I despise the concept of gender as an "experience" or "exploration". Gender and gender roles aren't come innocuous facet of self-expression, they are a system of sexist oppression. Detrans people often recognize this to a greater extent than most other people.

I don't believe in gender identity as a concept, so it would be impossible for me to legitimately view someone as the opposite sex to what they were born, since that idea hinges on being able to overlook someone's biological sex in favor of recognizing their "gender identity". I don't think it's possible to "feel" like a man or a woman or neither because what would that even mean? Beyond sexist stereotypes, what does it mean to "feel" like a woman or a man? That being said, I do recognize the existence of sex dysphoria (and have suffered from it myself). There's a pretty massive difference between considering yourself to be the opposite sex because you "feel" like the opposite sex versus considering yourself the opposite sex because you experience a feeling of distress towards your body that you believe would be alleviated if you were the opposite sex. I'm not against transition in all circumstances, but I think it's extremely difficult to assess when dysphoria is or isn't primarily a response to society. I think it usually is, especially for women and homosexual people. I think some people may innately suffer from sex dysphoria as a mental illness, but these people are the minority and for most, sex dysphoria originates as a response to lived experiences such as oppression, abuse or other mental illnesses. I think that medical / psychiatric professionals should at least try to help sex dysphoric people cope on their own before recommending medical transition. Putting high levels of the opposite sex hormones into your body can have a lot of averse negative effects, and many transsexual surgeries have incredibly high risks of complications.

I don't think of myself as cis or trans because I don't have a gender identity. I am a woman solely on the basis that I am biologically female - had I been born male, I would be a man. So I don't "identify" with my birth sex, I'm just no longer actively disidentifying with it.

One thing I will say: I have heard that's it's not uncommon to feel some sense of loss after a mastectomy, even one that was wanted, because of how the breasts effect hormones. I'm not totally sure how this works, but it's something I've heard multiple times and when I had a mastectomy I was told that I should schedule am appointment with my therapist for fairly soon after because I would probably be emotional.

That said, intense regret is less common, and from your description of how you're doing it sounds like you're feelings towards this are a lot more than just normal post-surgery emotions.

Right now, you do need to focus on recovery. The surgery is done with and it's important for you to heal physically, especially given that you had a complication. And it will be easier for you to sort out your emotions when you've healed physically and don't have to worry about that aspect of the surgery.

My regret after my mastectomy wasn't immediate but has become more of a nagging, ongoing feeling that I have to contend with. I will never get breast implants for a multitude of reasons, so there's not really much I can do. I wish I hadn't gone under the knife, and like you I feel like something is missing from me and I probably always will to some extent. But it's not the end of the world.

Unfortunately I did have top surgery as a minor, but I feel similarly about bottom surgery. Throughout my entire transition, bottom surgery was the ultimate goal and I thought I was going to have it at 18. If I could have had it as a minor, I might have. I am overwhelmingly glad I didn't do that to myself.

You don't need to change anything about your self expression to detransition. Plenty of detrans women are butch / masculine. I would recommend that you analyze why you dislike being considered female or referred to as such - is it because of association you have with what it means to be a woman? Or because of how women are viewed and treated in society?

Of course I can't explain how you feel, especially not based on one post, but a lot of women who transition and later detransition did so because they felt like they couldn't reconcile being a woman in the world because of how women are seen and treated. Being a woman doesn't have to imply anything about you other than that you are of the female sex, it doesn't have to dictate your self-image or how you dress or how you behave.

I don't really believe in the concept of inherent "gender". A person can have sex dysphoria, be strongly gender non-conforming, etc, but if you are biologically female it is not possible to be male or a man in any capacity.

I still have dysphoria and it's pretty severe honestly, but I cannot be a biological male and therefore no effort to transition is ever going to be worth it. I didn't transition so that I could be an overzealous female crossdresser, but that's what I got because human beings cannot change their sex.

I strongly disbelieve in the notion that medical transition is the only viable treatment for sex dysphoria. There are plenty of people who don't transition for any number of reasons and still live fulfilling lives. I view sex dysphoria as a subset of body dysmorphic disorder, ans there is absolutely no reputable therapist who would recommend plastic surgery as a treatment for BDD. Additionally, there are very few disorders where it's believed that there is only one treatment method that can be successful, yet somehow when it comes to sex dysphoria questioning the conventional method in any way makes you bigoted and hateful. Any method of treatment outside of lifelong medication that jeopardizes your physical health is categorized as conversion therapy. I think this is insane. I think more research should be done into treatments that are less extreme and less likely to screw up a patient's physical health and body image, but transition is extremely profitable for the pharmacutical and platic surgery industries.

