This story is from the comments by /u/Irinescence 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 suggesting it is a bot or a fake persona.
The comments demonstrate:
- High Coherence and Depth: The user provides a highly detailed, nuanced, and internally consistent personal narrative spanning their transition, detransition, trauma history, and evolving spiritual beliefs over many months.
- Complex Emotional Range: The tone varies appropriately, showing empathy, anger, sadness, introspection, and peace, which aligns with the expected passion and pain of the subject matter.
- Specific, Plausible Details: The account includes specific, non-cliché details about medical regimens (types of estrogen, injection schedules, blood test results), therapeutic techniques (EMDR, IFS), and a gradual, non-linear process of detransitioning.
The account exhibits the hallmarks of a genuine individual sharing a complex personal journey.
About me
I was born male and began transitioning at 38 to escape the deep pain and self-hatred I felt from my childhood trauma. I lived as a woman for five years, but therapy and spiritual exploration helped me realize my discomfort wasn't with being male, but with my own unresolved pain. I stopped taking hormones and was surprised to find I could finally accept my natural body and its functions. I lost most of my friends from that time, but I've found my real identity and healing through my faith. I now see that true freedom came from accepting my sex and learning to be a good man, not from trying to become a woman.
My detransition story
My whole journey with transition and detransition was long and complicated. It started from a place of deep pain. I was born male, but from a young age, I felt a lot of discomfort with my body and the idea of becoming a man. I now see this was rooted in childhood trauma and a very strict, controlling religious upbringing that left me feeling isolated, worthless, and like a failure. I hated the expectations placed on men; I saw them as violent, dominant, and emotionally stunted, and I wanted nothing to do with that. I also struggled with low self-esteem, depression, and a pornography problem that made me feel like my body and its sexuality were out of my control.
I first started identifying as non-binary, then eventually as a trans woman. I thought that if I could become a woman, I would finally be soft, kind, vulnerable, and loved. It felt like an escape from everything I hated about myself and my life. It also felt like a way to dis-identify with the privilege and power I was told, as a white male, I inherently held. Coming out as trans felt like waking up; for the first time, I felt seen and supported. People praised me for being brave, and it gave me an explanation for why I always felt so broken.
I started taking estrogen and a testosterone blocker when I was 38 years old. I was on hormones for almost five years. The physical changes were significant. My aerobic fitness disappeared almost immediately, I gained sixty pounds, and my cholesterol got worse. I lost my libido and the ability to have involuntary erections, which was a huge relief at the time because I had always resented and feared my body's sexual functions. I lived fully as a woman, even completing a chaplaincy internship at a very progressive hospital. I changed my name and used she/her pronouns.
But the whole time, there was a part of me that was questioning. My therapist at the time just affirmed my trans identity and told me my doubts were "internalized transphobia" that would go away. But I kept pulling on the threads. I couldn't find a satisfactory answer for what it actually meant to call myself a woman. I started to see that my discomfort with puberty, my adult male body, and cultural expectations wasn't a sign I was in the wrong body, but a universal human experience, amplified by my own trauma.
My real healing began with non-affirming therapy. I found a counselor who helped me work through my trauma using EMDR and Internal Family Systems therapy. I also started meditating, spending a lot of time in nature, and, significantly, using psychedelic drugs in a careful, intentional way. These psychedelic experiences were crucial. They helped me get underneath the social constructs of gender and reconnect with reality itself. I faced the deep pain from my childhood, I wept for the ways I had hurt my body, and I finally found a spiritual anchor in Christianity. I prayed for Jesus to heal my intense fear, and I felt He did.
I stopped taking my estrogen injections gradually. I’d put off my weekly shot, then it turned into weeks, and then I decided to see if I could tolerate my body’s natural testosterone coming back. To my surprise, I could. Chest hair came back and it didn’t distress me. Function returned and it felt good, like my body and I were finally consenting to each other. The pronouns "she/her" just stopped feeling like they applied to me. It felt like waking up from a dream.
I don’t regret transitioning because it was the path I needed to take to finally do the work on my trauma. It gave me the courage to break out of the male stereotypes I felt trapped by and to integrate the softer, more expressive parts of myself. But I ultimately regret the ideology that told me medical transition was the only answer. I benefited immensely from therapy that helped me work through my issues instead of just affirming my gender identity. I had a surgery scheduled that was canceled due to the pandemic, and I am infinitely grateful I never went through with it.
The permanent changes from hormones are that I have breast growth, and I worry about my long-term health and fertility, though some function has returned. The social cost has been high; I lost almost all of my friends from the trans community when I detransitioned. I’ve withdrawn socially and am in the process of becoming Catholic, finding my primary identity as a child of God.
