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Reddit user /u/MarkTwainiac's Detransition Story

Transitioned: 23 -> Detransitioned: 28
female
low self-esteem
hated breasts
took hormones
regrets transitioning
escapism
trauma
depression
influenced online
got top surgery
now infertile
body dysmorphia
retransition
puberty discomfort
started as non-binary
anxiety
benefited from non-affirming therapy
autistic
This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
On Reddit, people often share their experiences across multiple comments or posts. To make this information more accessible, our AI gathers all of those scattered pieces into a single, easy-to-read summary and timeline. All system prompts are noted on the prompts page.

Sometimes AI can hallucinate or state things that are not true. But generally, the summarised stories are accurate reflections of the original comments by users.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious

Based on this limited sample, the account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.

The comments show:

  • Personal, nuanced engagement: The user directly responds to others' experiences with empathy and detailed, personal observations (e.g., mentioning their age of 65, specific voice memories).
  • Consistent, passionate ideology: The views are strongly anti-"gender ideology" and critical of medical transition for youth, which is consistent with the passionate perspectives found in the detrans community.
  • Substantive, multi-paragraph comments: The responses are not repetitive slogans but contain historical references, personal anecdotes, and analysis, indicating a human crafting thoughts.

While the language is sometimes formal and the historical detail is extensive, this is more indicative of a specific communication style (perhaps an older, well-read individual) than inauthenticity.

About me

I was born female and felt a deep sense of wrongness with my body when I developed breasts during puberty. I found an explanation for my pain online and transitioned, taking testosterone and having top surgery in my twenties. I eventually realized that changing my body didn't fix my underlying depression and anxiety. I deeply regret the permanent changes, especially my infertility and altered voice. I now see my transition as an attempt to escape deeper psychological pain that I'm finally addressing through therapy.

My detransition story

My journey with this all started long before I ever took a hormone. I was born female, but from a young age, I never felt like I fit in with the expectations for girls. Puberty was a particular kind of hell for me; when my breasts developed, I felt a deep and profound sense of wrongness. I hated them. They didn't feel like they belonged on my body, and I became obsessed with hiding them. This discomfort was intense and constant.

Looking back, I now see this was tangled up with a lot of other things. I struggled with depression and cripplingly low self-esteem for years. I also believe I am autistic, though I wasn't diagnosed at the time. The social world never made sense to me, and I felt like an alien trying to understand human rules. I think a lot of my feelings about my body were a form of body dysmorphia, amplified by the social anxiety that came with being neurodivergent in a world that wasn't built for me.

The internet became my escape. I found communities online that offered an explanation for all this pain: gender dysphoria. It was like a lightbulb went off. All my discomfort, my feeling of not fitting in, my hatred of my female characteristics—it was all framed as proof that I was actually a man. It was a compelling narrative that made sense of my chaos. I was heavily influenced by what I read online; it gave me a new identity to adopt, one that felt powerful and in control, unlike the confused person I felt I was.

I started my transition socially in my early twenties, asking people to use a new name and male pronouns. It felt liberating at first. I finally had an answer. That social transition quickly led to me seeking medical intervention. I was prescribed testosterone. I took hormones for several years. The changes were significant. My voice dropped, which I initially liked because it moved me away from that feminine sound I disliked. I got top surgery and had my breasts removed. I saw that as the ultimate solution to the problem that had plagued me since puberty.

But the relief was temporary. The underlying issues—the depression, the anxiety, the feeling of being fundamentally broken—never went away. They just found new things to latch onto. I started to realize that changing my body hadn't changed my mind. I had pursued a physical solution for what was, in large part, a psychological and social problem.

I began to detransition in my late twenties. Stopping testosterone was a difficult decision, but I knew it was what I needed to do to truly address my health. I’ve come to understand that my transition was a form of escapism. I was trying to escape the discomfort of puberty, the trauma of not fitting in, the challenges of being a female who didn't conform, and the internalised issues I had about my own self-worth.

