This story is from the comments by /u/ParticularSwanne that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or inauthentic.
The user's writing is highly personal, nuanced, and emotionally consistent. They share a detailed, multi-faceted narrative of their detransition/desistance journey, including specific struggles (eating disorder, C-PTSD), a timeline of their evolving perspective, and complex critiques of gender ideology. The language is natural, contains personal anecdotes, and shows a deep, lived-in understanding of the topic's emotional and philosophical complexities. The passion and anger expressed are consistent with a genuine detransitioner/desister who feels harmed by their experience.
About me
I was a tomboy who started questioning my gender in college after finding trans communities online, thinking it was an escape from my body issues and depression. My real breakthrough came through therapy for my eating disorder, where I realized my gender confusion was also about a desperate need for control in a sexist world. I met a group of women who showed me there are countless ways to be female, which completely changed my perspective. I decided against medical transition and let go of all labels, which was the most freeing thing I've ever done. Now I'm just a happy lesbian, at peace with my female body, and I live my life without gender defining who I am.
My detransition story
My whole journey with gender started when I was a kid. I was a tomboy and never really fit into the girly-girl mold. When I hit puberty, things got really hard. I developed an eating disorder that stuck with me well into my college years. I hated my breasts and my period; it felt like my body was a sign that people could make judgments about me, that I was the "weaker" sex. I felt like I was running away from womanhood because of the patriarchy.
Around 2014, when being trans became a bigger topic online, I started questioning everything. I saw trans men talking about feelings I had—feeling out of place, hating their bodies, feeling like society saw them as inferior. It seemed like an escape route from all my depression and anxiety. I became obsessed with labels, trying to find the right one to describe how I felt. For a while, I identified as non-binary. It was my "enby era," and I was probably insufferable. I was convinced that if I could just control my pronouns, my looks, how I stood, everything, I would finally feel peace. I even considered taking testosterone and looked into top surgery.
But a few things started to change for me. My social circle grew to include people outside of the LGBT+ community. I became financially independent and moved out, so my decisions were truly my own. Most importantly, I went to therapy for my eating disorder. My therapist and I had a breakthrough: we realized my eating disorder was a desperate reach for control, and I started to see that my gender confusion might be the same thing. It was about controlling how society perceived me in a chaotic, sexist world.
I realized I was trying to fix everything on the outside instead of looking inside. I asked myself what my inner child wanted, and the answer wasn't to become a man or non-binary. It was to just be okay with being me. I met a group of older women who showed me all the different ways to be a woman—loud, funny, stubborn, compassionate. They defined themselves by who they were, not by some inner gender feeling.
I started to see how the idea of a fixed "gender identity" keeps you trapped. You start seeing everything through the lens of being trans. I had bought into the idea that society was repressing my true self, and that expressing it would bring me peace. I was wrong. The euphoria I felt when thinking about transition wasn't really euphoria; it was a dissociative feeling, a numbness.
I also started to see problems in the trans community itself. It began to feel militant. I saw a lot of hostility towards anyone who questioned anything, and it started to feel less like a community and more like a religion with strict rules. I'm a deeply rational person, and the logic of transgenderism started to fall apart for me under scrutiny. Simple questions like "what is a woman?" only had circular answers. I realized I couldn't live with that much cognitive dissonance.
I never went through with medical transition. I held off on hormones and surgery because I read about the side effects and the fact that I’d be medicated for life. The reported suicide rates don't really go down after medicalization, and I learned that gender dysphoria is actually pretty common in teens and young women; it often goes away as you get older. For me, it was linked to my C-PTSD, anxiety, and need for control. Treating my eating disorder is what ultimately treated my gender dysphoria.
Now, I don't use any labels. I'm just me. I'm a soul in a female body, and I've made peace with that. I'm a lesbian, and I'm married to an amazing woman. Accepting that I'm just a female person who can like masculine things—like fixing cars, sports, and tech—without it meaning I'm a man, has been incredibly freeing. I'm so much happier now that I've stopped obsessing over gender altogether. I just live my life.
