This story is from the comments by /u/furbysaysburnthings that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the extensive comment history provided, there are no serious red flags to suggest this account is inauthentic, a bot, or not a real detransitioner/desister.
The comments demonstrate a high degree of authenticity through:
- Personal, Consistent Narrative: The user shares a detailed and consistent personal history over several years, including their journey as an FTM considering detransition, specific timelines (starting T at 25, being on it for 6-7 years), and nuanced reflections on the social and physical aspects of their experience.
- Complex, Nuanced Thought: The comments are not simplistic or repetitive. They show deep, often critical, reflection on the transgender movement, the psychology behind transition/detransition, and the social dynamics involved. The user acknowledges both the benefits and drawbacks they experienced, which is consistent with the passionate but conflicted feelings of real detransitioners.
- Engaged Interaction: The user responds directly to other users' specific situations, offering tailored advice, asking follow-up questions, and building on conversations. This demonstrates a real person engaging with a community, not a scripted bot.
- Acknowledgment of Common Detransitioner Themes: The user frequently mentions common factors found in detransition narratives, such as underlying autism, sexual trauma, social alienation, and the influence of online communities, aligning their experience with known patterns.
In short, the account shows the hallmarks of a genuine, thoughtful individual who is passionately working through their complex experiences with gender transition and detransition.
About me
I started transitioning to male at 25 to escape feeling like a failed woman and the pain from my past. I was on testosterone for over seven years, but I eventually realized I was using it as a coping mechanism, not because I was truly a man. Moving away from my affirming social circle gave me the perspective to see I was living a lie and dissociating from myself. I've been detransitioning for a year now, working to reverse the physical changes, which is difficult and scary. I now accept that I am female and am trying to build an identity for myself outside of gender entirely.
My detransition story
My journey with gender has been long and confusing, and I’m still figuring it out. I started identifying as a transgender man (FTM) when I was about 25 years old. I was on testosterone for roughly seven and a half years. I’m now in my early thirties and have been detransitioning for about a year.
Looking back, I realize my reasons for transitioning were complicated and not really about having a "male brain." I was a major tomboy growing up and never felt like I fit in with other girls. I now suspect I might be on the autism spectrum, as I’ve always had trouble with social things and understanding the unspoken rules that everyone else seemed to just get. I also struggled with a lot of internal pain from my upbringing; I was adopted and felt like an outsider, and I have a visible physical disability that made me feel ugly and unworthy. I think a big part of wanting to transition was to escape feeling like a "failed woman" and to avoid the vulnerability and sexual attention that came with being female. A close call with a sexual assault right before I started hormones was the final push that made me go through with it.
When I first started testosterone, I felt a kind of "euphoria." But I’ve come to see that as similar to the excitement people get when they start any big new life change, like a new diet or moving to a new city. It wasn't a sign that I was truly a man. Testosterone also acted like a powerful antidepressant and gave me a lot of energy, which I liked. But after a few years, the excitement wore off, and I started to see the downsides. Living as a man felt like I was constantly acting. I had to think about how to walk, talk, and act in a way that felt unnatural to me. I realized my personality is actually quite feminine, and trying to fit into the "man box" was suffocating. Men have a much narrower range of acceptable behavior, and I didn't fit it well.
A huge moment for me was moving away from the very LGBT-friendly city I lived in. In my new city, people weren't automatically affirming my gender, and I started to see how I was really perceived. I also had time alone, especially during the pandemic, to really think without the constant influence of my trans-friendly social circle. I started to question everything. I realized that transition was a way for me to dissociate from my real self and my problems. It was a coping mechanism, not a solution.
I also started to see a darker side to the trans movement. I began to believe that society, sometimes without even realizing it, encourages people like me—autistic, mentally ill, gender nonconforming, or otherwise "different"—to transition as a way to sterilize us and remove us from the gene pool. It feels like a modern, insidious form of eugenics disguised as acceptance. The constant affirmation I got felt good at the time, but now it seems like people were encouraging me to harm myself.
