This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this user account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or an inauthentic actor.
The comments display a consistent, nuanced, and deeply personal narrative of detransition/desistance. The user shares specific, multi-faceted details about their history (e.g., religious upbringing, sexual trauma, ADHD/neurological conditions, top surgery experience, dating history) that would be difficult to fabricate consistently. Their advice is empathetic, complex, and focuses on internal exploration, which aligns with the passionate and often painful perspective of a genuine detransitioner or desister. The language is natural, with varied sentence structures and personal reflections that do not resemble automated or scripted bot responses.
About me
I was born female and felt different from a very young age, wanting to be a boy. My journey started with intense discomfort during puberty, which I later tried to solve by identifying as a trans man and getting top surgery. I eventually realized my desire to transition was a coping mechanism for deeper issues like past trauma, undiagnosed ADHD, and internalized misogyny. I’ve since detransitioned and now identify as a butch lesbian, finally feeling comfortable in my own skin. I don't regret my surgery, but I do regret believing that changing my gender was the answer to all my problems.
My detransition story
My whole journey with gender has been a long and complicated one, and it’s taken me years to untangle. I was born female, and from a very young age, I felt different. I remember wanting to be a boy as early as four years old. When I hit puberty around age nine, the discomfort became intense and specific: I hated developing breasts. It wasn't about how they looked to others; it was a deep, physical sensation that felt wrong, like my body was mapped incorrectly. I started binding unsafely for years before I even knew what a binder was, and later, when I got one at 18, I wore it constantly, even to sleep, because the distress was so overwhelming. It stopped me from being physical, from working out; my life revolved around managing this crushing feeling.
I was raised in a semi-conservative, Christian environment that was misogynistic and homophobic. I was a masculine girl who liked masculine things and was attracted to women, and I was made to feel like that was wrong or even evil. When I was eight years old, I experienced a predatory sexualization on the street that also messed with my head. All of this created a lot of internalized hatred. I think I embraced the idea of being "evil" or wrong because it felt more powerful than feeling like a victim.
When I discovered the concept of being transgender, it felt like an answer. It gave me a clear, step-by-step solution to the pain I was in. I identified as a trans man for a while. The idea of taking testosterone and getting surgeries offered an escape from being a woman, which felt like a liability. I enjoyed being seen as male. But I always had a nagging hesitation about pursuing hormones or bottom surgery. The one thing I never doubted was my need for top surgery. I had wanted it for 13 years, well before I knew it was part of a medical transition. I got top surgery at 23, and I don't regret it. For me, it fixed a specific, debilitating sensory issue. Most days now, I forget I even had the surgery; it just feels natural and has allowed me to move on with my life.
What made me start to question everything was realizing that being trans was, for me, a coping mechanism. I started to disconnect from the label of "woman" and realized I had a lot of hidden hatred towards women that I had turned inward. I saw that my desire to transition kept expanding—I wanted T, then bottom surgery, then even leg lengthening. Every difference I found between myself and a biological male became a new source of insecurity. It hit me that I could never actually be a biological male; it would always be an imitation. That was a devastating but necessary realization that started my detransition.
Around the same time, I began to understand my own mental health better. I was diagnosed with temporal lobe seizures in high school, but the first neurologist I saw didn't believe me because I was female. I also now strongly believe I have undiagnosed ADHD. So many of my struggles—the anxiety, depression, suicidal behavior, self-harm, and even the feeling of not fitting in with gender stereotypes—are explained by ADHD. I think my top dysphoria might even be linked to my seizures and ADHD-related sensory issues. Had these issues been properly addressed, or had I not been raised in such a shaming environment, I might have figured things out much sooner.
Letting go of the trans identity was a grieving process. I had to grieve the solution I thought I had. I’ve settled into identifying as a butch lesbian. I’m very masculine, and I’m comfortable with that. My relationships with women are healthier and more genuine now than when I was living as a man. I still deal with emotional pain, but it’s from past trauma and the ADHD, not from my gender. I don’t regret my top surgery, but I do regret buying into the ideology that my problems could be solved by changing my gender. The best thing I did was step away from all gender-related content online for a while and just focus on who I am as an individual—my hobbies, what I’m good at, what I like. That’s how I found my footing.
My thoughts on gender now are that it’s not the most important thing about a person. For me, it was an escape from other, harder-to-solve problems. I think we put too much emphasis on it. I benefited from stripping away the labels and just existing as me.
