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 suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor. The user presents a complex, nuanced, and internally consistent narrative of being a medical transitioner who socially detransitioned. Their views are critical of both mainstream trans activism and certain detrans perspectives, which aligns with the expected passion and strong opinions of someone who has experienced this specific form of harm and stigma. The language is natural, personal, and shows development of thought over time.
About me
I was born male but always felt more feminine and uncomfortable as a boy, which led me to transition in my twenties. I started taking estrogen, which helped my mental health, and I lived as a woman for several years. I eventually realized I was using transition to escape the trauma of being a feminine man in an unaccepting world. I've now socially detransitioned and live as a male again, though I still take hormones for my well-being. My biggest regret is buying into the ideology that medical transition was my only solution instead of addressing my underlying issues.
My detransition story
My journey with gender has been long and complicated, and I’m still figuring things out. I was born male, but from a very young age, around six, I remember feeling deeply uncomfortable with that. I wanted to be a girl. This feeling, this dysphoria, never really went away. It was a persistent part of my life.
As I got older, I found myself naturally feminine. Even before I ever thought about transition, people would often assume I was gay because of my mannerisms. My friends were mostly girls, and I just felt more comfortable that way. I think a lot of my initial discomfort came from growing up in a culture that wasn't ready for a man like me. I was punished for being soft and feminine, and I internalized that.
Eventually, I found online trans communities. At first, it seemed like a place for free expression and bodily autonomy. I started to believe the narrative that I was "born in the wrong body" and that medical transition was the only way to fix my lifelong dysphoria. I started taking estrogen (HRT). For me, HRT did help my mental health. It felt like a net positive. I never got any surgeries, though. I made a conscious choice to never get bottom surgery because I was always convinced that would be a mistake.
But as I lived as a trans woman, I started to see huge problems within the trans community. It felt less like a support group and more like a cult. There was no room for nuance or critical questions. If you didn't affirm everything 100%, you were ostracized. I was even banned from some spaces for having opinions that went against the grain. I came to see that the dominant ideology—that gender is completely separate from sex and that it’s whatever you say it is—is sexist and based on stereotypes. It made me not want to be associated with the label anymore.
A major turning point was realizing I didn't always pass. No matter what I did, blending in as a normal woman wasn't an option. I had to face the reality that I would always be a male who looks female. I started to question the entire foundation of my identity. Was I really "born this way," or did I develop this identity as a way to cope? Through a lot of self-reflection, I realized my dysphoria was rooted in the trauma of being a feminine boy in a world that rejected that. Transition was an escape, but not a true solution.
I decided to socially detransition. I went back to identifying as male, though I'm still a feminine man. I stopped telling people to use female pronouns for me. This was a hard choice, but it was the right one for my mental health. I'm still on HRT because, for me, the medical effects are still beneficial. But I completely reject the social identity of being trans.
I have a lot of regrets about my social transition. I regret buying into the ideology and coming out to everyone. It felt like I signed up for a cult without realizing it. I lost friends and made my social life incredibly complicated. I don't regret taking HRT, as it helped me at the time, but I regret the reasons why I started. I now believe that for most people, transition is the wrong treatment. The underlying issues—like trauma, internalized homophobia, or social discomfort—need to be addressed with therapy, not hormones.
My thoughts on gender now are that it's largely the social side of biological sex. We can't fully separate the two. A man is someone perceived as male, and a woman is someone perceived as female. For people like me who don't fit the stereotypes, the answer isn't to change our bodies or identities, but to challenge the stereotypes themselves. I'm just me, a person inhabiting my body, and I don't need a label to justify that.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 6 | First recall experiencing gender dysphoria and wanting to be a girl. |
| Early 20s | Started questioning my gender identity after engaging with online trans communities. |
| 26 | Began taking estrogen (HRT). |
| 30 | Started socially identifying as a trans woman and using she/her pronouns. |
| 32 | Began to seriously question trans ideology and community practices; diagnosed with autism (though I am skeptical due to unaddressed trauma). |
| 33 | Made the decision to socially detransition, reverting to male pronouns and identity while continuing HRT. |
Top Comments by /u/Kawaii_Spider_OwO:
People only say this because if they accept that some people were trans and ended up detransitioning anyway, it threatens everything they believe about trans identities. They might even have to rethink whether or not transition is as appropriate a treatment as they believe it is.
So it’s basically a massive cope.
Not even a little bit. If anything, their cult-like blind acceptance where no "invalidation" is permitted is a huge part of what got me wanting to distance myself from them. They haven't just ruined any trans "community" that could have existed - they've ruined cis allies as well.