Detransitioning has been its own journey. It's scary. I don't get the same cheering squad I had when I transitioned. I’ve been off testosterone for about a year and on estrogen-based birth control to help my body readjust. My period hasn't come back yet, which is worrying. Physically, my body is changing back—my face is softer, my body shape is more feminine, and I’m getting laser hair removal for my beard. I practice voice training to sound more feminine again. It’s a lot of work, but it feels more honest.
I have a lot of regrets. I regret the damage I may have done to my body with high doses of testosterone. I regret the years I spent living a lie and the relationships I complicated. But I don't regret the lessons I learned. Living as a man gave me a perspective on gender and society that I wouldn't have otherwise. It showed me the constraints both men and women live under.
My thoughts on gender now are that it's largely a social performance. We're all acting to some degree. There's no one "true" self. For me, accepting that I am female, regardless of how well I conform to feminine stereotypes, is what matters. I'm trying to find an identity outside of gender, in things I enjoy and the values I hold.
The most significant topics from my experience are definitely autistic traits, using transition as escapism from trauma and low self-esteem, and the social pressure that influenced me. I also believe I benefited from stepping away from affirming therapy and thinking for myself. I experimented with psychedelic drugs, which helped me see my situation from a different angle, though they can also be dangerous. I don't think I would have detransitioned without moving away from my old community and getting that outside perspective.
Here is a timeline of the major events:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 25 | Started testosterone therapy (FTM transition). |
| 32 | Began seriously questioning my transition after moving cities and gaining distance from my old social circle. |
| 33 | Stopped testosterone after approximately 7.5 years of use. |
| 33 | Started estrogen-based birth control to help my body feminize and address menopausal symptoms from hormone imbalance. |
| 33-34 | Began the process of social and physical detransition: voice training, laser hair removal, changing my style. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/furbysaysburnthings:
No, I suspect you’re closer to the average viewpoint. I think Most people feel disgust or aversion to transgender people if they have a personal encounter, but keep it quiet because they don’t want to get involved with mentally ill or otherwise red flag people.
The way I now see trans ideology is as a pseudo-religious movement. The problem is much of the westernized world shits on religion now as backwards and outdated. Which it is. The problem is that conventional organized religion has a lot of very useful personal and community growth and transformation practices. We've thrown out the baby with the bath water.
The reason trans identification works is that it provides a belief system, where religion used to function, that whether right or wrong, is effective in helping people's inner transformation to becoming better. By using belief in something that's improvable, gender identity, in place of an antiquated God, we're recreating the kind of faith system many ordinary people need to overcome difficult personal life situations.
The problem is this practice sterilizes members which traditional religions don't do as part of their core practices. However, for many people, sterilization isn't too big of a price to pay to feel better, to feel more useful and alive.
Automation and the comforts of modernity have pulled us away from organized religion. Yet people still need the life practices that religions created a framework for. We're trying to recreate these same structures in trans ideology, New Age beliefs, membership in tribes like Crossfit and yoga "cults". It's not wrong, it's a basic human need for belonging and for re-identifying as someone better who can wake up in the morning and go about their life productively.
Ok honestly as much as I now understand how crazy my "gender journey" was, yeet the teat is hilarious and catchy. No wonder the kids love the trans thing. You get to act out whoever you want and get fun little sayings and get to be part of an oppressed minority allowed to weaponize basically anything as a victim to bully others. I miss it, the toxicity was delicious.
Don't feel bad. The whole game is that they are, of course, men. And they're using the social contract that women are supposed to be understanding and nice and compliant to be like, yo what's up. I'm a lesbian wermyn. Lick my peepee. I mean, lady penor.
But that wouldn't be "nice".
Although I think we've come a long way from some of the harsher parts of culture pre-21st century, I think people were generally more honest in previous generations even if it hurt in the moment. Now parents have been told for the last generation or so to put their kids in emotional bubble wrap in the name of not abusing them. There's a balance though. I think we may have gone too far as a culture in trying to protect people's feelings in that it becomes actively damaging.
