This story is from the comments by /u/kryptokate2 that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account "kryptokate2" appears to be authentic and not a bot. The user demonstrates a deep, nuanced, and personal understanding of gender dysphoria, detransition, and the surrounding social and political issues. The comments are lengthy, detailed, and show a consistent, well-reasoned perspective developed over many years of personal experience and observation.
There are no serious red flags suggesting this is a fake account, a bot, or someone falsely claiming to be a desister. The user identifies as female, describes a personal history of dysphoria (specifically chest dysphoria), and explains how they overcame it without medical intervention, which aligns with the definition of a desister. The writing is passionate, analytical, and contains personal anecdotes that are complex and specific, making them difficult to fabricate consistently. The account's long history of engagement on the subreddit further supports its authenticity.
About me
I'm a woman in my forties, and my discomfort started in childhood from feeling shamed for my body. I spent years hating my female development and feeling powerless, believing I might be a man because my personality wasn't traditionally feminine. Through stepping away from media and letting time pass, those intense feelings faded on their own in my late twenties. I now see my struggle was about social pressures and not my body itself. I am profoundly grateful I never medically transitioned and am at peace living as the woman I am.
My detransition story
My journey with gender has been long and complicated, and looking back, I’m glad I never medically transitioned because I know I would have regretted it. I’m a woman in my early forties, and my struggles started when I was a kid.
Around the age of seven, a boy asked me if I was a boy or a girl because I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I remember burning with shame. That feeling got much worse when I hit puberty around thirteen. I developed a deep hatred for my breasts. They weren't even big, but I was filled with shame and embarrassment by them. I hated that they were a source of obsession for men and I couldn't stand the idea of having them. I wanted a completely flat, smooth chest. This intense discomfort lasted from my early teens until my mid-twenties.
I also had a lot of confusion about my sexuality. For a long time, I was sure I was bisexual. But when I actually had a sexual experience with a female friend in high school, my body reacted with such intense physical nausea that I felt sick to my stomach. It was a shock because I had built it up in my head, but my body was giving me a hard no. Experiences with men, even when disappointing for other reasons, never felt like that. It took that real-life experience for me to realize I was actually heterosexual. My mind liked the idea of being with a woman, but my body knew otherwise.
A huge part of my discomfort was also about physical strength. I’ve always been intensely jealous of the natural size and strength advantages men have. They get this "magic juice" – testosterone – that makes them stronger, faster, and more energetic. I’ve killed myself in the gym, but I’ll always have puny muscles compared to even an out-of-shape man. It felt so unfair. To me, being a woman meant being the weaker sex, and the only consolation was the ability to have babies, which was something I knew from a young age I never wanted. The thought of pregnancy horrified me. So I felt stuck with the weakness and got nothing I wanted out of being female.
For a while, I even tried living as a man. This was back before medical transition was a common or easily available option. People my whole life had told me I had a masculine personality – I’m blunt, logical, not sentimental, have a high sex drive, and I’m not very agreeable. I hated the performance of femininity; I only wear makeup and dress a certain way because it’s practical for attracting men, not because I enjoy it. But I quickly realized that pretending to be a man was silly and didn’t make sense for me. I might have personality traits that are more common in men, but that just puts me on an end of the bell curve for women. I am still, obviously, female.
What helped me more than anything was time and getting away from media influences. In my late twenties, my feelings about my body started to fade. I got over the hatred for my breasts and now I don't really think about them. By my thirties, I just stopped caring as much. You get busy with life and you don’t have as much time to obsess over yourself. I also made a conscious effort in the past to go on a "media diet." I threw out all my magazines and stopped watching TV for a couple of years because I realized I was filling my head with images of "perfect" people and becoming disgusted with real, flawed bodies. It worked. My issues went away. I worry a lot for young people today who are "extremely online," living in a disembodied fantasy world that warps their perception of reality.
