This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.
The user demonstrates:
- Personal, detailed experience with both taking and stopping testosterone, including specific physical and emotional effects.
- Consistent internal logic in their arguments about detransition, trauma, and medical ethics.
- Emotional depth and vulnerability, sharing personal stories of trauma and regret that are complex and nuanced.
- Engagement in supportive dialogue, offering practical advice and empathy to others.
The passion and anger expressed are consistent with a genuine detransitioner who feels they were harmed by the medical system.
About me
I was born female and transitioned because I believed becoming male would protect me from the trauma I suffered as a child. I started testosterone alone, and the physical changes happened much faster than I was told they would, with some being completely irreversible. I realized I had made a mistake when seeing my identical twin became a painful reminder of the woman I lost, and I felt my true self was trapped inside a body I'd altered. I've been off hormones for five months now and am working in therapy to reclaim my femininity and my birth name, Hope. I feel I was failed by a medical system that didn't help me address my past trauma before offering such a permanent solution.
My detransition story
My journey into transition and back is deeply tied to a lot of pain and confusion I was carrying from my past. I experienced severe trauma as a child; my father was abusive and there was a worker involved who hurt me. I tried to get justice, but the system failed me. My father had videos of the abuse and showed them to me, but he deleted the evidence and nothing was ever done. I think a lot of my feelings about myself and my body were shaped by that trauma. I felt like if I had been born male, none of that would have happened to me, even though I know, logically, that isn't true.
I was born female, but I started to hate the feminine parts of myself. I hated my breasts and my name, Hope, which people would compliment and call beautiful. Those compliments felt wrong and actually pushed me further away from myself. I think I had a lot of internalized issues and low self-esteem. I wanted to look androgynous, to be ambiguous to everyone who looked at me. I didn't start by saying I was a man; it was more about wanting to change how I was seen.
I started taking testosterone. I went to all my appointments alone, with no family to back me up or discuss the effects with me. My doctor presented hormones as a kind of medicine and led me to believe they would help, but he didn't really talk about the psychological effects. I was told that if I went off T, things would mostly revert to baseline, but that isn't the full truth. The changes happened much faster than I expected. My voice dropped in the first week, and I experienced clitoral growth, which can't be reversed. At first, I loved the changes because I felt like I was finally becoming the person I wanted to look like.
But it quickly turned sour. After about a year on T, I had a horrible realization that I would never look or sound remotely like the person I was before, no matter how long I was off hormones. I have an identical twin, and seeing her is a constant, walking reminder of the woman I could have been content as, had I not gone down this path. I started to feel like a walking spirit of who I was before, living in a possessed body. People were so accepting of me being a man that they called me handsome and used masculine compliments, which ended up offending the woman still inside me. I took their acceptance as a sign I should transition, but now I hate that no one calls me beautiful anymore.
I’ve been off testosterone for five months now. The changes off T have been both emotional and physical. Emotionally, my sex drive decreased and I had outbursts of anger and sadness that were overwhelming but manageable. Physically, my body ached as it changed shape, I lost muscle mass, and I had pain return to my ovaries. I experienced what felt like weight gain, but was most likely fat redistribution.
I’ve come to understand that a big sign someone might not be truly trans is when they say they “want to change.” For me, it was a misunderstanding of sex and gender. I equated fixing my appearance with being female and being physical with being male, but those aren't one-size-fits-all traits. I transitioned not because I was trans, but because I was trying to fill a void left by trauma with something I could control.
I don’t like the word “regret” for my transition. I knew what I was getting into, and I did what I thought was best for myself at the time. But I do feel wronged. I was wronged by a medical system that allowed me to make irreversible decisions based on informed consent alone, without a gender therapist ever really helping me uncover my true feelings and past trauma. HRT is not therapy; it’s a cosmetic procedure with life-altering effects. I now believe that the best thing for anyone considering this is to wait and explore socially for a long time, preferably with a therapist, before making any medical decisions.
My goal now is to try and reclaim my femininity. I’m trying to imagine myself as someone who shares my past but has confidence in herself. I’m working on radical acceptance in therapy, focusing on my past to uncover my true desires. I’m going back to my birth name, Hope, though I sometimes use my transition name, Grey, which is a nickname for my middle name, Grace, as a stepping stone. I’m finding ways to express myself without medical alteration, like through character creation, cosplay, and using Pinterest to build a style that feels like me.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 6 | Experienced trauma and abuse; attempted to get justice but failed. |
| 22 | Began social transition, started using a new name (Grey). |
| 23 | Started testosterone therapy. |
| 24 | Stopped testosterone after approximately one year of use. |
| 24 (Present) | 5 months off testosterone, actively detransitioning and working to reclaim my identity as a woman. |
Top Comments by /u/HopesGrace:
You’re not alone in your struggles of not wanting to go out, I definitely resent going out out of fear of people clocking me for my voice/lower face, especially at work.
