I don't think he's saying no one experiences "being trans." He compared the gender identity stuff to lobotomy, which was a real treatment, for real symptoms people experienced, but the point being: it was a bad treatment. I think he's saying hormones and surgeries in response to feelings or identities are a bad treatment.

I read recently that "Sybil," the woman who kicked off the multiple personality phenomenon, and made it so popular that many other people (presumably sincerely) experienced those symptoms (it's kind of a classic example of social contagion) -- admitted that she made the whole thing up. But these ideas led to real suffering in thousands of people who sincerely felt they suffered the same thing.

Many people believe "being trans" is similar to having multiple personalities. The people who suffer from it genuinely experience the symptoms, but it's a culture-bound phenomenon, spread by social contagion and the power of suggestion. To say it's "all in your head" would be to grossly oversimplify -- most people probably can't just "will it away" (although interestingly, probably some can--you can read many anecdotes from people who experienced very real, chronic back pain, after learning their particular back pain was probably psychogenic -- and when they relized this, many people never had back pain again -- after in some cases decades of very real pain).

In any case, if people really experience the symptoms of "being trans" in a genuine way, it probably doesn't matter to them one bit if it's generated by social contagion, suggestion, and their own mids. The suffering is every bit as real.

The million-dollar question is, What is the very best treatment for these real symptoms that cause real distress? The guy in this story is suggesting hormones and surgeries are not the very best treatment. I would tend to agree. Others might disagree.

" There's no future for trans people. What happens, though, if I go back and try and pick up the pieces of my old identity, but regret it more? What if all the things that led me to transition just come back?"

​

You sort of answered your own question here. Your pain, which led you to transition, is real, but the "solution" (transition) didn't result in a happy solution. So why would you regret that, and go back to it?

​

You've realized either way, transition or no transition, you're not comfortable in your own body. You understand (as you mentioned) you won't ever be female, and yet you weren't happy being male.

It sounds to me that your solution isn't "Well, let's just keep trying this thing that hasn't worked for me." It sounds to me like you're realizing, "This didn't work, and so it makes sense to give that up, but I'm afraid of revisiting my old problems because I don't know what else to do with my pain." And that's all very understandable.

Someone once described being obsessed with one's "identity" and sex/gender as an addiction of sorts. If that became the focus/addiction of your life at some point, you might have noticed a lot of other interests and pursuits dropping away -- or maybe, if you were depressed when you started, and didn't _replace_ other interests and pursuits, maybe transitioning filled a huge void for you?

Either way, the key in overcoming an obsession or behavioral addiction -- once you've decided it's unhelpful in your life -- is to replace it with other things. Have substitute behaviors. If someone has other behavioral addictions, like emotional eating, they might replace the urge to emotionally eat with something incompatible with that, like going jogging. Similarly, a porn addiction could be addressed by replacing that behavior with something that doesn't involve sitting alone in total privacy -- like talking to a roommate or going to the library. So, similarly whatever triggers you to obsess about your "identity/gender" instead of living and enjoying your life, you might try to replace it with something else, which will help you live life.

Therapy might help too, if that's available to you. Someone who specializes in behavioral addictions would be better than a "gender therapist" who might misunderstand what you want and encourage you to continue down a road that hasn't made you happy. You might tell the therapist that your goal is to accept your natural body but also to fill your life with things, which will help you stop obsessing over it.

Good luck.

​

​

That I say I really disliked a meal somewhere, got food poisoning, had terrible service, got mugged in the parking lot, and don't recommend anyone else going there is also a personal opinion that is given to anyone who might listen. But you wouldn't be so butthurt about that, would you? Especially if it was said in a support group for people who had bad experiences in restaurants.

So maybe look at your own feelings and motives and psychological wounds here. The poster said they have PTSD around this, and yet you're going on the attack with your unasked-for input (on a support group for this very issue, no less!) about what this person should or shouldn't say about their own personal experience and their no-doubt completely noble and well-intentioned wish to prevent someone else from going through what they did.

Let's all try to help each other instead of hurt.

