I looked at detrans stories before going on hormones too. I felt I was different from what I saw. I was such a typical “case” of gender dysphoria starting in childhood, a “perfect” candidate. I tried other “treatments” (therapy, the gym, etc.) for seven years before going on hormones, and I had wanted to transition for five years before that. There were no “signs” I would detransition. I did trans/queer studies at school and wanted to serve the trans community in my profession. I believed with 100% certainty that I would transition for life. Still, within 2 years, I did detransition.

We’re all different here. There’s not one or two or even ten “detrans stories.” There are occasionally common themes in detrans posts, like underlying internalized homophobia, autism, or body dysmorphia, but there are also people with none of these who detransition. We don’t have enough research to adequately predict who will continue and discontinue hormone treatment. Take it from a graduate statistics student—the current studies are all flawed in different ways, either in their samples or their design, and the “detrans rates” you see touted around are probably not accurate. Not to mention current studies aren’t distinguishing well between detransition and regret.

I will be the first to say that a lot of people here aren’t very well-spoken either, or they entered transition lacking critical understanding of the construct of gender. These stories aren’t always described in scientific terms or ways that could translate with trans theory because people are talking about their feelings. These posts won’t “meet you where you are” and a lot of people in this sub won’t do so either because they can’t go back to seeing their thought processes before this big paradigm shift of whatever led them to detransition, or they’ll be downright hostile to you.

We also don’t all have the same ideology. I believe it’s an adult’s right to modify their body however they would like. I believe it does “work” for some people, even if we don’t know why. If you want to go ahead and transition regardless of what you’re seeing here, just say that it’s a risk you’re willing to take. That’s fine. It is your body. But don’t act like you’ve “verified” anything and “proven” to yourself that you won’t detransition, because there’s no way to do that. Don’t just come here and see what you want to see. We don’t know the mechanisms behind dysphoria, and you are unfortunately not an accurate psychoanalyst of yourself. No one is.

If you transition and it makes you happy, I’m happy for you. But it may not be the only treatment for dysphoria, and for some it is not an effective treatment at all. Statistically you are taking a risk. That’s just a fact. If you want to talk to someone who will actually meet you where you are, someone who doesn’t hate transness or trans people but also doesn’t see it as what it is projected to be in the mainstream, feel free to DM.

I realized that being a woman is a neutral part of me that doesn’t matter all that much. It definitely has no bearing on what personality traits I can have, or what I can wear, or what aesthetics I can achieve. While rationally I always knew this, my deep internalized feelings (that were hidden from me) were another story. The societal view of womanhood that we are all shown from a young age is very narrow: femininity is desirable, anything else is not. Everything women do is fetishized/sexualized. It’s an uncomfortable role to be a part of. I believed that, as a woman, my personality and appearance were undesirable and that I would always be chasing the unattainable —or, I thought it was a problem that I wasn’t all that interested in attaining femininity. Now I realize that I don’t care how people will view me as a woman because I think the societal view of womanhood is fundamentally wrong and constrictive; a person’s sex is the least interesting thing about them and certainly is not enough to make predictions about their personality or what they want in life. A lot of the feelings I had about failing to be feminine came from being a lesbian, because society shows us that heterosexuality is a huge part of doing womanhood “correctly.” But I don’t have to participate in these things to be a woman —I just am a woman. I just want to be safe and healthy in the body I have.

I think a lot of people who detransition feel tired of focusing on appearance all the time and devoting so much effort to how people perceive them. I want to prioritize how I feel for once. Not everything is about looks. When I perceived myself as a trans man both before and on hormones, I was constantly thinking about everything I could do to make sure I passed. It takes a toll and I don’t want to continue to live my life that way anymore, even if it’s in the opposite direction.

I regret a lot of my transition or feel uncomfortable from the amount that I have masculinized, but I also felt uncomfortable before testosterone and my solution to overperform masculinity wasn’t the answer, so why would I use the same approach with femininity now? The one thing I needed to do was just be myself, or accepting myself, instead of always fighting an uphill battle with regards to how people perceive me. After being on T, the reality is that I have masculinized and that is now part of myself that I have to accept. I don’t have much control over that now. What I have control over is being myself in other ways. Hair, clothing, makeup, etc. can be part of this. I was never and still am not comfortable in super feminine clothes—that’s part of why I thought I was trans in the first place. A lot of people who have identified as trans men don’t feel comfortable in feminine clothing. So why would I force myself to do anything now when detransition is supposed to be about being my authentic self—accepting that I’m female with masculine traits?

