This story is from the comments by /u/stepstepstep77 that are listed below, summarised with AI.
User Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account "stepstepstep77" exhibits strong signs of being authentic. There are no serious red flags indicating it is a bot or an inauthentic actor.
The user demonstrates:
- Personal, detailed, and consistent lived experience over many years (e.g., discussing detransition in 2014, marriage, having a baby, working as a therapist).
- Complex, nuanced, and often contradictory viewpoints that reflect a genuine personal struggle rather than a scripted narrative.
- Emotional depth and vulnerability across a wide range of topics, from anger and grief to hope and support, which is consistent with the stated passion and pain of the community.
- Practical, specific advice drawn from their own life (e.g., weaning off testosterone, dating, dealing with OCD, postpartum experiences).
The account's history, depth, and human inconsistency strongly suggest it is a real person sharing their authentic experiences as a detransitioned woman.
About me
I was born female and started identifying as a trans man in my early twenties, partly because I felt I never fit in with other women. My journey was heavily influenced by my social circle and undiagnosed mental health issues like depression and OCD, which made my feelings about my body feel so urgent. I took testosterone for nine months but stopped because the reality of being trans didn't match my fantasy and the medical burden was too high. Now, I'm a married mother, and while I don't regret the path that led me here, I still struggle with the permanent changes from testosterone. Zoloft has helped quiet the obsessive thoughts, and I've learned to just focus on building a good life as a person in a female body.
My detransition story
My journey with gender has been long and complicated. I was born female and started identifying as a trans man in my early twenties. I was on testosterone for about nine months. A big part of my desire to transition came from a deep discomfort with my female body, especially my breasts, and a feeling that I just never fit in with other women. I felt like an outsider everywhere I went, and I thought becoming a man would finally make me feel at ease in the world.
I was also really influenced by the people I was around at the time; it seemed like everyone in my social circle was transitioning, and it felt like the right path to take. Looking back, I think a lot of my feelings were tied up with internalized homophobia—I’m attracted to men, and I think I had a hard time accepting myself as a lesbian. I also struggled with severe depression, anxiety, and obsessive, ruminating thoughts about my body and identity. I now suspect I have undiagnosed OCD, which made everything feel so much more intense and urgent.
Testosterone gave me a lot of energy and acted like an antidepressant for a while, but it didn’t help me pass as male. I hated the social aspects of being visibly trans—the constant condescension and feeling like a token. I started to realize that my vision of life as a man was a fantasy of what it would be like to be born a cis man, not the reality of being a trans man. The logistics of medical transition, like dealing with doctors and needles, also became a huge burden.
I decided to detransition about eight years ago. The first few months off testosterone were the hardest depressive episode of my life. My hormones were a mess, and the obsessive thoughts came back with a vengeance. It took about a year and a half for me to start feeling stable again. I eventually met a wonderful man on Bumble, and we’re now married with a baby. I had to be very careful about who I told my history to when dating; I waited until I was sure a guy was respectful and kind before sharing something so vulnerable.
Being pregnant and giving birth was a brutally difficult experience that spiked my gender dysphoria to an extreme level. It really highlighted the raw biological realities of having a female body, and how unfair and physically demanding it can be. I formula-fed my baby because I knew breastfeeding would have been too much for my mental health, and we are deeply bonded.
I don’t regret my transition because it was a detour that led me to where I am now. I got to live a different life, and it made me certain that the life I have now—as a wife and mother—is the one I truly want. But I do have regrets about the permanent changes, like my deeper voice and facial hair. I still struggle with body dysmorphia and hate my breasts, often thinking about getting top surgery. Zoloft, which I started for postpartum depression, has helped immensely with my obsessive thoughts about my body.
My views on gender are complicated. I think our culture has a really messed-up idea of womanhood that often just seems like masochism. I don’t feel at peace with womanhood, and I don’t try to. I’m just a person in a female body who deserves to have a fabulous life. I believe a lot of us who detransition have OCD or other mental health issues that weren’t addressed before we transitioned. The medical establishment fails female people in general, and I think they were too quick to offer medical transition without exploring these other issues.
I benefited from non-affirming therapy that helped me work through my trauma and obsessive thoughts. I also had a religious background that I’ve since stepped away from. My main advice to others is to focus on building a good life for yourself, whatever that looks like. Slow down, be kind to yourself, and don’t make any permanent decisions about your body when you’re in crisis.
Here is a timeline of my journey:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| Early 20s | Started identifying as a trans man and began taking testosterone. |
| 23 | Stopped testosterone after approximately 9 months and began detransitioning. |
| 24-25 | Went through a severe depressive episode and began to stabilize over ~1.5 years. |
| 30s | Met my future husband on Bumble and got married. |
| 39 | Gave birth to my son and started taking Zoloft for postpartum depression. |
| Present (40s) | Living as a detransitioned woman, married with a child. |
Top Reddit Comments by /u/stepstepstep77:
It's not that sad. Not only is it better for my organs but for the rest of my life I get to live rent free in River's head.