As another parent, I want to say I agree with this 100%. If my child ever decided transition was not right for them (because I'm pretty sure it's not, but this is something that a person has to explore and discover on their own), I would just be overjoyed that they were no longer obsessing on gender, contemplating unnecessary medical treatments and surgeries, and decided to just BE, to just live life in all the ways that exist beyond an obsession with gender, and I would never once need to hear my kid say "This was a mistake" or expect an apology or anything. This is something for whatever reason you needed to do, so in that sense it's not a mistake and no one needs to apologize.

I would be so happy to hear about the decision if it were my child (so I encourage you to tell your mom if you're emotionally able--obviously none of us knows the full situation and full dynamic so I don't want to tell you what to do) but if my child approached me with this, I would just be HAPPY, and I would not say "I told you so" or anything negative about any of it.

I just want my kid happy and healthy, and to live in their own body without this gender-focus. To me, it's 100% not about appearance or body or facial hair, or what anyone's voice sounds like now, or whether someone wears clothes or "tries" to look a certain way. No, to me, it's all about living your life authentically, in your own body, however you currently look or don't look, current sound or don't sound.

I wish you the very, very best.

For decades, the few outliers who absolutely, positively couldn't live any other way than by taking hormones and drastically surgically altering their bodies were able to find doctors willing to do this. I can't imagine that would cease any time soon.

As it is, though, these folks still have higher than normal rates for suicide attempts. It's not as if the surgeries made these folks "happy" overall - although a few are indeed happy with it.

It's a little bit like saying, "Smoking cigarettes is good for digestion, so it's a good idea to prescribe cigarette smoking for digestive troubles." No...the harm of smoking for the vast majority of people outweighs the small benefit on digestion for the outliers.

Smoking cigarettes is a bad treatment for digestive troubles. Overall it causes more harm than good, although a few people might benefit and have no evidence of harm. Likewise, hormones and surgery are a bad treatment for gender dysphoria.

You don't treat the vast majority of people and allow them to be harmed, according to what benefits, or might benefit, a very small number of people. That's just not how medicine or policy works -- or at least it's not how it should work. Groups like WPATH don't really seem to give a damn, though.

With the transgender issue -- we see more and more AND MORE people suddenly identifying as "transgender" and this is being...celebrated almost. Why would something as painful as gender dysphoria, which is so extreme as to lead people to wish to drastically alter their bodies, be cause for celebration?

Social contagion of mental health problems is a thing. Sybil admitted she invented her "multiple personalities" -- flat-out lied about it, to get attention from her therapist -- and yet thousands of people sincerely developed what they experienced as "multiple personalities" -- that's how MANY types of mental health conditions spread.

The more we tell young people that "being trans" is no big deal, that "doctors can change your gender" -- the more we tell garden-variety gender nonconforming and/or same-sex attracted kids that might "really be" the opposite sex, and set them on the path of social transition, hormone blockers, hormones, surgeries, the more we are CREATING the problem of gender dysphoria in many, many people who, if left alone, never would have had a problem: They would go through natural puberty and accept their body. They would accept they were gay or lesbian and not "trans." The majority would be perfectly happy NOT "being trans" if we simply left them alone.

So it will NEVER be "on my conscience" that I'm speaking out against public policies and new medical "standards of care" which are actually increasing human suffering. That's just a fact.

What any individual chooses to do with his or her own body, I support them. How any individual chooses to live her or her life, they have my respect and I wish them well. But I will argue, to my last breath, against policies that are HARMING vulnerable children and youth, and creating unbelievable, needless amounts of suffering.

I think I understand what you're saying. You don't feel female or trans, so you'd prefer to detrans, but you're also kind of sick of the whole "trans" culture, and to detrans means announcing a name change and pronoun change, which is reminiscent of what you did the first time around, and what trans people do, ie, tell others what to call them.

Is that a fair summary?

I hear your concern. It makes sense. On the other hand, "going back" is more like "undoing what you did before" and not "doing more of the same." If it's what you choose to do, it involves reclaiming your original self, and giving up what you now have come to feel is a false self. There's nothing embarrassing about that.

Good luck to you and best wishes.

I like her focus on doing things outside herself. It sounds satisfying to her. Sometimes it seems like (some) people get sucked into the trans way-of-being via a true obsession with self, and the antidote for self-obsession is doing things for others, thinking of others, helping others.

