This story is from the comments by /u/shorterversion that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the user "shorterversion" appears to be an authentic account and not a bot or troll impersonating a detransitioner/desister.
There are no serious red flags indicating inauthenticity. The comments demonstrate:
- Deeply personal and nuanced reflection: The user shares specific, complex, and often painful details about their mental health (dissociation, anxiety, an eating disorder), therapy, medication (Zoloft dosage), relationships, and family history. This level of consistent, multifaceted personal narrative is difficult to fabricate.
- Internal consistency: Their story remains coherent over time. They consistently identify as an AFAB desister who was on testosterone for only a month, explores their gender dysphoria in the context of other mental health issues, and adopts a nuanced, critical-but-not-hostile view of both trans activism and gender-critical perspectives.
- Emotional authenticity: The tone varies appropriately with the subject matter—passionate, empathetic, frustrated, analytical, and vulnerable. This matches the expected sentiment of someone who has experienced significant personal struggle with this topic.
- Authentic engagement: The comments are not just ideological statements; they include personal advice, offers to chat via PM, and responses that are directly tailored to the specific situations of other users.
The account exhibits the passion and complexity expected from a genuine individual navigating a difficult personal history with gender.
About me
I'm a female who started identifying as a trans man at 18, believing it would fix my deep self-loathing and disconnection from my body. I tried testosterone for a month but stopped because it didn't resolve my feelings and caused my family pain. I realized my dysphoria was tied to trauma, internalized misogyny, and other mental health struggles, not to being male. Through therapy and medication, I've learned to accept myself as a masculine woman, even though some dysphoria remains. I now believe peace comes from rejecting rigid labels and focusing on healing the underlying issues.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started when I was 17, right around my last year of high school. It began after a traumatic event that wasn't related to my gender or sexuality, but it seemed to trigger a deep discomfort with myself. I was born female, but I never felt like I fit the idea of what a "woman" was supposed to be. I hated dresses, makeup, and the pressure to be pretty and nice all the time. I felt a massive disconnect from my body; looking in the mirror was like looking at a stranger. This feeling got worse during puberty when I developed breasts and started my period. I hated my breasts and felt my body was betraying me.
I started identifying as a trans man online and with a few close friends when I was 18. I asked people to use he/him pronouns for me. I thought that if I could just become a man, all my problems with dissociation and self-loathing would disappear. I was deeply depressed, had terrible anxiety, and struggled with an eating disorder from a young age. I also have frequent dissociative episodes where I feel completely detached from my body and my life, like I'm watching someone else. My therapist thinks I might have depersonalization/derealization disorder.
When I was 19, I decided to try testosterone. I was on it for about a month. I stopped because I came out to my parents and it caused a lot of pain and humiliating conversations. Seeing how upset they were made me question if I was doing the right thing. I also realized that taking T wasn't making the feeling of disconnect go away. I still felt just as lost. I was obsessed with my appearance and my identity, and it was consuming my life. I was sick of it.
I decided to stop everything medical and socially detransition. I told my friends to go back to using she/her pronouns for me, though I've never really liked any pronouns. I don't love being called a woman, but I accept that I am female. For me, my biological sex is a fact, but it doesn't have to define my personality, my interests, or how I live my life. I dress in men's clothes, keep my hair short, and use sports bras to flatten my chest. I don't wear makeup. This is how I feel most comfortable.
A huge part of my struggle was internalized misogyny and homophobia. I'm bisexual, but I grew up in a conservative, Catholic environment where being gay was considered a sin. I also felt immense pressure to be a certain type of woman—feminine, maternal, and soft. I was bullied a lot in school for being smart and different, which made me feel like an outcast. I think my childhood, and my mother's own severe mental health struggles during that time, contributed heavily to my gender dysphoria. She was very ill and said some hurtful things about my body and my personality, which I internalized.
I benefited greatly from non-affirming therapy. My therapist helped me work on my anxiety and depression without focusing on transition as the only solution. I started taking Zoloft, which helped my mental health immensely. I also focused on practical things: exercising, eating better, and spending time with friends who accepted me as a masculine woman. I realized that my dysphoria was tied to a lot of other issues—body dysmorphia, fear of men, and a deep-seated self-loathing.