Do I have regrets? I don't regret exploring it, because it led me to where I am now. But I do regret the years I spent in that headspace, so fixated on something that caused me so much pain. I'm glad I never medically transitioned. I think if I were a teenager today, with the pressure that exists now, I might have gone through with it, and that would have been a terrible mistake for me.
Here is a timeline of the main events for me:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| Childhood | I was a tomboy and never felt like I fit in with girly expectations. |
| Puberty (Teen years) | Developed a strong eating disorder. Felt intense discomfort with my female body (breasts, period). Hated the social expectations placed on women. |
| Around 18-19 (College) | Started questioning my gender seriously after being exposed to trans narratives online. Identified as non-binary. Explored the idea of medical transition (hormones, top surgery). |
| Early 20s | Began therapy for my eating disorder. Had a breakthrough linking my need for control to both my eating disorder and gender dysphoria. Became financially independent and met a diverse group of women who expanded my view of womanhood. |
| Early 20s | Decided against medical transition. Stopped identifying as non-binary. Started the process of accepting my female body and detaching from gender labels. |
| Now (Early 30s) | I am content and no longer use gender labels. I see myself as a female person and am at peace with my body. I am a married lesbian and focus on living my life without gender defining me. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/ParticularSwanne:
actual-detrans is entrenched with censorship and only trans-approved messaging gets shared there
same with the actual-lesbian sub being filled with trans women and nonbinabagoo pronouns police
I find both places to be entrenched in anti-intellectualism and the validity of the trans image takes precedence over an individual’s experience. They are communities that say “yes you can be whatever you want so long as you don’t point out to cognitive dissonance in our ideology”.
yeah i checked top and bottom surgery and realized no matter how bad i hate my body, chopping bits off and being permanently medicated isn’t a solution that i can live with
and fun fact: suicide rates of trans people dont lower after medicalization or surgery, so ……the only people benefiting are the ones making money
yeah 😭😭, heres some more “fun” facts i only learned about after desisting
the reported 1% regret rate is from a study done 20+ years ago
its estimated that 80-90% of girls will experience unhappiness in relation to their gender and then go on to desist, gender curiousness is actually NORMAL across the human experience
puberty blockers and hormones have disastrous side effects which exasperate existing mental illnesses/ptsd
for some reason i was led to believe gender dysphoria only comes from being trans, ITS NOT!!! you can experience gender dysphoria bc youre depressed, dissociating, autistic/adhd, high anxiety, a ton of factors can lead to it
The “actual" detrans subreddit is a trans approved messaging machine and openly erosive to detrans people the same way "actual" lesbian subreddit is openly hostile to lesbians. Both subreddits have the mods that invite every which type of queer person to adopt the lesbian/detrans label, and chiming in over the voices of the real people where the label actually applies.
Its insulting that those subreddits don’t allow a person to acknowledge the vortex of genderism that has/had consumed people’s entire youth.
Criticality is good.
Self reflection is good.
Growth is good.
Change is important.
The only thing these “actual” subreddits lets you change is your label, and never the mindset. Never the internal mentality. Thats why they’re able to spout insanity like “hormones do change your sex” or “terf pipeline”.
The amount of privilege, entitlement and total lack of self awareness one has to have to assume detrans people are nonbinary/trans….just astonishing.
This is why lesbians and other older gay people are at the forefront of trans skepticism. So much of it doesn’t add up. It took years and years for gay marriage to become a legal right between two consenting people but now drugs and elective surgery are being pandered to confused children as a cure-all for gender distress? With almost no pushback?
That is insanity.
Oh hey, me too. Being a rational centrist these days will get you banned or called a bigot. Heres my observation, as a lesbian:
Gay, lesbian and non-heterosexual people built good faith with the general public for a really long time. The original “pride” was to show that same-sex attracted people were just like others, and proud to love who they love. Thats how the LGBT won the fight for gay marriage; by being good neighbors.
And, trans people then were largely gay or lesbian people who transitioned and wanted to fly under the radar. The goal was to fit into society and marriage equality was a step in that direction. “We’re just like you,” we said, “just a little gay. We want to get married and grow old and pay taxes.”
This is the opposite for what is the LGBT movement now. And, largely, the good faith that the original LGB movement build has been eroded by loud radical T activists who want to be (simultaneously) the most victimized group of people and also pandered to if they’re god’s greatest gift to genderism.
