No matter how well intended, trying to convince her that she isn't trans will only harbor resentment. Try talking with her and asking more thoughtful questions. Point out that women can wear comfortable/masculine clothes and wear their hair short. There's nothing wrong with it. Ask her how she knows she feels like a boy, and what do boys feel like.

Gender detox. Gender isn't what you need. You're a woman by nature of being female, but that doesn't mean anything beyond that. You don't have to be feminine, you don't have to fit the stereotypes of what women are. But slapping a new label on yourself is counterproductive. Just let yourself exist. If you'd like to chat more in depth about ways to do that, you're free to message me. I had a similar line of thought when I was beginning to detrans.

Sounds very similar to my story tbh. You said you don't want to live as either gender--so don't. And I don't mean identify as non-binary, bc that's counterproductive and plays into gender even more. I mean, just let yourself exist without worrying about gender. Your sex is female, and that's enough. I'm living authentically as a butch lesbian now with the understanding that being female ties me to womanhood, but that doesn't mean I have to conform to stereotypes.

In the meantime, I would say staying on hormones isn't advisable while you figure this out.

There’s no right way to be a woman. Masculinized women are still women! Idk if you’re into women but I know lots of lesbians personally who have had mastectomies or been on testosterone (either as part of previous transition efforts or simply as a way to be more comfortable with their bodies), and they still find girlfriends and wives. I didn’t get surgery but I was on T, and I’ve heard from lots of lesbian friends that they think the masculinizing effects are actually kinda hot, especially the deep voice.

I still have dysphoria and am almost exactly a year after getting off hormones. It’s really hard some days, but other days it’s barely noticeable. I’d recommend you look into DBT coping mechanisms, particularly radical acceptance and mindfulness. Figure out some grounding techniques and reconnect with your body for what it is—not for what you wish it could be. Your body is healthy, it takes you from place to place, it can love and be loved, it can move through the world, hear the sound of breeze and birds singing, it can pet dogs and cats, it can wash dishes and feel the sudsy water between its fingers. Those kind of thoughts are what keeps me sane. In a capitalistic society, we are all taught to commodify our own bodies—even people without sex dysphoria. It’s what leads women to get plastic surgeries, it’s what causes insecurity and body issues, because people have disconnected the sense of self from their bodies. Even the language we use around bodies—it isn’t ‘your body’, it’s you. You’re inseparable from it and vice versa.

When a large segment of results are “horror stories” as you said above, it’s worth exposing yourself to these narratives. These people got these surgeries, and you can’t be certain that you’ll have no complications.

At best, neovaginas have to be dilated consistently (which can be painful, tedious, and messy) for the rest of your life to ensure they don’t shrink and close up (because the body recognizes it as a wound, whether you do or not, and will try to heal it). They do not self clean so they also require daily douching. Often, hair removal prior to surgery is not 100% effective so they have hair growing inside. They contain harmful bacteria including fecal bacteria. Most varieties are not self-lubricating, and the ones that are use colonic mucus to lubricate, which is not even analogous to vaginal mucus. Because they are not self-cleaning or ph-balanced, they are prone to both yeast and bacterial infections (like any wound), and there is no way to regulate the PH with things like female-health probiotics, because it isn’t actually a vagina, and the body does not recognize it as such. There are no ruggae inside the neovagina, no cervix, the vulva is unrealistic and usually visibly made of scrotal skin, the fabricated labia minora Close above the neovaginal opening, as opposed to below it like with real vaginas. There are often issues with sensation loss, or complete lack of erotically sensate tissue, because penises already have half the number of nerve endings that clitorises do, and cutting up any part of the body severely damages nerve function. Along with sensation loss, there are issues with urinary incontinence. Because the skin used to create the neovagina is not a durable mucus membrane like real vaginas, they are prone to perforations and rectovaginal fistulas, especially if you’re having penetrative sex. Your surgeon might leave too much erectile tissue and your neovagina will swell and balloon comically if you manage to get aroused.

And yes, that was all best case scenario. Worst case scenarios are as follows. The surgery is botched from the beginning, leaving no erotic and little tactile sensation—the only things you’ll feel are numbness and stinging (quote from an actual SRS patient). The healing process goes wrong, stitches come undone, and your fabricated labia unravel into a gory mess of blood and pus and granulation tissue. If you‘re unlucky enough to live far from your surgeon, no other doctor will know how to help you, because this surgery is uncommon and does not represent any real body part. Your neovagina prolapses, because there are no organs holding it in place, because it wasn’t meant to be there. Your clitoris or labia become necrotic and rot off. You become depressed for a few weeks or a month and don’t have the energy to dilate, and your neovagina closes up, leaving you without a dick or an approximation of a vagina—the only way to fix this is by replacing it with a section of bowel. You end up with chronic infections that are resistant to antibiotics, and have to go over and over to doctors who genuinely don’t know what to do for you.

Also, SRS is an extremely major surgery, and carries with it all the usual risks of surgery. They’re also quite long surgeries, and being under anesthesia for that long is unsafe even when it’s actually medically necessary. I recently had a medically necessary 3.5 hour surgery, and there’s a small but significant chance that you can die under anesthesia. There’s also a very long recovery period, potential for chronic pain, life interfering side effects. Spending 3+ hours a day dilating is already life interfering enough, but add in infections that lead to pain and embarrassing odor/discharge, and you’ve got a recipe for not leaving your home and becoming quite depressed.

Has she tried DBT based therapy? Also, in my experience, dysphoria is a condition that’s aggravated by focusing on it. If she continues to lean into gender as a solution for all her problems, it won’t improve—even with hormones and surgery. The trans movement acts like a body is so easily torn apart and put back together, but we aren’t mr potato heads, you can’t mix and match parts and hormones without harm. It will severely damage her body if she proceeds on this route. I’m about to be 21, was on hormones for six months when I was 19 before realizing that it wasn’t a sustainable treatment for my dysphoria. And in those six months, my previously masked chronic illness (endometriosis) became symptomatic, increasingly so, to the point that I had to take this semester off to have surgery. Hormones affect everything and treating them as an easy treatment for a mental illness is incredibly dangerous. She needs mental care, possibly psychiatric medication to help her stabilize, and she needs a supportive community of people who are there to remind her that there’s no wrong way to be a woman, and that she can be as masculine as she wants without making herself reliant on hormones.

For you, I’d recommend to be extremely clinical about transition. Call “top surgery” a double mastectomy. Call “T” hormone injections. She needs a hefty dose of reality, and not the echo chambers online of trans people.

Had a similar situation. Still ended up detransitioning. I don’t believe in the “Really trans” vs “stupid detransitioning trender who didn’t actually have dysphoria” dichotomy. Many of us were having all the same feelings you’re having and still ended up realizing that transitioning is not sustainable or safe. If you’re looking here for validation, you won’t get it.

Edit: whoever downvoted this, why?

Seek therapy for depersonalization/dysmorphic disorders. You’re only 18, hopefully you aren’t looking to become a parent soon, regardless of mother vs father. The fact that your struggles with identity are framed in parenthood is interesting and I’d recommend you speak with a mental health professional.

I’m more referring to the radfems who say shit like “you’ve mutilated your body” and other bullshit, especially to people who are considering detransition. And then trans people who encourage people away from detransition and say they should just keep going, even though they’re having misgivings. Not to mention the infighting and petty arguments on the posts made my suffering people.