I don't believe that men and women are fundamentally different in their brains. The only real differences are biological—reproduction and general physical strength. Everything else is just stereotypes and social conditioning. I think gender is a broken system, and no label will ever perfectly fit anyone. I found peace when I stopped trying to label myself and just focused on being me—a female person who is masculine and doesn't conform to expectations.
Do I have regrets? I regret telling my parents and putting them through that pain, especially since I changed my mind. It was a mistake that caused a lot of hurt. But I don't regret the journey entirely. Socially transitioning helped me learn things about myself I might not have otherwise discovered—that I prefer men's clothing, that I enjoy being "one of the guys," and that my real friends will stick by me no matter what. I also have a lot of empathy for trans people; I understand their pain, even if transition wasn't the right path for me.
My dysphoria hasn't completely gone away. Some days are still really hard, and I wake up wishing I had a male body. But I'm learning to manage it. I'm in a stable relationship with a straight man who understands my dysphoria and is supportive. Sex is still difficult for me and I often dissociate during it, but we've found ways to work around it that make us both comfortable.
My main thought on gender now is that it's mostly a social construct, and we'd all be better off if people could just express themselves without such rigid rules. I wish there was more support and understanding for gender non-conforming people without immediately pushing them toward medical transition. For me, the better solution was to deal with my underlying mental health issues and learn to accept my body as it is.
Here is a timeline of my transition and detransition events:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 12 | Struggles with depression and an eating disorder begin. |
| 15 | Came out to my mother as a lesbian (later realized I was bi); it did not go well. |
| 17 | began experiencing intense gender dysphoria after an unrelated traumatic event. |
| 18 | Began identifying as a trans man and using he/him pronouns socially. |
| 19 | Started testosterone (HRT). |
| 19 | Stopped testosterone after one month. Came out to parents, which led to me questioning and ultimately desisting. |
| 20 | Socially detransitioned, asking people to use she/her pronouns again. |
| 20 | Found greater stability through therapy, medication (Zoloft), and self-acceptance as a masculine woman. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/shorterversion:
The thing I regret the most about my transition (and take this with a grain of salt, as I only took T for a month, so I didn’t have medical changes) is still telling my parents. They didn’t kick me out, but it was a lot of humiliating conversations. I pride myself on being smart, and oftentimes my parents (God bless them) have encouraged this idea that my calm intelligence is what I bring to the family. So being proven wrong by them... not an awesome feeling. Especially causing them and myself major emotional pain, all for what was basically my own stupid mistake. I hate that I did that. I look back on those conversations and feel awful.
But you can feel 100% certain about something at one point in time, be willing to die on that hill, and then change your mind later. If it happens a lot it can be a mental illness, but at a normal rate it happens to everyone. That’s why people get divorced. That’s why businesses shut down. That’s why people who’ve committed awful crimes beg for forgiveness later. People regret everything from big purchases to entering a career to tattoos. There is no life without mistakes. Big mistakes. Irreversible mistakes. That’s fine.
I’d say take it slow. Give it thought. Don’t continue HRT if you don’t want to. Personally if I were you, I’d confide in your boyfriend (especially if he’s the person you tell everything to). But that’s up to you at the end of the day.
Try to get to the root of why you want to detransition. There’s no right or wrong answer, as long as you think it’ll make you happy. If transition hasn’t given you what you wanted, then that’s certainly something to factor in.
I think you're apt using the abortion comparison.
Both trans issues and abortion are hot button. Both the decision to transition and the decision to have an abortion are serious decisions that involve medicine and bodily anatomy. But they're also influenced by other things. To argue that abortion is not for every unhappily pregnant woman is not anti-abortion. To point out that factors like a lack of money, abusive or unsupportive partners, health fears, etc. could play into a woman's choice to get an abortion is not anti-abortion. Wanting to understand abortion requires, basically, understanding all of society.
So I think in both cases, lawmakers and doctors fail to see why people make the choices they do -- i.e., why people transition, or why people get abortions. Some conservative lawmakers hoping to restrict abortion (if you're cynical) or prevent abortion regret (if you're being generous) put laws in place that force pregnant women to listen to the baby's heartbeat before they choose whether to go forward with the abortion. Activists line the sidewalks outside Planned Parenthood and scream that abortion is a sin.
