This story is from the comments by /u/TheDrillKeeper that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the extensive and highly personal commentary provided, this account appears to be authentic. There are no serious red flags indicating it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.
The user's comments are:
- Highly specific and internally consistent, detailing a multi-year journey from questioning to medical transition to detransition, including specific timelines, medical details (e.g., IM valerate injections, effects of hormones), and psychological reasoning.
- Emotionally complex and nuanced, expressing a wide range of genuine emotions like regret, frustration, relief, and sympathy, which align with the known experiences of detransitioners.
- Focused on personal experience and support, consistently offering nuanced advice, sharing vulnerable details of their own story, and engaging in good-faith discussions with others, rather than pushing a singular, repetitive agenda.
The account demonstrates the passion and lived experience of a real person who has detransitioned.
About me
I was a sensitive man who never fit in, and I started transitioning because I saw it as an escape from the pressures of masculinity and my own self-hatred. My medical transition was rushed through without anyone addressing my deep depression and anxiety, and I quickly realized I hated the physical changes, especially developing breasts. I felt stuck in a terrible limbo, not a woman but having lost my stability as a man. Deciding to detransition was a huge relief, even though it cost me $10,000 for surgery to fix the damage. Now, I'm finally learning to accept myself as an imperfect man and rebuild a stable, honest life.
My detransition story
My whole journey started with feeling like I never fit in as a man. I was a scrawny, sensitive kid who was bullied and always felt more comfortable around women. As a teenager, I started balding early and hated the way my body was changing with testosterone—getting hairier, oilier, and just feeling like I was turning into this rough, angry person I didn't want to be. I spent a lot of time online, especially on Tumblr, and the atmosphere there was pretty hostile towards men. I started to internalize the idea that being a man was something bad, something predatory.
This led me to start questioning my gender. I first identified as non-binary, which felt like an escape from the pressures of being a man. But that didn't feel like enough after a while, and I started identifying as a trans woman. It wasn't that I felt a strong "euphoria" about being a woman; it was more that I saw it as a way to recontextualize all the things I hated about myself. Being thin, sensitive, and less masculine could be seen as positive traits in a woman, whereas they made me feel like a failure as a man. I was also starting to accept that I was bisexual, but I was afraid of gay men's spaces because of the hypersexual hookup culture, and I was terrified of being seen as a creepy straight guy by women. Transitioning felt like a way to make myself "benign."
I saw a therapist years before I medically transitioned, but the "diagnosis" was a joke. I said I didn't like being a man and felt good when called a different name, and that was it. No deep digging into my depression, social isolation, or body dysmorphia. Years later, when I was at a really low point, I walked into an informed consent clinic. I told them about that old diagnosis, and by the end of the day, I had a prescription for estrogen. It was that easy.
Being on hormones was strange. I liked that it made my skin smoother, reduced my body hair, and made me look younger. I appreciated the increased emotional range; it was easier to cry and feel things deeply. But I absolutely hated developing breasts. That feeling of something being physically wrong never went away. It was like I was constantly aware of these foreign objects on my chest. Socially, things were a mess. I tried to come out at work, but when they offered to change the name on my office door, I froze. I couldn't go through with it. I never felt comfortable using women's spaces, like restrooms. I started to feel like people were walking on eggshells around me.
The turning point was realizing I was living in a state of permanent limbo. I wasn't a woman, and I was losing the stability of being a man. I was spending so much money on medication and doctors, and for what? I missed the simplicity of introducing myself with my birth name. I missed my flat chest. I started to understand that I had been using transition as a form of escapism from the difficulties of being a gender-nonconforming man. I was afraid of "twink death"—of getting older and losing my youthful, slightly feminine appearance. But I realized that wasn't a sustainable reason to medically transition.
When I finally talked to my therapist about stopping everything, she told me that the fear left my eyes. That's when I knew detransition was the right path. It was a huge relief to decide to stop pretending. Coming off hormones was tough. I had to pay $10,000 out of pocket for gynecomastia surgery to remove the breast tissue. My body is still adjusting, and my libido hasn't fully returned. Emotionally, it's been hard to readjust to the more limited range I have on testosterone.
I don't regret transitioning because it taught me what I truly needed: to learn to accept myself as an imperfect man. My regret is that the system failed me. I was a vulnerable adult in a mental health crisis, and I was rushed into medical treatment without any real therapy to address the root causes—my depression, social anxiety, body dysmorphia, and the OCD-like obsessions that fueled my questioning. I'm frustrated with the communities that encouraged me, with the "egg-cracking" culture that pressures people, and with the way our society has no good answers for men who don't fit the mold.
Now, I'm trying to rebuild. I focus on my hobbies, like painting miniatures, to keep my mind occupied and feel like I'm creating something. It's a long road, and I'm still dealing with the social stunting from spending a decade dissociating. But I'm learning that stability, even if it's imperfect, is better than living a lie. I am who I am, and no amount of medication can change that fundamental truth.
