This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or inauthentic.
The user's posts display a consistent, nuanced, and emotionally complex perspective that aligns with a genuine desister/detransitioner. They express personal fears about safety, detailed reflections on their transition, and offer supportive, specific advice to others. The writing style is human, with natural variations in tone and topic. The passion and frustration present are consistent with the harm and stigma experienced by this community.
About me
I was born female and began taking testosterone at 18, living as a man for years. I detransitioned at 22 because living as a trans person felt too dangerous with the constant threat of violence and hatred. A lot of my initial transition was about escaping the racism and sexism I faced and trying to control how others saw me. I don't regret my top surgery, as it felt right for my body, but I see the social transition as a waste of energy. Now, I'm learning to accept myself as I've always been and making choices based on my safety and stability.
My detransition story
My entire journey with transition and detransition was complicated and deeply tied to fear. I was born female and for a long time, I believed I was a trans man. I started taking testosterone and lived as a man for several years. I was stealth, meaning no one knew I was trans, and I was seen as a cis man.
A huge reason I decided to detransition was because of safety. Living as a trans person felt incredibly dangerous. I heard people talking almost every day about how disgusting trans people are, using slurs like "shemale" or "tranny," and even saying they would become violent if they found out someone was trans. I realized I could never truly be safe as long as I was living here and identified as trans. It would be safer for me to just be seen as a cis woman. My detransition wasn't because I woke up one day and realized I wasn't trans; it was a choice I felt I had to make to protect myself.
Looking back, I think a lot of my initial desire to transition came from a place of discomfort with how people saw me. I've faced a lot of racism living in a white area, and it's awful to have people make assumptions about you because of your race. I started to feel like my body was the same way—people saw me as a woman and made all these assumptions about who I was because of that. Transitioning felt like a way to escape that and have more control over how I was perceived.
I don't think I ever had a solid, internal sense of gender. For me, it was more about the external perception and the safety that came with being seen as male. I didn't have bottom surgery, but I did get top surgery. I don't regret the top surgery itself because I always hated my breasts and felt a lot of discomfort with them, even before I considered transition. That part of the change felt right for my body, regardless of my gender.
I do have some regrets about the social aspect of transition. It feels like it was a huge waste of time and energy. I spent so much effort trying to become someone else, to be seen as male, only to realize that the core issue was never my gender but how unsafe I felt in the world as myself. I sometimes worry that I never really looked male, even when I was on testosterone and passing, but I have to remind myself that the physical changes were real. Testosterone did change my face and body; it’s just that those changes can reverse.
Now, I'm trying to move forward. I’m focusing on practical steps for my future, like going to community college to figure out what I want to do with my life. I'm learning to accept that I am who I have always been, and that no medical or social transition can fundamentally change that. My journey has left me with a lot of mixed feelings, but mostly I feel relieved to be making choices based on what I need to be safe and stable, rather than what I think I should be.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 18 | Started taking testosterone and began living as a man. |
| 22 | Stopped testosterone and began socially detransitioning back to living as a woman, primarily due to safety concerns and transphobia. |
Top Comments by /u/aneerithink:
Community college
Seriously.
Depending on where you are some CCs even have joint programs with 4 year colleges where if you get a certain GPA you'll automatically transfer.
If you're poor then a pell grant will most likely cover 95%
I'm assuming you're in the states.
And doing that will help you interact with more people as well
You'll most likely be taking general courses in different subject areas and you'll be able to figure out what you like more.
And there's no need to worry about being short or feminine looking or having some gynecomastia. Plenty of guys are like that and one of the cool things about being a short dude is being able to have solidarity with other short dudes.
You'll most likely be put in general classes where you can discover what you want to do, most people in CC have no idea what they want to do. And you just be part time and take a class or two every semester so that you have even more time to figure things out. (Be warned that financial aid works differently for part time students though, but you'll still get some financial aid and CC is the cheapest option)
I don't know what to say about the motivation thing but perhaps if there's any subject at all that you find interesting you could pick a class in that subject area and then slowly become more motivated as it goes along? Sorry, not sure how that stuff works.
If you end up wanting to go then apply asap, you can fill out your application and get accepted and then start classes a year later. But knowing that it's an option you can go for at any time will be helpful.
