This story is from the comments by /u/cranberry_snacks that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the extensive comment history provided, this account appears to be authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.
Key indicators of authenticity:
- Deeply Personal and Consistent Narrative: The user shares a detailed, multi-year journey of grappling with gender dysphoria, self-reflection, therapy, and ultimately finding a path of desistance. The narrative is complex, nuanced, and internally consistent over time.
- Psychological Depth: The comments demonstrate a high degree of introspection, referencing specific therapeutic techniques (CBT, mindfulness, journaling), psychological concepts (identity formation, BPD traits, AGP), and a long, non-linear process of healing. This level of detail is difficult to fabricate consistently.
- Lack of Agenda-Pushing: While the user is critical of certain aspects of "gender ideology" and online trans communities, they consistently express support for individuals choosing to transition if it's right for them. Their perspective is balanced, emphasizing that their path of desistance is one valid option among others, not the only correct one. This lack of a blanket anti-trans agenda is not typical of a troll account.
- Authentic Engagement: The user responds thoughtfully to others' questions, tailoring advice and sharing personal anecdotes that are relevant to the specific struggles mentioned by others in the community.
The account exhibits the passion and strong opinions one would expect from someone who has personally experienced the harm and complexity of gender dysphoria and detransition/desistance. The history reflects a genuine person sharing their hard-won insights.
About me
I'm a man who, from a very young age, overwhelmingly identified with women and felt a deep disconnect from my own body. I nearly started hormone therapy because I believed becoming a woman was the only way to be happy. But I stopped because I felt changing my body was just an escape from a deeper lack of self-love. Through years of therapy and self-reflection, I realized my "female self" was a part of me I needed to accept, not become. Now I'm at peace, learning to love myself as a man with a female sense of self, and my dysphoria has faded.
My detransition story
My journey with gender has been a long and winding road, filled with a lot of internal questioning and searching for peace. For decades, I struggled with intense gender dysphoria. I’m male, but from a very young age, I overwhelmingly identified with women. The characters I connected with in stories, my role models in the sports and hobbies I loved, even the way I saw myself in my mind’s eye—it was always female. It felt like looking in a mirror at a version of myself that was just out of reach.
This created a deep disconnect. I desperately wanted to wake up as a woman. I had vivid dreams about it and spent years feeling like I was suffocating in my own skin. There was a persistent, aching feeling that my body was wrong. For a long time, I believed the only way to be happy was to transition. I came very close to starting hormone therapy; I even came out to a few close people. The idea of finally becoming "her" was incredibly powerful.
But something always held me back. A big part of it was a deep-seated skepticism. I couldn't shake the feeling that changing my body was just a way to escape a deeper problem. I kept asking myself: why should my outer shell have to match my inner self to make me valid? Who says they even need to match? I looked at my pets and thought, they don't care about their gender—they just are. Why was I making it so complicated?
My healing didn't come from suddenly "realizing I wasn't trans." It came from years of incredibly hard work in therapy and on my own. I journaled constantly. I went for long walks and just thought, trying to understand the root of my pain. I discovered that a lot of my dysphoria was tangled up with a profound lack of self-love, stemming from childhood abandonment. I had created an idealized female version of myself as a child—someone I could love because I couldn't love myself as a boy. The desire to become her was really a desire to finally be worthy of love.
The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to change myself and started trying to understand and accept myself. I realized that the person I wanted to be was already me. She wasn't a separate entity; she was a part of me I had projected outward. By embracing that female aspect of my identity psychologically, I didn't need to change my body physically. I learned to hold the incongruence between my male body and my female sense of self without it causing me pain. I found a way to love myself as I am.
I don't believe gender is some magical, innate soul. I see it as a psychological construct, a part of our identity shaped by both nature and nurture. For me, transitioning would have been treating the symptom, not the cause. The cause was a need for self-love and integration. I chose a path of introspection and acceptance instead.
I have no regrets about not transitioning. I'm happier now than I ever thought possible. I'm at peace. My body is just my body—it's healthy and functional, and I've learned to appreciate it. My mind is my mind, with all its unique cross-sex identifications, and that's okay too. They can coexist. I finally feel free.
I support everyone's right to choose their own path to happiness. For some, that is transition, and I'm genuinely happy for those who find peace that way. But for me, the answer was always within, waiting to be discovered through patience, hard work, and learning to love the person I already was.
Timeline of My Gender Journey
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| ~9 years old | First experiences of identifying strongly with female characters and creating an idealized female self as a coping mechanism during childhood trauma. |
| Early 20s | Intense gender dysphoria begins. Overwhelming desire to be female, but no accessible information or path to transition at the time. |
| 40s (early) | Re-engages with gender dysphoria with new intensity. Researches transition heavily, comes out to close friends, and consults a doctor about HRT. |
| 40s (mid) | Halts plans for medical transition. Begins deep therapeutic work and self-reflection to address the root causes of dysphoria, focusing on self-love and identity integration. |
| 40s (late) | Achieves significant healing and the dissipation of gender dysphoria. Finds peace and self-acceptance by embracing the incongruence between mind and body. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/cranberry_snacks:
Funny--I almost just replied to the post there, decided against it, and then stumbled on the same post over here.
I was going to agree with the caveat that I think the real disservice is that we don't inform people that not only does it sometimes not get better, but that, for some people, it can actually get better without transition. Transition is the way for some people and not for others. The most destructive falsehood out there in the trans community right now is that transition is the only way to be happy and that if you don't transition you're basically relegating yourself to a life of repression, misery, and possible suicide.
