This story is from the comments by /u/Your_socks that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the extensive comment history, this account appears to be authentic. There are no serious red flags indicating it is a bot or a fake persona.
Key points supporting authenticity:
- Consistent, Detailed Narrative: The user provides a highly detailed, nuanced, and internally consistent personal story spanning years. They describe a specific motivation for transition (body dysmorphia focused on halting masculinization, not social dysphoria), a multi-year medical and social transition, and a reasoned detransition based on the realization that their innate behavioral mannerisms were male, causing distress when trying to perform as a woman.
- Complex Psychological Insight: The comments demonstrate deep, prolonged introspection about gender, dysphoria vs. dysmorphia, trauma, autism, and the social nuances of passing. This level of complex, evolving thought is difficult to fake consistently.
- Emotional Authenticity: The user expresses deep regret, pain, self-loathing, and ongoing struggle in a way that aligns with the known experiences of many detransitioners, particularly those who medically transitioned for reasons other than classic transsexualism.
- No Scripted Talking Points: While the user has strong opinions (e.g., distinguishing "true transsexuals" from others), their arguments are elaborated with personal experience and specific observations rather than parroting simplified propaganda.
- Engagement and Evolution: The account shows engagement with others, changing views over time (e.g., their understanding of "dysphoria"), and reactions to new studies and events, which is typical of a real person.
The account exhibits the passion and strong opinions expected from someone who feels they were harmed by a medical path they now reject.
About me
I started transitioning because I hated how my male body changed during puberty, and I thought becoming a woman would fix everything. I loved how estrogen made me look and feel physically, but trying to act like a woman socially felt like a exhausting, fake performance. I realized I wasn't trans after meeting a woman for whom it was natural, while for me it was a stressful act. I've since detransitioned and am living as a male again, but I'm now stuck with all my original insecurities and a deep regret for ever starting. I see now my problem was always a hatred of my masculinized body, not a need to live as a woman.
My detransition story
My journey with transition and detransition is complicated, and it all started with a deep hatred for my body that began when I hit puberty. I was born male, and as soon as testosterone started changing me, I felt like my body was being ruined. I hated everything about it: the beard growth, the body hair, the fact that I started losing my hair in my late teens, the acne, and the male smell. I remember feeling like my perfect, clean body from childhood was being taken away and replaced with something ugly and dirty. I was also gay, which I realized around age 9, and the idea of being a man attracted to other men never made sense to me; it felt like a mistake. I thought that if I were a woman, everything would be right.
I first learned about the concept of being trans when I was 22, but the idea had been in my head organically since before I was 10. By the time I was 27, my body had masculinized so much that I felt desperate. I saw starting estrogen as a way to escape. I loved the effects of HRT. It stopped and reversed my hair loss, gave me softer skin, reduced my body hair, eliminated my acne and male body odor, and gave me a low libido. For the first time in years, I felt okay with my reflection. I thought this meant I was truly trans, because I’d been told that if you like the effects of HRT, you must be a woman.
I was on a full dose of estrogen for about four years. I did laser hair removal on my face and worked on my voice. But I eventually tried to socially transition, and that’s where everything fell apart. I realized that looking like a woman wasn't enough to actually live as one. I had to learn how to act like a woman—how to walk, talk, sit, stand, and smile in a feminine way. This wasn't natural for me at all; it was a constant, conscious performance. It was exhausting and felt fake, like a 24/7 job I could never quit. I’d be fine in short interactions, but over a whole day, I’d get distracted and slip back into my natural male mannerisms. This acting created a huge amount of anxiety and stress. I felt like I was lying all the time and was terrified of being "clocked."
My perspective completely changed when I met a trans woman who was the opposite of me. She didn't need to act at all; being seen as a woman came naturally to her from her body language and mannerisms. She told me that before she transitioned, she had to consciously act like a man to fit in, and it made her miserable. Transition for her was about freedom from that act. For me, transition was about putting on an act. I was transitioning into the very distress that she was trying to escape. That’s when I realized I wasn't trans. What I had wasn't gender dysphoria; it was body dysmorphia. I hated my male body, but I was perfectly comfortable behaving as a male socially. I was trying to use transition as a coping mechanism for my hatred of masculinization.
I decided to detransition. Stopping HRT was hard because I missed the physical effects immediately. My testosterone came back, and my body started remasculinizing: my hairline receded again, body hair returned, acne came back, and I lost the ability to cry easily. I don’t regret detransitioning because I know transition was a dead end for me, but I deeply regret that I ever learned about it in the first place. All the insecurities that drove me to transition are still there, stronger than ever. I’m now stuck between two miserable states: transitioning meant living a stressful, fake life, and detransitioning means living with a body I hate. I feel like I’ve lost the only thing that made me feel okay about myself.
I now see that I was influenced by online communities and a flawed understanding of gender. I’m also autistic, which I think made me blind to the subtle social cues of gender. I saw the world in a very superficial way, thinking the only difference between men and women was their physical bodies. I didn’t understand that gender is largely about unconscious behavior and mannerisms. My transition was also fueled by internalized homophobia; I couldn't accept being a gay man because the image of two masculine men together felt wrong to me.
I believe real trans people exist, but they are very rare. They are people who, from a young age, naturally have the body language and mannerisms of the opposite sex. Transition for them is a medical treatment that allows them to live normally. But the current affirmative model diagnoses almost anyone with vague feelings of discomfort as having gender dysphoria, which I think is a disaster. It captures people like me who have other issues, such as body dysmorphia, trauma, or anxiety.