Side note: All the names in the world they chose to be called, by everyone, "River Butcher." Why tho. Why. Why tho.
This issue, whether it was "cult-like" was the beginning of me and my dad's relationship falling apart. He and my mom were a-ok with me detransitioning but they weren't at all ok with me saying the trans community was cult-like. Good little Democrats and they weren't willing to go against orthodoxy. And then from this argument onward our relationship just kind of fell apart.
edit: in his defense i think he and my mom were both super embarrassed by me being trans and then it was like the embarrassment just got too overwhelming when I detransitioned and kept talking about the whole thing.
I've been in the dark hole you are in, so I know those thoughts are running the show right now and you don't have much control over listening to them. That torturous, self-hating rumination is LYING to you. It is VERY possible to have a meaningful, joyful life with a deep voice and facial hair and a surgically changed chest.
If you haven't worked with a psychiatrist to get some relief from these thoughts, I really encourage you to pursue this and working with a therapist. Zoloft has been a huge blessing for me, and therapists have been too.
Before testosterone cypionate was created in a lab, women were running around having epic lives with deep voices and facial hair. Women have had mastectomies and lived long, impactful lives. The idea your physical form has to look a certain way to have a life worth living is self-objectification and applying the ethics of the coldest, most hateful capitalist mindset to yourself. People have a sacred value that has NOTHING TO DO with what they look like, period.
You are not your meanest thoughts. They are simply events you must weather. I need zoloft to help me weather mine. I know that I am valuable enough to deserve pharmaceutical help and therapy and affirmations and rest to help me weather mean thoughts. You are valuable enough to deserve all this too.
Oh my gosh, this is what I couldn't deal with about being trans- the CONDESCENSION. I knew I didn't pass at all. I knew T was not delivering the transformative magic I was promised. And I felt so insulted that people were pretending it had as an ongoing favor to me, even pushing back against me acknowledging how I actually looked. Like, I have intense gender dysphoria, I'm not stupid, those are different things.
But just to say- I personally do not want people to be honest with me at the expense of being kind to me. I don't go around telling people the harshest truths about themselves with no regard for their emotions, because the vast majority of the time that's destructive, and so people don't get to do that to me either.
The most effective thing any detransitioner can do is live very well. Our words carry a very high risk of inciting someone to double down. Make money, find love, do good work- living a life you love is much harder to dismiss. Not impossible to dismiss, but a lot harder.
Detrans lady here, married to a dude I met on Bumble after detransing. I had a v different perspective about telling dudes, which was I had to really vet the dudes to see whether they could respond to my story with any intelligence/empathy. Because gosh there are a lot of straight dudes online dating who need to just go work on themselves, and it's not wise to expose any vulnerabilities to those guys. I made that mistake a couple of times before I finally caught on that that is fundamentally emotionally/socially unsafe.
So the first couple of dates I just focused on whether they were actually respectful, smart, attractive, treating me right. Most dudes will fail this standard and take themselves out of your pool. They have to keep this up for at least a month before you can realistically ponder whether they are worthy of being trusted with something vulnerable. A month of treating a lady right is really not very long, but at least it's a standard.
My husband continuing to treat me as an intelligent, valuable person after I told him netted him a lot a lot of points. I'm glad I kept going on first dates until I met him. I think the life experience I got transitioning/detransitioning makes me a wiser, better partner, and I'm cute too, so I think we both got good deals.
But I guess if you conceive of detransitioners as people "turning straight" then stories about the psychological cost of homophobia and misogyny just don't even have a place to land in your brain. We got some years before people get that medicalizing gender nonconformity is maybe not so kind to gnc people.
IDK, I think about this literally all the time. It's like "you must hate me if you don't want me scheduling with one of Dr. Crane's lackeys to be given a mess of an experimental surgery that could leave me incontinent!" Like, no. I don't hate you. I don't think you deserve the risk of being incontinent. Why do you think you deserve the risk of being incontinent?
Just to say I didn't bind as a teenager and mine were like that by 19. I once went to a women's festival and saw at least 1,000 pairs of bare boobs, and like, 4 pairs were perky. Made me realize I didn't really have a handle on what human bodies actually look like.
A lot of times I look at my year old son and I'm so envious of his capacity to experience without the limitations of language. And I'm actively robbing him of it by teaching him how to say "da da da" "ba ba ba" "ma ma ma!"
Point is whatever you end up doing you gotta find some relief from your inner monologue. It's a rough one. "Disgusting." You got a mean motherfucker narrativizing your life to you. Rock climbing? Saunas? Something buddhist? Skeet shooting? I don't know there's lots of ways people escape the motherfuckers in their heads. You could watch The Sopranos, it's pretty distracting.