In other words, sort of the same thing as OP, but with the addition that it isn't all a hopeless failure. Whether physical transition is a failure or not, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Not at all. I firmly believe it's the best path for some people, as evidenced by the fact that they're ultimately happy with themselves after their transition. We all share the same goal of being happy and authentic in who we are, and I have no ideology on this, other than standing fast on my own experience. I fully support these people, and in many ways I feel like I have strong shared experience with them. I'm not transitioning, but I still have a cross-sex gender identity so I'm somewhat trans, detrans, and even sorta cis from an outside looking in perspective.
Maybe my most controversial perspective is that I'm not sure I really believe that anybody has to transition. For the psychological dynamics, there are other ways, and working out a way to be happy isn't "conversion therapy." Psychologically speaking, there's really no compelling reason we have to have a specific body or presentation to be happy with ourselves--it just requires a lot of really difficult work to change your perception on this. From my own experience I've come to hold a semi-philosophical perspective that, assuming you have your health, you can learn to be happy with yourself and love yourself regardless of what physical vessel you happen to be riding through life in.
I wouldn't presume that my experience perfectly matches everyone else, though, and maybe there is some physiological aspect to some types of dysphoria. Some people believe that they actually feel sick on the wrong hormones or that they have phantom limb like experiences of the wrong body parts. I'm skeptical of all of this, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, and even if it's all just psychosomatic, maybe just experiencing this kind of dynamic is a perfectly good reason to transition.
I believe they're using "assimilationist" to refer to assimilating trans women with cis women, i.e. "we're all just women."
And, they're claiming that a trans woman going on HRT and undergoing surgery is no different than a cis woman who doesn't want to be forcibly transitioned to male. After all, they're all just trying to be women. Or something like that.
It's pretty bizarre. It's probably good that you don't get it. lol
I don't imagine most sane trans women would actually say something like this either, but sadly, at least one did.
Sad to say gender "therapists" are more "cheerleaders" then therapists and they know nothing beyond cheerleading and affirmation.
I've never been to a gender therapist, but I've noticed this. So many medical websites and therapist's bios contain the assumption that it's all about gender affirmation instead of taking a few steps back and trying to work out why the dysphoria is there in the first place. I'm sure there are good ones out there, but I feel like picking a gender therapist out at random doesn't provide great odds of bias-free treatment.
I hate the conflation of overcoming dysphoria with repression. The idea that transition and repression are the only options is such a naive, black and white perspective. We're talking about the complexity of the human mind--is it really that hard to imagine that there can be a other ways of handling it?
Part of it might be selection bias and the fact that more dramatic or toxic trans women make more noise. They're simply more visible, probably much to the chagrin of the trans women who just want to lay low and fit in.
Also, comorbid mental illness is well documented. Not necessarily NPD, but lots of disorders end up expressing in a very self-centered sort of way, and as you're-not-their-therapist, it all might appear feel somewhat narcissistic. One in particular is that I had diagnosed BPD traits that were very directly related to my dysphoria and gender identity, and I've run into a lot of others here with very similar experiences. When in the throws of untreated BPD, it can be fairly narcissistic (not just my take--this is well documented). Cluster B's are pretty much universally self-centered until they do some healing and learn how to be less so. That's not an attack on anyone with a cluster B PD; it's just the reality of it. It's ultimately a coping mechanism and psychological "survival."
Like others are saying, it wasn't that I "realized I wasn't trans." What I realized is that transition couldn't give me what I really needed, which was feeling lovable.
It wasn't a sudden realization, but something I struggled with for years. I had intense dysphoria and really wished I could just magically wake up as the opposite sex. But, I couldn't be that person in my mind--that's not possible. I also couldn't work out any reason why I should need to be any particular sex. I couldn't pin down anything tangible that made me different from this idea of who I wanted to be. I was already that person in every way except for my own gender biases.
That's all to say that it was really difficult, but more of a sustained, slow burn than one big crash.
The thing that gets me is how obvious it is that this stuff is complex and varied, while at the same time being taboo to discuss the nuance and complexity. There's so much varied information out there and massively varied self-reports from both people detransitioning and sticking with their transition.
I was just reading over a post in asktransgender from someone who realized that HRT did not solve their psychological and emotional struggles. The consensus in the comments was that this was an overwhelmingly relatable experience, yet, at the same time it's taboo to suggest that self-love and acceptance might help with gender dysphoria.
The egg cracking culture is more of the same--transition is the only answer and solves all your problems. It's not just detransitioners who know this isn't true--plenty of people (trans or not) know that wrestling with gender doesn't make you trans, yet, again, it's taboo to suggest this kind of thing.
I hate to say "cult like" in a community of individuals, but when a large part of a community adopts unfounded absolutes like this and refuses to recognize any other views it does start to feel very much like thought control.
People say this place is cult-like too, but for me this stuff I mentioned is the key difference. You can actually disagree and discuss the nuance here at least. If you talk with TERFs about the nuance, you get shut down. If you talk with the trans community, you largely get shut down too. honesttransgender and asktransgender are some of the better communities on reddit, but there's still very much a correct way to think about this stuff, which makes it harder for everyone to find the truth.
I think eventually I'll need friends that are more open minded and more "normal" I guess (even though I hate that word)
This is the sad truth of it.
I'm very liberal and amongst true middle of road America, I often find myself defending or at least explaining the the trans experience. I had dysphoria. I identified strongly with the opposite sex. I want everyone to live their best, happiest life possible. I get it.
But, in many modern trans circles my lived experience is considered blasphemy.
Like you, I don't know what to do with this other than just to measure my words.
I wish more trans people could understand that when I say that there's more than one way to treat gender dysphoria, I'm not trying to impose this on them.
My healing is not conversion therapy, and just because this way worked for me doesn't mean anyone is forcing you to follow in my footsteps. If someone wants to transition, I'll absolutely defend their right to do so, but there are clearly other paths of healing available to us too. My way being right for me doesn't make your way wrong for you.