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 a bad-faith actor.
The user's posts are highly detailed, emotionally nuanced, and internally consistent over time. They describe a complex, personal journey of detransitioning, including struggles with body image, sexuality, societal expectations, and personal trauma. The language is natural, with self-reflection, humor, and responses that directly engage with other users' comments. The passion and anger expressed are contextually appropriate for someone who feels harmed by their transition experience. The account exhibits the hallmarks of a genuine person sharing their lived experience.
About me
My journey started with a deep discomfort during puberty, where I hated my developing female body and blamed my unhappiness on being a woman. I was heavily influenced by online culture and began taking testosterone, thinking it would finally make me my true self. I never felt like a man, and I eventually realized transition was a harmful coping mechanism that was destroying my self-esteem. After detransitioning, I had to painfully work through my internalized beliefs about being weak and learn to accept myself as a masculine woman. I now have serious regrets, but I'm finally connecting with my natural body and my self-confidence has skyrocketed.
My detransition story
My whole journey started with a deep discomfort during puberty. I never felt like a girl, and I hated the changes my body was going through, especially developing breasts. I felt like my body was working against me. Looking back, I was a really dysfunctional kid with terrible self-esteem, anxiety, and unsupportive parents. I now believe that my desire to transition was a coping mechanism for all of that. I took my general misery and social awkwardness and blamed it on being female.
I was also heavily influenced by online culture and porn. I saw so much straight porn that was degrading to women, and it made me believe that being female meant being weak and submissive. Since I wasn't into that, I felt like I couldn't be a sexual person as a woman. I was attracted to feminine, submissive men, but the only ones I saw were gay. I thought the only way to attract the kind of person I liked was to become a man myself. I got it into my head that if I transitioned, I could finally be my true, masculine self and be with gay men.
So, I started identifying as a man and began taking testosterone. I wanted a male body more than anything. But no matter how long I was on hormones, I never fully felt like a man. People would use my pronouns, but there was always this uncomfortable energy, like everyone was just humoring me. I chased after gay men, which was cringe and never worked. I was trying to force a vision of my life that just wasn't realistic.
The turning point came when I finally grew up a bit. I got a good job, built a decent life, and learned emotional regulation and social skills. I suddenly felt like a complete person for the first time. I looked at my transition and realized it was doing more harm than good; it was a cancer eating away at my relationships and self-esteem. I had backed myself into a corner and I was finally ready to face myself.
I decided to detransition. It was incredibly hard. I felt like a failed science experiment, stuck between genders and drawing negative attention. I hated that my appearance showed I had been trans; it felt like an embarrassing tattoo on my face. I just wanted to blend in again as a woman.
Working through my feelings about being female was the biggest challenge. I had to figure out what I hated about it and challenge those beliefs. I hated feeling weak, so I sought out stories of strong women. I hated feeling small, so I looked for tall women. I realized that my body shape means nothing about who I am inside. I can be a masculine woman; there's nothing wrong with that. I don't have to wear dresses to be a woman. I can be the same person I always was, just in a female body.
I also had to come to terms with my sexuality. I learned that there are plenty of men who are attracted to masculine, dominant women. I didn't need to change my body to find love. Meeting a good guy who made me feel safe helped me realize I had been repressing my femininity to protect myself my whole life.
I have serious regrets about transitioning. I believe it was a mistake. I think being trans is not a separate category of person, but rather a form of extreme body modification to deal with deep-seated insecurities and internalized issues, often influenced by society and porn. I don't think it's the right solution for anyone. I was absolutely convinced I was trans and that it was impossible to change, but once I actually wanted to work through my problems, I was able to detransition surprisingly fast.
Now, I’m learning to accept myself as a gender-nonconforming woman. I’m connecting with my natural body and my self-confidence has skyrocketed. I’m finally just me.
Age | Event |
---|---|
13-14 | Started puberty. Hated breast development and body changes. Felt deeply uncomfortable and disconnected. |
16 | Began identifying as transgender and started socially transitioning to male. |
18 | Started testosterone hormone therapy. |
28 | Began detransitioning after building a stable life and realizing transition was harming my mental health. |
29 | Stopped testosterone and started presenting as female again. |
Top Comments by /u/Solitary-Broccolus:
I would replace the word kind with emotionally or socially intelligent. I was a mostly well-meaning kid, I feel like I was just an idiot. As soon as I learned emotional regulation and some genuine social skills the walls started crumbling down.
But in general I think you have to either be very isolated, in a bubble surrounded by lots of naïve folks constantly building you up, or just not give a shit about anybody else's opinions to be trans, so yeah I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are fairly narcissistic.
Ugh there was literally just a post on lesbianfashionadvice that had me thinking the same thing - another "lesbian" couple with a trans woman. Their bodies are in no way similar. They're cute but he's clearly in no way a woman. Like, ugh, just be a feminine dude. You can wear all the same clothes and be a man.
The sad part is there are so many women who would like to be with a feminine man, but the only ones they see that aren't transitioned are gay, so then they think I must not be a woman, because I like gay men. I must transition so I can be my true, masculine self and attract the men I'm attracted to.
This sounds ridiculous but is 100% my experience as an FTMTF detransitioner. It's me, I'm the one who tried to transition to attract gay men and failed miserably. Turned out all the stereotyping and sexism in the world didn't magic away my female body.
I went through the exact same thing. I got to the point after a decade of this where I felt like "I just want to be attractive as any gender."
I never thought I'd get to the point where I literally don't miss being a man but here I am. I'm having a blast getting connected to my natural body. I look good in women's clothing because it's all designed to look good on me.