I’m doing now what I wished I had done instead of medically transition—be my authentic sex and just wear whatever/look however I want as a female. I don’t need to perform femininity to be female. I don’t want to “perform” anything anymore. That’s why I stopped hormones. I started hormones and forced myself into certain aesthetics to “become” a man, I will not stop hormones and force myself into aesthetics to “become” a woman. I am what I am no matter what I’ve done to myself.

The butch lesbian whose post you commented on today is making the best of their situation while still being authentic to their preferences and things they like. Butches like to look masculine. I would not expect a cis butch woman who is misgendered as male to compromise anything about their appearance (start wearing makeup, wear more feminine clothes, etc.) to ensure that others think they look female. Detrans people have permanent effects from medical interventions intended to make us look like the opposite sex. Being on T for years, having surgeries, etc. are not reversible. Why not try to embrace literally anything that you actually like about those interventions instead of fighting tooth and nail to become your pretransition self, something you can never attain (just like we can never become the opposite sex)? Aside from mental energy, many of us don’t have the financial resources or time needed to do this, or don’t want to devote that to more cosmetic maneuvers. Even if you want to do everything to be gendered female again (laser hair removal, makeup, etc.) so much of ever looking female again is just about time spent off T. Time to let hair grow or for the face and skin to feminize again. At any point in detransition, why not get joy where you can find it? Some detrans women get a lot of joy from feminizing after T in ways they never used to like—others are still masculine or want to wear masculine clothing or have short hair or whatever because that is what makes them feel like themselves, because that’s what they would be doing if they had never been on T at all. Why grow out their hair or wear hyperfeminine clothing or makeup and continue to be inauthentic to themselves, just in a different way, to try to fight the permanent effects of T for everyone else to perceive them as a woman? Thinking there is a right way to be a woman is what got a lot of us into this mess.

I think continuing to prioritize appearance and the perception of others will only lead many of us to more detriment and misery.

You know, I felt the same way. When I dated men, I didn’t like them to see me as “other” and I wanted to feel like a man with another man. I think it came down to not wanting to feel subservient or stupid in their eyes, because so many men view women that way. I think you should remind yourself again that being a woman doesn’t really mean anything about you. Many men won’t see it that way because of societal misogyny, but that isn’t your problem to respond to as an individual, and the answer isn’t to become a man. Just be who you are. Decentralize gender as an important part of how you perceive yourself.

I can see that you are a minor so I don’t want to be try to convince you of anything, that’s not fair. But I can tell you my experience. If I had said any of this to my younger self, it would not have helped me because I didn’t think my dysphoria was coming from internalized misogyny and internalized homophobia. I had read through detransition stories and still did not see that in my future. It was the firsthand experience of taking testosterone for 2 years and still feeling that fraudulent feeling that convinced me that I was a woman. Taking T did not reduce my dysphoria and may have increased it. I didn’t feel like a man, I felt like a freak. I can’t say for sure if that would happen to you, but living as a woman now after experiencing that feeling viscerally firsthand, after taking T, is much harder because of being androgenized. I guess I don’t know if you have taken T, but I wish that I could prevent you from ever feeling what I feel (I think that’s where a lot of detransitioners are coming from) but I really can’t implement into your mind what it feels like for me. Of course I had dysphoria and still do to this day, but transition just was not the cure. So I have simply ruled out transition as a possible solution for those feelings. It’s harder when maybe you haven’t tried T yet and you feel like you may always wonder if it would help you.

My only advice would be to keep trying to decentralize gender from how you view yourself. When you think of yourself, think of the many diverse descriptors you might use that have nothing to do with gender. Try to feel okay in being gender nonconforming—try to internalize that even masculinity and femininity have nothing to do with gender. I’m sorry that you are dealing with this—I struggled badly from 13-22 with dysphoria and I feel like it took a lot of attention away from trying to find myself in ways that had nothing to do with gender OR sexuality. It has started to get so much better now at 23-24. If you are already having doubts about transitioning as a solution for dysphoria, those thoughts will not change.

Hmm, that’s really interesting. Something kind of similar happened to me but the T definitely isn’t even out of my system yet—it’s only been like a week. But for the first time in about a year, I got called “miss” at the grocery store yesterday. Maybe it’s something about demeanor.

Rest assured that people can speculate all they want, but no one really knows anything until/unless you tell them. Take your time.