I believe that what’s called "real" gender dysphoria probably does exist, but it’s much rarer than the current explosion in numbers suggests. I think a lot of the increase, especially in young girls, comes from a desire to escape the pressures and powerlessness that can come with being female. For males, I see patterns linked to cultures with strong "machismo" expectations or to a specific sexual paraphilia. The whole situation is made worse by a culture that doesn’t allow for open questioning and treats any doubt as hatred.
I don’t regret exploring these feelings, but I am profoundly glad that medical intervention wasn’t an easy path for me when I was younger. I benefited from having to work through my issues mentally and emotionally. My conclusion is that the only thing that fundamentally determines if you’re a man or a woman is whether your body was designed to get pregnant or to impregnate someone. Everything else is just personality or social performance. I wish we could just let people be themselves without forcing them into boxes that make them feel like they need to change their bodies to fit in.
Here is a timeline of my experiences based on my memories:
Age | Event |
---|---|
7 | A boy shamed me for not wearing a shirt, sparking early body discomfort. |
13 | Puberty began; intense hatred and shame towards my developing breasts started. |
25 | Feelings of breast hatred and body discomfort began to finally fade. |
Late 20s | Fully overcame body dysmorphic feelings; became comfortable as a woman. |
Early 40s (Now) | Reflecting on the journey; grateful I never pursued medical transition. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/kryptokate2:
Those specific issues are not at all only a conservative viewpoint. In fact I think it is being framed that way specifically to intimidate people from speaking up (which is sadly effective). I know so, so, so many progressive, very lefty people who agree on these issues and are all terrified to say so publicly bc they don't want to be labeled a terf, transphove, non inclusive, etc. They won't say anything publicly but so many will privately say so if they know they won't be judged. I was actually shocked to find out that many of my ultra lefty friends felt this way when someone finally...tenderly and carefully...raised the issue. It was like a dam broke with everyone saying yes, yes, I agree! So I think that some people merely being courageous enough to be honest about their opinions while also being progressive is helpful. Though that is hard to do when one has to worry about their professional reputation etc.
First, please realize that prior to 20 years ago, this question would never have even occurred to you. It would not cross your mind any more than whether or not there was such thing as a "senior citizen" or a "Canadian" or a "teenager" or a "brunette". Those were all just descriptors of certain demographic groups and so was "woman" (being a female who is not a child but an adult).
Secondly, you would not have had a device to "look up" the term and then scroll through images generated by an algorithm, which images were mostly generated for advertising or aesthetic purposes. If you Google "teenager" you will get a bunch of images. Are they comprehensive of the state of being age 13 to 19? Does the state of teenagerhood actually exist? If those questions sound absurd/nonsensical, please understand they would sound equally nonsensical to someone 20 years ago asking whether womanhood exists. Of course it exists, there are females who are adults! That would be the response you would get. But then people changed the definition to mean something no one can actually define, but that seems to represent some form of idealized aesthetic and social status.
If in 1995 you looked up "woman" in the encyclopedia you would have read an entry that said "human adult female" and then there probably would have been a few photos of women from different countries and different ages. In fact I'm pretty sure that is the only definition you would have found in any dictionary up til 5 to 10 years ago. A lot of this is just word games.
The obsession with categories and sub categories and labels and who's included and who isn't is seriously at a level of complete insanity. Like padded room level craziness. I read some of the arguments people have about these things on like the honesttransgender sub and it is mind bending. The warring factions about what are basically word games that never end are just wild. Almost like the actual problem some of these people have is with obsessive levels of systemizing, diagramming and categorization rather than anything else. I truly don't understand where this came from.
Personally, I think it's great if you can come to these realizations and still be happy with how you look and with your life. That's a really great thing in fact. And honestly, if there were more transitioned people like you, I think there would also be less of a backlash against trans issues, like we currently see, so ultimately you would be helping trans people.
