This story is from the comments by /u/patrello that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a fake persona.
The comments display a consistent, deeply personal, and evolving narrative over four years. The user shares specific, plausible medical details (e.g., UTIs, skin changes, surgical outcomes), emotional struggles, and a nuanced perspective that includes personal responsibility while criticizing medical professionals. The language is natural, with varied sentence structures and self-reflection that would be difficult for a bot to fabricate consistently. The passion and anger expressed are consistent with the genuine trauma many detransitioners experience.
About me
I started feeling depressed at 11 and thought I was supposed to be a boy at 15 because I wanted the freedom and friendships that boys had. I took testosterone for 14 months and had top surgery, but the hormones made me very sick and I deeply regret the permanent changes from the operation. After stopping, I realized through religion that my real issue was envy and fear, not actually being male. I had to face the fact that I had permanently altered my body based on a teenage misunderstanding. Now, at 22, I am finally comfortable again as a woman and accept that I can't fight my biological sex.
My detransition story
My whole journey with transition started when I was 15. I was a normal, happy kid before I turned 11, but after that, I became really depressed. I felt lonely and like an outsider, especially around boys. I wanted to be friends with them and have the freedom they seemed to have, and I started to think that the reason I felt so bad was because I was supposed to be a boy. I convinced myself that I had always felt that way, even though looking back, I never actually wanted to be male before I was 15. I was delusional, and I was seeing my past through a trans lens to justify what I was about to do.
I came out as trans at 15 and started living as male. Right after I made that decision, I was hit with a ton of anxiety and panic. I remember my lungs feeling like they couldn't open, like I had just run a sprint, even when I was just lying still. I think now that was my subconscious trying to tell me I was making a huge mistake.
I was on testosterone for 14 months, from when I was 18 until I was 19. The physical effects were horrible. I got severe, recurrent UTIs that made it painful and urgent to pee, to the point I was almost incontinent. I had terrible kidney and organ pain that almost sent me to the hospital. My skin got dry and thin, like an elderly woman’s, especially on my inner arms, and I was covered in whiteheads. I also had what felt like hot flashes—prickly, itchy heat from just standing up or walking in normal weather. It was like going through menopause. Testosterone was making me sick and causing rapid aging.
I stopped testosterone in mid-January when I was 19 because the UTI became unbearable. All those symptoms went away pretty quickly after I stopped. My skin went back to normal, becoming moisturized again without being oily. My muscle tone took about a year to go back to how it was before, and I lost the 15 pounds of muscle I’d gained. My period came back exactly 30 days after my last shot.
I had top surgery right after I turned 19. I got a peri-areolar mastectomy, so some breast tissue and my nipple stalks were left intact. I wanted to swim shirtless so badly that I rushed into it, but once I actually did it that summer, it was lame and not worth it at all. Now I deeply regret it. I want my natural breasts back and I regret spending all that money. The scar tissue is still numb and sometimes causes nerve pain when it gets hot. My biggest sadness now is that I probably can’t breastfeed, which is something I really want to do someday. It makes me feel less normal as a woman.
After I stopped testosterone, I realized I had to face what I’d done. I call my detransition me "getting saved." I found a lot of truth and comfort in religion, specifically through the sermons of Douglas Wilson. He talked about things like "gender envy," and it helped me break down the mental blocks I had about being female. For me, religion wasn’t about restrictions; it was about being set free from the pressure to transition and from the shame I felt about my body. I finally accepted that I am a woman, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t have to suppress myself anymore.
I also figured out the real reasons I wanted to transition. It wasn’t that I was a man; it was that I was a lonely girl who wanted male friendship and the freedom I saw boys had. I was also attracted to men, but as a teenager, I was scared of that attraction and of being in a relationship. It felt safer to want to be the man with the traits I found attractive rather than to be with one. My "attraction" to women wasn’t sexual either; I just admired them and wanted companionship, which I confused for being a lesbian.
I don’t blame myself for what happened. I was a teenager, and I was mentally ill and naive. The medical professionals who gave me hormones and surgery are the ones who should have protected me from harming myself. They dropped the ball completely. I was an 18-year-old who wanted to hurt myself, and they gave me the tools to do it.
Now, at 22, I’ve been off testosterone for a few years. I’m a heterosexual woman, and I’m comfortable with that. My voice is still deep, and I have some facial and body hair, but I’ve had laser treatments to help with that. I’m doing vocal training to try and feminize my voice, but it’s emotionally challenging. People gender me correctly in person, but not on the phone. I dress in a normal, classic style for a woman, and that helps. It took me about three years to feel comfortable being a woman again and to look physically feminine.
I have a lot of regrets about transitioning, especially the surgery. I lost a part of my body I can never get back, and it’s affected how I see myself and how I think men will see me. But I’m moving forward. I’m dating, and I’ve found that most men don’t care about my past once they get to know me. I don’t lead with my detransition story anymore because it’s too intimate and reads as baggage early on.
My view on gender is simple: you can’t fight your body. You are your sex, and trying to change that is a losing battle that will only hurt you. I wish someone had protected me from that when I was a teenager.
