This story is from the comments by /u/chasingmars that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or an inauthentic detransitioner/desister.
The user demonstrates:
- Personal experience: Detailed, first-person accounts of being on HRT, detransitioning, and the associated emotional and social challenges.
- Consistent worldview: A coherent, repeated argument that transition often addresses symptoms rather than root causes (like trauma, mental health comorbidities, or social influences) and that underlying issues should be explored first.
- Nuanced engagement: They offer practical advice, ask probing questions, and share resources, which is typical of a invested community member.
The passion and strong opinions expressed are consistent with someone who has undergone a significant and likely difficult personal experience with transition and detransition.
About me
I was born male and my discomfort started with puberty, feeling isolated from other boys without a good father figure to guide me. I found communities online that convinced me my feelings meant I was a woman, which became a project to escape my deeper depression and anxiety. During the lockdowns, I realized my desire to transition was entirely about how others saw me and not who I truly was inside. I stopped hormones and have found immense relief in no longer obsessing over my appearance or gender. I've since returned to my faith and learned that real fulfillment comes from fixing what's inside, not by changing your body.
My detransition story
My journey with transition and detransition was long and complicated, and looking back, I see it was driven by a lot of confusion and pain that had nothing to do with actually being born in the wrong body.
I was born male, but I never felt like I fit in with other boys, especially during puberty. I didn't have a good relationship with my dad, who was a checked-out alcoholic. I didn't have a healthy male role model to look up to, and I missed out on a lot of typical guy stuff like sports, which made me feel like an outsider. I think a lot of my initial discomfort was just the normal, awkward feeling of growing up, mixed with not having a solid foundation of what it meant to be a man.
A huge influence for me was the internet. I grew up online, in forums and chat rooms, and I was heavily influenced by the communities I found there. These spaces were very aggressive about pushing a trans narrative and shutting down anyone who questioned it, which I now see as a major red flag. I started to believe that my feelings of not fitting in meant I was really a woman.
I was also dealing with a lot of other issues. I struggled with depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. I used video games and the internet as a form of escapism. I had a problem with porn. I now realize I was using the idea of transition as a way to fix all these deeper problems. It gave me a new project to focus on, a new identity to obsess over, and for the first year or so, it felt like it was working. But it was just a temporary distraction. The underlying issues were still there.
I took estrogen for about two to three years. I never got any surgeries. During the COVID lockdowns, everything changed. I was alone most of the time, just wearing comfortable clothes around the house. I wasn't constantly trying to "pass" or worrying about my appearance. Without that social pressure and constant performance, the walls started to crumble. I had to ask myself, if I was alone on a desert island with no one to see me, would I still want to do this? The answer was no. The desire was entirely about how others perceived me and a deep-seated need for approval.
I realized my desire to transition was rooted in a lot of things: childhood trauma, a lack of a strong father figure, internalized ideas about what masculinity had to be, and a hedonistic, narcissistic pursuit of a quick fix. I came to see it as a form of arrested development; I was a "Peter Pan" who didn't want to grow up and become a man with responsibilities. I had bought into the stupid idea of gender stereotypes so completely that I thought the only way to be a nurturing or feminine person was to be a woman.
Stopping hormones was the best decision I ever made. The hardest part wasn't physical—my body adjusted fine—it was the emotional and mental shame and embarrassment of admitting I was wrong. I was so worried about what people would think, that they'd see me as a failure. But most people were understanding. The biggest benefit has been a massive sense of relief. I can just leave the house now without spending hours getting ready, worrying if I pass, or obsessing in the mirror. I don't have to think about gender all the time.
I returned to the Catholic Church after detransitioning, and exploring spirituality and philosophy has helped me more than anything else in finding real, long-term fulfillment instead of short-term happiness. I've learned that working on your internal self is what truly matters, not changing your exterior.
I do have regrets. I regret not being honest with my therapists from the beginning. I was so sure I was trans that I only told them what would help me get hormones. I regret the time and energy I wasted. I also feel guilty that I might have influenced a friend of mine who started transitioning around the same time I did; they later had bottom surgery and I regret not being able to properly express my concerns to them.
I don't believe most people are "born trans." I think for the vast majority, it's a solution to a different set of problems—trauma, autism, OCD, depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. These should be treated first. Transitioning felt like using a hammer to fix everything, when what I really needed was a whole toolbox.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| Early Teens | Felt discomfort and isolation during male puberty. Lacked positive male role models. |
| Teens - Early 20s | Heavy internet use; influenced by online trans communities. Developed depression, anxiety, and used escapism. |
| 30 | Began taking estrogen (HRT). |
| 33 | Stopped HRT during COVID lockdowns after 2-3 years. Realized the desire to transition was based on external validation, not an internal truth. |
| 33-34 | Socially and legally detransitioned, changing my name back. |
| 34 | Returned to the Catholic Church and found solace in spirituality. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/chasingmars:
Not publishing the findings because they’re worried about what it would do politically is why we shouldn’t immediately trust any study. Clearly these people have an agenda and anything that goes against it either doesn’t get published or gets “massaged” to meet whatever message they want to push.
To add, also hedonistic and addictive tendencies. Poly, kink communities, moderate to heavy drug use, alcohol abuse, heavy video game use, other generally risky behavior all seem to be very common in the MtF community. I think it’s chicken/egg per situation whether the PD brought about the addictions or the addictions brought about the PD traits.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38413534/
Puberty blockers are not as “reversible” as some people claim. They can cause permanent sterility, osteoporosis, seizures, mood disorder, and cognitive impairment.