What may help is having an “ally” work beside you to correct anyone who slips up. If you primarily work alone, you’ll have to do the correcting yourself, but it could be as simple as saying “I’m a woman” and respond to follow ups with “do I know you?” It’s not a customers place to ask personal questions to employees and setting your boundaries will affirm where you stand on your own identity in their eyes.
Hormones don’t need to come up ever. Plenty of women have naturally high levels if testosterone including deep voice and Adam’s apple, although rare, they aren’t obscenities. I wish people knew that we’re not the only ones with issues of fitting into societal standards, and that many people are born into the roles we unknowingly took on through medical procedures.
Also, I promise you no one is looking at you in disgust or disdain as it’s simpler for us to project our feelings of ourselves onto others rather than asking how they feel. Chances are they’re confused and visibly show it in their face to get a signal from you without opening their mouths to ask it.
I’m seriously hoping that all of this madness to conform and alter our bodies permanently will come to an end soon.
These doctors don’t deserve their licenses, and it isn’t far off to expect them to lose their jobs when plenty of transgender people become doctors to coerce children into this shameful practice, as well as numerous pedophiles. It’s an insult to our bodies and being, and one day it’ll come around to get these predatory “professionals” out of our clinics and hospitals.
Also, wtf is a youth gender clinic? Why does that exist in today’s world? It’s seriously sickening.
Now, being transgender isn’t wrong, but performing life altering procedures while being told it can reverse is wrong. While my doctor didn’t say hormones were reversible, he did say being off of it would in time return to baseline. Some doctors don’t even have the honesty to tell their patients or their parents they won’t reverse, ever. Most patients don’t even see a therapist before being prescribed hormones due to informed consent.
HRT is not therapy as much as I believed it would be when I started. No one talks about the psychological effects or has the time to keep up with you as a literal test subject. It’s voluntary castration/mutilation to leave you in debt or suffer financial distress, which many patients can’t and will never be able to afford. This isn’t to say these outcomes are botched because a lot of results look good aesthetically. However, at the end of the day, it’s a human rights violation to every decree.
You’re definitely not alone, I broke down crying two days ago over this.
Remembering how I showed up to all of my appointments alone, no family to confidently back me up or anyone to discuss the effects, except my bf who still has a hard time calling me by my birth name and she/her. I have a twin (desist), but even then only I went through medical transition and changed my name. We used to look identical (because we are) but I’ve changed so much physically that we only faintly look related.
Something that gets to me is that people were so accepting of me being ftm that they didn’t realize calling me handsome and all these masculine traits would offend the woman in me, and I took that as a sign that I should transition. I hate that most compliments I’ve gotten to this day don’t mention my beauty like they used to before social transition. It feels almost like I’m a walking spirit of who I was before, in a possessed body. Nail polish can only do but so much to convince me I’m as beautiful as before.
All I can say is, keep your head up and work through the past in therapy. Learning radical acceptance and practicing it daily through mantras or whatever will help, although it’s not easy to learn. To be able to look towards the future is a strength all of us need and can give us many insights that we often have but clouded by judgements on our past. You’ve gone through the difficult transition that is changing who you are, now you can transition into yourself. It’ll be shocking but infinitely rewarding. There are silver linings everywhere.
I used to be very feminine, loved to wear girly clothes, do my hair and everything basically since I was a teenager, until the age of 22… I have a lot of masculine energy and I was all into physical activities, especially fighting, mostly with men as I wanted to be one.
What stands out to me here isn’t the fact that you used to love being feminine, but the fact that you equate fixing your appearance with being female and being physical with male. This isn’t true as these are not a one size fits all for every man and woman. I understand they are typical traits, but that would mean several men would be women/feminine and vice versa.
Personally, it sounds like you transitioned not because you’re trans but a misunderstanding of the concept of sex and gender, which is extremely common amongst a lot of us detrans people, including me for one. Also, saying you “wanted to be male” is unfortunately a giveaway that you aren’t trans as it is who they are, they don’t want it.
Had you said something along the lines of “I’ve always felt this way since I was young, suppressing the inner me,” I would suspect you were trans but I’m not a doctor who can confirm that.
I hope all goes well and you’ll be able to live as yourself without the added stress of sex and gender. You deserve it!
