This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags indicating it is a bot or inauthentic.
The user demonstrates deep, nuanced engagement with complex topics, shares personal anecdotes, offers tailored advice, and shows a consistent, passionate perspective that aligns with a genuine detransitioner/desister experience. The writing style is human, with natural variations in tone and length.
About me
I started hating my body when I hit puberty as a young girl, and that feeling got mixed up with my anorexia and anxiety. I found communities online that made me believe my discomfort meant I was trans, which felt like an easy answer to my social struggles as an autistic person. I identified as a trans man for a while, but I now see I was using that idea to escape dealing with my real problems like OCD and internalized homophobia. Through therapy in my early twenties, I worked on my mental health and realized my body was never the problem. I am now at peace as a woman, understanding that being female doesn't mean I have to fit into a stereotype.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started when I was very young, around puberty. I was born female, and like a lot of girls, I hated the changes my body was going through. I developed an eating disorder, anorexia, which felt very similar to the gender dysphoria I experienced later. Both were ways to try and control my body and stop it from becoming that of an adult woman. The idea of growing up and becoming a woman was terrifying to me.
I spent a lot of time online, especially on sites like Tumblr, and I was influenced by what I saw there. I saw many other girls, especially nerdy and autistic ones like me, identifying as trans. It seemed like an easy explanation for why I felt so uncomfortable and alien around other people. I thought, "Maybe I'm not a girl. Maybe that's why I don't fit in." It gave me a simple answer to my social difficulties and deep-seated anxiety, without me having to do the hard work of addressing my underlying mental health issues.
I never medically transitioned. I didn't take hormones or have surgery, but I identified as non-binary and then as a trans man for a while. I hated my breasts and felt disconnected from my body. I now see that a lot of this was tied to my autism and OCD. Being autistic made social interactions incredibly difficult, and it was easier to blame that on being "in the wrong body" than to accept that I just communicated differently. My OCD made me hyperfixate on gender as a thing I could "solve," following a set of rules to make everything feel orderly.
Looking back, I realise my problems were much bigger than gender. I had a history of bullying, severe anxiety, and depression. I was incredibly lonely and isolated, spending too much time online instead of building real-life connections. I used the idea of being trans as an escape, a way to avoid dealing with my actual problems. I thought that if I could just change my gender, everything else would fall into place. But that was a fantasy.
I also struggled with internalised homophobia. The thought of being a lesbian was uncomfortable for me, and identifying as a man felt like a way to sidestep that. But you can't change your sex. I was, and am, female.
Over time, and especially as I got into my early twenties, my brain developed more and I started to see things differently. I learned that for the vast majority of teens, gender dysphoria goes away on its own after puberty. I began to understand that hating my body or not fitting into feminine stereotypes didn't make me any less of a woman. I worked on my mental health, got treatment for my anxiety and eating disorder, and slowly learned to accept my body for what it is: female.
I don't regret exploring my gender because it led me to where I am now, but I do regret not addressing my core issues sooner. I benefited greatly from therapy that wasn't just about affirming a trans identity, but that actually helped me work through my trauma, anxiety, and OCD. I now believe that no one should medically transition without first exhaustively treating any other mental health conditions. Our bodies aren't the problem; the way we cope with pain and trauma is.
My thoughts on gender now are simple: it's mostly stereotypes and social rules. I am a woman because I am an adult human female. I don't have to like makeup or dresses or my breasts to be one. I can just be me.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 12 | Started puberty; developed anorexia and began hating my body. |
| 14-17 | Spent a lot of time online; was influenced by trans communities; identified as non-binary. |
| 18-21 | Identified as a trans man; struggled with severe anxiety, OCD, and social isolation. |
| 22-23 | Brain development made me rethink everything; began addressing underlying mental health issues in therapy. |
| Present (24) | Accepted myself as a woman; focused on treating my anxiety, OCD, and history of eating disorder. |
Top Comments by /u/MeninAeido:
As I just said on another post, the existence of detransitioners and desisters who got over their gender dysphoria naturally invalidates the whole concept of "born in the wrong body", so of course we're shouted down or ignored. After all, if it turns out that a lot of people's dysphoria just resolves on their own after puberty, there's no justification for giving children "gender-affirming care".
(It's also sooo ironic that the same people who say "you don't need to transition to be trans, you only need to feel trans" will then turn around and say "you were never trans".)
How did you even know what labiaplasty was at 12? How did you know that your vulva looked wrong? Did you think others' (whose?) looked right/better? Something to think about.
You say you also had anorexia. In teenage girls, gender dysphoria and anorexia are practically the same thing. Same triggers, same underlying causes, same body hate, similar results. Both tend to begin in puberty, and both provide us with mechanisms to control our bodies and prevent them from feminising: through starvation and turning off our natural production pf sex hormones with anorexia, and through puberty blockers and testosterone with gender dysphoria. And importantly, both are a way to escape the daunting prospect to become that terrible thing, an adult woman.
