This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account "detrans-throwaway7" appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.
The comments display a highly consistent, nuanced, and deeply personal narrative spanning several years. The user shares specific, complex details about their medical history (8 years on testosterone, mastectomy at 16), the emotional and physical process of detransition, and the evolution of their philosophical views on gender. The language is passionate and often angry, which aligns with the warning that detransitioners can be "pissed off about this topic because of the harm and stigma." The advice given is detailed, practical, and reflects lived experience, not just talking points. The long-term consistency and emotional depth make it highly improbable that this is an inauthentic account.
About me
I was born female and transitioned to male at 15 because I felt pressured by what was expected of girls. I lived as a man for eight years after starting testosterone and having surgery, but I eventually realized I didn't want to be a man, I just wanted to escape the difficulties of being a woman. I stopped hormones at 24 and have been detransitioned for a few years now, finally understanding that I can be a masculine woman. I regret the medical interventions, especially my surgery, and I now live with some lasting health issues. My journey was about hiding from trauma, but I'm now finding peace by accepting myself as the woman I am.
My detransition story
My whole journey with transition and detransition has been a long and complicated one, and it’s taken me a lot of time and reflection to understand it. I was born female, and as a kid, I was just an unusual girl. I had short hair, played with boys, and had crushes on girls. I felt deeply at odds with what was expected of me.
When I was 15, I socially transitioned. I started telling everyone I was a boy. It felt like an escape from all the pressures and unfairness I felt came with being female. At 16, I started testosterone and had top surgery. I was told by doctors that my dysphoria would be lifelong, and at the time, I believed them completely. I lived as a trans man for nearly a decade, from age 16 to 24. For a long time, especially in high school, I passed easily as male. I was stealth, and it felt like I had finally found a way to be myself.
But things started to change as I got older. I began to realize that passing as a man was getting harder. My female skeleton, with wider hips, became more apparent as I aged. I also started to feel a deep disconnect. I wasn't really understanding male social interactions the way I thought I would. The "male privilege" I had was superficial and could be taken away in an instant. I also struggled with a severe eating disorder that was tied up with my desire to look more masculine; being underweight was the only way I could make my body look less curvy.
A major turning point came when I was 23. I became disillusioned with my male identity. I realized I didn't actually want to be a man; I wanted to have been born male. I wanted to escape my female childhood—the belittling, the feeling of never fitting in, and being treated like the family maid and therapist just for being the eldest daughter. I had been diagnosed with BPD young, but I've come to see that as a modern form of hysteria, a subtype of PTSD from growing up in a world that devalues women. My transition, in many ways, was another way to hide, just like my struggles with addiction and my eating disorder.
When I was 24, I made the decision to detransition. I stopped testosterone cold turkey. It was scary, but it felt necessary. Emotionally, things changed quickly. I felt a lid lift off my emotions; I could cry again and felt a clarity I hadn't had in years. My body began to change back. My period returned, my face softened, and my body fat redistributed, making my hips and thighs more prominent again—which was hard at first, but I've worked on accepting it.
A huge part of my healing was a philosophical shift in how I see gender. I realized that masculine women have always existed. I’d never allowed myself to see the commonality between my feelings and those of butch lesbians. Clothes and haircuts aren't male or female. I can be "just myself," a woman, whether someone calls me she, he, or they. I gave up on the idea of being "correctly gendered" because it just causes anxiety. Now, I see that being a masculine woman is a valid way to be. I sometimes wear breast forms to help with my mastectomy regret, and it’s made a big difference in how I feel about my body.
I have some serious health complications now. A few years after stopping T, I developed chronic fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and other issues. It’s been diagnosed as similar to fibromyalgia, and I also have PCOS. I can't help but feel these are connected to the long-term use of testosterone.
Do I regret transitioning? I don't hate myself for it, but it was built on a lie I told myself to survive. It buried my real issues with trauma, internalized homophobia, and an eating disorder. I regret that I was so young and that the doctors who treated me didn't look deeper. I regret my top surgery, and I live with physical pain from it. But my journey is part of who I am. All those years as a trans man are a part of my life, a female-exclusive experience. I'm a woman who lived a different kind of life, and now I'm finally finding peace by accepting all of myself.