I was an adult when I transitioned so I cannot comment on experience starting at age 12. I can say that I had a lot of girl friends when I was young and was interested in some stereotypically girl things. How do you precisely know a child that young is trans and isn’t just into some stereotypically girl things? Is it possible at all that parents/therapist might’ve lead them down this path unconsciously?
Your insistence that they’ve had no trauma—how do you know? My parents didn’t know the kind of trauma I had outside of the home, nor did I until it was brought up decades later after a lot of therapy.
I’ve never found detrans to be a fixation like being trans once was. I’m subbed to many subreddits, including this one, but I generally don’t visit this sub I’ll just see posts show up on my main feed. I find some of the content people post helpful to my life and occasionally I find I can put my two cents out there and maybe help someone else.
If you find you’re fixating on subs again and again, maybe the problem isn’t individual subs but your relationship with social media in general? I’ve deleted most of my other social media (twitter, Facebook, etc) because it was wasting too much of my time and too addictive. For me, Reddit is easy to put down but everyone is different.
With regards to what you say about doctors, I’ll add my experience:
I started going to an lgbt center that was newly opened at a hospital nearby. It was recommended by a local trans support group I was going to because some of us had trouble with endos not knowing or not wanting to prescribe certain hormones.
The lgbt center was run by doctors who were doing it as part of their residency. There was not a permanent doctor for the 3+ years I went there, but instead brand new doctors rotating out every year or so.
I don’t think those doctors were doing it for money or any other nefarious purpose, but they were young, ignorant, and probably not wanting to make any waves before their career even begins. So, they’re just following orders that are pushed down by a board that would quickly label any pushback as transphobic.
There are other centers like this, that are associated with universities and probably staffed and setup in similar ways. I can’t help think it isn’t part of the design.
You were a child when you started down this path. It’s not your fault but a failure of the society and adults around you at the time. You shouldn’t feel humiliated, you were a child under the supervision of adults. Children don’t have the capacity to understand what or why they’re doing something.
I know how embarrassing and humiliating it can be to go through detransitioning, it’s not easy but it’ll be worth it. You already know you aren’t trans, don’t keep living this way, it’ll eat away at you.
When I was first starting to contemplate detransition, I had a friend who was less than a year of discovering they were trans and told me they were scheduled for bottom surgery. I wasn’t able to properly express my concerns and they distanced themselves from me and got the surgery. I regret not being able to get them to at least wait a while longer or reconsider, but I was too emotional at the time.
I think we owe it to others to at least try to voice concerns, regardless of whether they’re an adult or not—to love someone is to tell them the truth. But, if they decide to do it anyway, we can’t hold ourselves responsible for not doing more.
I’m not sure “transmaxxing” is really a thing outside a small group that may or may not be saying it on some level of irony.
But there absolutely are some mtfs who are “transmaxxing” in the sense they are doing better versus when they were a cis white male—Lia Thomas, Dylan, mtfs working in STEM fields. It certainly is not without its drawbacks, but if you live in a very blue area (west cost or north east or a few cities in between), there isn’t as much in terms of harassment and plenty of progressive people that will fall over themselves to be nice to be much nicer to you (even if it is fake). Being in stem, in a blue area, I got a lot more callbacks/job offers when I was trans versus before or after I transitioned, anecdotal sure, but it’s not like companies aren’t looking to fill AA/DEI quotas.
Having gay sex has been around for as long as humans. Having a gay “identity” is relatively modern.
Being trans requires at minimum language, clothing, and ways of modifying one’s appearance (makeup, surgery, etc). Could the first humans evolved from apes have been trans? Would mtf Adam wear a few extra leaves and ask Eve to address him with a more feminine grunt? Can any animal be trans?
I wish there were more questions asked about why I wanted to transition and going further into my issues in childhood and how I was raised.
Did you have healthy role models of your birth gender growing up? My dad was a checked out alcoholic, I didn’t have a good role model to look up to or to do things with me that would’ve helped me grow. Stereotypical male stuff like sports or camping or whatever was never a part of my life and it made it difficult for me to feel like I fit in with my peers.
How much influence has the internet had on your feelings of transitioning? I would say I’m terminally online, grew up with unfiltered access to the internet. Forums, chat rooms, etc. played a large role in influencing and indoctrination. A lot of pro-trans or pro-lgbt circles online are very aggressive in removing anything that disagrees with their narrative, that’s a huge red flag that I didn’t consider at the time.
It’s easy to focus so much on transition for the first few years and how it’s going that it seems like it has fixed other problems in your life. It hasn’t, only covered them up and created a temporary distraction. When it’s no longer new, or you’re no longer focusing on it all the time, those bad feelings and issues will come back. Are you happy in other areas of your life that don’t have to do with gender? Do you feel fulfilled?
3a) Are you depressed? Anxious? Do you believe that transitioning will help you in these areas? (It won’t, though it might feel like it does at first)
3b) Do you abuse alcohol or drugs? Do you escape into other things-video games, binge watching TV, internet browsing?
- I didn’t think I wanted to have kids, but now I really really do. It’s hard, especially younger, to see this. Our society is setup in a way to just want to have fun and not take on responsibility. I didn’t think I could be a good parent. Most people do change their minds about wanting to have kids at some point, but that’s really hard to see when you’re in your early 20s. “Having fun” and “being happy” aren’t things to aspire to in life, at some point you’ll want fulfillment, possibly through raising kids or maybe helping others, there’s nothing sadder than a 40+ year old who still acts like a 20 year old.