I’m 5’10 with broad shoulders, narrow hips, an androgynous voice, and a masculine frame and skeletal structure despite being AFAB. I passed as male almost 100% of the time pre-T, pre-everything. Still now I get gendered as male without makeup and with short, non-dyed hair.

Even if you’re one of the “lucky ones”, like me, it still didn’t do it for me since I was born born female and identifying as male. The cognitive dissonance was real between the way others perceived me (as a boy, I was in high school during transition and cis-passing so my cis male 14-year-old classmates would ask me about my penis (non existent of course) and my wet dreams…. Not joking, that’s the shit they talked about). It was too much incongruence between my social identity and biological reality.

Then I heard about the side of medical transition the trans community won’t tell you (my trans male friend nearly died from top surgery complications, and lost both his nipples - another’s nipples fell off and down the shower drain, another had top surgery severely botched by a drunk surgeon, so botched it was beyond grotesque). I saw so many photos on Transbucket of gory phalloplasty pics, post-op pics, and then about the unknown long-term side effects of testosterone (like organ degeneration). I was like fuck, why didn’t anyone tell me? Thankfully I’ve never had hormones or surgery.

I detransitioned initially because I had an intuitive feeling that medical transition was damaging to the body. At the end of the day, no one really cares whether you’re male or female except you. And even then, I notice when I’m not focusing on myself - spending time with friends, animals, meaningful work, hobbies - my gender doesn’t matter at all. Gender is one of those things in life that just isn’t very meaningful on a deeper level.

this person isn’t interfering they’re offering an opinion. As an adult, you’re free to do whatever you want.

Imo, you shouldn’t take testosterone just because you feel like it. If you were born female it will take a toll on your reproductive system after several years. You can become infertile and you will require a hysterectomy eventually. Research the side effects of cross sex hormonal treatment and preferably seek unbiased psychiatric care before you take elective medical interventions that, more than likely, will change your body and voice for the rest of your life. You only live once, so respect yourself and think things through.

Bro, you and me both. I'm so glad I'm not alone. Sorry, the way top surgery promoted is so, so weird, and I'm glad more than one person can see it. It's a literal amputation.

See my latest post - people (including myself) are confused about how to feel about their breasts, so get them chopped off to fit their own "identity". or mental projection of themselves. Very mentally sound solution, right?

That’s so interesting. Not to undermine what you’re saying, but I think just now it’s beginning to swing the other way in some regards. My brother is studying psychology and believes that boys and men are frequently emasculated and suffer by the modern education system. Conversely, I noted girls were often favoured in classrooms over boys growing up. Women are more likely to finish University degrees than men.

I understand your frustration. There are many brilliant brilliant women, however, in fields of classical music, arts and science - even if some were lost to history. My city’s classical radio station features heavy rotation of mostly female composers. Yes they are more modern composers - society is slowly waking up to its own delusion.

Yeah that’s so true. “Don’t waste too much breath” in beginning to realise that. I detransitioned at 16 years old (came out at 13), and I’m now 19. Transition/Detransition was such a formative part of my life and so I hold it very close to me, but I’d like to learn to hold it less close if possible.

And going back to the school thing - when I was in trauma mode from my transition/detransition, I went to alternative high school. At that “school”, there were pride flags in every single room, every gathering we had to introduce ourselves by our pronouns.

They had a “queer room” and a “queer club” (which was basically half the school of 90 people identified as trans masc or non binary). It was exactly what you’d imagine - a room full of pride flags and paraphernalia, “trans man are men” posters, etc. And the “queer group” got special privileges that the rest of the school missed out on - excursions to coffee shops, zoos, shopping malls, beaches - wtf. Also half the teachers at this school were genderqueer too 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ and co-ordinated this. So detached from reality tho.

In a very similar situation to you, but reverse. I am same age as you, female and with autism too. I get possessed by painful thoughts of wanting to be male and a boy/man. I know it’s really tough. It’s so confusing and can really get in the way of your life.

People with autism tend to struggle with their gender and gender dysphoria more often than NT people. I have theories but we don’t fully understand why.

One reason may be that we are more sensitive, we internalise negative things/misinterpret things related to our gender. We are also much more sensitive to trauma.

As an example, when I was expected to wear bras at age 12 or whenever and it was socially expected, I started to feel much ongoing shame and pain about how society sees female chest, so much ambiguity around it that it is painful, leading me to want to remove it and be flat chested. Also never understood things like women being sexualised. I’m sure you possibly struggle with similar things but in reverse for your birth gender. Perhaps worth considering and reflecting on.

But honestly, I feel like a lot of the stories you read here are not things an ordinary cis person would write. Many of them are very detailed descriptions of gender dysphoria/detransition that I feel like would be hard to fake… anyways, why would a whole community of cis people come together just to fake detransition? That kind of group organisation on a large-scale would be very hard to believe.

Damn. This is probably right. Brutal, but I can't really argue against most of your points. I'm just baffled how it all got here, with the social and medical system, and how glamourised transition is within online artistic spaces with everyone coming out as FTM or trans masc.. it doesn't make sense.

Exactly. Many young women feel unsatisfied, “weirded out” or generally unhappy with their body from the onset of puberty and onwards. We need to treat and resolve this collective problem of excessive body-self-consciousness rather than let it continue into adulthood under the guise of gender dysphoria.

There are so many reasons for detransition. For me, I wanted to be a cis man, not a trans man - coming to the realisation that being trans would have taken away many life opportunities from me. A trans person might call that internalised transphobia or “repressing”, but for me it was coming to terms with the full reality of what being trans really involves in real life, not on the internet. I don’t want risky surgery. I don’t want risky hormone treatment. I’ll continue to see myself as a gender-neutral being. Each to their own though.