It's kind of suspect that the entire emotional wellbeing of many trans people is currently perched on an edifice of never being reminded of their biological sex. Making people change the words they use and recite mantras that everyone knows deep down to be untrue makes them seem somewhat...deluded and very mentally unhealthy if merely being reminded of facts will cause am emotional breakdown. I think if more people could accept what you accept, recognize that it sucks nut it's reality, nut still be happy and content with their body as they've chosen to modify it and the gender they now inhabit, it would be a good thing. And would lead to less lying and suspicion and deception. Right now we have a situation where cis people are told that they must essentially treat trans people like they're children who still believe in Santa Claus and never reveal the truth because it will upset them. One, that's infantilizing and patronizing. Two, it's causing some people to make wrong-headed decisions based on hopes and fantasies that don't reflect reality. And three, despite the supposed good intentions, I think it also sets up a dynamic where people are learning to treat trans people as mentally unhealthy people living in a fantasy world who can't be exposed to truths without melting down or killing themselves...and how can one really respect a trans person if that's how you think of them?
Telling the truth, that trans and cis women/men are not the same and biology IS relevant and at best one can just make enough extreme modifications to very closely resemble the opposite sex, but that some people are profoundly unhappy with their given body and prefer to change it, should be okay. I really don't get the need to try to bring this other metaphysical element into it.
All that said, I am sorry that you're experiencing disillusionment and that things aren't what you'd hoped. Life disappoints all of us and no one has everything the way they want and wish it could be. I hope you can maintain some happiness and satisfaction in your life regardless of leaving illusions behind.
No particular thoughts on this particular post, but I just went down a rabbit hole reading that sub and....holy hell. What a complete cluster fuck the trans community is obviously currently in, with the cognitive dissonance and competing theories and new ideas every five seconds that completely invalidate what was yesterday's iron rules.
Prior to the 2000s, what used to be called "transexuals" did exist and they surely do now...and they went through massive shit and obstacles to be trans so clearly they were. The numbers were far, far lower though, and also back then 90% of them were men. To me, the reason transitioning is exploding in numbers since the 2000s is because the technology and medical availability has made it so that it is so much easier, and also possible to even kind of pass (which wasn't truly possible previously when the cosmetic techniques weren't as advanced). So in my mind, yes "real" trans exists, but likely it is far more rare than what is seen now, where there are far fewer barriers to transitioning and it is massively more socially acceptable. And also where it is much less likely in FtM, like it used to be, unlike today where those transitions are skyrocketing.
The problem is that a lot of this stuff is irreversible. Somewhat like any cosmetic surgery. You can always have implants removed, but if you have a nose job and carve down your nose, you can never get your original nose back. Things you take away can't come back, and that includes your fertility,, which most teenagers are not at all thinking about but which is very likely to become important to them by age 35.
Then add the fact that the massive increase in numbers over the past two decades are 1. Teenagers who have zero life experience or maturity to be making enormous life altering decisions and barely even know what it means or feels like to be an adult man/woman of their natal sex, because they're still going through puberty themselves, and therefore certainly don't know what it's like to be an adult of the opposite sex, 2. Much of the increase is from girls who suffer from being in the more powerless sex class, which inherently brings about questions of whether what they truly want is to escape oppressive and distorting gender roles imposed by society (I mean what if medical technology suddenly came up with a way to realistically transition black people to white...would we not question that and wonder whether they were motivated by societally imposed racism?). And 3. A totally moralistic and ideological cult has sprung up around the whole issue where you either 100% support anything any random trans person has to say or you're an evil transphobic trans hating bigot, which does not allow for full and free exploration of what are truly complex and sensitive issues where there is zero long term or clear science and certain forms of research or inquiry will be completely shut down. All that ends up with a total cluster fuck.
So, my answer is yes there are actual trans people, but likely they exist in far, far fewer numbers than we currently see or that would exist absent such strongly imposed cultural expectations around gender performance or certain very restrictive pro-trans ideologies. As for me, despite always being me, at different cultural times when I've existed I would be considered not trans or trans or trans in denial, all depending on the constantly fluctuating cultural norms and not because of any change in ME. I don't consider myself trans currently, and simply wish that we could stop oppressing people with forced gender roles that make them feel like they have to look/act a certain way based on their sex or they're defective. I would think that MOST people would prefer not to spend thousands of dollars on medical treatments and irreversible surgeries and would rather just be comfortable in their bodies, if that were possible.
