This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears to be authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or inauthentic.
The user's story is highly detailed, emotionally complex, and internally consistent over time. They describe deeply personal and specific experiences with transition, detransition, surgery, relationships, and ongoing physical and psychological challenges. The language is nuanced, and their engagement with others shows appropriate emotional reactivity and boundary-setting, which is not typical of automated accounts. The passion and anger expressed are consistent with the genuine trauma and regret described.
About me
I was born female and grew up in a religious home, which made me feel deep shame about being attracted to girls. I thought transitioning to male would make my feelings seem normal and let me escape being a lesbian. I rushed into testosterone and surgery at 16, but living as a man was exhausting and I deeply regret the permanent changes. I've realized my discomfort was from internalized homophobia, not being in the wrong body, and I now know I'm just a masculine lesbian. I'm learning to accept myself while dealing with the lasting physical consequences of that choice.
My detransition story
My journey with transition and detransition has been the most difficult experience of my life. I was born female, and from a young age, I knew I was attracted to other girls. I grew up in a religious environment, and this caused me a lot of internal conflict and shame. I felt like my feelings were unnatural and wrong.
When I was a teenager, I discovered the concept of being transgender online. It felt like an answer. I thought that if I could become a man, then my attraction to women would be seen as straight and normal. I wouldn't have to be a lesbian. This was a huge part of why I decided to transition; it felt like an escape from the shame and self-hatred I felt about my sexuality.
I started my social transition at 16. I was so sure it was the right path, even though I had doubts from the very beginning. I told myself that the doubts would go away once I finally looked like a man. I was in a rush, feeling like I had to start hormones and get surgery before I was 20, or it would be "too late" to ever pass.
I started testosterone at 16 and got top surgery when I was 16 as well. The surgeon required a picture of my chest for the online consultation. After the surgery, I deleted that picture, trying to erase any evidence that I was ever female. Now, at 19, I lie awake at night trying to remember what it felt like to have breasts. I regret the surgery deeply. I wish I had just used a binder, because even if it caused some damage, at least I would have something left. I feel a profound sense of loss.
Living as a man was exhausting. I had to constantly monitor my mannerisms, my walk, my smile, and my interests to be seen as male. Even then, people often thought I was a gay man because I couldn't hide all my femininity. The pressure of repressing myself every single day became too much. I started having recurring dreams where I was a woman again, with long hair and breasts, feeling beautiful. Waking up from those dreams filled me with a deep sadness and regret. It was after one of these dreams that I finally admitted to myself that I had made a mistake and needed to detransition.
A big part of my healing has been realizing that it's okay to not have everything figured out and to slow down. I now wear padded sports bras to give my flat chest a more feminine shape, since I can't wear normal bras anymore. I experiment with makeup, wigs, and clothes that make me feel happy. I'm also dealing with the permanent changes from testosterone. I'm very hairy and have to shave my face daily with a special electric razor to avoid skin irritation. I'm using laser hair removal on my face and an at-home device on my body to try and reduce the hair. The testosterone also caused my hairline to recede and my hair to thin out dramatically, which has been really hard on my self-esteem.
Figuring out my sexuality has been a journey too. I know now that I am a lesbian. Moving to my partner's country, which is more accepting of lesbians than my home country, actually helped me finally realize this. My partner initially wanted to break up when I told her I was detransitioning, but she came to understand that I am the same person she fell in love with. She had to confront her own identity and realize she isn't 100% straight, which was difficult for her too.
I do have regrets about transitioning. I regret the permanent changes to my body and the loss of my fertility. I feel grief for the young woman I never got to be. My mom is supportive but also has a contradictory mindset; she feels guilty for allowing me to transition as a minor but still defends the right for minors to transition. I think it's her way of dealing with her own guilt.
My thoughts on gender now are that it's okay to be a masculine woman. It's okay to be a lesbian. I don't think my discomfort was ever truly about being in the wrong body; it was a mixture of internalized homophobia, body dysmorphia, and the normal discomfort of going through female puberty. I was a confused kid who found what looked like a solution online and raced into it without being able to fully understand the lifelong consequences.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 16 | Started socially identifying as male. Started testosterone. Had top surgery (double mastectomy). |
| 16-19 | Lived as a male for approximately 3 years. |
| 19 | Realized I had made a mistake and began my detransition. Stopped taking testosterone. |
| 19 (Present) | Currently navigating life as a detransitioned female, dealing with the permanent effects of medical transition. |
Top Comments by /u/blueshrubs:
I’m glad you were able to avoid top surgery! It must have been difficult to make the decision to stop all this at only 14. You should feel proud of yourself for being so brave. I’m older than you, but it still took me much longer to realize I wanted to detransition. Thanks for sharing this ❤️
Thank you for your comment.