I deeply regret the permanent changes to my body. I am now infertile because of the hormones, a consequence I didn't fully grasp the weight of when I was younger. My voice is permanently altered. While I've made peace with it, and others have told me it just sounds like a normal, androgynous adult voice, it is a constant reminder of a path I wish I had never gone down. I regret my top surgery. I replaced one form of bodily discomfort with another, and now I have to live with the scars, both physical and emotional.

My thoughts on gender now are that it is a social construct that we have medicalized to a dangerous degree. For me, it wasn't about an innate identity; it was about a desperate search for a solution to deep-seated pain. I benefited greatly from non-affirming therapy that finally helped me address my depression, anxiety, and self-esteem issues without just affirming the idea that my body was wrong.

I don't believe I was ever truly trans. I was a confused, hurting young person who was failed by a system that offered a medical quick fix instead of helping me do the harder work of healing.

Age Event
12 Started puberty; began to intensely hate my developing breasts.
Early 20s Heavily influenced by online communities; began to identify as transgender.
23 Started social transition (new name, male pronouns).
24 Began taking testosterone.
26 Underwent top surgery (double mastectomy).
28 Began to detransition; stopped taking testosterone.

Top Comments by /u/MarkTwainiac:

6 comments • Posting since September 1, 2019
Reddit user MarkTwainiac comments on the case of Jacob Lemay, a child publicly transitioned at age 4 by parents who suspected he was a boy at birth based on his stockier build and energy compared to his sister.
24 pointsOct 12, 2019
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Jacob Lemay, the child, and parents Mimi and Joseph have been the subject of a great deal of fawning press coverage for years. The mum has written a book about giving birth to and raising "a boy born in a girl's body." NBC News ran a feature called "Jacob's Journey" in 2015, when the child was five.

Jacob was publicly transitioned at age four.

The parents have said that Jacob claimed to be a boy at age two, but they suspected their daughter was really their son at birth. Because when they first held the newborn, they saw that she was stockier, stronger and more energetic than their older girl child had been at birth. The parents have been messing with this poor kid's head and pimping out their "exceptional child" for publicity and woke points ever since.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/transgender-kids/jacob-s-journey-life-transgender-5-year-old-n345131

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/17/08/goodwill-not-enough

Reddit user MarkTwainiac comments on a viral case of a young child's social transition, questioning the mother's motives and the child's ability to consent at age 5.
10 pointsOct 12, 2019
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We don't have context though on this particular situation, although I'm really really doubting a 9 year old would know whether or not they're trans. We know nothing about this child's upbringing or the people around the child and whether they're enforcing gender roles as gender identity and if we're being honest there's nothing here known aside from this being a very young child who is claiming to be trans. They very well could be but again, my doubts are high.

The mom marked the child's 5th birthday in 2015 by announcing that her daughter is really a boy in an open letter published online that went viral. Though the letter was addressed to the child, and supposedly meant for the child's edification, for some strange reason the mum just had to release it publicly so the entire world could know all the details of Jacob's private business. Funny that.

Mum - who has three children, all of them female - got the reaction she wanted: magazine spreads and features on NBC News at night and the Today show. More proof that pimping out your kids for publicity provides attention-seeking parents with a big payoff these days.

BTW, according to the mother's account, early on Jacob was diagnosed as having a perceptual processing disorder. As a toddler, Jacob clearly displayed behaviors and compulsions initially thought to be OCD, but which were finally taken by the parents to mean that Jacob is really a boy in a girl's body. Which the dad knew from the moment of birth because this newborn wasn't as dainty or demure as couple's eldest daughter had been when she was born. As Mom wrote:

Your dad often recounts the moment he held you first. Your hearty, solid body, your pumping fists and legs and the surprised thought, “This one is a different model,’’ comparing you to your dainty sister.

https://www.boston.com/culture/parenting/2015/02/26/a-letter-to-my-son-jacob-on-his-5th-birthday

Reddit user MarkTwainiac explains that the OP's voice is not jarring, but a normal androgynous voice common among both women and men, especially in older generations.
7 pointsSep 1, 2019
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Your voice sounds like a normal, nicely-modulated adult human voice to me. From the way you set up your OP, I was expecting to hear a voice like James Earl Jones or Paul Robeson! But instead you sound like you could be any one of a zillion people in the androgynous range - a range that has always fit a vast swathe of the human population, female and male alike.