Here is a timeline of my transition and detransition:
Age | Event |
---|---|
11 | Began feeling depressed and uncomfortable. |
15 | Came out as transgender and started socially living as male. |
18 | Started testosterone. |
19 | Had top surgery (peri-areolar mastectomy). |
19 | Stopped testosterone due to severe health issues. |
19 | Began detransitioning and living as a woman again. |
22 | Present day; comfortable and secure as a woman. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/patrello:
The majority of people who will support your transition aren't really invested in the trans narrative itself, and they are really truly just trying to support you as a person. So detransitioning for them is no big deal. It's really only a select few people that prioritize the trans narrative over their friend.
He will be super relieved to not have to “accept you as his son” anymore. If you think his knowledge of you as his daughter ever changed, you’re wrong. His persistence for 8 years in telling the truth shows that. He still knows, nothing changed.
My mom “accepted me as her son” at the same time I was getting ready to detransition as well. Ironic, lol.
The whole "straight guy is gonna kill you for being a trans woman" scaremongering has never happened to me in the past 5 years. It is insanely overblown and frankly a tactic ripped from trans women's arguments as to why they have to use the women's bathroom. All you have to do to introduce yourself with online dating is post a video of yourself speaking. If they don't listen to it, it's their problem.
I found greater dating success from doing this instead of revealing that I'm detrans. The less I talked about it, the better dating went. It's an INSANELY intimate and sexual story to reveal to a person before even meeting them in person. Imagine if you were "normal", and you prefaced your entire self-introduction with an in-depth description of your genitalia, and a check to make sure that your exact vagina was okay, whether or not they liked bush, and if they were okay with each and every sex act you had ever done, on your own and with a partner. It would be very bizarre. Talking about detransition is far, far more bizarre than that.
I wouldn't feel comfortable disclosing that I'm detrans before spending at least 100 hours with a person, in person. I have scared many men off by over-explaining my struggles. Before they give a shit about you, it all reads as "baggage". Think about it. What kind of man will be turned on to pursuit mode by a strange woman who dumps her sexual trauma history instantly? A man looking for a vulnerable, low-self-esteem woman to take advantage of. There aren't actually very many of these men in normal society, IME.
In real life, men who aren't interested in you show it immediately. It's never serious enough to warrant a violent outburst, they just duck out and leave you alone. They don't care enough to even insult you. The worst I've gotten was a man saying "yeah, the deep voice is not my thing". Only a true predator, serial killer level man would get to the point of violence from a simple meeting.
Furthermore, the trans women whose murders are used for evidence of this claim died because they were involved with scum of the earth: heavy sex buyers, drug dealers, etc. Those groups of men are drastically more likely to also be murderers and/or psychopaths. Most detrans women here will simply NEVER meet those type of men, due to their lifestyle and locale. This fearmongering, and equating detrans women with trans women, has to stop. It's just not proven out to be common in the real world.
I recently contacted Campbell Miller Payne and I would recommend them. Very quick, attentive service and they are working hard to help everyone build a case that they can. I was outside the statute of limitations in my state, I detransitioned in 2021. They formed this partnership specifically to work on behalf of detransitioners.
Teen girls follow each other in droves. Even the ones who “don’t follow the crowd”(myself incl). I actually notice that most girls that occupy the “different/weird” role in groups pretty much consider themselves as nonbinary by default, which slides to FtM quickly when they’re adults seeking a more intelligible identity. They start forming identity outside of “womanhood” as teens and therefore find it easier to imagine they’re men than women. Ironic.
Males transition for entirely different reasons, more personal than group-belonging-oriented.
Gendered spaces are good and serve to protect women and girls’ privacy.
People have the right to use the gendered spaces that accord with their sex no matter their appearance. People in that space also have the right to exclude people who seem to be trespassing. It’s a give-take that has to be negotiated in some instances, but both rights are there. Males do not have the right to use women’s facilities. Women have the right to exclude them. That’s just how it is.
I have never had an issue in the women’s bathroom or locker room, even after speaking. Like I said previously, I’m female and I have the right to be in the women’s room. Even if someone were to be confused about my sex, my sex is in fact female and my place in women’s facilities is defensible through that.
So, since you were a teenager? I transitioned for 4 years and I thought that made me legit as well. 4 years is a big percentage of your life right now, but as time passes, you’ll realize how small an amount of time it is. Discomfort in your developing body and identity is an adolescent phenomenon. You can put your mind to moving on and leave this phase behind. You can dedicate your focus to something else. That is, if you’re really serious about wanting to put an end to this confusion that is bothering you.
I'm going through something similar, but with my state government. In order to resume my original sex on my birth certificate, I have to get a "court order"... Meaning an attorney and likely a legal case of some kind. The paralegal is investigating what the process would even look like, because there is ZERO allowance or instruction for a case like this. It's significantly easier to change a birth certificate to the opposite sex than it is to resume the original sex, in my state. You can change it with just a written request from the applicant.
Bisexual men think it's fine. I dated an exclusively straight guy long-term, he thought it was fine. In terms of casual sex, the interaction is so short that the guy will likely go through with it and get his rocks off once or twice without saying anything, even if he thinks it's ugly. Men who are in love with you never care.
I was in your position when I detransitioned, I was 19 and I had sex with a couple of strangers. It's not worth pushing past discomfort.
If he’s in love with you he would have compassion. If he’s into you because he’s projecting his ideal woman onto you, and then this story makes you differ, he’ll lose interest. In the second scenario you don’t really lose anything but an eventual problem.