I don’t believe you are asking me this question in good faith. And because of that, I do not feel like giving you an explanation would be productive.
However, I will say that since we are currently in a subreddit focused on detransition, I’m sure you are already familiar with the fact that some people, due to internal and external circumstances, make decisions that they regret, especially as young people lacking life experience. I shared my story today not to blame my surgeon, but because I am dealing with this very heavy emotion of regret and just needed to vent to people who could understand me.
Your reply, whether intentional or not, is very callous. She was still very young, barely a legal adult when she started T. Her brain was not fully developed yet. It was not her fault that she got wrapped up in the trans ideology and I completely disagree that doctors don’t have the responsibility to put an end to this nonsense. Stop victim blaming.
I can relate to you. I took the same type of picture of myself at 16 as per the surgeon’s request for my online mastectomy consultation. After surgery, I deleted the picture in an attempt to erase any photographic evidence that I was ever female. But now at 19, I lie awake at night just trying to remember what it even felt like to have breasts. I don’t have any advice, just solidarity. I hope both of us can find a way forward. ❤️
Perhaps consider giving yourself a bit of time to heal first. ❤️I’m not trying to be condescending at all, I just worry that going from one major surgery right into the next might not be good for your mental or physical wellbeing.
I really feel for you though. I had a mastectomy 3 years ago, and I regret it more and more every day. Hang in there.
Yeah it was pretty disheartening to see those comments to be honest. It’s upsetting that my pain has to be controversial, when I was never trying to start a debate just express my own personal grief. Someone basically implying that I did this to myself doesn’t change my current reality. But I’m really touched that you care, so thank you.
Omg. I could’ve just chosen this whole time to be attracted to men??? And NOT lost almost everyone I cared about who couldn’t accept my “lifestyle choice” when I told them at 16??? Someone should have told me that when I was a preschooler who had a crush on the neighbor girl. Or when I was in elementary school, wondering why I was only interested in other girls. Or when I was in middle school, praying to god every night to help me like the boys in my class so that I wouldn’t go to hell.
Yeah. I’m not inherently gay, actually. Maybe I’m just not developmentally ready for a real relationship with a man yet. Perhaps I’ll try again at age 30. Or perhaps I should have just chosen to stay celibate just to avoid acting on my unnatural urges.
People like you are the reason I felt the only way to survive in society was to transition.
My mom is exactly like this. She feels guilty about letting me transition as a minor but also ardently defends minors’ right to transition. It’s a very contradictory mindset. My mom also justifies it in similar ways to your parents: “Well maybe you aren’t trans but others are!” “If we didn’t let you transition you would have killed yourself!” Or my favorite: “You needed to transition to /find yourself/.”
I think it comes from them trying to justify their own actions and assuage their own guilt. I think it’s natural to want to justify past decisions as being necessary so as not to feel regret about them. Part of my journey has been accepting my past decisions as unnecessary and harmful, which causes me to feel a lot of grief and regret. Honestly, my strategy is to just let my mom think what she’s going to think. She doesn’t have to support everything I think or do. Recently, I’ve been looking into my lawsuit options, and it pains me that I won’t have my mom’s support if I decide to go ahead with this. So this isn’t really a great solution, but at the end of the day, it’s not our job to comfort our parents. The best I can do is try not to argue with her, and focus on my own progress.
But this isn't the place for this discussion, this is a support group.
I think what u/AlviToronto getting at was the fact that I flaired this post “VENT - FEMALE REPLIES ONLY.” My intention with this post was not to start an ideological debate, but to share my own personal experience living through an unfortunate situation and get some support from others who may have had a similar experience.
I appreciate your right to comment what you want as this is a public forum, but on a humanistic level, I hope that going forward with others’ posts you can show a bit more empathy towards those of us who are struggling and avoid asking ideologically-charged questions when they are clearly uncalled for. There is a time and place for those discussions, certainly, but I personally don’t think it is appropriate here.
I’m assuming you’re a teenager—take it from someone who transitioned ftm at 16 only to detransition at 19. Please wait. Trans people will say if you wait too long, it ruins your chances of passing. But I didn’t pass THAT well even though I started relatively early. And those feminine urges? They won’t go away, they’ll just get worse. You will likely start wishing you could dress femininely outside. But in society, feminine males do not have it easy. So you end up having to repress that side of yourself. And you may never be treated as “male.” I never really was.