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 a bad-faith actor. The user's perspective is highly consistent with a genuine detransitioner/desister, displaying:
- Personal, detailed experience: They share specific, multi-faceted reasons for their own transition and detransition (e.g., internalized misogyny, internalized homophobia, health concerns from testosterone, social pressure).
- Nuanced and empathetic advice: Their comments offer support, share resources, and encourage self-reflection in a way that aligns with the complex, painful, and personal nature of the detransition experience.
- Consistent ideology: Their critique of gender ideology, medicalization, and the pressure on butch lesbians is a passionate but coherent worldview common in the detrans community.
The account exhibits the passion and strong opinions expected from someone who feels they were harmed by transition, not the markers of an inauthentic account.
About me
I started transitioning because my normal discomfort with puberty and being a masculine lesbian was labeled as gender dysphoria by my friends in college. I was on testosterone for ten years and had top surgery, believing it was the solution, but it led to serious health problems and a deep depression. I realized my real issues were internalized misogyny and homophobia, which were never addressed. Now, I know true peace comes from self-acceptance, not from changing your body. I'm learning to love myself as a masculine woman and want to warn other young women not to make my same mistake.
My detransition story
My whole journey started with a deep discomfort that I didn't understand. Looking back, I can see it was a mix of many things. I grew up between two brothers and I think I developed a subconscious internalized misogyny, feeling like being a girl was somehow lesser. I’m also a lesbian, and there was internalized homophobia there too, from my family and religious background not fully accepting my natural masculinity. On top of that, I’m probably neurodivergent, which I now know can really affect how you feel about puberty and gender roles.
When I got to college, I was surrounded by people in the trans community who took all these normal feelings of not fitting in and gave them a name: "gender dysphoria." They told me that my discomfort with my female body, which was really just normal unease for a 20-year-old not yet comfortable with her sexuality, meant I was supposed to be a man. It felt like an answer. I was a butch lesbian, and there was this unspoken pressure that life would be easier if I could pass as male. I didn't realize it was harmful; I thought I was finally becoming my true self.
So I started taking testosterone. I was on it for about ten years. For a long time, I thought it was the solution. But eventually, the health concerns started piling up. I experienced side effects that my doctor dismissed as anxiety. I began to see that the medical community doesn't really know the long-term effects of these treatments. I feel like informed consent is a lie; it's medical malpractice. My emotions became blunted; I was seen as stoic, but inside I was deeply depressed. I realized that by rejecting my sex, I had destroyed my ability for self-acceptance. My self-image became entirely dependent on how others saw me, which is an incredibly unhealthy way to live.
I also saw how miserable everyone in trans spaces seemed to be. We were all trying to learn how to be the opposite sex, and it was exhausting. I always felt on edge, like I had to hide "female" parts of myself. I had top surgery, and even with that, I still had to dress carefully to pass. I felt like I didn't belong with women anymore, and I never truly belonged with men. I was in between, and it was isolating.
Deciding to detransition was a process. The health problems were the first reason. I finally saw through the bullshit. "Gender dysphoria" isn't a real diagnosis; it's just a catch-all term for hating the sex you were born with, and there are a million reasons someone might feel that way. It’s like the old diagnosis of "hysteria" for women. I realized I had been on a conveyor belt, and my real issues—internalized misogyny, internalized homophobia, neurodivergence—were never addressed. What I needed was therapy that would help me question why I felt the way I did, not just affirm a mistaken identity.
I do have regrets. I regret the permanent changes to my body and the health complications I now live with. I regret that I wasn't encouraged to love myself as a masculine woman. I feel conflicted about my masculine attributes now, not because I dislike them, but because they are a reminder that I tried to change myself to fit into a societal box.
Now, I believe that you can be a woman and be masculine. You can be a feminine man. Your body doesn't have to define your personality or your interests. The idea that you need to change your body to match how you feel inside is, in my opinion, deeply damaging. It’s sexism all the way down. I'm motivated to share my story because I don't want other young women, especially butch lesbians, to go through what I did. They need to know that it's okay to be a woman who doesn't fit the stereotype, and that true peace comes from self-acceptance, not from transition.