I am much older than most commenting on this sub, I can tell you for a fact that prior to the 2000s, no one thought about gender, it was just an interchangeable word for sex, and everyone was the sex they were whether they liked it or not and no one really cared to spend any time thinking or worrying about it because there was nothing you could do about it anyway.
The reason this changed is bc medical and cosmetic surgery techniques improved to a point where some people could actually pass (sort of, sometimes) as the opposite sex. But they did not want to be thought of as just a masquerading faker wearing the costume of the opposite sex, they wanted to be actually believed and accepted as the opposite sex. Therefore they came up with the idea of "gender" as some metaphysical, internal, subjective state of being that expressed one's "real" sex and should be taken as and treated as more important and authentic and true than the biological reality of sex. And now that trans people have asked everyone to accept gender as the real state of one's being and more important and vital than sex, it opens the door for everyone else who is not interested in body modification to have to describe and take ownership of a "gender", even though it's frankly an irrelevant concept for anyone not interested in modifying their body.
Because those are the years that basically mark the beginning and end of puberty. Which is not just physical but the time when people are making their own place and role in the social world and working on solidifying and trying to increase their social status by imitating others, trying on identities, and social striving. They're the years when humans are at the absolute peak of being socially obsessed with others, with their relative staus and attractiveness, how they're viewed by others, what and who are cool versus not, admiring or becoming obsessed with or getting crushes on total strangers, etc. All that settles around 19 or 20. And after that, the whole idea of being so concerned with what's cool just becomes hard to even relate to and sad. Honestly, as an adult it is very, very hard to relate to or even remember exactly how socially obsessed and anxious one is as a teenager. And when I say socially obsessed I don't mean actually being social, plenty of teens are isolated, but they are constantly scanning for information on their peers and celebrities and thinking about others and what others think. That goes away as an adult (or at least it should, some people are sadly perpetual teenagers).
I wonder how much of the recent explosion in increasing numbers of teenaged trans comes from being "extremely online". I mean, anytime someone is online it's an inherently disembodied experience. It utilizes completely different neural pathways when you're only using certain cognitive elements of your brain but without body movement, physical context, smells, the presence of other people, or any of the other things that are part of real life. For young kids who are now raised spending literally MOST of their time online, and very little out in the real world, it makes sense to me that we would see more and more dysphoria (and I don't mean just gender dysphoria but generalized feelings of dissociation from one's body).
For example I notice that trans or trans questioning teens are obsessed with anime images. It's like their ideals and conceptions of people aren't even remotely linked to actual humans but to literal cartoons of children. I find that very bizarre. When I experienced dysphoria back in the 90s it was very much related to the fact that I was constantly consuming magazines and watching TV and filling my head with ideas about what people were "supposed" to look like rather than looking at the actual human beings around me. I was obsessed by images of "perfect" men and women and disgusted by actual, flawed bodies. One way that I resolved and got over that problem was to go on a media diet where I tossed all magazines and catalogs and stopped watching TV for a couple years and my issues went away. But being online 14 hours a day is SO much worse nowadays and I can't even imagine what it's doing to still developing brains to be constantly saturated in a fantasy world where all actual humans are disembodied, and all images of humans are artificial.
Makes me wonder if you took your average trans 14 year old, took away all their devices, and sent them out to participate in an Outward Bound type excursion where they just had to live in nature with no media and no artifice and no images and no internet and just being with regular humans every day interacting and surviving and using their bodies, how many would find the experience to totally change their perspective.
