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 an inauthentic poster.
The user provides a highly detailed, nuanced, and emotionally raw personal narrative that is consistent across multiple posts. They discuss specific medical details (dosages, health conditions like POTS/EDS), a timeline of their transition and detransition, and complex social interactions, all of which are difficult to fabricate convincingly. The expressed anger, regret, and personal reflection align with the known experiences of detransitioners.
About me
I started identifying as a man at 16, rushed by fear and a therapist who said I'd be in danger if people knew I was female. I was on a high dose of testosterone for five years, which severely damaged my health due to my pre-existing conditions. I realized I didn't need to be a man to be my masculine self, I just needed the freedom to be a butch woman. Now at 24, I've stopped testosterone and am reclaiming my birth name and female identity, though I still present very masculinely. It's a difficult path, but finally being my authentic self is worth the struggle.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started when I was a teenager. I was 16 when I first identified as trans. Looking back, I think a huge part of it was the intense pressure I felt to “pass or die.” My therapist at the time even told me that if people found out I was trans, they might want to kill me. That fear, combined with a rush to transition before I went away to college in 2017-2018, sped everything up. The adults around me, including that therapist, thought I was mature for my age and just went along with it. Now I’m 24, and I’ve been trying to detransition for the last two years. I realize now that teens don’t really know what they’re signing up for, and the adults should have known better.
I was what they called a textbook case of GID back then. I started testosterone at 17 and was on it until I was 22. I was living as a stealth man, and no one knew I was born female. I took a high dose, 100 mg a week. But my health started to suffer. I also have pre-existing conditions called POTS and EDS, and stopping testosterone so abruptly made everything worse. My body paid a heavy price for that decision. I experienced months of perpetual fatigue and pain.
For me, my transition was the culmination of all my life’s traumas. It felt like every bad thing that had ever happened to me, every way I had been wronged, all came to a head and led me down this path. Now my body will bear the consequences of that until I die. It’s a really hard thing to live with, and sometimes I get so angry and sad I just want to scream. I feel like the people who facilitated this are celebrated, while I’m left dealing with the fallout.
I don’t regret everything. I liked how testosterone made me feel—the energy, the increased ability to build muscle. If it hadn’t wrecked my health, I’d honestly consider going back on a low dose. I got top surgery, and most of the time, I’m okay with my flat chest. My voice is deep, I have a lot of body hair, and I’m very broad-shouldered from taking T as a teen and from lifting weights. I still love building a strong, masculine physique. Strangers almost always see me as a man, and that’s fine.
But my perspective on myself changed. I realized I didn’t need to be a man to be myself. I needed the freedom to be super masculine, to take up space as a butch woman, even if society doesn’t always view me that way. So my detransition wasn’t about becoming feminine. It was about three main things: going back to my feminine birth name, using the women’s restroom (unless I feel unsafe, then I’ll use the men’s), and no longer trying to hide my biological sex by binding or wearing specific clothes.
I’m still me. I wear men’s clothes, I have a buzzed head, and I don’t get bent out of shape about pronouns. But being called “she” and my birth name makes me happy now. It’s about being authentic to who I am, which is a very masculine woman. It’s been a difficult path. I lost a lot of time trying to learn how to be a man, and I forgot who I was. I’m having to learn how to socialize and date now, things I deprived myself of before. It feels like I’m years behind my peers.
I’ve been lucky in some ways. I’ve been honest with healthcare providers about being detrans, and I’ve found some who are willing to help. I’m even working with a surgeon who does gender-affirming surgeries to discuss reconstruction options. I haven’t been ostracized by my trans friends in real life; they still consider me part of the group. Online is a different story, but in person, I can speak my truth.
My thoughts on gender now are that society makes it really hard for people who don’t fit neatly into boxes. It treats gender outliers like me poorly. The best way to get through it is to build a inner circle of people who accept you for exactly who you are. For anyone considering this path, you have to decide what’s easier: carrying the burden of lying to yourself and the world, or carrying the burden of others not understanding you. I chose the latter, and while it’s fucking difficult, the moments of true authenticity are worth it.
