deleted my comments and blocked me a few hours later.
Seems like the same has happened to any other detrans person who had commented. Not very supportive of detrans ppl.... 🤨