Here is a timeline of the major events:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 15 | Socially transitioned (began living as a boy). |
| 16 | Started testosterone and had top surgery (double mastectomy). |
| 16-24 | Lived as a trans man (FTM) for 8 years. |
| 24 | Stopped testosterone and began detransitioning. |
| 26 (Present) | Have been detransitioned for a few years, living as a woman. |
Top Comments by /u/detrans-throwaway7:
You don’t look male in any way. Anyone on here saying “you look like a trans man” may as well tell you you look female, because trans men… are female. Lol.
I mean this in the least depressing way possibly: being misgendered is basically what life is like as a masculine-appearing lesbian in 2024. There’s nothing systemic you or I can do about it right now, and it will probably be different in a few years’ time. Unless you want to transition again or go hyperfeminine, the option is to remain GNC, remain woman-identified, and stand strong knowing that you’re part of a small group of people actually defying gender and sex stereotypes.
My advice? When people ask or assume, just be honest (when it’s safe ofc). Tell them you are detransitioned. Tell them you used to live as a trans man. Tell them “I transitioned and changed my mind”. Tell them “I’m a masculine woman”. Tell them you’re a woman, you’re just not into makeup and prefer comfortable clothes.
Anyone who can hear any of the above and STILL insist you’re a man, a trans man, a trans woman etc is just doing extra mental work to try and make things confusing. You don’t owe anyone ANY explanation- but if you give one and they try and find a reason to disbelieve it, that is 1000% their problem.
If I saw you in public I would immediately assume you were a fellow lesbian. :)
fourthwavewomen is the best feminist subreddit imo, and it’s sizable and active. thelezistance is great but is exclusive to lesbians. blockedandreported is for news/politics, often touching on trans or detrans issues, centered around a podcast. GC viewpoints are very much the norm there
i wish there were dedicated GC spaces for bi women on here, i’m sure the main subreddits are just awful for open discussion. we have some going strong as lesbians now but it’s taken years of persistence, lezistance only became an active community in the last few months. hopefully there will be more for GC bi women / mixed spaces for lesbians and bi women etc in the near future (and if i’m mistaken and it already exists i hope you find it!)
Many butch lesbians are detrans, and many more have experienced dysphoria, considered transition, or had transition suggested to them. This has had a huge effect on butch lesbians over the past couple decades. I promise you, even if not everyone is immediately accepting, the lesbian community is aware of how common FTM transition is for butches.
It’s never too late to find your community and I promise there are women out there who will get you completely.
If you don’t like the effects of testosterone, you should not be on testosterone. There is no picking and choosing and your body/facial hair will only get thicker the longer you stay on it, even at a low dose.
You sound really unhappy with transition to me. It seems you know it happened too early. (I’m so sorry to hear you regret top surgery, and that your shitty doctor didn’t listen to you.) And if you enjoy having a feminine shaped body I can say with almost 100% certainty that you don’t have the desire to live as a man. It sounds like you’re just continuing to identify this way because 1. you have already put time and effort into it/are afraid of people’s reactions (look up “sunk cost fallacy”) and 2. you believe that your gender expression/sense of masculinity means you “must be” male… well, good news, you can actually look, behave, etc EXACTLY as you do today, AND be a woman. The only thing that makes us women inherently is that we’re female: everything else is adornment.
It’s simply untrue that your low voice would “totally conflict” with living as a woman lol. Me and most other detrans women manage to make it work! As I said above, literally all your traits are totally fine to have, regardless of your stated gender identity (or lack thereof)
The only thing I’ll warn you against is doing Literally Anything simply to get men to be attracted to you. First off you’re worth so much more than what any man thinks of you sexually; and secondly, men will sleep with pretty much anything that moves… it’s not a matter of “men being attracted to you” (which is not necessarily a compliment) but of finding ones who are both attracted to you AND respect you. They are out there; don’t settle for simple attraction.
I wish you the best of luck. Don’t be afraid; you got this! You are still yourself no matter your name, pronouns, appearance, behavior, anything— this is your body and your life. Don’t waste time being uncomfortable! I was once terrified to give up being a trans man but it literally saved my life. I found confidence I never knew I could have. I respect and appreciate my body more than I ever did before. And I am finally freed of the gender stereotypes that chained me in, both the feminine and the masculine ones. It is NEVER too late if it’s what you want to do!