Here is a timeline of my journey:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 16 | First identified as a trans man. |
| 17 | Started taking testosterone (100mg/week). |
| 17 | Began living as a stealth man. |
| 22 | Stopped testosterone abruptly, health declined. |
| 22 | Began the process of detransition. |
| 24 | Present day, still detransitioning and navigating life as a masculine woman. |
Top Comments by /u/One_Requirement7305:
I've actually gaslit myself with this same line in telling myself that transition wasn't the worst thing to happen to me because of * insert life event here *. What I realized recently was that transition was the culmination of my life's traumas: everything that had gone wrong or every way that I had been wronged came to a head and led me down this path, and now my physical will bear the consequences of that path until I die.
I can understand why people try to compare it to something they know, but this shit is just beyond fucked, especially for those of us who were kids when it happened.
Well you should stay alive because *you* deserve to get to live your life, not to make sure the doctors don't win, which I get is easier said than done. Literally slogged through years of intense suicidal ideation wondering why I was even alive and wanting to be dead and hoping I found something that gave my life meaning, so I truly get it.
I wish they would stop too. The way I cope is I just don't think about it.
I IDed as trans at 16, medically transitioned from 17-22 and was stealth, began detransition a little over two years ago. I'm 24 now and I've done more growing in the past year than I did in my five years as a trans man. I lost so much time trying to learn how young men are supposed to act that I forgot who I was, and there were so many things I deprived myself of or couldn't feasibly engage in (like socializing and dating) that I've had to learn how to do now. Boy oh boy did I learn some hard lessons these past two years, especially this past year. It's been difficult, and it's not until the past few months that I feel like I've started to "catch up" to my peers.
I try to keep a positive spin on things, I try to remember everything I did learn during that time and I carry it with me, but I'm also painfully aware of how much I didn't learn. I'm aware of all the opportunities I didn't take advantage of because I didn't have the capacity to because I was quite literally too preoccupied with LARPing as the opposite sex, and my extreme gender-nonconformity and obviously medicalized body on top of other things make it difficult for me to relate to peers.
I totally get that. Trust me, I do. I try to channel that spite into moving forward, but it's hard when you're angry and sad and just want to scream because you know what happened wasn't right and yet the people who did this to you are venerated and you are left with the consequences. I'm also having a rough time right now too, and usually I can put on a face like it's all fine.
One day at a time. Wait for the wave to pass and just keep going one day at a time. Eventually, it becomes more manageable.
Kinda echoing what others have said, you either a) continue on the current path of being MTF and leaning into feminine stereotypes, b) swing hard the other way and lean into male stereotypes, or c) exist as you are. The last one, in my opinion, is both the easiest and the hardest to do. I'm not a detrans man, but I'm a detrans woman who's still very male-passing (very butch, crossdressing, buzzed head, bathrooms are an issue, the whole gambit) so I get the feeling of being ostracized in society because of who I am.
It sucks. It really sucks how society treats gender outliers like us. And yet I wouldn't trade the few moments of respect and the authenticity I feel in just being myself for myself for anything in the world. If you choose to be authentic to yourself and not put on an act, it's going to be fucking difficult and it won't necessarily get easier, you just get better with living with it. The "best" way to deal is to build an inner circle who accepts you; they're honestly the only people who keep me sane in a world that doesn't understand people like me.
Basically, you have to decide which one is easier for you: getting social standing through lying to yourself and the world and having to carry the burden of that lie, or marching to the beat of your own drum and carrying the burden of others treating you subpar because they can't wrap their head around gender diversity.