As for your situation… You sound like you are a young woman who hates her body. A lot of young women do. That doesn’t make them men. Neither does not using makeup, not getting femininity, and not liking one's secondary sex organs. Isn’t that sexist? The thought that if a woman doesn’t like makeup and isn’t traditionally feminine, she isn’t a woman? It's nonsense. All of that isn’t required to be a woman. As for not liking one's breasts…well, they're often painful, feel useless, and are relentlessly sexualised. It’s not surprising if a woman doesn’t like them. But not liking something about your body doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, or that you should go under the knife to change it. If a black person hated being black, would you tell them to use bleaching agents on their skin? No, absolutely not.
And as for your planned double mastectomy, please don’t get it, it’s irreversible and can lead to all sorts of long-term issues, and you sound ambivalent about it anyway.
Another extremely important thing, OP: I had a look at your comment history and saw that you said you were sexually assaulted as a child. Sexual abuse in childhood is a huge reason behind gender dysphoria, especially for teenage girls, just like it is for anorexia. It's only natural that children who were sexually abused try to identify out of their sex and their memories associated with it, and often reject their genitals. Have you had therapy for that trauma?
What an excellent post, OP. Thank you for writing and sharing this. And as for the pipeline you are speaking about: let me share this highly pertinent Tumblr post that perfectly encapsulates this: https://prettygayrose.tumblr.com/post/642254503899447296/something-that-bears-mentioning-i-get-why-we-need
All of this, u/Maddieismadlol What you're going through right now is normal. A lot of girls hate puberty and hate turning into women. Turning into a woman is scary, between pain from periods, gendered social expectations and objectification at the very least. But it gets better once you've actually finished puberty and grown into your body and your adulthood.
We know that if they remain unmedicated, the majority of children and teens with gender dysphoria grow out of it once they hit their twenties. We also know that a large part of children and teens with dysphoria are same-sex attracted. You say it yourself, you want to be the tall, attractive man who's desired by women. But that's a fantasy. That's not you, and it's not something you (or medicine) can achieve.
I would say, wait. Most girls who struggle with their sex in puberty grow out of it once puberty is behind them. It took me until I was around 22, and that's quite the typical age. You still have so much brain development in front of you--don't think that the way you feel now is the way you'll feel forever.
And in the meantime, if you don't like your body, I'd focus on health and becoming grounded in your body, rather than on chasing a certain aesthetic. Exercise, eat well, all that. Right now, you think that your escape from being a "chubby and ugly" girl is transition, but that's not going to change your body miraculously. You aren't going to grow a foot if you start testosterone now. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Allow yourself to grow into your body and try to support it by being healthy and active.
Practically everyone here is or used to be mentally ill, or has some sort of neurological thing like autism or OCD. Both mental ill-health and neurodivergence cause trans identification, especially in young people. It gives you something to latch on to without doing any of the hard work to fix your mental issues (“I'm only agoraphobic because I'm in the wrong body, so once I fix my body to look like my actual gender, I'll be cured”). Are you aware of Trans OCD? Both autism and OCD lead people to hyperfixate on specific things, and unfortunately, right now it's often on gender. For autistics, gender gives them an easy explanation why they don’t fit in and can’t communicate normally with other people (“I'm actually a boy, so of course I'm awkward around the other girls!”), while to people with OCD, “gender-affirming care” gives them a nice fixed pathway to follow.
It's an incredible dereliction of duty that doctors nowadays ignore all mental and neurological issues and just prescribe hormones snd surgeries. There are records of doctors discussing how to get the consent of every alter of people with DID before starting hormones. It's mind-bogglingly insane, isn’t it?
Puberty blockers should never, ever be given to stop a healthy puberty at the appropriate time. No "trans child" should ever be given Lupron, considered too dangerous even for sex offenders, and no child should have the mental and neurological development of puberty suppressed in order for them to "pass" better as an adult, which was the original idea behind puberty blockers.
Gender dysphoria in most cases resolves when the sufferer goes through puberty. Giving children and teens puberty blockers literally prevents the best cure for gender dysphoria from working.
Precisely as far as we take it with the anorexic. But we should also take a closer look at the plastic surgery industry in general, not just in a “gender-affirming care” context. There’s simply no way that some of the surgeries routinely offered are ethical. The plastic surgery industry tends to prey on people in a really unsavoury way in general.
The existence of detransitioners and desisters who got over their gender dysphoria naturally invalidates the whole concept of "born in the wrong body", so of course we're shouted down or ignored. After all, if it turns out that a lot of people's dysphoria just resolves on their own after puberty, there's no justification for giving children "gender-affirming care".
> I don't know where that statistic is even pulled from
The academic term is "straight out of their arses".
If you want an overview of the research that exists and an explanation as to why it's not applicable to anything that's happening today, try this article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02623-5