(And if you try out detransition and it’s not working for you, as another commenter said, you can always re-evaluate in the future.)
✌🏼😊❣️
By openly being both a woman (who doesn’t identify as anything else) and masculine, you are showing the world that there is more than one way to be a woman. Being visibly yourself means that other people are made to realize the existence of “manly” women.
Is it difficult? Absolutely. But in my opinion it’s worth it to push back against regressive sex roles, I want to someday live in a world where all women can be as masculine as they like without being told they are secretly men or would be better suited as a man. Embracing our natural selves can help build this world.
These are not your friends. Real friends do not belittle and laugh at their friends’ life journeys, even if they disagree on a personal level.
They will never respect you unless they leave their dogmatic belief system, or you lie about everything you believe. It seems like a fucking pain to me. Even if you don’t drop them entirely you need a support base who you can be real with.
If you’re into radical feminism already you should look into discord groups, especially ones for your local area, and meet some people on a more similar wavelength to you.
(And of course you know this, but their stupid jokes are only signs of these people’s own insecurities. Your bravery to live exactly as you are is terrifying to them because it implies that they could do that, too)
regardless of where you end up playing or not playing i highly suggest you do some research on the historical fight for women’s sports (“title ix” in the US) and why they exist. “a consolation prize for people who weren’t good enough to play with the guys” is, in addition to just being a blatant falsehood, INCREDIBLY sexist & demeans the struggles that have been faced by women in sports who have had to time and time again “prove” that they are not intrinsically inferior to men on the basis of being female. which is also the sex you are, T or no T.
ask yourself why you view men’s sports (and, i suspect, men themselves) as superior to women. why do you consider things like lifting heavier things and having a longer stride to be the determiners of who is superior in our world??? men are only superior if you view specific things as “better”. it’s a centuries-old system so maybe you don’t know any better, but… seriously you need to do some digging into why you believe these things.
you will always be female even if you live full time in society passing as a man. you will always be viewed as inferior to males under the system YOU are perpetuating with this line of thinking. i think you should cut yourself some slack and stop expecting yourself to be the same as a bunch of males- they would never do the same for you.
and fyi women are not “small and weak and bad at things”, for fucks sake. and, fwiw, when i went off testosterone (after 8 years on it) my mental health and self image improved IMMENSELY quite soon after. it also really improved my physical health in all areas. our bodies aren’t designed to sustain years of exogenous hormones, they may feel good initially but it’s not sustainable.
AI doesn’t know what you were “supposed” to look like. Don’t rely on that
I was straight out of the psych ward too (for a suicide attempt) when I was 15, straight to the gender clinic and diagnosed with GID even tho the hospital had diagnosed me with “Adjustment disorder” among other more longterm things. It’s not fair at all and a lot of people don’t understand how tied in the transition industry is with the psychiatric industry. And they are total industries. We were not able to truly consent and they took advantage of us.
For what it’s worth, the first two pics look WAY more similar to each other than the third pic does to either. You’re still you. I know it’s difficult but everything is gonna be okay. I’m 4.5 years detransitioned (after almost a decade living as FTM) and as I age I continue to look more and more like the adult woman I am. A couple years after stopping T, I actually looked more like my 14-year-old pre-transition self than I ever had before lol.
Your body is you. It will never stop being female, even if doctors lied to you. You are gonna be okay ❤️🩹
women in general are not necessarily turned off by transwomen, and given that probably 80% or more of trans acceptance and positivity comes from women, i find it ridiculous to claim that they “hate” transwomen. however, if you are talking specifically about dating lesbians, you’ll simply have to give that up, as lesbians are not attracted to male individuals, even if they pass in a lot of situations. it’s just different sexually and it’s different being with someone who also grew up as a girl. it’s nothing to be overcome, that’s just sexuality.
that said, there are PLENTY of straight and especially bisexual women who are into feminine men, transwomen, gnc males, detrans men, etc. in fact i think a significant portion of the male-attracted female population actually would prefer someone more feminine. yes i know that SRS makes it more difficult, but it’s definitely not a deal-breaker for all women.
just be honest, don’t downplay your lived experience, be unashamedly you, and you will attract people, be they men or women, who see you, who admire your uniqueness and ability to own everything you are. ✌🏼♥️