My thoughts on gender now are that it’s a social construct, and dismantling it isn’t the selfless, kind act I thought it was. True freedom came from accepting my sex and learning to be a good, kind, and vulnerable man. I had body dysmorphia and hated being male because of my trauma, not because I was inherently meant to be female. I now believe that for me, wanting to be something I was not was a symptom of deep emotional pain, a longing to be safe and loved.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 38 | Started taking estrogen and testosterone blockers. |
| 38-42 | Lived as a trans woman for almost 5 years. |
| 42 | Began to irregularly take hormone shots, eventually stopping altogether. Testosterone function began to return. |
| 42 | Stopped identifying as a woman and began to detransition. |
| 43 | Now detransitioned, living as a male and working on building a healthy life. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/Irinescence:
The way intersectionality doctrine works encourages a "cis women are so privileged, they need to sit down and learn from trans women because 'WE' are marginalized and oppressed" mindset. [because it is Marxism]
I often found it grotesque (and misaligned with why I wanted to 'be a woman" in the first place). Eventually I got to the point where I couldn't even just say I disagreed with how or what trans activism argued for, but that respecting women required me accepting my maleness. There were lots of layers, but that was a big part of my deprogramming.
I don't know if I'm the category of people you mean by "AGP" but since working through my trauma and issues with my body and sex, I have quit pornography (3+ months clean after most of my life in use/addiction). I am in the process of joining the Catholic Church. Jesus healed me.
I'm 43, so I would say I'm attracted to women, not girls. I finally feel like being a man "works" for me; I dont feel inferior or jealous or insecure. I still have the stray thought sometimes, but they're not my identity. They're like echoes from a past life.
All in all, I feel much more grounded in reality than I ever have in my life. Like I woke up from some childish game I was playing, and now it doesn't even quite make sense how it ever seemed so real to me. I guess it's what I needed to do to work through what I needed to work through.
May this new year bring you peace, sibling.
That insecure rigidity is part of what helped me work through being trans. It reminded me of my fundamentalist father and the elders of the church I grew up in. Sometimes I would police other people and sometimes I would be terrified of saying [or thinking] the wrong thing myself, and both of those felt like the mirror image of the kind of zealous puritanism I grew up in. Becoming the angry transgender leftist mirror image of my father didn't sit entirely comfortably with me.
The progressive left calling everyone who disagrees or even questions a tenet of Social Justice alt-right or fascist. Trans activists calling anyone who pushed back on the total trans mission a Terf and Nazi.
Actually learning about the history of leftism so I could understand the left orthodoxy I was afraid of messing up.
Part of why I ended up detransitioning is because the thought control of the trans community reminded me constantly of the abusive homeschool culture I grew up in. I know exactly the dynamic you're talking about. It's not a sign of good spiritual or emotional health, or genuine care for your well-being.
I'm sorry you're going through this, dear sibling. 🫂
[Also, for what it's worth, I had a surgery scheduled, in 2020, after 3 years of hormones. It got canceled because of the pandemic, and then I kept putting off rescheduling it because I was unsure about what was really going on with me. Now I am very glad I didn't have that procedure.]
One of my most important realizations:
Discomfort with [or hatred of] the reality of embodiment, puberty, sexual reproduction - and the cultural systems that go with it - is part of the universal human experience, not special evidence that I am in the wrong body.
Yes. There was a lot going on that I never discussed, or only vaguely hinted at, with even my counselor.
42 days free from porn presently. It feels good.
Edit: I don't think there's a neat separation between trauma, self-image issues, etc, and fetish/sexualization motivations. My hating my adult male body, feeling trapped and unloved, wanting a new identity, didn't originate with my own free choices.
I asked my counselor, before she let me go, where detransitioners fit in the intersectional hierarchy, observing that by one way of thinking we're a minority of a minority, doubly marginalized, and so the movement should highly regard our lived experience and center our voices. But in the view that all gender norms are oppressive white supremacist hegemony, anyone who challenges their deconstruction and abolition should be themselves deplatformed and silenced as fascists.
Personally I came out as detrans, but then stopped talking to people and turned off my socials. I admire the people speaking up, I don't feel ready for the abuse from the cultists.
Yes, and no. I didn't on my own decide that biology was a social construct of privilege and power that needed to be deconstructed and queered, along with all other forms of normativity. Vulnerable people are being used.
There were two distinct camps of responses when I started coming out. Conservative Christians who said I was delusional and going to war with God. And affirmation-only Social Justice people who praised me for being brave enough to live my truth.
Neither really helped me dig into my gender related beliefs and trauma, not intentionally anyways. My therapist just affirmed me as trans because I had gender dysphoric thoughts, and as a woman because I wanted to be one. She told me my doubts, my "internalized transphobia," would go away. I'm the one who kept pulling on the threads of what my "womanhood" meant and why I hated being born male.
Ok. I'm thankful for your willingness to put yourself out there to include us detrans people in the picture.
I hope you don't get negative reactions to this, and I don't know your town or coworkers at all, but my first reaction was that you would get in trouble. Putting the stickers over faces reads like defacing the pride display to me. If someone complains I think you could get reprimanded or even fired for violating the library's policy on inclusion and belonging.
Pride month is hard for me, when it feels like the ideology has hurt and taken advantage of me, and my "community" didn't stick with me. I drive through an area that has Progress Pride flags on all the lamp posts. It's hard. I wanted to belong. Now I feel like an outsider again to the accepted culture.
Anyways. I don't want to discourage you from speaking up about your own experience. I might be doing that. I'm sorry. I think it would be a good idea for you as an employee to consider moving the stickers if possible, and/or removing them unless you have permission from a supervisor.
Good luck, friend. We see you.