Trans advocates, people just like us, rallied super hard to get trans affirmative care aka remove the safety checks which were maligned as "gatekeeping". People like us did this to ourselves. But also hospitals and society caved in because they're ok with letting us self destruct if we want to. Freedom of choice to self harm.
It's interesting how transgender and crossdressers tend to dress like an idealized form of the other gender, from the POV of our birth sex.
Looking good. If I passed you on the street I'd have no idea you had spent time passing as a woman. That being said you can pull off an androgynous look pretty easily if you want to.
Both photos look like a man. In order to look like a woman:
- Get laser so there's no facial hair.
- Did your period come back? I saw you've been off T 6 months and mine didn't come back by then. I started using birth control to get estrogen and after a few months I started looking much more female.
- Grow hair to a typical female length or wear a wig. Going bald only works for people who already look clearly female and you don't yet.
- Watch a YouTube video on how to shape your eyebrows. This will help a lot and you can do in an afternoon.
- Besides appearance, make sure to practice speaking higher on a regular basis.
- Wear clothes that women tend to wear. It doesn't actually have to be feminine clothes, just clothes for women. Like someone else mentioned, the sexy anime girl sweater is something that tends to be worn by young men with poor social skills. I'm guessing you're on the autism spectrum like many of us.
I can see some changes I'm your facial shape between the left and right picture so being off T is helping with looking more feminine. Keep going!
Why is this even allowed? Why are adults deciding that children have the capacity to understand what they're doing to themselves, possibly to the extent of making themselves infertile as minors, and seeing nothing wrong with it? Knowing full well that children don't have the cognitive skills to fully understand the consequences of their actions and be able to weigh that against their childish fantasies of what can never be?
Please note this comment isn't intended to make you feel better, but to answer the question about why we've gotten to the place we're at now with this cultural transgender craze. By exploring what events led up to where we are now, my hope is that people will have ideas for how we could move forward in some positive way.
Transgender medicine for minors is a result of trans political dogma, the same I used to believe in and fervently parroted. It is still used as the reason for fast tracking medicalization of minors and adults with hormones and surgeries. And the original reason was that it was supposed to keep people from killing themselves.
The dogma states that people, especially minors, need to have the option to transition because if they don't, you'll end up with a dead child.
This didn't come out of thin air. I'm 32 so I've lived through a few more years of LGBT history than you and everything made sense at the time. The problem is, everything was supposed to help people, but then it got out of hand.
What happened in the past decade or so is gay marriage got legalized. Then the trans political movement rose up on the coattails of widespread public support for gay marriage. It was perfect timing since gay marriage legalization was still fresh in everyone's minds.
We know the trans population has a higher than average suicide rate. Many people were tired of all the hoops they had to jump through in order to get cleared for medical transition and sometimes people would commit suicide with the explanation being it was because they couldn't transition.
I remember starting to hear about informed consent clinics when I was a teen around the late 2000s. At the time they were quite rare and relegated to the larger cities. As far as I know, they all required a person to be 18+.
Bathroom bills were a major transgender political talking point in 2013 and subsequent years as several high profile cases ruled in favor of allowing transgender people to use the desired bathroom. A test. How far can we push the issue.
Then in 2015, there was a very well publicized transgender teen named Leelah Alcorn who killed herself then posted her suicide note explaining she committed suicide because of the inability to transition. A rash of copycat transgender youth suicides soon followed. The media spotlight again provided an opportunity for trans activists to push the needle in favor of making transition more accessible.
Every step was supposed to make things safer and happier for people for who transition benefits. The supposed ultimate, truly transgender individual. Nobody guessed that transgender medicine would soon flow freely and be prescribed as a cure-all to people who haven't found an easier solution to their personal problems.
You're feeling this way because you haven't even had pain management figured out after half a year. Everything you mentioned concerning your regrets would only feel like a 5 instead of a 10 if you weren't also in excruciating physical pain. Get that fixed first. Seriously. All the other things have pretty straight forward solutions.