Here is a timeline of the main events:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 4 | First recall wanting to be a boy. |
| 7 | Experienced predatory sexualization on the street. |
| 9 | Puberty began; intense top dysphoria started. Began unsafe binding practices. |
| 18 | Got my first proper binder. |
| 23 | Had top surgery (double incision). |
| 26 (Present) | Detransitioned; now identify as a butch lesbian. |
Top Comments by /u/detransaimless:
That’s what I was thinking. There’s not a single country on the planet that prefers female babies to male babies. There are plenty of countries where baby girls are straight up killed because they aren’t male. There’s one country in particular that suddenly recognizes this as an issue because none of their sons have women to marry not because baby girls were killed, no because their sons don’t have women to marry. Well no shit you have no women to marry, who’s fault is that?
Jesus the obsession with narrative control these people have. Kinda reminds me of how the church freaks out about how exposure to a secular college turns people into far left atheists. Instead of asking why this happens they just want to hide the content.
Lmao this is why I was never a fan of trans spaces when I was trans, there’s too many correlations between them and abusive church environments. I feel bad for the emotionally balanced trans people who are stuck being lumped in with internet trans people. Please y’all, go outside. The average run of the mill transphobe isn’t even on Reddit anymore thanks to the multiple ban waves and more extreme alternative platforms.
this happened to me as well. I got chewed up and spit out by quite a few ideologies before coming to a similar conclusion as you, you can't look to an ideology to define yourself.
Ive since stripped myself of labels as labels only serve to help others understand you, not you understand yourself. And since then have managed to pick up a few labels that make sense to me. I have been having to do this process for myself for 8 years after leaving christianity, which put me in a similar spiral. (this was an ideology I was raised in so I'm not saying your time line will be as long) But 8 years out I can say you do make progress, even if it doesnt feel like it now. You have learned a lot, and while figuring out what doesnt work might not seem like progress, it is. simply because you have been able to identify why it is you keep getting the wrong answers. That's a really good thing!
My best advice would be figure out who are you outside of your gender/gender roles/bio sex. what hobbies do you enjoy? what things are you good at? what foods do you like? what's your favorite color? they all sound really basic but putting down gender as a whole, and deciding to give it a rest for now, may help you. I'm not saying you cant return to this question. I know for me, when I was experiencing this, the best thing I did for myself was find "the ground" while it felt like I was falling and spiraling, and frankly, feeling like I was getting tossed around in a bottomless river.
Find something that has remained a constant throughout these identity changes. If you can find that thing, or even discover it, you are on the right track and you'll know you have found "the ground". It will give you something about yourself you can point to and say "this is me" and from there youll be able to add things and build up a better understanding of yourself, which seems to be your ultimate goal.
I find what happens to me is I get so hung up on wanting an answer to this one aspect that I end up pushing out a LOT of information in an attempt to get more and more specific only to find that I come up more and more empty handed. Its only when I stand back, or abandon the question entirely for an amount of time, does this other question suddenly make sense. I'm not sure if you can relate to that at all but its something I realized.
In your case, you might not have all the information you need, and you need to go searching for information elsewhere before you can definitively put together the pieces you're working on. And thats not an issue, you don't owe anyone an answer on who you are. There is no time limit to figuring it out, though I'm sure you definitely feel this way, I know I did.
Munchausen by proxy is still very much a thing, and seeing as munchausen syndrom is driven by receiving attention, praise, sympathy and money and say transitioning and puberty blockers could easily fall on an abusive parents radar. That’s not even touching on other possibilities of narcissistic parents or other abusive things.
Gypsy rose is a pretty good example of the most extreme of these cases.
In addition to what others have said, misdiagnosis happens more frequently for afab people. And sometimes afab go undiagnosed for longer especially for neurological disorders like autism and adhd. Interestingly enough, both of those disorders are disproportionally higher for trans men, and afab trans people. Correlation of course doesn’t equal causation so take my prediction with a grain of salt, but I think with the blanketed “if you think you’re trans you are” it’s easier for afab to be misdiagnosed. They’re citing all these symptoms that are similar to gender dysphoria and so they just get a full pass meanwhile there’s little to no time dedicated to further investigation into someone’s mental health which was a lot more thorough in the past. Not being fully aware of your own mental health history results in a lot of misinterpretations of the symptoms you experience because you just don’t have the full picture of yourself. I would say these people are in pain, but the pain doesn’t tell you the solution you need.