So...I relate to your post. I'll tell you where I've come down, based on my observations. I don't believe there is any such thing as "trans" except for in heterosexual males who have an extremely strong fetish/paraphilia about sexually being a woman, which is strong enough that it completely takes over their life and they will do anything...super risky/extreme medical procedures, going through massive social rejection and humiliation, etc in order to fulfill that sexual drive which can be described as a sort of fetish. I do not think they are "trans" in the way the trans community conceives as trans, in that I don't think they really think or behave like women whatsoever, but I do think they have a deep seated, seemingly wired in and irresistible impulse to fulfill a sexual drive to feel like they are sexually female. I have no idea what causes it but they have always existed, even when being trans was considered a completely unacceptable thing that made you a joke and social pariah almost like a child molester. But honestly, it is almost entirely males that develop these overwhelming sexual fetishes that take over their lives and that they can't resist and will sacrifice everything else for, whether the fetish is to sexually be a woman or exhibitionism/voyeurism or masochism or pedophilia or any of the others. Females don't throw away their lives and go to jail for sexual fetishes, males do (only a small portion though).
For everyone else, i.e. amab who are attracted to males and all afab, I don't believe anyone is really "trans". I think they all believe they would be more socially and romantically successful being the opposite sex, whether bc their personality is more masculine/feminine or bc they're homophobic and gay or because their body is such that they think they'd be more attractive as the opposite sex (ie small males or large females) or because they experienced some sex-related trauma they want to escape.
For me, I never took hormones bc I'm older and that wasn't a thing when I decided to live as a man...I doubt I could have gotten them, and even if I could it wasn't something I'd ever heard of and it didn't occur to me. What made me do it is that my entire life since puberty, everyone has told me that I was like a guy in a girl's body. Especially guys told me this, including all my boyfriends and my now husband. Here are the factors that made people say this: I'm blunt to the point of being brutal, I'm super logical, I have zero sentimentality about anything, I attach no meaning or feelings to sex and always preferred casual sex with strangers to relationship sex and lose interest in sexual partners quickly, I'm high sex drive and promiscuous, I have zero interest in children or family, I hate talking about feelings or sharing emotions and just want people to get to the point, I'm not very agreeable and if someone disagrees with me I'm much more likely to argue with them and try to dominate them mentally and win then concede or give in to get along, I prefer talking about abstract philosophy and politics to personal or relationship stuff. Okay, so those are things people perceive as masculine about me. And those traits are much more typical of males than females. But, I'm female. I'm just on the end of the bell curve, not the middle. I get my period and can get pregnant, so there's no question I'm female and I now present as quite feminine (not bc I like it but only bc I'm attracted to males and they like it). I'm not sure what my point is other than to say if anyone has a personality more typical of the opposite sex, it's me, to the point where I've had hundreds of people comment on it through out my life, yet I don't think I'm trans. I tried it out briefly but quickly came to the conclusion it was silly and didn't make sense.
People need to get over these categories. We're all on a bell curve on all traits. I'm more masculine in personality than 99% of women. So what? I'm still obviously female. I'm also taller than 99% of women. I make a totally passable guy if I want to. When I was young I also hated the physical stuff...I hated having boobs and wanted my chest to be as flat and smooth as my back. Bc they suck! In a biological sense they are literally purposeless except as sexual decorations to attract men. No other mammal has swollen globs of fat, their mammary glands stay flat unless they're actually swollen with milk to feed young. Humans are the only ones with these stupid sexual decorations and I resented that terribly and had no interest in being a decoration. I also badly wanted the muscle and strength of men.
All I can tell you is that it fades. Along with a lot of other intense emotions. I seriously no longer care about any of this and am not remotely bothered by any of it. It takes a while to adjust and accept your body after puberty. By your 30s you just don't care as much. And MOST of your life will be after you're 30. And you get so busy with work and life that you stop having so much time to think about yourself and obsess and you just stop caring. That probably doesn't sound great to a young person, but it's true.
I only read this forum bc it's fascinating to me how much this shit has blown up and how psycho/ideological its become and how many people think they're trans. 15 years ago it just wasn't a thing, it was ultra rare and for males with sexual fetishes. It makes me sad so many people are torturing themselves and obsessing about being trans when I doubt it would've even crossed their mind pre-2000s. What's weird to me is the high number of people who think they're trans even though in my view their personalities seem nothing like the opposite sex so I don't even get how they think that.