I agree with the point you made about the differences between gender-nonconformity in girls and boys with regards to how it's celebrated (or not celebrated). However, I reject that it's not okay for men to be effeminate. I think being real about how society will treat you if you're an effeminate man (or a masculine woman frankly) is warranted, but that doesn't mean effeminate men or masculine women are bad. It just plays into the old stereotypes of visibly "queer" people being predators and in order for people to not feel like they have to transition in order to meet some sort of gender ideal, that myth needs to die.
I'm all for tough love if you're super GNC and I get it's different for men vs. women, but I'm still pro-authenticity, and if that means the GNC life for OP, so be it.
I honestly don't know. Do I think he's going to hunt trans people down and/or something nearly that extreme is going to happen? No. Perhaps we will see challenges to GAC in minors and that'll rattle some cages, and to that I say "about damn time" because teens don't know what the fuck they're signing up for and the adults in the room should know better than to think they do. I'm saying this as someone who thought she knew and the adults were like "whelp, she's mature for a 16-year-old!" and now here I am at 24 having been attempting detransition for two years lol.
On the adult side though? They'd be hard-pressed to push for a ban, hell, they'd be hard-pressed to make it harder to access for adults. We have this thing called bodily autonomy that allows relatively consenting adults to do whatever they want to themselves so long as they're not explicitly attempting to end their own lives (which IMO they still have the right to do so long as they're not under medical etc. supervision). Adults can get tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery out the wazoo, and all of that is legal. I don't think any one of us who has tattoos or piercings are under the illusion that they're healthy, but we accept that and do it anyways because we want to. Is it ethical? Some of it I'd say "no," and yet we allow it because those with the money to spend have the freedom to choose so long as they are of relatively sound mind. If you removed the choice of body modification for the purpose of transition, every other form of medical/surgical modification would have to be called into question, and every form of nonmedical legal body modification could be called into question, too. Plastic surgery world won't have any of that, so I think GAC in adults will be sticking around.
I think society will make it harder for not just trans people, but visibly LGBTQ+ people, like myself, and that is what I think is both a more realistic outcome of another Trump presidency and the most concerning.
Edit: to answer the original question that I got sidetracked from, I think there might be an increase, but there's the equal risk that detrans folks just cult-hop to the right evangelical Christian track, and I don't think that's a great outcome for anyone either.
The rush to "pass" and transition before going away to college was what expedited the process for me in the first place in 2017-2018. It was essentially "pass or die" and my therapist literally told me if some people found out I was trans, they would want to kill me.
The thing is, I'm kinda ambiguous but I still "pass" as male. This idea that I need to put effort into passing is a farce because I'm not trying and it's happening, but I'm also not going to cave and pretend to be a man again. But yeah, the idea of what others at my college must be hearing right now who don't have the insight I gained the hard way are feeling and thinking and how it might accelerate the process for them...
Did my shoulders personally shrink? No, but that's because I took t as a teen and I physically grew (height, arms/legs got longer) and I've always been very broad-shouldered. I also lift still and I want to be broad. But my neck has definitely gotten thinner, and friends who've stopped t have seen their necks/shoulders shrink. So yeah, anecdotally, very possible.
The peer who said I should probably consider living as "the gender you can pass as" also has a friend she brings up whenever I talk about gender stuff who is a self-professed butch lesbian → straight trans man and says "well it worked for him" and I finally told her to stfu because she doesn't have the lived experience or any idea what she's talking about.
As for the "white man" comments, I run in mixed circles, but all of my student coworkers are POC, I work in an almost 100% POC department (which I like honestly), and some of my closest friends are POC. In general, they've been less weird about gender and faster to accept me as a woman than straight white world who just... doesn't get it lol. But yeah, the sentiment at work is that if shit hits the fan, "we have someone that can act as a white guy for us" which is weird bc I'm not a man and we have a male coworker, but because he's not white he's not "high enough on the privilege ladder." Even comments made by them i.e.: I hate white women for voting this way, and I'd jokingly say "am I an exception to that rule because I voted for Harris?" and some of them will say "well we don't include you in that group anyways." It's weird.