But if you simply don't have the money to have a baby, then none of that is gonna change your mind. You might WANT the baby. And that'll all probably make you feel worse. But if you don't have the health, the stability, or the finances to have a child, then how will listening to its heartbeat help you at ALL??? What these women need is the assurance they will be supported financially, believed, loved, and given rights. THAT is what would ensure that there is less abortion regret. And the women who decide to have abortions anyways would be far more sure of themselves.
Likewise, with transition, there is a total lack of understanding why people make that choice. Doctors think, "Oh, I would never change my gender, so clearly the people doing it are really certain." Hence affirmative care. But by removing clear explanations of what the drugs and surgeries do, the risks involved, etc., doctors are providing a low level of care. Or -- doctors see someone in distress who wants to transition, and think, "Look how upset they are! Clearly they need this."
Only by first dealing with societal sexism, personal beliefs about gender and sex, body dysmorphia, trauma, etc. can a person be sure they want to transition.
Sorry for my long-ass comment!
Exactly where I'm at too. We don't let kids get tattoos... Hell, my mom didn't want me on birth control for a while because someone a long time ago told her the pill would make me infertile (not exactly true).
The reasoning of "these kids will commit suicide / be mentally unwell otherwise" also really rubs me the wrong way. If a kid is suicidal or otherwise mentally ill, they need therapy. Period. The bar should be INCREDIBLY high before we start altering kids' bodies. Hell, that's the reasoning behind the legal drinking age in the US being 21.
It just bums me out. These kids need therapy and support. They need to be allowed to be themselves without gender BS being put on them, whether that's the gender stereotypes of their birth sex or of the opposite sex.
Without sounding too tinfoil hat ish, I think there's also a big drive to find meaning in these LGBT identities and mental illnesses turned exclusive club because of the confluence of "privilege" rhetoric online and the total lack of counter culture movements that haven't been co-opted by "lame adults" and other people who have forgotten it's really hard to be a teenager. Here's what I mean:
- Privilege rhetoric. I'm on the left, and I do agree that there are certain levels of privilege one gets from being white, straight, gender conforming, etc. And also, as someone capable of nuanced thinking, I know that doesn't mean a white cishet person has an easy life automatically, but rather that they are less likely to face certain problems like racist or homophobic discrimination. But really young people on Twitter completely overloaded with this rhetoric take it to its extreme, which is that a white cishet person will ALWAYS have an easier life than, say, a black lesbian. I think to contextualize their totally normal struggles as kids (which again, being a kid can be super hard), they need some identities to point at and say, there, that's why I'm hurting, that's why I'm having a rough time.
- What other counter culture is there right now? As an avid riot grrrl listener, I get nothing from the ongoing trend of "you're gonna hear me roar" Katy Perry BS. Every tiktok trend of teenagers trying to be edgy gets taken within days and used to sell something. Teenagers find solace in expressing themselves in weird ways that their parents don't understand. But they can't just slap on some eyeliner anymore and call themselves goth. Every kind of counterculture movement is ultra commercialized. What's left? LGBT identities and mental illness labels. I'm not saying they're lying on purpose to get attention. I'm saying that being a teenager in the midst of social media takes things to an extreme once again, and some of these kids are maybe gay or depressed or have not ideal family lives or are just unhappy because middle and high school suck.
For what it's worth, I think a lot of this gets grown out of like everything else. I don't think a lot of these kids are taking hormones.
I'm fairly left-leaning but people's responses to Rowling's essay confused me for the most part. I agree she's somewhat incorrect in saying that there's an organized push to pretend biological sex is not real, because (in my experience) most trans people and trans allies believe biological sex is real and needs to be taken into consideration for things like medicine.
But Rowling made some good points, and no one was talking about that. The point that girls might experience GD due to big or small traumas? Totally true -- and yet to argue that transition should not be the immediate solution to GD is cancel-worthy. I dunno.
Rowling will be fine, she has plenty of money and a legacy via the Harry Potter books, so I don't lose sleep thinking about her being "cancelled." But I wish so badly I could have these conversations with my friends without making them jump to, "You can't say that." My mother's mental illness and my childhood most certainly contributed to my GD, which is why I decided not to transition. But I can't SAY that. I can only vaguely pretend I never had GD in the first place, which is not true.