I think as a person, I just despise two-faced liars... and most people I've encountered since socially transitioning have proven to be two-faced liars. I understand why they lie to my face, since they've been taught that there are consequences for being honest, but I notice nonetheless and I despise them for it. It makes me miss my pre-transition days when people didn't walk on eggshells and tell me I'm heckin valid for breathing in their vicinity.
So no, I don't miss it. It's the thing that pushed me out of that "community" in the first place.
I’ve been healing by acknowledging that trans identity is an ideology. One opinion I hold thanks to that is that no-one should transition.
Those who ascribe to the ideology would certainly find that “anti-trans,” but the thing is, I don’t wish harm on trans people. In my opinion, I wish harm on trans people less than the people affirming them do… because I want to see them be saved from the trans cult and get treatment for their problems that will actually help them. Telling people what they want to hear is a way to avoid conflict, while loving a person sometimes means telling them things they don’t want to hear.
I agree with you, but yeah, the LGBT subs are going to ban you for even slightly going against whatever it is the mods believe. I feel like it’s become a big problem that those taking on leadership positions within the LGBT community frequently want to turn our spaces into their own personal echo chamber safe space and boot out the undesirables who disagree with the rest of the hive.
Mainly questioning the “born this way” rhetoric. Once I started considering the possibility that trans people are wrong - that we were not born this way and that this is not a lifelong condition - I started to see how believing such a thing can railroad people into identifying as the opposite gender.
I don't see how I could possibly not reject that idea. I basically fit their ideal narrative of a trans person (identified as a girl since I was like 6, had persistent dysphoria that didn't go away, wasn't a fetishist, was naturally feminine as a child, etc), so in what universe would it make sense to view myself as wrong without believing they are also wrong?
The truth I've arrived at is that a cross-sex identity is a fragile thing that relies heavily upon the belief that gender identity is an innate thing a person is born with. They have to believe this not just to justify this identity to themselves, but also to justify it in the eyes of other people. Therefore there is no bigger threat than a person who genuinely was trans and was able to let go of their cross-sex identity anyway.
I was basically the perfect candidate for transition, so my red flags were actually more about other people:
- The vast majority of trans people, allies, therapists, etc only affirm affirm affirm. There were no attempts to discern why I wanted to be female; just an acceptance that this meant I was born this way, despite no proof.
- People are treating this like being gay, despite it very clearly being a medical and sociological issue.
- Even in less hugboxxy trans spaces, there's a huge lack of people trying to discern why they feel the way they do. It's like everyone has just decided we were born this way, despite there being no proof of that.
- People are literally afraid to criticize trans identity. One major annoyance for me, in fact, was that everyone just used whichever pronouns they thought I wanted to hear. What they saw as being polite I saw as them lying to and gaslighting me.
It sounds like you've started to realize some uncomfortable truths, like the fact that the trans "community" is toxic and that transition isn't the magic cure for dysphoria they want to paint it as.
In fact, I'd say the whole reason they are so outright hostile towards anyone who questions things is because they don't have answers to those questions. Not only do they not have answers to these questions, but they feel personally attacked when those questions are asked, because their beliefs are incredibly fragile and are likely to crumble if prodded too hard.
I know trans people hate when transness is compared to religion, but it really isn't much different from questioning a Christian's religion. After all, if you ask a Christian why they believe in Yahweh, hell, or stuff like the holy spirit, then all they can really tell you is to "have faith." Faith is very important to a Christian, so if you prod their beliefs too hard, you are attacking their faith and thus attacking them... so they will turn tail and flee if they don't get hostile.
I'm really confused. And really lost. Is it all self hate? Am I just enby or something? I know I need a LOT of therapy but I'm in the US, so.... I'm working on it. I'm at least a month on meds again!
In my personal opinion, trying to throw labels on ourselves isn't the way to go. Speaking personally, I am simply "me" and that's all I need to be - I am a person inhabiting my body who doesn't fit all the stereotypes of a person who inhabits that type of body. People will certainly try to wedge me into a box, but they're wrong to do so and I know they're wrong to do so.
Are you ID'ing yourself as detrans? I've kind of learned to move away from the labels of trans or detrans altogether (it's weird, because in some ways I'm both), because regardless of which label I choose, I know people are going to other me the second they associate one of those labels with me.
As much as it sucks, I think sometimes you have to dump people and maybe delete old photos if you don't want your past haunting you for the rest of your life. We don't have to ID ourselves as trans or detrans, but yeah, it's a lot harder if someone won't stop bringing it up or old photos keep giving it away.
Transitioning would be a very bad idea, but you're going to get very different answers depending on who you ask. Trans people are going to affirm you and try to sell you on transition, which is in good part because they don't want to accept that they've made a mistake. Detransitioners are likely to be the opposite - they've been there, done that, and realized it was a mistake.
Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. While it's human to make mistakes though, transitioning is one mistake that isn't easily undone.