Here is a timeline of my journey:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 9 | Realized I was gay and started to dislike the changes of male puberty. |
| 22 | First exposed to the concept of being transgender. |
| 27 | Started hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with estrogen. |
| 30 | Began attempting social transition, realized the difficulty of "passing" due to male mannerisms. |
| 31 | Met a trans woman whose experience was the opposite of mine, leading to my realization that I was not trans. |
| 31 | Stopped HRT and began detransitioning. |
| 32 (Present) | Living as a male again, but struggling with severe body dysmorphia and regret over the entire experience. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/Your_socks:
Can someone please talk me out of it?
Sure. Estrogen is an absolutely underwhelming drug.
It will give you A or B cups, but on your extremely wide chest, they will look more like 2 tiny bumps. Forget all the women with B cups you know, you have 10+ inches of band size on them, you will look nothing alike
Fat redistribution is a meme. Most people never get it. I'm 3 years in and any fat I gain goes right to my belly. Absolutely no hips or thighs to speak of. Want reliable curves? Go to the gym, start doing lower body lifts only, lift as heavy as you can, and eat plenty of protein. Having T ironically helps
Oh, and if you diet down to lose the male fat, your head will look absolutely gigantic. Idk why people don't mention that. It seriously looks bizzare
You'll get better skin and hair. But you know what's even better? A basic skin and hair routine coupled with professional treatments every few month. Hell, that's probably cheaper too
Most of the femininity of women comes from their unconscious behavioral cues. It comes from how they walk, talk, sit, stand, smile, pose, etc... just looking like a woman wouldn't get you any closer to femininity. These things arent learned, they are pure instinct. You will look like a feminine gay man at best. Women are women because they were born women, not because they have estrogen in their body
Finally, anything you've heard about the supposed mental effects of hrt is a giant placebo. People feel happy about doing something they wanted to do, that's it. HRT itself feels like nothing. Having high E now feels exactly like having high T before transition. If I somehow injected saline instead of hrt, I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference
Don't fall for the hype, estrogen won't change you
My therapist and I discussed her younger trans clients, and I showed a little skepticism towards the whole non-binary thing. She agreed and told me she had no idea why most of the trans people she was seeing these days are very different from her trans clients from just 10 years prior.
She feels a change, but she can't put her finger on why it happened because she isn't engrossed in the drama of the trans community as much as us
I'm not triggered, but I'm worried. These stunts sparked a huge wave of anti-lgbt sentiment back in my home country. The west has to understand that their constant pushing of boundaries is making the lives of actual lgbt people worse in the not-so-fortunate parts of the world
I proctored dozens of oral exams. Trust me, no one will care about your voice. The students don't wanna be there, the lecturer doesn't want to be there, and the TAs don't wanna be there. They just wanna fill out your grade card asap and move on. I can't recall the voice of a single student from these exams
Historically, there was much more mtf than ftm. The recent explosion in transition equalized the numbers of the two. That means there are much more ftms who shouldn't have transitioned, so they get over represented here
Besides that, T isnt as kind as E. T makes you go bald, get oily, get acne, etc... E reverses these things. So it's much more tempting for mtfs with bad transitions to just stop presenting as a woman but stay on hrt. I know so many mtfs who gave up on social transition, but wouldnt quit E to avoid going through male aging issues
If you've lived your life as a ghost with very few online friends and no relationships at all, any attention is good attention. Women get attention by default, from both men and women. This is obviously bad if it's unwanted, but it's not as bad as being invisible. I've also seen lots of ftms complaining about the reverse of this. Going from someone who people smile at and talk to, to someone who is totally invisible. It takes some "skill" to socialize as a man
There is also the ability to date someone like them. Male arousal isn't that picky, if something looks vaguely feminine, they can get aroused from it. So dating other mtfs becomes a viable option, even if they used to be straight. It might not be a stable relationship, but it beats nothing at all
But I think the biggest gateway to that kind of thinking is autism. It's very tempting to focus on one aspect of being a woman (the ease of acquiring dates) and lose sight of everything else that happens after that. Without this distorted focus, it would be a lot harder to think like that
That guy you dated was a typical crossdresser. Most of them act exactly like that, doesn't matter if they transitioned or not. Feminization/submission/humiliation kinks are always a major red flag. It's never just a kink, most of them are hypersexual, unfaithful, self-centered, and have a boatload of other issues. This isn't a terf argument, every society on earth used to demonize people like that for a good reason
You're describing attention-seeking behavior for self-validation, that's very common and usually harmless. But that's very different from arousal to oneself
man wtf is going on? why?
I think it's a mix of two very potent forces
The first is the progressive desire to subvert any system of traditional authority. Gender is being sold to the people as just a performance that we are conditioned into by our society, so breaking it by allowing people to create their own performance is seen as revolutionary in some way. This creates an atmosphere of fake acceptance where people don't call out those who have a painfully artificial and fake gender performance
The second thing is that lots of people seem to be carrying tons of gendered trauma. Not trauma as in ptsd, but trauma as in a profound dislike of one's gender. Men are unhappy with manhood, women are unhappy with womanhood. These feelings warp our perception and infect every standard we hold for ourselves. If we think there is a way out, we'll be tempted to take it
The way these 2 forces interact creates a positive feedback loop. If one transitions and their life doesn't improve, they're encouraged to attribute that to failure to society's bigotry, which leads to even more isolation in a trans bubble
Most are clockable by their body alone
A small percentage pass visually, you wouldn't be able to tell from just looking at them. But if you observe them in real life for a few hours, you'd be able to tell that their body language and behavior doesn't fit their sex. The longer you watch, the more mistakes they will make
A tiny percentage pass completely, you wouldn't be able to tell even if you observed them all day