Trans isn't a real thing just like "cis" isn't. Gender dysphoria has been experienced by not just everyone here but countless other "cis", never-transitioned people. They can't concretely define it otherwise, the only material definition is "already transitioned" and as we also know the capacity to desist from trans ideology while having been or for whatever reason still being a trans medicine patient muddles that as well. Being trans is just that, an ideology; basically a religion, so you cannot ever "be" it anymore than one can hold any other view, self conception with all-consuming intensity or not.

Much like we should've to begin with, we must be realistic about our situation. If we were men then, we should have accepted it. Well, we're transitioned to one degree or another now, and we must accept that as much as we accept now that we are indeed men. Be honest about what your body is and you will find a market for it.

See, some of us have realized that gender isn't real. We know better "who we're supposed to be", and it's merely whoever we want to be, unencumbered by social expectations for our original sex or for the socially constructed gender we tried so hard to fit into, desperate every day for an impossible validation of our astroturf "identity". There's animosity towards trans dogma because it's a sexist coping mechanism being spread as an ontological challenge to the biological basis for feminism that ends up hurting those it promises a better life to. It's a cult, a pyramid scheme of validation that preys on vulnerable people who've been hurt and failed gendered expectations, not a "choice" about who you want to be in some vague postmodern sense. Gender identity is a systematic ideology based upon patriarchy that weeds out those who are afraid of the social consequences of being nonconforming. We all know that's an understandable fear, because we've all been there. We simply don't want it to be so scary you have to change your body and your entire being to avoid it.

I'd love to hear more about your detransition. I'm not surprised an HSTS would desist, but I was always pretty upset being "invalidated" over my status as an agp (and still I don't think it's relevant to whether or not I was a "real trans", plus it evaporated with transition like usual and I didn't mind that). So I'd be interested to hear the story of an HSTS who gets that "validity' isn't about sexuality.

This is a horrible idea. Try to remain content as you are now. That is something too many detrans forget, becoming still more confused by the postmodern rather than centered in the natural. You are now cut off from the natural, pun appropriate but unintended. You must not chase such a warped version of it further down the rabbit hole of physicalized identity. In fact you are more natural now than you would be because you appear more or less normally female. Given the lack of natural T and male genitalia, this would not be a detransition, it’d be a double transition. Stand pat the way we all should’ve to begin with.

I don't believe I denied it at any point. I literally said people have it. The intensity of dysphoria's relative and emotional nature does not provide a concrete point at which a diagnosis of "trans" can be granted; dysphoria can be exceedingly mild and still be present. dysphoria itself has an extremely vague definition.

I suggest attempting to purge the notion that only men behave or look a certain way, and that only women behave the opposite way. Gender is a social construct and that implication I think is often misread in trans ideology to allow the exit from gender, but to somehow preserve gender stereotypes. I myself don't "identify as" anything, I'm just a bio male who happens to be feminine and I'm OK with that, because woman doesn't equal feminine. I think realizing pretty much all my dysphoria, including the physical, was caused by patriarchy helped me a lot. If I'd interrogated the notion of dysphoria before I transitioned, I may not have felt the need to, so that's what I suggest. Don't look at it so much as a "trans/cis" or "transition/don't transition" binary, just do what YOU want to do and forget about the way you'll be perceived.

I relate a lot to this. The role of trauma in dysphoria is very underdiscussed, I believe because it "invalidates" those who believe gender identity to be inborn, "born this way" trans activists. While not every transwoman is a "failed man" (think about what so many of us have in common with incels), we all have a serious detachment from manhood. That's due not to any kind of inherent "womanhood" in us, it's due to the stress of living up to gender, something you also seem to get.

I similarly was so ashamed of manhood that I had a PRINCIPLED STANCE as a teen to not make my feelings known to any girls I liked, because I felt burdening a woman with the knowledge of your feelings like that was in the realm of frat chads. And all this combined with autogynephilic crossdressing (also a component of "failed male" socialization) led up to me ending up being convinced by the spread of trans ideology, after a short stint identifying as some pretentious personal variant of genderqueer, that I was "really female" for 5 years.

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So I'll tell you, someone so much like I was, what I would've wanted to know before I was caught up in the lie that becoming a new person, a woman, would fix my masculine self hatred. The "feminine manhood" that I pondered being content over was much deeper and more healing than I could conceive of in my prison of gendered thinking, plus much more than inflicting the trauma of "failing womanhood" on myself. Gender isn't real. Sex is real, and you won't escape it. But a male can be as feminine, as "cute" as a female typically is, even to the point of being mistaken for one, and still be male. A woman can be as masculine as a man and still be a woman. Femininity and masculinity are inherent neither to sex nor even to people's "gender identities", they're constructs that are destroying so many nonconforming people's psyches. Transness promises freedom, but real freedom is destroying your conception of gender.

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Unfortunately, socialization is also real, but you can heal from that by learning that gender can't hurt you anymore. There are concrete steps to improve dysphoria that involve "moving away from masculinity" in ways that are, yes, associated with "femininity", but "identifying as female" shouldn't be one of them, because it can bring you serious, almost equal pain. Yes many people are happy identifying as the opposite gender, but so do most people never think to transition. But when you think about trans theory, that "being uncomfortable in your gender probably makes you trans", doesn't that describe almost everyone? Trans people just feel it more acutely, and usually cope with it using the self abuse of transition, where you fail your new gender even worse than your old one, due to your sex, and beat yourself up over it harder than anyone else does.

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I can't tell you what to do, and even a suggestion feels like an overreach, but I'll clarify what I'm doing in my similar, though advanced situation. I am not stopping HRT (though I wouldn't SUGGEST starting it just for aesthetics), but I am reidentifying to male. I will likely continue to look very female, which helps me cope with my patriarchal trauma, but I will no longer be burdened trying to maintain the illusion that I "AM" female in anyway and NEED to act and look the same. You don't need to be comfortable in any "gender identity", because gender identity isn't real, it's a box that does nothing BUT make you feel uncomfortable. I am a biological male, aesthetically a trap (yeah yeah, weeb language i know but i am a weeb so, lol), and ideologically a gender abolitionist. So I am learning to feel comfortable in a male body by attempting to separate sex from gender: I'll always be a male, I can't change that, but that doesn't have to mean anything at all. I can still jettison every "gendered male" thing forced on me as a child that I don't want anything to do with: dominance, handsomeness, strength, and adopt every "gendered female" trait I wish. None of this makes me any kind of weird "labelgender" freak, it makes me the same as every human being on the planet. Gender is taught to us based on our sex, on a misogynist axis to boot. I think it would be healthiest for everyone if we could forget all about it.

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Sorry if this was a little more ideological than personal, and if I come off like a salesman. But I really do feel a lot happier ever since I found gender critical feminism (which is unfairly maligned in the trans community right now) and if I could prevent myself from hurting myself the way I did with social transition again, I would.