Timeline of My Transition and Detransition
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| Early Teens (around 13-14) | Started feeling intense discomfort with male puberty: early balding, becoming hairier and oilier. Felt alienated from other boys and sought friendship almost exclusively with girls. |
| Mid-Teens (around 15-16) | Joined Tumblr; influenced by online communities. Began to internalize negative views of men. Started questioning my gender. |
| Late Teens / Early College (around 18-20) | Identified as non-binary online. Felt this was an escape from the pressures of male identity. |
| Around 23 | Saw a therapist, was quickly "diagnosed" with gender dysphoria based on superficial answers. |
| 26 | Medically transitioned. Started estrogen injections through an informed consent clinic on the same day as my first appointment. |
| 26 - 27.5 | Lived on hormones for about 1.5 years. Experienced physical changes like breast growth, which I hated, and emotional changes, which I liked. Social transition failed—I couldn't commit to a new name/pronouns at work. |
| 27.5 | Realized transition was unsustainable. Decided to detransition after a conversation with my therapist where I felt immediate relief. Stopped taking hormones. |
| 28 | Underwent gynecomastia surgery to remove breast tissue developed from HRT. |
| 28 (Present) | Currently navigating life as a detransitioned man, focusing on therapy, hobbies, and building a stable life. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/TheDrillKeeper:
Had this exact type of spat with someone the other day. They're so unbelievably concerned about us saying things that might sound adjacent to a "right wing talking point" that they won't actually listen to anything that's being brought up. And we wonder why the whole trans situation is such a mess now.
Modern day secular religion.
Hear me out - I'm not trying to say it's necessarily cultish or spiritual in the same way (though that could be argued) but I think with how vast our social landscape is now, people need tribes they can be a part of. Religion used to be one of the easiest ways to have a thing in common with people that was core to your being, which is probably part of why it spread so much - it contributed to social cohesion. I think the opt-in nature of transness is similar. I know I got way more social support as soon as I came out than I ever did as a man, and when you're a young and vulnerable person who's looking for an in-group, it's an easy pick to go for something that's being portrayed as a sort of righteous struggle.
You've been posting on this sub and many others with this issue for a while. I'm sorry things haven't worked for you so far, but you really need to stop dipping your toes into trans and AGP spaces if you want to get out of this. Fetishes are addictive, and addictions survive because you feed them.
Don't let people try to turn a fetish into reality. I've seen a lot of people suggest to stop engaging with porn - and that's good advice - but also consider that you're not doing yourself any favors by putting yourself around other people who are encouraging going further down the rabbit hole. I've been there and once it gets to a certain point it can be really hard to break out of.
It's difficult to answer this question because "being trans" means so many different things to so many different people. At the end of the day I can recognize that there are people who can handle it all respectfully and conscientiously but my take is that I wish gender was "abolished" and our discussions instead centered around sex. Sex is important in discussions of sexuality, single-sex spaces, and a number of other things. Understanding it is important, as is understanding that it's possible to express yourself in a wide variety of ways while still being your sex. I want people to feel comfortable being themselves without medical intervention.
As a neuropsych person I also have heavy doubts regarding the actual long-term efficacy of transition as a treatment method, too. We needed much more background knowledge before it was rolled out on this scale, considering how permanent it is, and I wish more emphasis had been put on psychotherapy as a prerequisite - not "conversion therapy" type stuff, but stuff that actually tries to address the issue at its root cause - dysmorphia, social isolation, OCD, whatever. We're not doing people a service mentally by giving them the easy solution before the thorough one.
This. People get scared by our existence because it pokes holes in a lot of the stuff they try to say about what makes someone who they are and the decisions they should make with their body. Amazed that we're at a point where people are genuinely challenged by the idea that liking "girly" stuff doesn't make you a girl.
My best recommendation is to spend more time offline. I hope this doesn't sound harsh or demeaning, but rather reassuring - nobody meaningful out in the real world is going to spend this much time dissecting whether someone was this worthy of their lived experience. What matters is where you are now!
Based on the pictures on your profile it looks like you've remade your account again, and I don't even know if this is the first time.
I wish I had something more I could add, but you really just need to seek help from a professional. You're obsessing. Constantly deleting and remaking just to post pictures asking for validation isn't going to solve your problems or ease your mind, it's just going to get worse. I've seen you posting a lot of the same stuff over and over so reddit is clearly not working as a substitute for therapy. You need to talk to a psychiatrist about this.
The really unfortunate thing is that there's a lot of lost souls caught in this stupid vortex and most of the time it's too self-reinforcing to pull people out of. I've seen too many kind and talented people nurture the worst parts of themselves and end up stuck in a hole because of this stuff.
I think you're right on the money with the healing aspect of it, because to the trans community it seems like "healing" mostly involves blocking out dissenting voices and shouting over the ones that are too loud to block. Real health doesn't need to be shielded from scrutiny, and this community has felt so much more genuinely concerned with health than the trans community did for the 10-odd years I took part in it.
I don't know about hate, but I think a lot of us are frustrated because people will draw Holocaust comparisons when we raise concern.
The destruction of literature and research is regressive because we can learn from it. No matter the nature of it, knowledge is knowledge - but we collectively need to be ready to accept the possibility that the current medical hegemony might be misguided. Affirmation-only care does a lot of harm, and there's a lot to suggest that the numbers are skewed regarding detransition.
To suggest that encouraging the advancement of accurate and thorough medical practice is the same as destroying research spits in the face of medicine as a concept. We're here to improve our lives, not to advance an ideology.