I'm not even a good-looking woman, I have a face that once made a guy tell me I'm the ugliest person he had ever seen. But my self-confidence has skyrocketed just feeling like I have a fully functional female body that looks the way it's supposed to look.
Ding ding ding. I've had to explain this to so many people. There are not "trans" and "cis" people, there are GNC people who choose to accept themselves and GNC people who cannot. Even if there are women with brains unusually similar to men's, the differences between them are just tendencies that scientists are looking specifically for, they are not hard lines between male and female brains. You are not a man with a female brain or a woman with a male brain, you are just outside the norm. Trans people are trying to fix something that is not broken.
The "really trans" attitude always gets an eye roll from me. Like bitch, the only difference between you and me is that I put in the work and I got better.
I feel bad. These people are spending their entire lives either hating/being out of touch with their physical bodies or running around with fake, dysfunctional genitalia. I don't even know how to save people from a delusion that is fed to them by our society. It is like some batshit crazy new religion that we all have to be polite and put up with.
Yeah for me I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who respected my pronouns and treated me as a man. But what used to crush me was there was still always this uncomfortable energy like everyone knew that I was not really a man and was just accommodating me to keep the peace.
But yeah basically I was just really young and dumb when all of this started. I really thought at some point I would just be fully transitioned and look and feel like a man, and everything else would sort itself out. I never imagined this journey would go the way it did. I learned emotional regulation to try to cope with everything, but through that I eventually realized my transition was the cancer that was eating away at my relationships, my self-esteem, and my mental health in general.
You cannot traumatize yourself by doing anything feminine. If it feels traumatizing that means you already have some trauma that you need to work through. You need to figure out what you think femininity means to you that makes it seem so dangerous, if you associate it with feeling powerless or worthless or what.
Also, being a woman isn't being feminine. Being a man isn't being masculine. Being a woman is having boobs and a vagina. There's nothing up for debate.
I think it's a combination of trauma from always having to hide your biological sex as a trans person (I think transitioning is inherently bad for the human psyche for this specific reason, you go through your whole life hiding something), knowing that you don't quite pass right now, and also no longer supporting your transition but still being slightly..transitioned.
It will get easier with time but I know the feeling. The more I pass the less I feel like I look like a weirdo pervert, but I still feel like an imposter a little bit, like I've just been through something everybody else hasn't and I'm still not a "normal person." I don't know when/if that part will fade away.
It does help to look as female as possible though. I agree with the other commenter about plucking facial hair if you can stand to, hopefully it'll eventually just stop coming in so strong. Shaping your eyebrows can also help, also we live in a wonderful time where it is fashionable to wear a small shirt and big pants again, which is very flattering and a simple way to look more female, even if you're a more masc lady.
Something I recently suggested to someone else, if you're having a hard time with your voice, you should try singing along with female voices once a day or so, and it may help you to keep your voice slightly higher. I used to do that in the opposite direction when my voice didn't change on testosterone..the results were temporary but helped me to keep my voice where I wanted it most of the time.
Yeah I used to feel that way too. The only thing that helped me was finding out what I hated about being a woman and looking for women who challenged that belief. I hated feeling weak so I found women who were strong. I hated feeling small so I found women who were tall. I hated feeling like women weren't supposed to work tough blue collar jobs so I found women who worked all their lives just because they wanted to.
Also, just to clarify, you don't have to like femininity. I still probably won't ever wear dresses. You can be exactly the same person you've always been just with boobs if you want. The key is realizing the shape of your body means absolutely nothing about you. You can be whoever you want. If you have a masculine brain in a woman's body there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's not something that needs to change. If you feel like a man it's probably because you relate to them more and imitate a lot of their behavior. You don't have to stop feeling this way. It feels dissonant because society has taught you that it should.
One more thing: be easy on yourself. Cool down as much as you can. Detransitioning is hard for everybody. I was deeply depressed when I first started unpacking all of this. But I'm doing way better now and actually almost never feel like a man anymore, I'm just me.
The fact that some people don't regret transition does not mean it is valid or necessary treatment for anybody in my opinion. People who get plastic surgery or alter their appearance in any other way tend to report being happier overall. To me transitioning is just another form of that, of dealing with an insecurity physically rather than mentally. I do not think trans people are a separate group of people from the rest of society in any way. They may have unusually masculine or feminine brains for their sex, but that does not mean they have to physically alter their bodies to match in order to find happiness.
Masculinity/femininity in the brain is not black and white. Men tend to have certain characteristics. Women tend to have different characteristics. I don't personally know if it's nature or nurture. But no one has a male brain floating around in a female body, you just might have a female brain that resembles male brains better.
Just my opinion on the matter as a masc lady who sometimes still "feels like a man." Of course I do if my brain is very similar to most men, that doesn't mean I'm not a woman or my brain is not a female brain.
Just wanted to say I've been through the same, meeting an incredible guy who made me feel safe was what I needed to realize I've actually been repressing my femininity my entire life to protect myself. I don't think you're a mix of male and female, you're just a complex human being like everybody else, and that's fine. Any differences between men and women are mostly just tendencies, not absolutes.
Some random advice I want to throw out there: keep in mind during your relationship with this guy that he is not the only one out there that can make you feel safe. I see far too many people with a history of abuse latch onto the first person who treats them with respect and not want to let go even if they're not compatible. There are lots of good men out there who will treat you right, he just happened to be the first.
That being said I'm so glad you've found that! It is such a relief to feel like you're just safe and okay and you don't have to hide yourself anymore.