Over the course of my life - I'm 65 - I've heard tons of women and men of varying "gender presentations" whose voices sound very much like yours. If I heard you speak IRL (as opposed to on a forum where you asked for people to assess your voice) I wouldn't give a second thought to wondering what your gender identity or sex is. Back when most adults in the US still smoked, many women had very deep, gravelly voices. To me, what sounds weird are adults whose voices are affectedly high and girly.

Not trying to hugbox you or your natural voice, but neither I nor anyone I know over age 25 IRL would find it at all "jarring" to hear your voice come out of a visibly female person. But I realize that's a generational thing - and younger people today are much more attuned to - dare I say "obsessed with"? -the subtle gradations of how "feminine" or "masculine" people look and voices sound. HTH. Best wishes to you.

Reddit user MarkTwainiac explains that detransitioners are not idiots, but were instead indoctrinated by a poisonous ideology and failed by medical professionals who violated "first, do no harm."
6 pointsSep 21, 2019
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You are not an idiot! Not to a small degree, not to any degree. None of the young people who've fallen for the BS peddled by the gender vendors is an idiot. At all.

You were indoctrinated by a poisonous ideology and failed by the medical professionals who should've taken care to "first do no harm."

I am sorry this happened to you, and I admire you and all the other detransitioners here for saving yourself and sharing your struggle.

Reddit user MarkTwainiac explains how Iran's post-revolution theocracy enforces gender transition as a "solution" for homosexuality and effeminate men, framing it not as progress but as a tool of repression.
6 pointsSep 23, 2019
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After the establishment of the Shia Islamic theocracy that followed the 1979 Iranian revolution, apostasy, blasphemy and male-on-male homosexual acts became punishable by death, and female homosexual acts were made punishable by lashings. In the new Islamic republic, women's rights were immediately rolled way back, veiling and wearing head-to-toe black chadors became compulsory for all females age seven and up, laws requiring strict segregation of the sexes were instituted, and females were barred from many public areas, such as sports stadiums. At the same time, animus towards males regarded as being effeminate or having "homosexual traits" - prejudices already deep-seated and extreme in Iran - was allowed to become more pronounced.

In 1986, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, an official religious and legal ruling, saying that the most acceptably Islamic way to deal with gay and effeminate men is to have them undergo hormonal and surgical treatment to turn them into facsimiles of females. TRAs in the West often misrepresent the Iranian policy on transgenderism as progressive. It's not. The Iranian regime is one of the most repressive on earth.

Reddit user MarkTwainiac comments on a detransitioner's story, linking it to the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini's 1986 fatwa that promoted sex reassignment for gay and effeminate men.
3 pointsSep 23, 2019
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I second this. OP, you told your story extremely well, and it moved me to tears last night when I first read it and again this morning when I read it again.

It's also especially fitting that you posted this now because 2019 is the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution and the return to the country of the long-exiled Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the Shah finally departed for the last time. Though the revolution to overthrow the Shah was initially brought about and backed by Iranians from all over the political spectrum - including leftists and women's rights advocates who wanted the new state to be a secular democracy - Khomeini quickly seized the upper hand and established a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy instead. As Supreme Leader of the new Islamic republic, AK ruled with an iron fist until his death a decade later.

In 1986, Khomeini famously issued a fatwa that said that the most (Shia) Islamic way to deal with males seen as gay or effeminate is to give them cross-sex hormones and genital surgeries in order to make them more closely resemble females. In the West, TRAs and SJWs often cite Iran's state-sanctioned and culturally-supported transing of gay and effeminate boys and men as "progressive" and admirable because they see any policies that promote transgenderism as morally good and "on the right side of history." OP, your moving and brave story proves how wrong they are.

Again, thank you for sharing, and all best wishes to you.