I transitioned quite young at 12 and developed my sense of sexuality later on at 19 and this factored in to me knowing that detransitioning was what I wanted quite a bit. I don't want people to be attracted to me as a trans man and I really want people to be attracted to me as a woman. I also wonder if it's that I was able to develop my sexuality past the "I find this person cute" stage only when I started to question my gender again and could explore what attraction and sex might be like if I was living as a woman.

Yes, mostly this meme made me wonder what they consider to be real if you believe that for something to be real it can't be arbitrary. I've heard of someone who was in a philosophy class and asked to come up with a definition for chair that excluded all non chairs and included all chairs and quickly realised it's impossible, but we'd all agree that chairs are real surely.

In my experience, having (at the time undiagnosed) autism and transitioning had a lot to do with one another. I mask a lot and copying specific people is a really big part of that for me. Because of my masking I often feel that I don't know anything about who I am and I have no identity of my own. Often I feel like I don't even know my most basic likes and dislikes because I take on others whole personalities to fit in. This was much more of a problem when I was a young teenager and at it's worst when I was 12 and 13 and I feel I "felt like a boy" when I was copying certain men to mask. I've been putting a lot of work into masking less recently and I feel that being trans just isn't a part of who I am. I feel now that it was an identity crisis brought on by not knowing I was autistic, masking an unbelievable amount to be able to socially function, and not knowing how I fit into a world where I was afraid to be myself. I also feel the "feeling different" experience spoke to me because I was an autistic child with no support and of course felt completely alien from everyone else and thinking I finally understood why I felt so weird was a huge relief.

Yes, I'm finding this really difficult at the moment. My GP so far has been wrong about everything he's told me about the permanent effects of testosterone so I'm swapping GPs, hopefully to someone who will be able to know what they don't know and refer me to an endocrinologist. I also find it really difficult to accept that even doctors who specialise in trans medicine don't really know what it is I've done to my body and especially in terms of fertility.

I was once in your position and my main piece of advice to you is to go off of testosterone and think about your gender and talk to a therapist if you can. You can always go back on if you decide that that's what is best for you, but taking time off of t to think was so so helpful for me and I highly recommend it. I even ended up going back on testosterone very briefly after 2 years off just to realise that I actually preferred being off and now I'm detransitioning. Re-questioning my gender was a very long process of trial and error lol. I don't think transitioning or detransitioning doesn't have to follow a set time line and I think having questions about testosterone being right for you is a good sign that you should stop and give yourself time to consider what it is you want.

At 6 months you probably won't have medical problems but after a few years on testosterone you might. I was on t from 15 - 16 and stopped after 1.5 years and it took about 10 months but my hormones returned to the expected range for a cis woman without any medical help if that helps your worries about the medical side.

I've been asking myself this question a lot recently because as you said I feel like there probably isn't an internal sense of gender (although I will always support trans people regardless) but then why am I bothering to detransition? And I think it's because I "feel like a woman" in the sense that biologically I'm female and I know that as a truth about me. I also have shared experiences with other people who are female and in that sense I "feel like a woman" too. Of course trans people add complexity to that point as well as the fact that lots of cis women may not have had some of these shared experiences I'm thinking of, but as a generalisation I think it works. I don't think my feeling toward gender goes any deeper than it being a descriptor of my body and the experiences I have because of it. Socially I want people to recognise me as having these experiences and being someone who "feels like a woman" for the reasons mentioned above and so I make an effort to look like an average woman by detransitioning.

I've been looking into vocal feminisation surgery and I'm pretty set on getting it, my voice is very low even in the typical male range. I was curious though, are you are able to sing after having it? It's the thing I'll be most upset to lose but also definately a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Yeah, gender roles are so confusing when figuring out how you relate to gender and finding your place in a very gendered world, especially when masculinity and femininity can be so subjective. Thanks for the lovely response, it helps so much to have support from people who have gone/are going through something similar <3

I've been on and off testosterone twice in the past four years. I was on nebido for 20 months the first time and it took 10 months for my periods to come back. After 22 months off I went back on for 6 months and it took 5 months for my period to come back that time.

I think the only difference was how long I'd been on t and that effected how much time it took my body to recover and for my natural hormone production to start up again, so maybe after being on it for two years it'll take longer for you? Although everyone is different.

Of course I'm not a doctor and this is me guessing with no medical knowledge at all.