Life can’t go backwards, we can only look forward for change. Your cries are being heard and won’t fall on deaf ears. Despite all of the effort you put into your medical decisions, were you really in charge there? It’s hard to forgive ourselves for our irreversible choices but let there be peace in knowing you as well as many other informed people have made a wrong choice that can be made right.
Perhaps you lost the ability to conceive, and perhaps it was something you decided at the time was right for you. It may sound unhealthy to say not to take accountability, but like those hundreds of thousands there was a doctor in charge of your transition (assuming you had medical intervention). They are to blame for your pain as it is not your place to always know what’s right for your body medically. That’s their profession they spend 10+ years studying.
You can still be a father and there’s many options for infertile men to have children of their own. Pricey, but worth all of the hassle long term.
I hope you’re able to shift that anger towards those who deserve it. In the end, you were only doing what you thought was best for yourself.
One month in and you’re planning on taking hormones? A lot of what goes into physical transition is the effort you put into social transition. I would definitely wait a year before setting up any appointments now as the best thing for trans people coming to terms with themselves is to wait and explore themselves socially before making irreversible decisions to change their body (I don’t say irreversible as a negative, it’s a fact).
To my knowledge, hormones affect people differently in terms of emotions, and if you want different emotions, estrogen won’t do that for you, it’ll simple expand the emotions you’ve already experienced. Also, regardless of whether you think you have mental illness, you meed a gender therapist to aid you in the right direction of transition. If you end up like me without one and going off of informed consent alone, you may have a bad time and not get what you were expecting from hormones (they’ll tell you everything you need to know and help you to uncover what you need from it).
This is all a process, a slow one at that. This is your life you’re talking about and the best decision is to inform yourself completely before taking action, which could take more than a year, especially without a gender therapist who are trained to help people like us.
Thank you, I really appreciate the compliment. I used to cut my eyelashes to help me pass because they're so long, which sounds funny to me now. I'll definitely try shaping my eyebrows a bit as I agree it makes a huge difference. Thanks so much for your input!
The biggest sign one isn’t trans is when they say they “want to change”. The fact is we didn’t discover these medical procedures until recent years, so transgender people from 150+ years ago would have no way of knowing they could alter their bodies. They simply lived with them and made due. In today’s society, we focus heavily on our body’s flaws, whereas there was little reason to do so for a person with a fully functional body back then.
When you breech on “need” territory, it becomes more complicated and borders on selfishness. How a person can go from living in their body, albeit “uncomfortably”, telling the truth of their existence to then claim to be the opposite sex followed by lies one convinced themselves of for comfort and security- it will always be a mystery to me.
I hate the word regret in regards to transition. We all knew what we were getting ourselves into, whether we had the results we wanted or not. We all need to learn acceptance and self love for our choices because we ultimately did what we deemed best for ourselves at the time.
Sorry, I apologize for the harshness of the question and general wording. It reminded me a lot of myself when I first heard of transition, I was adamant that it was right for me but here I am on this sub. Although a lot of what I shared is anecdotal, it seems to translate a lot into shared experiences being transgender/detrans.
You’re making great strides so far! It’s a great step working with a professional and hopefully she’s being honest with you about its effects. From experience, hormones aren’t medicine and shouldn’t be presented as such, like my doctor lead me to believe. It’s a cosmetic procedure with life altering effects, which may be necessary for some to enjoy their lives while some are left feeling damaged by its effects.
Sorry for the TW, but…
Long story short, I can’t get justice. My grandmother passed away before I took legal action. I had to file an arrest at 6 years old towards that worker and my father got out scout free with no questions asked despite having video evidence he later deleted. My father currently lives with his girlfriend he cheated on my mom with (they were taking a break but weren’t legally divorced or living in separate homes) to hurt her newborn granddaughter. I’ve called CPS countless times and they’ve called me after my therapist filed a report. No change and he still lives with her, currently a minor.
Essentially, all the police and investigators I’ve talked to say if I don’t have evidence, the case can’t move further. He has all of the evidence in the form of videos of him abusing me on a flash drive in a shoe box in his closet that he showed me sickeningly (which I’ve speculated for years that he shared them with his employees and sold them online to acquire the amount of money he had 10+ years ago before the separation).
The investigator “helping” me didn’t get to question him because he refused to talk, which never is the case with police arresting innocents on the street. I told him their laws were ridiculous and he chuckled back agreeing. What a waste of time. 😒
I’m certain someone has been caught with the videos and they’re in some catalog with other collected cp from criminals. But alas, I don’t have access to it so I can’t pursue my case in court.