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Reddit user /u/datinsatan's Detransition Story

Detransitioned: 26
female
internalised homophobia
porn problem
hated breasts
took hormones
regrets transitioning
escapism
now infertile
puberty discomfort
heterosexual
This story is from the comments by /u/datinsatan that are listed below, summarised with AI.
On Reddit, people often share their experiences across multiple comments or posts. To make this information more accessible, our AI gathers all of those scattered pieces into a single, easy-to-read summary and timeline. All system prompts are noted on the prompts page.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious

Based on the provided comments, this account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or inauthentic.

The user's writing is highly personal, nuanced, and emotionally consistent over a two-year period. They express complex, evolving views on gender, society, and their own desistance, which is characteristic of a genuine lived experience rather than a scripted narrative. The depth of introspection and the specific, non-clichéd examples (e.g., writing male protagonists, getting tubes tied, weight-lifting) strongly indicate a real person.

About me

I was born female and felt a deep discomfort with my body and the social role of a woman from a very young age. I nearly transitioned because I believed I was a man and hated how society treated women, but I realized I couldn't actually change my sex. I now see gender as a harmful social construct and have rejected it entirely. I am learning to live as a female human, finding strength in things like weight-lifting, and I am at peace with my body. My journey taught me the problem wasn't my sex, but the world's reaction to it.

My detransition story

My journey with gender started when I was very young, though I didn't have the words for it then. I just knew I felt profoundly wrong in my own skin, a feeling that intensified dramatically when I hit puberty. I was born female, and I grew to hate everything about that. I hated the way my body developed, I hated the way society treated me, and I hated the expectations placed on me simply for being a woman. For a very long time, I was completely convinced that I was a man trapped in a woman's body. It felt like the only logical explanation for my deep discomfort and my intense desire to escape myself.

A huge part of my desire to be male was rooted in how I saw the world treating men versus women. When I was younger and people mistakenly thought I was a boy, I was treated with a basic level of respect and autonomy that I never received when I was seen as a girl. I was listened to, taken seriously, and, most importantly, left alone. As a woman, I feel constantly dismissed, belittled, and sexualized. My bodily autonomy is ignored, my opinions are undervalued, and I'm expected to be servile. The revulsion I felt wasn't just towards my body, but towards the entire social experience of being female.

My sexuality also played a massive role in these feelings. I have always, and only, been intensely attracted to men. But I felt a deep disgust when my own female body was the object of their desire. I had a very high sex drive, which I felt was vilified and shamed, while men with the same drive were celebrated. I discovered porn very early, and I sometimes wonder how that shaped my views. I used writing and creating male characters as a form of escapism; writing from a female perspective felt too real and too sad.

I came incredibly close to medically transitioning. I spent years researching hormones and surgeries, believing it was my only path to being my true self. But I ultimately pulled the plug. I had to face the cold, hard truth that I could never actually be male. I could only ever imitate being male. My biological sex is immutable. I realized that what I truly wanted was to change my sex, not my gender, and that was impossible. The entire ideology of gender identity started to seem like a circular, contradictory scam to me. If I was "a man on the inside," then I already was a man and already had a man's body—so why would I need to change it? The logic fell apart for me.

Letting go of the idea of transition was the most liberating thing I've ever done. I renounced the concept of gender altogether. I see it as a poisonous, regressive social construct that causes nothing but misery. I am an animal who happened to be born female. That is a biological fact, like my height or my eye color, and it doesn't have to dictate my personality, my interests, or my worth. I don't "identify" as a woman anymore because I think the term is now void of any real meaning. I just am a female human.

Do I still have days where I wish I were male? Absolutely. I'd love to wake up as male, just like I'd love to wake up taller or as a Norse god. But it's a fantasy. My life is far less miserable now that I'm not constantly chasing an unattainable goal and obsessing over how others perceive me. Getting my tubes tied at 29 was a huge help; it made me feel less like my body could betray me. Weight-lifting has also helped me feel stronger and more capable in this body I have.

I don't regret exploring transition, as it was a coping mechanism for the profound pain I was in, but I am deeply relieved I never went through with it. I think society is failing people, especially young kids, by offering medical transition as a one-size-fits-all solution to deep-seated issues like internalized misogyny, homophobia, and the trauma of living in a world with rigid, unfair gender roles. My experience showed me that the problem wasn't my body—it was the world's reaction to it.