There are therapist who offer a less "affirming" treatment plan - and the affirmation model is slowly losing grip as more and more young people are detransitioning and expressing regret. But if you want to recover from your dysphoria, you'll likely have to do a lot of the work on your own, which sucks.

Question whether you want to be dependent on medication for your entire life when you don't need to be. Question where you'll feel happy when you worry about passing and looking right all the time. If living this way sounds decent to you then maybe you can be happy living as a transsexual, but most people would rather have more personal freedom and less anxiety.

I think a lot of young adult ftms feel "dysphoric" (I don't consider this dysphoria but it's the closest equivalent) over the fact that they were not born male and their childhood and sometimes teenage experiences were not as a male / boy - maybe "invalidated" is a better word to describe the experience - they feel that their childhood as a girl is invalidating to their current life as a "man".

I never really felt the grief some people feel over not having lived as a boy when I was a kid, but what I was upset about were that a lot of my childhood memories and experiences had to be kept secret from other people because they would give away that I had been a girl, or at least cause people to think I was an unconventional kid. And I was kind of upset that I had lived as a girl in middle school, but more because in my eyes I now had a lot of memories that didn't align with my current state as a man. I was never okay with being trans and I tried to assimilate as a "cis" man, so having a history that could only be that as a trans person upset me.

I think this is similar to what a lot of ftms feel but with different language. I didn't grief an idealized "boyhood" I had lacked, but I was upset that my life in the past couldn't be reconciled with my life now.

In ceasing my belief that I am male, I've found more comfort in my memories from middle school. I had a good experience in middle school (better than in high school - likely because I wasn't trans yet), but when I thought I was male, I couldn't really reminisce because it reminded me of something I hated in myself.

Honestly bottom surgeries are so messed up I don't think it's right to treat them like legitimate surgeries. I don't think it should be illegal to perform bottom surgery on adults per se, but surgeons need to be way more honest about the reality of these procedures because they're a mess. The chance of complication is insanely high to the point where most people who undergo them will have complications, and many people require revisions, the the point where the entire process can take years. I would say Phalloplasty is clearly the worst, but no form of bottom surgery is actually humane.

Phalloplasty has a chance of actually becoming necrotic and has a high chance of urethral strictures, along with many patients never being able to feel sensative down their again. Metoidioplasty also has a high chance of strictures. Vaginoplasty needs to be dilated constantly for the rest of the patient's life or it will heal shut, and if the surgeons have to use part of the rectum for vaginoplasty (which is somewhat likely, since prolonged exposure to estrogen causes the phallus to shrink, so there isn't enough flesh to use for vaginoplasty), they it can cause the person's "new genitals" to smell like feces. Additionally, all of these surgeries except for Metoidioplasty have a chance of growing hair in the urethra and / or cavity.

And the trans community pretends this is the peak of medical science.

I'm gender critical and not transphobic (don't hate trans people). I fundamentally do not believe in the concept of gender identity, and therefore it's not really possible for me to think that transwomen are women or transmen are men; I only believe in biological sex and not gender, therefore there's really nothing that a person who was born as one sex can do to be the other one in my eyes.

Of course I never believed that it was legitimately possible for a person to change from one sex to the other, because it's just scientifically impossible. But when I was transsexual (never associated with mainstream trans stuff - I was a medical transsexual and not transgender), I believed in the idea of brain sex and that a mitch-match caused dysphoria that could only be treated by transition.

Now, I recognize how much harm I did to myself. I had major body image issues, with my biological sex causing me severe distress, and I was screwing with my health by taking male hormones in dose-amounts that my female body was absolutely not intended to have. Human bodies aren't a Mr. Potato Head toy, you can't just switch out the parts and hormones and have it all be fine, female bodies are supposed to have high estrogen and relatively low testosterone, male bodies are supposed to be the opposite. Anything else and you have a medical problem. I'm lucky to have avoided major complications, a lot of people aren't so lucky. Endos are literally giving people the disorders that they normally treat by messing up their hormone balances.

I destransitioned because I recognized that I could not change my sex and would not be happy unless I came to terms with my body and stopped being obsessed with changing it.

I don't believe in gender identity and therefore don't believe in objectively trans people. I absolutely believe in dysphoria as I suffered and still suffer from it, but from my own experiences and what I see others say, I 100% view dysphoria as a form of body dysmorphia that just has an atypical focus, and just as you wouldn't treat any other body dysmorphic patient with plastic surgery, I don't think it's right to treat a sex dysmorphic (dysphoric) patient with plastic surgery and cross-sex hormones. Sex dysmorphic people deserve actual help and to come to terms with their body and learn to be okay with themself without unnecessarily becoming a lifelong medical patient or damaging their health.