I think the idea of transitioning medically is best for most people is a new idea. Back in 2014 when I started identifying as trans it was starting to change, but the idea that medical transition should be for those who don’t respond to other types of medical treatment wasn’t considered transphobic and many trans people advocated and agreed with this idea. I think like with other forms of body dysmorphia, turning to surgery shouldn’t be the first choice. I think for everyone we should be prescribing cbt and other forms of therapy, and if they genuinely don’t respond to these then I can see a justification of hrt and other surgeries.

I detransitioned slowly so many people still thought I was trans last year. I was a senior in highschool and a boy came up behind me and slapped my ass so hard it bruised a bit. Most of my friends who are friends with him don’t really care. Even the ones who witnessed it. For misogyny in general, many many many people assume I’m dumber now. I despise it. It makes me really insecure. I work in fast food and boys my age get trained very quickly and are allowed to try new things while I and other girls my age for some magical reason weren’t given the same treatment. It’s even more frustrating when you surpass them in a certain skill and they’re still thought of as better than you. It’s nice to feel community and belonging with women, though. It’s my favorite part of detransitioning along with my newfound appreciation for my body. I’m sorry you went thru what you did and I know it’s scary being female sometimes. I’m glad he couldn’t do anything worse and that you’re safe now.

A lot of trans people (at least in my experience as a detrans woman) do not get outwardly upset when you just simply say you no longer think you are transgender!! You can just say that to people and leave, if they want you to elaborate I would try my best not to say things that could threaten their trans identity because that can make them outwardly upset.

Does NOT make you a coward. Living as a nonbinary person was supposed to help make your life better right? As a way to cope with dysphoria? If this is making your life worse you can always live as a woman and cope with dysphoria in other ways. Stay strong :)

Your conservative upbringing may have given you unhealthy ideas on what it means to be a man or a woman. It doesn't define any part of you: your personality, your hobbies, your interests, how you dress, who you like, these are all independent from your sex. You don't have to be a strong man or a submissive house wife. You can just be you :)

You seem that you’d agree it’d be easier to convince women they’re actually men than the reverse due to the sexism women face. I think the motivation lies partially in being able to sell plastic surgery and hormones (and more). Lots of money can (and is) made off of it. Even beyond the medical treatment aspect the trans community is super consumeristic. Clothes don’t equal gender but um get rid of your entire closet and buy all new clothes so you can pass! Buy a binder and fuck up your ribs (and get more surgery) get multiple binders! Get a packer! Get multiple packers! Buy these pronoun buttons! Get these pride flags! Oh you already have them, here are new identities and new flags! Get these rainbow socks! And the encouragement to go thru new identities and collect new labels and the encouragement of buying of more merch to match. Oh, and what about the trend of literally everyone wearing make up, even transmascs. It’s all just about putting money in some rich guy’s pockets.

Another reason, I definitely do think some trans people fetishize not just their transness, but other people’s as well. Idk about now, but I know when I was apart of the trans community (3ish years ago) t4t was very popular. Among both trans women and trans men. In fact, I personally knew a trans man who encouraged multiple romantic partners to identify as transgender. I remember a friend of mine who dated him told me he said “I’m only attracted to men and nonbinary people, so you (a woman) must be a man or nonbinary” and that’s how they realized they were transgender. Before that, they had never questioned their gender. And this is common, the joke in the trans community of “oh everyone who dates me becomes trans” why IS that so common? It can be argued it’s a social contagion and that’s why sure, but I know that for some it’s more sinister.

Edit: spelling

I think that the overlap is def there. A lot of detrans people eventually stop doing things like trying to act or dress different than how they want so they can pass, because part of detransitioning is learning to accept your entire self for who you are, body mind and all. But yeah, when I first saw the detrans reddit immediately noticed the similarities.

Binding actually has been known to cause damage even if used within given binding guidelines. The guidelines are not based in any scientific reality, and if you scroll through here you may hear stories of damage caused to people's ribs from 'safely' binding.

But I digress, I had wanted to be a boy since preschool. I hung out with mostly boys, and then only boys once I got a little older. I have always been masculine, I always wanted to be grouped in with boys. I learned what being transgender was at age 12, and when I realized that younger people could be trans too it felt like it clicked.

Of course, there were other factors in my life that contributed to this, disordered eating, sexual assault, liking girls (also being a child, lol). But to me those things didn't seem like they were relevant to my identity as a man.

What made me personally detransition after those 5 years was: 1. When I was 16 I wanted to learn to be okay with my body and not hate it (this in my mind was independent from my identity as a trans man) and 2. I became scared of hrt. I decided to then just live my life socially male anyways and not medically transition, but I had a voice in the back of my head saying "if you don't want to be male how are you male" but I ignored it for months. Then I got stoned and just accepted it.

I never missed being female, I hated it for most of my transition and was neutral to it by the end. I didn't like puberty, but I took that as a symptom of gender dysphoria. In fact, I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. I genuinely was dysphoric, but rather than changing my body I learned to be okay with it.

I always just thought "I want to be a boy and I have gender dysphoria that's it end of story" but I never really thought about why I wanted to be a boy. Why did being a girl make me feel bad? Why did certain things make me dysphoric? I think if more therapists went into that before transition or did that in place of transition many people would have had a healthier outcome.

Honestly, the theory I see about this amount of time being the average length gender dysphoria lasts is interesting (I personally identified as trans from the ages of 12/13-17 so this lines up with my experiences as well, although I had worked thru a lot of body issues during this time that helped a lot) but I think another reason could be that you were in a position of actually committing to irreversible changes to your body, and your subconscious that had been chewing on the idea that you didn’t actually want to permanently transition in the background brought that forward to your conscious mind. After all, 11 year old you saying you want to do something when you turn 18 is MUCH different than 17 year old you saying you want to do something when you turn 18.

As others have mentioned, many young females become very uncomfortable when going through puberty. Maybe you, on some level, accepted your body sometime ago, and the conscious mind/ego was already preoccupied with the trans identity to grapple with that (this personally was my experience).

I never medically transitioned, so I’m sure my experiences are different than other ftmtf, but my relationships with guys didn’t change very much. Gay jokes were no longer a thing, but other than that I think most men pretty much just viewed me as a woman. I think I think about relationships with men differently now because I’m aware and accept they view me as different than them.