Age Event
Early Childhood Began feeling a deep sense of wrongness and discomfort with being a girl.
Puberty Intense discomfort and hatred of female puberty and breast development. Felt like an "impending expiration date" at age 13.
Teens - Mid 20s Frequently mistaken for a young boy; did not correct people as I preferred the way I was treated. Explored identity through writing male characters.
26 Had a major realization that I was not a man, but a woman trapped by societal expectations. Began to deeply question the urge to transition.
Late 20s Intensely researched medical transition (hormones, top surgery) but ultimately decided against it after realizing I wanted to change my sex, not my gender, which was impossible.
29 Underwent a tubal ligation (got tubes tied). This greatly reduced feelings of my body being able to betray me and was a positive step.
30s (Present) Have fully desisted. Reject the concept of gender identity. Focus on living as a female human without conforming to social stereotypes. Manage dysphoria through weight-lifting and reframing my perspective.

Top Reddit Comments by /u/datinsatan:

56 comments • Posting since March 10, 2020
Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains the purpose of the detrans subreddit and expresses frustration at attempts to shut it down.
264 pointsOct 21, 2020
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I will never understand how this sub can possibly get the hatred that it does. I am sickened that there are people trying to shut it down so that they don't have to be reminded that somewhere, on some little corner of the internet that they never have to visit, detrans and desisted people just...exist.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains why the "detransitioners were never actually trans" argument is flawed and invalidating.
90 pointsOct 21, 2020
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I've also experienced this to some degree. Or the "detrans people were never actually trans" assertion, whatever the hell they think "actually" means. As if we were never actually dysphoric? Never actually wanted to be the opposite sex? Like I've always said: if your worldview is contingent upon me being a liar, then the fault is with your worldview.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains why rejecting gender identity ideology was crucial to her healing, arguing that the belief one can change sex is toxic and harmful.
44 pointsNov 19, 2020
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I believe that gender as divorced from sex is unarguably toxic. I never wanted to express a different gender identity, for whatever that entails. I wanted to physiologically be the opposite sex. Ideologies trying to convince me that this was attainable only made my mental state worse, because it was simply not true. Hormones, surgery, performative masculinity and constantly demanding verbal validation sounded like an exhausting trainwreck of a life that would only serve to magnify every negative thought I had about myself.

If I took away every physical part of myself and traded it for something artificial, I didn't become who I "truly am". My body is not a Build-A-Bear. It just is what it is, even if I don't like it. If I somehow grew up never knowing what a male was, and never having met one, these feelings would not be there. They are not innate, unlike my sex. I am not secretly another height on the inside, I am not secretly another skin color on the inside, I am not secretly another species on the inside, and I am not secretly the opposite sex on the inside. I am a run of the mill, miserable animal who was mentally ruined by domestication just like the rest of us. And I might be a monkey, but I no longer agree to be a performing monkey. Gender identity can catch my flung feces.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains why the concept of a gendered "inner self" is flawed, arguing that biology is an immutable truth and that social stereotypes are reductive and toxic for children.
26 pointsMar 13, 2021
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I can't tell you how much I passionately hate that this is not the prevailing sentiment we express to children. There is no girl or boy on the inside--those are just words to describe our outsides. How could I possibly know what a male feels like on the inside enough to make the claim that I feel it too? How do I know that this feeling, whatever it is, is exactly what a male is feeling? I inherently cannot know what it's like to be anything other than what I physically am.

People love to put arbitrary social qualifiers on male and female, but the only real, observable qualifiers are physical. One side of the argument says "if you are a female, you must do x, y, and z," while the other says, "if you do x, y, and z, you are a female". Both are reductive and toxic mindsets. Biology is an immutable and innocuous truth, and is immune to alteration by mere proclivities, mannerisms, or feelings.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) comments on the pressure to transition, explaining that the idea you must physiologically be female to like feminine things can lead to self-hatred, and notes the concerning emphasis on youth in the phrase "be a girl."
24 pointsNov 23, 2020
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It seems very oppressive to me. Like, you can't just be a male who happens to like arbitrarily fem-coded things, you must just somehow physiologically BE female. I don't see how that can't just make you hate your body and yourself even more.

And it's always "be a girl". Not an adult lady. There seems to be a huge emphasis on the young part that you don't really see with transmen. Maybe that's just because society as a whole focuses so hard on simultaneously infantilizing and sexualizing women anyway, but it's still off-putting.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains that bodies, not behaviors, determine sex and discusses the societal dismissal of non-conforming females, validating the OP's feelings as a common experience.
22 pointsMar 14, 2021
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The fact is that most people are like you. Behaviors and preferences don't determine whether you are "really female" or "really male", because people are not male or female--bodies are male or female. Society is very dismissive of those who don't conform to their sex's socially assigned gender stereotypes, that's true. On top of which, society is largely dismissive of females as a whole. All of us have felt, and continue to feel, like no one is taking us seriously. Like we are being talked down to, ignored, accused of there being some conniving, secret meaning in everything we say or do, assumed that we could not possible be an authority on anything regardless of our experience. We are infantilized and mocked and often times downright despised. And that's when we conform to gender stereotypes. When we don't? We're somehow treated even worse.