I went to public elementary school in the United States south and United States midwest, and I went to private middle and high school in the United States south. I graduated high school in 2019.
- I had absolutely no exposure to LGBT history or ideas in school. My US history class was a high level, intense class, and we did not even cover Stonewall or the legalization of gay marriage.
- Fictional LGBT stories were also rare. We read Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but my English teacher even said at the time she didn't believe it was about being gay (lol). Besides that book, I don't think we read anything about LGBT people.
- I and a few other students formed a Gender & Sexuality Alliance at my high school, but it was difficult and administration did not allow us to send emails or make announcements or fundraise. In our meetings, we mostly talked about our personal experiences, like the difficulties of dating. Only one kid ID'd as trans -- the other twenty or so students were lesbians or bisexual women (I went to an all-girls school).
- My sex education at two different schools did not mention LGBT people.
My boyfriend went to public school in the American south. He graduated high school in 2019.
- His sex education was abstinence-based, which means they taught kids to not have sex until marriage. It certainly did not involve LGBT sex education or anything about gender.
- He was never told any subject was racist, homophobic, or transphobic. He was also not taught any LGBT history. Most of his teachers were Christian and open about that.
Your fears are unfounded in my opinion, and they sound like the ideas that many reactionaries are pushing about the education system. I have never heard a teacher say math is racist, nor have I ever heard a person of color say that.
Rest easy -- school is still school. They are not teaching kids about gender dysphoria.
Edit: I should say -- they are not teaching kids these things where I am from.
Oh my gosh, I feel like every article about transition or detransition has at least one person saying "I was a tomboy, now I'm a well-adjusted heterosexual woman who loves dresses and pink." And that's great to be so stable in YOUR identity, but not all of us "tomboys" or masculine teenage girls are going to turn out that way.
...Personal responsibility? For real?? What a gross thing to say. Like none of these people in the comments have ever made a big mistake, or a few. I would never say, "Well, you have to take some PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" to people upset about a divorce, or about being addicted to drugs, or about failing out of school. Jesus. Sometimes you feel one way and then later on feel another way. Where's the empathy???
My best friend from high school is nonbinary and AFAB, and they still present relatively feminine, and did so even more earlier on in their transition.
At first, I was bothered by this (and was likewise bothered by the handful of nonbinary people at my college who were mostly AFAB and relatively feminine). I'm still at a point where wearing a dress or most "obviously" feminine clothes is difficult. Same for jewelry, most makeup. Having long hair wrecked havoc on my self esteem and mental health. It's all tied into this complex knot of mental health issues like dissociation, anxiety, an eating disorder, and of course gender dysphoria. And these things were making my life very difficult.
I assumed (maybe correctly) that these people had never felt the total dissociation and disconnect I felt from wearing a dress for special events, didn't having to argue with their mothers every day about their presentation, didn't hear their own voice or see their own face and think, "Who is that?" I assumed they'd never had panic attacks over pap smears or shopping in the men's section at Target.
And I thought they were claiming they went through anything similar to what I went through.
But I guess where I found peace about it was I realized... they weren't claiming my experience. None of the nonbinary people I knew in real life had ever tried to "connect" with me on a basis of shared dysphoria, none of them ever claimed they went through more than anyone else, none of them spoke out over anyone. I know there's nonbinary people who do all those things, but most of them are just people with their own experiences of this whole mess of gender and sex, and that's cool. Actually, it's something I can relate to a lot.
It also helped me to realize I didn't have the "most pain" either, if that makes sense. I didn't have dysphoria until after puberty, and I was a feminine child. My parents didn't love my clothing choices, but they respected my freedom enough to mostly leave well enough alone. That didn't mean I didn't have gender dysphoria, but self awareness and context were healthy, and as long as a person has got self awareness, I will respect their identity and listen to anything they have to say about it.
Oh god, your last thought is depressing. I was watching this video on people believing vaccines cause autism, and the ways in which money factored into the whole situation were TRULY depressing. I never knew that the guy who ran the "MMR vaccine causes autism" study patented a competing vaccine AND was hired by a lawyer trying to start a lawsuit.
The more I know about medicine, the more it seems purely motivated by money. And that SUCKS.