It’s not to say women don’t know what’s going on and can’t be trusted on their symptoms, they can be and should be. But when you go to a doctor you expect that doctor to be able to your symptoms and help you find the correct diagnosis to match that but for women that is essentially a crap shoot that they will more often then not loose and that’s more so then if they were men (on average).
Womens health care is severely lacking just in general. While they may seek out medical professionals more often then men they more often don’t leave with a proper diagnosis, or a diagnosis at all. And that’s in countries that are more egalitarian then the rest of the world.
In addition to that I think age could be a factor as well. I think trans men seem to transition earlier then trans women despite it being more important for trans women to transition early. Being younger just leads to more errors in general. Male or female doesn’t matter.
A lot of ftmtf seem to cite social pressure as a reason, at least in a round about way. I would be curious to know the mtf detransition rate especially in comparison to amab who were gay and gender non conforming in comparison to gender conforming straight amab. Would the detrans rate be higher for the gay and gender non conforming? My gut is to say yes as a lot of the detrans mtf I’ve seen fit into this category which would point to social pressure to preform “masculinity” would be internalized and understood to be harder for them to do, thus leading to a higher false positive. But that’s all speculation.
Leave her. Any girlfriend I have ever had who breaks my boundaries ended up being a piece of shit.
I had a girlfriend who tried to touch me in a way I explicitly told her not to, and she ended up hurting me too in the process. Ironically this bitch also cheated on me and was trying to fuck with me mentally in other ways.
Your boundaries are your boundaries; they don’t require an explanation. People in your life can either follow them or they can leave. As someone who did the stupid thing and tried to stay with my psycho ex, cut it off. I regret not doing it sooner. Now I have an absolutely wonderful gf who treats me right and has the biggest heart in the world. But I can’t undo the damage to my trust that happened and I’m constantly having to be on myself to be able to be open with my partner now.
Why do you want to be with someone who makes you feel awful?
What made me think I was:
- Issues with body mapping/kinesthetic sensation with top dysphoria
- I’m masculine in interests and aptitude
- I’m attracted to women
- Significant distress over primary and secondary sex characteristics
- Enjoyed being viewed as male
- Dealt with anxiety, depression, suicide, self harm
- Suicidal behavior during menstration
What made me think I wasn’t:
- Predatory sexualization when I was 8
- Was brought up in a misogynistic/homophobic religious environment with sexual shaming
- Gender dysphoria did not fit all of my mental health issues
- Unknown reason for hesitation with perusing further transitioning
To give you a picture of myself as I know now, I have temporal seizures which after some research I believe branch out into areas of body sensation given how my seizures present and location of headaches after. This particular seizure could be due to a scar in the brain. I also found out I most likely have adhd which is a pretty common comorbidity with epilepsy. The adhd also explains the anxiety and depression, as well as suicidal and self harm behaviors. Including a whole other list of issues that fit under the adhd umbrella. Had I not been raised in an environment that treated my gender presentation as the worst thing as well as my sexuality I probably would have come to the second conclusion a hell of a lot faster.
Yup. If that were truly the case then I suppose transphobia should be classified as a rather new phenomenon seeing as detransitioners are a pretty new phenomenon in a more broader understood sense which I’m sure all these kids would disagree with. And I guarantee your run of the mill transphobe who knows very little about trans people doesn’t even know detransitioners are a thing.
When this stuff is posted I’m always like, why not attack actual transphobes? Or is that too scary because these people they’ll get actual shit and hateful things thrown at them because real transphobic people couldn’t care less about what they have to say and have no issue showing it.
it sort of comes and goes. sometimes im insanely suicidal, sometimes im not. im a little better then i was during tranisition simply because im not longer lying to myself about why i feel like shit. but i still feel like shit, probably with the same level of frequency but i feel its more intense now that I know theres no real solution. the state of the world doesn't help either.
Hmmm no.
If they wanted a decent metaphor it should be more like a depressed person stopped taking antidepressants and got depressed again so they started taking them again because modern medicine good.
Being gay doesn’t have shit to do with the medical community while gay conversion therapy, the reason all those 2000’s gays were claiming to be no longer gay, was medical. So your metaphor is that medical intervention causes people to forget who they are and do damage to themselves?
While not their intent, I do appreciate them highlighting how medical intervention consistently fucks over the lgbt community. Quite a brave take actually.