While I by no means advocate for medical transitioning, I don't blame anyone who uses desperate measures to try and cope with the above reality. It's hard to accept what you are when the rest of the world refuses to accept you for being as much. But the point is that you are not alone, you're not a freak, you're not a deviant, you're not an attention-seeking brat--you're just unhappy and trying to cope, and you deserve to do so. The experience you describe here is very common. The problem is not you.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains why life is not better as a female, detailing pervasive social disadvantages like being ignored, presumed incompetent, and not being seen as fully human.
20 pointsOct 22, 2020
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If we're talking biologically? No.

If we're talking socially? Still no.

I genuinely hate every second of being female, from the bottom of my heart. But more so for the social aspect than the biological one anymore. I can't change what I am, but it would sure be a lot easier to accept it if it didn't negatively inform the way people treated me at the most microscopic of levels. I am not listened to, I am presumed incompetent, I am walked on, taken advantage of, expected to be servile in a million conscious and unconscious ways, expected to defer to any incidental man in my life, treated as if I don't own anything legally mine--including my body, ignored, belittled, shamed for every single minuscule aspect of how I look, and at the end of it, dismissed and told those things didn't happen, weren't serious, or were just the result of a mysterious "few" bad people who couldn't possibly be representative of the majority. I am seen as female first and human never. Back when I presented masculine and people thought I was male, it was like existing for the first time in my life.

So again, from my perspective, hard no.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains her decision not to transition, arguing that she could never truly be male, only imitate it, and that embracing her immutable female biology was liberating.
16 pointsMar 10, 2021
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I know in my mind that if I transition, I would be a trans-woman. I wouldn't have lived through the struggles women face, I would be a man on hormones. That's the niggling thought that eats away at those ideas.

This was the root of it for me, and why I couldn't transition. I could never be male. I could only be a man, and gender just plain doesn't cut it. Not for me. I don't care if society would treat me like a male, see me as a male, accept me as a male--I wouldn't be one. I will always be female, because that's the side my coin toss landed on. That's the sperm that won. It's immutable, and to pretend otherwise just feels like appropriating the male experience. I will always want to be male, but it's the same as wanting to be more attractive, wanting to be taller, wanting to be younger. I can wear make-up, stand on stilts, and dress like a middle-schooler, but these are external changes that don't alter my reality.

It sounds pessimistic, but for me it was a fairly liberating thing to embrace. I am the way that I am, and I'm female. That means that female really doesn't mean anything that society pretends it means--it's just the incidental model of body I inhabit. If you ask me, I find the whole concept of gender as some additional layer of personality to be thoroughly regressive and toxic. I refute gender. It's poison to me. I'm just a female animal, like any other female animal. We don't sit around thinking stupid things like bulls should like blue and cows should prefer pink, so why do it to ourselves?

But as someone who desisted, I inherently cannot be unbiased, so I doubt any of this is helpful to you. I personally feel horrible for trans-identifying individuals. I feel like this is a group of people trying their damnedest to escape getting trampled by a cavalcade of unfair, pointless, rigid standards, and that society is absolutely, miserably failing them with snake oils and bills of goods.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) critiques the contradictory logic used to dismiss detransitioners, arguing that their continued experience of gender dysphoria proves transition is not the only solution.
16 pointsNov 24, 2020
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people who detransition were never really trans (If that's true then we should stop telling people that identifying as trans makes you trans)

I always wonder what they think "actually trans" means. That you actually have gender dysphoria? That you actually want the body of the opposite sex to the point of suicidal ideation? Because if so, every detransitioner I've ever know is "actually trans". But no--the only valid qualification in their minds seems to be "you accept that transitioning is the correct solution to these feelings, full stop".

people who detransition are actually still trans (If that's true then the whole premise of being transgender falls apart under the slightest bit of pressure)

Often times, once I've been accused of never having been trans and subsequently present the point above, this is their next go-to and they somehow see no contradiction. Like, I'm not in denial that the gender dysphoria didn't just disappear. It might not be nearly as bad now, but it's of course still there. It's just that transitioning made those feelings worse. And you're right, this assertion really seems to attack their own point. It's an admission that transition is not the only solution, because here we are, still coping with dysphoria sans transition. It's telling that some people find this to be a threat.

Reddit user datinsatan (desisted female) explains that dismissing someone's lived experience to validate one's own worldview reveals deep insecurity and a flawed perspective.
15 pointsNov 3, 2020
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Anyone who has to deny your lived experience in order to validate their own is a self-obsessed twit. If their worldview hinges on you being a liar, it's a faulty worldview. You should pity anyone who speaks to you that way for the crippling insecurity they have just shown you about their own identity.