Theres nothing about “getting along” with trans activism now. Their rhetoric is everyone else should listen up and shut up. Affirm them or else you’re a bigot, no matter how problematic they are. Their definition of allyship is for the nontrans people to give up any presence.
Thats not allyship, thats parasitism.
They have no mutual respect for homosexuality to the point of calling gay or lesbian people “sex racists” for having preferences. Gay rights and womans right have moved back 10-20+ years thanks to the actions of loud, violent, and mentally unwell T activists. I used to say “trans people are people” but with their behavior over the last few years, I’ve realized I played a part in enabling a destructive rhetoric to take root.
LGB should divorce itself from the TQ+. Any news I see about LGBT is really just about transgender this or that. They need the LGB as part of their umbrella to be valid and I think thats why leftist spaces are so keen on silencing centrists, theyre desperate to keep the LGB attached.
Why are we denying biology?
Judith Butler’s theory of queer and gender identity was taken to its literal extreme. Certain people with black and white thinking saw Butler’s philosophical assertion that you express gender through performance as gospel. Now, a whole generation of people will feel its corrosive effects.
The Butler’s theory spread like wildfire into language outside of philosophy. Basic biology(mammals have two sexes) became convoluted with theology (their idea that gender is expressed) since they use similar language. This is because sex and gender were once synonymous. Today’s definition of gender has become so many things now its not possible to discuss what aspect of gender we’re talking about.
When we speak on gender, are we talking about its expression through an individual? Are our definitions of man and woman genders different? Is the inner gender an unquestionable feeling?
This muddling of language is how our society outputs phrases like “trans men are men”.
“trans men are men”
Translated in good faith, it means “a female body who presents as a man can be seen by society as men”. How will the person present as a man is something only they can decide. Is it a cyclical definition? Yes. Does it have merit? Barely.
Is it useful in society?
No, it’s not because it obfuscates maleness or femaleness to social performances as opposed to a fixed biology. This cauldron boiling of language, philosophy, medicinal treatment based on biological sex while basing your identity on an internal fixed point subjective to your lived experience is ultimately why the trans community are fractured or surface level.
No one is 100% sure what the fuck reality they’re living.
It also explains the bitter generational divide between older transexuals like Buck Angel who clearly recognizes his biology as excluding him from “real men” as opposed to a current generation trans man who insist he is a “real man”. Their definitions of man is different. If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend looking into the inter debate between truscum and tucutes.
Previously, the definition for transexual were people who wanted to change sex. This was overwhelmingly men, sometimes homosexual and oftentimes fetishizers (AGP, transvestites, etc).
The definition has changed. Girls take the route of modern transgenderism as a way to self correct in a society which tells girls that being a woman is a very strict set of qualities. The new trans movement is saying “if you don’t fit into the female stereotypes, you’re actually a different gender”.
The shift toward female demographics is due to a shift in the core definition of transgenderism.
Its also an ideology which functions similarly like a cult (unintentionally), and we’ve all had that friend on tumblr or twitter which has said “oh! You’re uncomfortable with X and Y? That means could probably nonbinary or trans!”
Its an easy rabbit hole to fall into when you’re a young woman facing a world that is hostile and full of expectations about your sex.
Yep thats a side effect of using gender identity as a basis for reality; it leans on stereotypes as perceived by an individual. Gender ideology perpetuates the same narrative as bio traditionalists (that being a men and woman are fundamentally different and women have a ‘feminine’ way of thinking, are natural homemakers, more gentile, passive and submissive). The separation between traditionalists and transgenderism is that the latter insists male bodies can experience this ‘womanhood’, too.
Its still turbo misogyny and sleeps in the bed next to erasure of nonconforming people like your pixie cut.
✨ obligatory: I support trans rights as much as I support the rights of other minorities, criticizing a philosophical viewpoint is not the same as saying trans people shouldn’t exist ✨
A detrans space should never be a “safe space” for trans people
👏👏👏
What blows people’s minds is they’ll see this as transphobia when the simple fact is…its just not about trans people. And they should be okay that not everything is about them, and everything shouldn’t need to be trans-approved for it to have validity.