Gender dysphoria is real, and at the same time, gender dysphoria is not the same as "being trans."

Look at it this way -- anorexia is real as well. Sufferers believe they are too fat. So, anorexia is a real problem, but it is not, as sufferers believe, a problem of "being fat." Any doctor who "affirmed" the fatness of the patient, in direct conflict with material reality, and who agreed to do, say, weight loss surgery on the patient, would be thought to be a bad doctor.

Likewise, someday, doctors who "affirmed" patients belief that it's appropriate to take high doses of hormones not intended for their bodies, and to have surgeries to cosmetically alter their bodies to look more like the other sex, in direct conflict with material reality (meaning, the patient already has their own hormones, their own healthy body), will be thought to have been bad doctors.

Now...to take it one step further -- how is gender dysphoria different from "being trans"? People equate the two, because they believe that dysphoria, and therefore the state of "being trans" is somehow hard-wired into people's brains. They believe people with dysphoria are "born this way."

This is one of the reasons why people who believe themselves to "be trans" are equated with LGB people. In fact, while gay and lesbian people are indeed "born this way," people with gender dysphoria are not.

Why do I say that? Well, we know -- from way before the current trend of affirming and transitioning "trans kids" -- that waiting for kids to go through a natural puberty "cures" gender dysphoria in the vast, vast majority of cases.

By contrast, the current trend of putting kids on puberty blockers ensures that almost all of them will remain dysphoric and on the "transgender" path.

So...think about it: Natural puberty means that most kids lose their desire to be the opposite sex. Blocking natural puberty means that most kids maintain their desire to be the opposite sex. Regardless of which "treatment" for dysphoria in kids you prefer, it's clear that the outcomes are very different, depending on the intervention you choose: natural puberty or blocked puberty.

That, right there, is rock-solid evidence that people with gender dysphoria are not in fact "born this way" in the same sense that sexual attraction is ingrained in us.

If you're not "born this way" -- if it's not a hard-wired condition -- then what sorts of interventions and treatments in your life do you want to commit to? Do you want to undertake the dangers, side effects, complications, and (often) bad health and bad mental-health outcomes (and in some cases, irreversibility) associated with hormones and surgeries? Or do you want to work on your mental health to explore the reasons why you feel this way, and explore less "medically interventionist" treatments?

Here's another fun fact. As transgender people age, some of them (just like any other group of people) will get dementia. When that happens, people with dementia often go mentally way back in time, for example, believing that a grandson is their brother, or believing that they are back in their childhood home. One of the things that often greatly upsets transgender elders with dementia is being called by their "new" pronouns instead of the ones they were called when they were young. They've apparently forgotten all about "being trans." That's another indication that they were not "born that way" -- they at one time they knew they were male/female, and it was congruent with their lived experience.

TL;DR: Gender dysphoria is real, but "being trans" is not. There is no demonstrable evidence that anyone can "be" an embodied set of gender stereotypes or expectations, such that the most appropriate treatment would be to drastically cosmetically change their body... It's ludicrous if you think about it.

​

Your desire to be invisible is well, kind of unhealthy.. man or woman.

I kind of disagree with this? People who are more introverted like to be invisible to randos, and that's perfectly OK. They might still want to be seen and connect with people who matter, family and close friends, but just going out on the street and getting attention from strangers can be truly exhausting, if you're not extraverted.

I'm sorry this is happening to you. I had this issue somewhat, back when I was "young and cute" and also very assertive and outspoken. I wanted to be taken seriously and not treated as a romantic/sexual object. Now that I'm middle aged and have had a couple kids, it's no longer an issue ha.

So, time will solve this problem, but that doesn't help you now.

But, thinking back, I think what helped was to cultivate a neutral (not unpleasant) but very direct and unambiguous demeanor. "No, I'm not interested in [fill in the blank] but thanks, Joel" (no explanation, no excuses, no hope of a maybe-another-time) or if I was being interrupted, "I'm still talking, Mike." Etc. Just very matter-of-fact without getting pissy -- not because pissiness was never warranted, but some guys love thinking they've gotten to you, or they think it's "cute" to see a cute young woman angry. So a demeanor that was just very direct, unexcitable, while still standing up for myself was very helpful.