My name isn't important, but my story is. I’m a woman, and my journey through transition and detransition was long and complicated. It was deeply tied to my struggles with accepting myself as a lesbian and with a lot of internal pain I was carrying.

I was born female, and I started to feel a deep discomfort with my body when I hit puberty. I hated developing breasts; it felt wrong and foreign to me. I now believe this was a mix of body dysmorphia and the difficulty of going through a female puberty while being a masculine, homosexual person. I felt like I didn't fit anywhere. I had a lot of anxiety and very low self-esteem. Looking back, I think a lot of this was also related to internalized homophobia; it was easier to think I was a man than to accept being a butch lesbian in a world that isn't always kind to us.

I found a lot of my initial ideas about transition online. I was influenced by the communities I found, which offered what felt like a clear solution to all my problems. I started my transition by first identifying as non-binary, but that quickly shifted to identifying as a transgender man. I began taking testosterone when I was 19 years old. The changes felt right at first; my voice dropped, and I liked my body becoming more masculine. I think for a time, it was a form of escapism from my deeper issues.

I eventually got top surgery to remove my breasts. I don't regret the surgery itself because I still have a lot of discomfort with having breasts, but I deeply regret the reasons why I did it and the permanent changes from testosterone. I am now infertile, which is a serious and lasting complication of my transition that I have to live with.

After several years living as a man, I began to detransition. This was not an easy decision. I faced a lot of harsh rejection from the transgender community I had been a part of. I was told that I was never really trans, which felt like a huge double standard. They say you don't need surgery or hormones to be valid, but if you detransition after having them, they say you were never trans to begin with. This was incredibly isolating.

I also felt used by political groups. For a brief time, I felt like some right-wing voices were the only ones who would listen to my story, but I quickly realized they didn't truly care about me or other detransitioners. They only wanted to use my experience as a pawn in their arguments against transgender people. This was especially difficult for me because my own transition was so wrapped up in religious trauma and internalized homophobia, and many of those same political figures are extremely homophobic and religious.

Now, I am learning to accept myself as a butch lesbian. I've found a community of other butch women who have been incredibly supportive, and that has helped more than anything else. I don't believe my initial feelings were truly gender dysphoria in the way it's often described. I think it was a combination of hating the changes of female puberty, struggling with my homosexuality, and dealing with underlying mental health issues like anxiety and low self-esteem.

Here is a timeline of my journey: