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Reddit user /u/white-china-owl's Detransition Story

Transitioned: 18 -> Detransitioned: 26
female
low self-esteem
hated breasts
took hormones
regrets transitioning
got top surgery
now infertile
retransition
sexuality changed
This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
On Reddit, people often share their experiences across multiple comments or posts. To make this information more accessible, our AI gathers all of those scattered pieces into a single, easy-to-read summary and timeline. All system prompts are noted on the prompts page.

Sometimes AI can hallucinate or state things that are not true. But generally, the summarised stories are accurate reflections of the original comments by users.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious

Based on the provided comments, this user account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or an inauthentic actor.

The comments display a high degree of personal, specific, and consistent detail about the physical and emotional experiences of transition and detransition. The user's perspective is nuanced, acknowledging both positive and negative aspects of their journey without adhering to a simplistic narrative. The language is natural, and the user engages with a wide range of topics (dating, clothing, surgery, electrolysis, mental health) in a way that reflects a lived experience rather than a script. The passion and occasional frustration expressed are consistent with someone who has personally undergone these deeply impactful experiences.

About me

I started feeling uncomfortable with my body as a teenager, especially when my breasts developed, and I began binding my chest. I transitioned to male for ten years, taking testosterone and having top surgery to relieve my dysphoria, which felt like the right choice at the time. Then, my feelings simply changed, the dysphoria vanished, and I realized I wanted to live as a woman again. I stopped hormones and am now happily detransitioned, though I have some permanent changes like a deeper voice. I don't regret my past, as it was a necessary part of my journey to finally feel at home as a woman.

My detransition story

My journey with gender has been long and winding, but I’ve come out the other side in a really good place. I lived as a man for almost ten years, taking testosterone for six of those years, and I also had top surgery. Now, I’ve been detransitioned for over a year and I’m living happily as a woman again.

When I was a teenager, I started to feel really uncomfortable with my body, especially when my breasts developed. At first, I was excited to grow up, but later it became a source of a lot of distress. I remember my dad being really weird and controlling about my clothes, making me feel like everything I wore was too revealing, and I think that shame got mixed up in my feelings about my body. I started binding my chest and dressing to hide my shape because it just felt better.

I decided to transition because I had what felt like real, persistent gender dysphoria. I thought it would fix the deep discomfort I felt. I went on a low dose of testosterone through weekly injections, and I also had top surgery. For a long time, that was the right choice for me. I was happy living as a man. The testosterone helped my mental health a lot by alleviating that dysphoria. I liked the changes, like my deeper voice. The only downsides were some acne and, later, facial hair that I didn’t want when I detransitioned.

My top surgery was a double incision with nipple grafts, and I healed really well. I was very pleased with my flat chest at the time. It felt like a relief. Binding was uncomfortable and hard on my body, so surgery seemed like the best solution with the information I had.

But then, for no clear reason I can point to, my feelings about my gender just… went away. The dysphoria vanished. I realized I wanted to be a woman again. It wasn't a dramatic, regret-filled decision; it was more like my path had naturally changed course. I stopped testosterone, and most of the effects reversed, except for my deeper voice, my slightly larger clitoris, and some facial hair. I’m getting laser hair removal for that, which has been working well.

I don’t regret my transition. I did the best I could with the knowledge and feelings I had at the time. It was a part of my life that helped me then, even if it’s not what I need now. I have a really unique perspective from having lived on both sides, and I actually really love being a woman now in a way I don’t think I could have if I hadn’t gone through all of this.

My main feeling about my top surgery is mixed. I’m cosmetically happy with my chest—the scars are faint—and I have good nipple sensation. But I am sad that I can’t breastfeed. It’s something I never thought about when I was younger, but it feels like a loss now. I don’t want reconstructive surgery because it’s invasive, I might lose sensation, and it wouldn’t give me the ability to breastfeed. Instead, I wear small silicone breast forms most days, and they look and feel very natural. I often forget they’re not a part of me.

My sexuality has also shifted over time. I identified as bisexual for a long time, but these days I have very little interest in women and consider myself heterosexual. It just changed naturally.

