This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears to be authentic.
There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or an inauthentic user. The comments demonstrate:
- Personal, detailed experiences with desisting and medical distrust.
- Consistent perspective over a three-year period.
- Emotional nuance and reflection, including changing their mind about sharing a video with family.
- Complex analogies (Plato's Cave) and opinions that reflect the passionate and critical nature of many genuine desisters.
About me
I was a teenager who spent too much time online and began to think my social struggles and puberty discomfort meant I was born the wrong sex. I never took hormones or had surgery because I deeply mistrusted medical procedures and feared they would go wrong. My perspective finally changed when I found others sharing their detransition stories, which made me realize my narrow online world had skewed my view. I now see I was using gender as an escape from my social anxiety and other issues, which were likely due to undiagnosed autistic traits. I don't regret exploring my identity, but I'm finally dealing with the real problems I was trying to avoid.
My detransition story
Looking back, my whole journey with gender feels like it was built on a shaky foundation. I was a teenager who spent way too much time online in very liberal spaces, and that became my whole world. I think I have a lot of traits that would be considered autistic today, and I always struggled to fit in socially. Back then, it was easier for me to look at all that social friction and confusion and blame it on being born in the wrong body, rather than on something more complicated like autism.
I never got any surgeries or took hormones. The idea of surgical transition was a huge reason I started to pull back. I've had other bad experiences with doctors and surgeries for different health issues, and I know that even medically necessary procedures can go wrong. I couldn't bring myself to trust that a transition-related surgery would be any different. I also know someone who avoided getting an autism diagnosis on purpose because they thought it might make it harder to get hormones or surgery later. That always seemed like a really bad idea to me; hiding information from the people who are supposed to be helping you just feels wrong.
My identification as trans started to fade when I realized how narrow my perspective had been. Being chronically online, I was only seeing one very specific viewpoint. Hearing other people share their stories of realizing they weren't trans after all was incredibly affirming for me. It was like, "Wow, someone else went through this exact same thought process." It helped me see that a lot of my discomfort, especially during puberty, might have just been a normal part of growing up that I'd misinterpreted.
I don't really believe in gender the way I used to. I think I was using the idea of being a different gender as a form of escapism from my other problems, like low self-esteem and social anxiety. I don't regret exploring it, because it led me to where I am now, but I do regret how much time and energy I spent on it when the real issues were probably something else entirely.
I tried to share a documentary with my family about this topic once, hoping it would help them understand, but the person making it was so aggressive and rude that it ruined the message. It felt like they were more interested in "gotcha" moments than in having a real conversation. It reminded me of the story of Plato's Cave, where the person who sees the truth is rejected by everyone else when he tries to tell them. That's how it felt—like I had seen something important, but the way it was presented made it impossible to share.
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| Early Teens | Started spending a lot of time online in liberal social spaces. Began to attribute social difficulties and puberty discomfort to being transgender. |
| Late Teens | Socially identified as trans. Researched medical transition but became hesitant due to mistrust of medical procedures and fear of surgical complications. |
| Early 20s | Began to desist. Found support in others' detransition stories. Realized my narrow online perspective and possible autistic traits were likely the root of my feelings, not gender dysphoria. |
Top Comments by /u/pikkuinen:
Absolutely. I even know someone who has avoided diagnosis explicitly in order to ease access to gender affirming care in the future.
I may not have many positive things to say about my experiences with western medicine, but hiding relevant information from a care team seems like a bad faith move to me.
I have many traits that would likely place me on the spectrum today.
I was also chronically online in extremely liberal social spaces for years on end. I believe that that self-limited perspective made it much easier for me to retroactively attribute many of the social frictions I experienced up to that point to gender, rather than autism or something else more complex.
Wow, this is almost exactly what my trans identification trajectory looked like. I’m so so glad she was able to have the support she needed to become comfortable with herself again.
It was remarkably affirming to hear that someone else experienced this the way I did.
Thank you for sharing
This had so much potential to “peak” people that was immediately squandered by the interviewer being rude and aiming for quick “gotchas”
I only made it half way through last night, but might sit down and try to finish it this weekend.
While I think a lot of what he has said so far is technically correct, the way he went about it was unnecessarily divisive in a way that specifically detracted from the perceived journalistic integrity of the piece. I went from being excited to share this with my family to being unlikely to.
I agree
I wrote that because I was hoping to show this to family members who need to see it, but will also dismiss it outright as soon as they hear the introduction.
The end of Plato’s Cave comes to mind, where the freed one who has seen the truth returns and speaks it to those still fettered in the cave (the ones who still believe the shadows are Reality) and is killed for the heresy.
The implications of surgical transition was one of my biggest contributing factors to desisting.
medically necessary surgeries go wrong all the time and I’ve had too many negative experiences with doctors about other things (surgery included) to trust that it would be any better in this context.
Dolezal was celebrated while she was “stealth”
I think the reason a lot of people hate her comes down to one of two things
- she was working for the NAACP pretending to be black
- She’s a white woman that has become a social acceptable target for hatred and mockery, a place to gain social capital for rebranded misogyny