Here is a timeline of my journey:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| Late Teens | Felt deep discomfort with puberty and social expectations of being a woman. Felt disconnected from other women. |
| Around 20 | Started college; influenced by online trans communities and friends. Came to believe my feelings were "gender dysphoria" and that I was a trans man. |
| Early 20s | Started taking testosterone. |
| Early 20s | Underwent top surgery. |
| Early 30s | Began experiencing serious health complications from long-term testosterone use. Doctor dismissed concerns. |
| Early 30s | Realized the connection between my discomfort and internalized misogyny/homophobia. Decided to stop testosterone and begin detransitioning. |
| Early 30s | Started the process of social and medical detransition, learning to accept myself as a masculine woman. |
Top Comments by /u/butchpeace:
Butch lesbians have been getting pulled into transition since the beginning. Check out this woman's videos – She goes into the history of this in the lesbian community going back to the 90s.
Basically, there's an insane amount of pressure being put on butch women from every direction. It gets ingrained in your mind that life would be easier if you looked a little more masculine and you could pass for male. But you don't realize that it's harmful and that it will divorce you from your community, you just think it's "what you want for yourself".
Transition is the butch version of makeup, boob jobs, and botox.
Yes, this is such an important thing to talk about!
While in trans spaces, it slowly dawned on me that everyone was miserable. By rejecting our own sex, we destroy our ability for self-esteem, self-acceptance, and body neutrality.
Our feeling about ourself starts to rely entirely on how other people view us.
That is an extremely unhealthy relationship to have with your own self image. And yet, it's impossible for a trans person not to be that way. There's no way to be trans and also have a completely secure self-image.
Problem is, it's all subconscious.
Part one of the problem is that we created this made up diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" that literally just means that you hate the sex you were born as.
Part two is that women who hate being female (for perfectly understandable and common reasons) are being ferried onto the transition assembly line because of said made up diagnosis.
These young women don't even know what's happening, because they're made to feel like this is them "becoming their true selves".
And this is why I'm so motivated to fight back since deciding to detransition. I finally see through all the bullshit and can see how damaging the trans movement really is to women and feminine men. It's sexism all the way down.
I do still read you as male, but I can tell your face has feminized a lot! I think the biggest thing is the beard shadow. If you want to be seen as female again, you will have to get it removed or learn to cover it with makeup.
And be patient! It will take a while to get back to how you want to be seen. It’s okay to be somewhere in between for a while, because you will get there eventually.
Yes, because the definition of gender dysphoria is literally just "Discomfort with the sex of your body".
There's about a million different things that could cause that, and because "Gender Dysphoria" is now part of our cultural discourse, it has the potential to pull all sorts of people in who wouldn't otherwise have thought that's what they were dealing with.
It's the same as telling a woman they have hysteria. A diagnosis that was made up in order to categorize any emotion that other people didn't know what to do with.
Everything will be questioned and the tide will start to turn. Unfortunately that's going to lead to a huge amount of people who feel hurt and lost. I hope we can be a welcoming and supportive community that will help to mitigate the damage done by all this.
This is sadly very common. PCOS leading to high T levels, leading to feeling like you're supposed to be a boy. It's a medical problem that needs proper treatment, not "gender affirming care".
Tell your friends what happened (maybe minus the gender stuff) and let them know they should get checked out too if they have similar symptoms.
If you're not sure, don't do anything.
It's perfectly normal to be a woman who doesn't feel like she relates to other women, or to the cultural meaning that surrounds the word "woman". That doesn't make you a different category of gender.
Feeling like you don't belong with either women or men? That's not going to change if you take steps towards transition. In fact, you'll feel even less like you belong with women once you change your body.
Be proud of yourself and love yourself. There's no need to change yourself.
Yep. There's a whole lot of victim blaming and lack of empathy going on.
I understand the argument that if you look like one sex, it's going to be hard for people to refer to you as the other sex. I'm in that situation too, and I'm too conflict avoidant to ask anyone to change how they refer to me. But it's just so shit.
Trans people demand to be called opposite sex pronouns all the time, but when we do it, it's suddenly unreasonable? Just because we don't look like the traditional definition of what a woman is supposed to look like?
When people talk about "social contagion" they imagine it as some kind of trendy thing that kids are getting into because it's cool.
In reality, trans ideology has become so pervasive in our society that "You're trans" has become a catchall diagnosis for anyone who has distress about their gender for any reason.
It's not the same as emo kids dressing weird to express themselves. Although there are parallels to fashion trends, in this case there's something much deeper going on and it's on the level of our whole western society.