I used to be interested in IT and whatnot, maybe that would work?
Yes! It would work! (there's a small chance that depending on where you are, the college doesn't have an it or computer science department, but that's a very slim chance).
And you're welcome! Good luck!
I want to detransition. But I want to detransition in an environment where it's a choice and not pressured.
This sub is supposed to be about helping detransitioners. There's no need to talk about trans people who are happy transitioning.
It doesn't seem like this place accepts people who are trans but don't detransition.
Also this post IS specifically about looking for other places anyways
I don't know if any of this is appropriate to say or not, and if it's not then lmk and I'll delete so that you don't have to look at it.
It makes me feel like I never really looked male, and I have some mixed feelings about it. I feel like being trans in the first place was a huge waste of time and energy and never really changed me
I'm mostly responding to this because below you said you don't want to regret transitioning and up here you said the above.
The important thing that I hope you can realize is that transition didn't change you. It never can or could. You've always been you and regardless of your life experiences that will always be you. You're not becoming a different person, you're just advancing in your life.
And the other part, the way you look now doesn't necessarily have to do with what you looked like when you were on T. If you're on T for over a year then it generally changes various aspects of your facial structure. It doesn't make you grow cheekbones or grow a jaw bone if you didn't have one pre-T and started T after puberty, but it does remove a lot of the fat covering the jaw bone and removes a lot of cheek fat so that your face looks sharper and more stereotypically male. So if you're regretting not ever looking male in the past, you could very well have looked male in the past but gotten back all that cheek fat and other things in the past year. If you weren't being she'd on T then you were passing. Some trans men end up using their beards as a shield but there are plenty that can't grow beards because of genetics but still have facial changes that make them pass.
I'm glad you feel more comfortable with detransitioning, but if you feel bad about thinking that you didn't look male when you tried to, you probably did.
If anyone sees this then PLEASE dont do this. Do you really think it's okay for picketers to overrun planned parenthood like that? They're not "abortion clinics". That's not even a significant proportion of what they do. And the same goes for centers where trans people get medical care. You're not just harassing the few people who are there to have an abortion or to get treatment for gender dysphoria, you're harassing everyone else as well. But lets say for a second that these clinics are explicitly for abortion or transition related services. How in any way is it still okay? If there are picketers then there will be cameras. If the videos on the cameras are seen then every one will know or think that someone had an abortion or that someone is trans and they will start being attacked for it. And doing this stuff isn't gonna change people's minds. There's zero positives to picketing like that.
They're just not geared towards it. There are a bunch of detransitioners who pop up on r/asktransgender and are nice, but there aren't many of them and I feel like most of the people there don't really unferstand.
Detransitioning and transitioning are completely separate things. It's not like you're transitioning from female to male and then transitioning from male to female. You're transitioning from female to male and then reversing that to be more like before. Trans people generally accept detransitioning, but it's .2 to 6 percent of a population that's already less than 1 percent...so there aren't a lot. I did post about detransitioning on there. The one detransitioner who replied also agreed with me about how frustrating it is to only have detransition resources that are explicitly anti trans. The other trans people who replied didn't know of any resources to give me.
Also, a lot of them seem to put transition at a forefront. And I can understand why. It's difficult to exist as and be seen as something that you so strongly believe you aren't. I've faced tons of racism from living in a white area and it kinda sucks to have people only see me as a specific way and assume things about me because of my race. My body was kinda the same way. But for me, my safety is more important. It's extemely dangerous for me to be trans. It would be fine if I was just a cis woman. And it's okay for the moment because I'm stealth and seen as a cis man. But there's always the risk of someone finding out that I'm actually a trans man and being attacked for being a shemale or tranny. I think I hear people almost every day talk about how disgusting it is for people like me to exist or how they'd kill themselves and their partner if their partner was trans because of how disgusting it is to have sex with a trans person. I can't be safe as long as I live here as a trans person. Every detransitioner there seems to be detransitioned because they just realized it wasn't for them. For the people that can't transition currently for financial, social, safety, etc reasons, it seems like they're still trying to transition as much as they can. Except I'd like to be able to talk to someone who detransitioned because of transphobia and doesn't think transitioning again would be in their future.
Edit: Wtf is this so downvoted for?