everyone thinks I’m a weird potentially dangerous guy and I get 0 empathy or support.

Not gonna lie as an autistic socially anxious guy this was a major contributing factor for why I decided to transition in the first place. Society treats men really badly in a lot of ways despite them supposedly having all the power and privilege. It took me a long time to become comfortable with the fact I was male because I thought it meant no one would ever love or care for or support me if they saw me that way. I'm still kind of afraid if I present in too masculine a way people will stop having empathy for me.

I detransitioned because I realized that I didn't need to change my identity to be the person I wanted to be and that reeee gender roles don't @ me. When I realized that I became a lot happier because I wasn't unconsciously trying to hold myself to some standard anymore, I just am the way I am now.

"I used to identify as a woman, now I don't, I'd appreciate being referred to with male pronouns." I don't think you need to explain or justify yourself more than that. The why is none of their business, just explain the what in a matter of fact way, and usually, people are pretty chill. It's very rare that I encounter someone who actually questions me beyond that.

I don't have hard data for you, but one thing to keep in mind as a factor is that a lot of gaming spaces and reddit and places of the like tend to somewhat male-dominated in general. If the majority of the initial population is male, then it's really no surprise that most of the trans people in that community are trans women. I would expect the opposite trend in female-dominated online spaces.

I could be wrong, but it really does not appear that men are stepping up to the plate in regards to creating specific spaces for themselves involving detransition/reconciliation.

There is actually kind of a weird thing that happens where when men do step up to the plate we're told to sit down and stop taking up so much space, and so...we...stop.

I think there's a lot of trying to have it both ways. Saying men should be more involved but then being condescending and hostile towards men who try to be more involved.

I run the detranscord discord server which is probably the "pretty toxic" one /u/purple_elderago is referring to. I admit there has been some legitimately awful behavior which I've been trying hard to keep clamped down and overall the server has been gradually been getting better. As it turns out moderating a detrans space is actually really hard and it quickly gets flooded with anti-trans nonsense if you don't constantly babysit it. I should probably recruit some additional mods.

Oh, I hate it when people do this, or dismiss my experiences as "not real trans experiences" because I'm "Not really trans" as if that actually somehow means something. I was trans, I had trans experiences, then I detransitioned. That does not mean the trans experiences I had were fake.

Is it a possibility to appreciate the effects of a medical transition while also recognizing that you are not the opposite sex?

Absolutely. I don't regret having taken hormones, they worked well for me and make me happier with myself. You don't have to identify as a thing to want to look that way. You can want to have a tan without identifying as another race. You can wear a dress, and even take hormones in my opinion, without identifying as a woman. Just do what makes you happy.

Gender is messy and complicated. If you want to be a feminine male that should be acceptable and the fact that society considers it unacceptable is I think a driving force behind some MtFs desire to transition, I know it deeply affected my own desires and realizing that I didn't need to try and be a woman to be femme was deeply liberating.

Check out /r/feminineboys sometime, there's a growing community of men who present femme while still identifying as male and I think it's a super positive thing to have exist.

For me personally, it's important to recognize that I retreated from the challenge of living as a very feminine, even hormonally feminized boy, choosing instead to live under a female identity. Sure, there were a lot of pressures on me to think this way, and my desire for feminizing hormones drove me to follow the only clear path available for me, but I still chose that path. I not only chose it, but fully internalized it, allowing it to colonize my thoughts and reorder my thinking, until I felt I had to pursue SRS to "complete my transition" and finally be relieved of the shame of being an androgynous creature.

Yes! This is a really important realization. When I was a teenager I didn't even actually realize it was a choice, I didn't understand the scope of the territory I was looking at, but nonetheless, I did choose to transition instead of trying to brave it out in the gender wilderness as a feminine boy.

I think something really important going forward now is to help carve out that space for people in the future, to create that path that we lacked so others don't end up trapped and railroaded the way we did.