This story is from the comments by /u/Space-A1ien that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account "Space-A1ien" appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.
The user demonstrates:
- Personal, detailed narratives of their own transition, detransition, and physical/emotional experiences (e.g., effects of testosterone, heart palpitations, social dynamics at work).
- Consistent, nuanced views over time, acknowledging that transition can help some while being harmful for others, a common but complex perspective in the detrans community.
- Emotional depth and introspection, including feelings of grief, regret, and spiritual exploration, which align with the passionate and often painful experiences of real detransitioners and desisters.
- Natural language patterns, including self-correction, venting, and organic conversations with other users.
The account exhibits the hallmarks of a genuine individual who is a desister/detransitioner.
About me
I was a butch lesbian who never felt like a boy until I learned about being transgender online, and then I convinced myself my discomfort was dysphoria. I started testosterone at 18, thinking it would fix my depression and give me control, but it ended up making me feel disconnected and caused health problems. Years later, I realized my real issues were anxiety and low self-esteem, not a need to be male. I stopped hormones and, after a difficult period of grief, found peace in accepting myself as a female. I now believe my transition was a survival strategy, but true healing came from addressing my mental health and learning to live in my body.
My detransition story
My whole journey with transition and detransition was messy and complicated. I was born female and lived as a butch lesbian for a long time. I never felt like a boy growing up, but I was always a tomboy. I didn't start feeling any discomfort with my body, what people call dysphoria, until I learned about being transgender online. Suddenly, it felt like a switch flipped and all my normal teenage awkwardness and discomfort got wrapped up into this new identity.
I decided to transition when I was 18, right after high school. I think a big part of it was that my life felt chaotic and out of control after graduation. I'm neurodivergent and changes to my routine are really hard for me. Transitioning felt like something I could control when everything else was shifting. I was also deeply depressed and thought becoming a man would be a way out of that. There was definitely an element of internalized homophobia and misogyny too; being a butch lesbian felt difficult and scary, but being seen as a straight man seemed so much easier. I convinced myself that my lack of attraction to men meant I must actually be one.
I was on testosterone for about two years. At first, it gave me a kind of euphoria, like a mood lift, but that feeling was hollow and didn't last. It started to feel like poison in my body. I began having heart palpitations and other health issues that really scared me. I also realized that the testosterone was muting my emotions and my connection to my spirituality, which is very important to me. I felt completely disconnected from my body, like a brain just floating around, not attached to anything.
Around the time I was 28, I started to seriously question everything. Using cannabis helped me see things more clearly; it amplified the thoughts I was already having but was ignoring. I began exercising, eating better, and meditating, and for the first time, I started to feel connected to my body. The dysphoria I had been feeling began to vanish. I realized that a lot of my "dysphoria" wasn't real—I had talked myself into being uncomfortable with things because I thought I should be, based on what I was reading online. I was wrapping up other problems, like low self-esteem, anxiety, and discomfort with puberty, into one neat package labeled "trans."
I decided to stop testosterone. Detransitioning has been one of the hardest things I've ever done, but also the most healing. It was emotionally draining and I had to face a lot of grief and shame for the choices I made. I lost friends and my entire community. But I also found a sense of peace I never had while transitioning. I no longer see my body as something to fight against. I'm just a female human being. The only labels I use now are "female" and "queer." I kept my male name because I like it more than my birth name, and I still wear men's clothes because that's what I'm comfortable in. I don't regret the time I spent living as a man because I think it was a survival strategy I needed at the time, but I'm glad to be moving past it.
I have serious regrets about the medical aspects of my transition. I didn't fully understand the health risks, and no doctor ever talked to me about fertility. I was young and thought I'd never want kids, but now that I'm older, I'm not so sure. I think medical transition is pushed way too hard and way too fast. It's treated as the first and only solution, when it should be an absolute last resort. It's a big business, and a lot of people are making a lot of money off of convincing kids and young adults that changing their bodies will solve their problems. For me, real healing came from addressing my mental health, logging off the internet, and learning to accept my body as it is.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 18 | Started identifying as transgender and began taking testosterone. |
| 20 | Stopped testosterone due to health concerns and a growing realization it was wrong for me. |
| 28 | Began the social process of detransition, embracing my identity as a female. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/Space-A1ien:
I'm glad someone else pointed this out because I'd been thinking the same thing. I hope he's happier and like others have said, we don't know what was going on in their private life but man, from where I'm standing, it seems like just another instance of the absolute mad rush through medicalization. And all of the attention he's getting for it is too much for me to take sometimes. Especially when he used to be such a role model for me when I was a young questioning lesbian (well before I transitioned). I know it's been said over and over again, but it really feels like the lesbians are disappearing. I truly wish them the best and I hope the decisions that they're making work out for them, but it makes me sick to my stomach to think about what impact his actions will have on people.
A lot of folks are making a hell of a lot of money off of the trans medicalization industry so it was only a matter of time before they had a celebrity endorsement, I suppose. I just truly hope it works out alright for him.
I think A) detransition is actually being acknowledged and talked about more and this particular sub is being mentioned in big public things. So we're gaining a lot more lurkers on top of people who may actually be detrans. B) someone commented this on another post but i forget which one, but quarantine seems to play a big role too. Being trans is mostly about outside validation. If someone was completely alone on a deserted island with no gender roles/stereotypes/etc cause they're literally completely isolated, would they still want to transition? Most likely not and that's effectively part of what quarantine is doing
The short answer is: yes. Cis people can have dysphoria. There's a weird idea in trans discourse that says that it's a uniquely trans thing but it 100% is not. A lot of people with dysphoria don't transition and find other ways of dealing with it. For me, dysphoria is a mental health issue and just as some people with depression respond better to certain medications or to therapy or some to just a change of scenery, there are many ways to treat dysphoria. Transition is just one of those ways. It's also the most invasive, and yet is touted as the only "cure". It's very much not
Oof. That feels so, I dk, fetish-y to me. In a way? Like, most actual detransitioners I know remove themselves from the entire schema of 50 million flags and 50 million identities. So I'd bet a good load of peanuts that no one involved in this interaction is actually detrans or knows anything about it. I feel like it's more "oh! A fun new type of lesbian for me to play around with and pretend my favorite cartoon characters are!". This is such an obvious divorce from and disregard of actual reality. Which, of course, is the trademark of these types.
I've already seen detransition fetish bullshit circulating the internet and this just feels like the sfw version of that. It's gross af.
You don't need to apologize. I think you're very right: there are a lot of differences between adult and childhood transition. As much as people claim otherwise, puberty blockers have not been studied near as much as they claim that they have. And the phenomenon of transitioning children is very very recent so the research just isn't there. The problem is that a lot more things go on during puberty than just the development of secondary sex characteristics. Changes in bones and muscles and the brain all take place. By delaying or curtailing natural puberty, we're fucking up more than just the reproductive systems. And for nothing but aesthetic purposes.
I'm so sorry that you have been through this. I really hope things work out for the better for you
Honestly, the most helpful thing for me was that oh so dreaded "TERF" rhetoric of a woman being an "adult human female". Being a woman then became something that I didn't have to identify as. There was nothing i, or anyone else, had to do to be a woman. I was born female and I grew to adulthood and that is the sole requirement. I was able to step out of all the gender rhetoric and going back and forth in circles constantly trying to define myself and just getting more and more obsessed with myself and enshrining my feelings as holy writ.
I'm female. Have always been and will always be. Sure, it sucks sometimes, but no one chooses their body and all the surgery and hormones in the world won't make one iota of difference. At the end of the day, it's still the same body it was at the beginning. Might as well embrace it.
"Queer" has become such a functionally useless word. There is no "queer" community if you let every single person in, which is what they're doling here. Also very much creating an in group vs out group situation around anyone who doesn't want to call themselves queer
I really feel like things are changing. The BBC ran that article about trans women pressuring lesbians into sex and it didn't get taken down. The UK is making it illegal for adults to pressure kids into transitioning. I feel like the Keira Bell case was a turning point and people are starting to wake the fuck up
There are so many amazing suggestions in the comment section here, but my go to is always: log off. So much of the trans stuff is all online and very little translates into the real world. Take some time away from social media and reconnect with actual reality. Get in touch with your body by exercising. Yoga is super helpful with this. Get in touch with mindfulness by taking up a meditation practice. Spend more time with cis people. Develop hobbies that have nothing to do with gender or being trans
This is hella relatable. The idea of the "cotton ceiling" was definitely a big thing that peaked me years and years ago. Also just being around trans people, it was obvious to me that pretty much none of the trans men actually acted like men and none of the trans women acted like women. I was a lesbian before i transitioned and so i thought i should be attracted to trans women but I found myself being attracted to trans men instead. All this became a wake up call that sex played more of a role than gender in attraction. I thought about detransitioning when i had these doubts and even joined a detrans group back in the day but ultimately stayed transitioned for several years longer