I think a lot of my initial struggle might have been related to shame, low self-esteem, and a need for control during a difficult time in my life. Transitioning gave me a sense of agency. I was pretty isolated, and I think that made me latch onto this identity strongly. I’ve learned that not every uncomfortable feeling about your body means you’re trans, especially during puberty when everyone feels weird. It’s okay to just sit with those feelings and see if they pass.

Now, I’m content. I have a boyfriend who doesn’t care about my past at all. I love my voice—I can make it sound male or female, which is fun. I feel at home in my body and enjoy embracing feminine things. My journey was unusual, but it was mine, and I’m okay with that.

Age Event
Early Teens Started feeling excited about puberty and becoming a woman.
Late Teens Developed significant discomfort with my breasts; began binding and hiding my body.
18 Started socially living as a man.
20 Began testosterone hormone therapy (low dose, weekly injections).
24 Underwent top surgery (double incision with nipple grafts).
26 My gender dysphoria disappeared; I decided to stop testosterone and detransition.
27 (Present) Living happily as a woman again; getting laser hair removal.

Top Comments by /u/white-china-owl:

20 comments • Posting since May 21, 2023
Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) comments that people will likely forget a past transition quickly and advises the OP to downplay its significance, while relating to the hassle of legally changing a "stupid trans name."
18 pointsFeb 17, 2024
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Probably no one will even care that much. In my experience, people will follow your lead on how big of a deal to make it. I bet everyone forgets about it in a few months.

Relatable about having a stupid trans name though, lol. I'm in the process of getting mine legally changed again, but it sure is a hassle, especially with computer systems.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) comments on the disappearance of early trans YouTubers, speculating that creators like Benton and Chase Ross may have gone stealth, and noting Daisy Chadra stopped posting after having kids.
17 pointsDec 11, 2024
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Oh yeah I used to watch Benton! Chase Ross was also popular? Most of these guys stopped doing Youtube at some point and I just assumed they went stealth or whatever but really you never know. Daisy Chadra used to be a trans Youtuber but she's mostly stopped posting since she had kids.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) reassures a detransitioner that a year on HRT is "nothing," sharing her own experience of living 10 years as trans with top surgery and how life can return to normal.
10 pointsMar 8, 2024
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Hey, you'll be fine. A year is nothing. You've figured out transition isn't for you - that's okay, you can just stop. Detransitioning won't fix your brain problems either, but ceasing something that's not working for you and that's making you more unhappy is a good place to start.

You have your whole life ahead of you. Transition can just be this weird thing you did once that doesn't matter any more. I was trans way longer than you (almost ten years, on hrt for six of those, got top surgery), and now just a year after stopping hormones, no one even knows unless I tell them. I've found, too, that people will follow your lead on how big a deal to make of it.

You can find a normal partner. I met my boyfriend several months into detransitioning and he doesn't care at all - it seems like most girls' significant others don't care much.

I definitely relate to your experience of being completely isolated and then going and making yourself even weirder. It seems like a lot of people (anecdotally, anyway) had that experience of being extremely isolated and then turning to trans stuff. Sometimes I wonder what the deal there is. At any rate - this experience can feel lonely, but you're not the only one. Things will be okay.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) explains why shaming a teen for chest binding can be deeply damaging, advising a safer sports bra and a supportive home environment instead.
9 pointsMar 5, 2024
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Poor kid :( They're probably going through some stuff rn

I would second what the other poster said about maybe looking for a higher-compression sports bra or something like that, it'll be both safer and more comfortable than an ace bandage. I don't super recommend binders, personally, but I guess it depends on the person, and it's still better than an ace bandage

Speaking from my own experience - my dad was really fucking mean and controlling about it when I was a teenager experiencing dysphoria/exploring gender stuff, and to this day it is one of the most painful things he ever did to me. It destroyed any trusting relationship we had before and is still nearly impossible for me to talk about. I think it also made me double down on the trans stuff. It's too long a story to get into here. Short version - trans stuff gave me something of my own and an outlet for my own agency in a time in my life where I had none, and punishing someone for (what they perceive as) their identity will only make them cling harder to it. So, I would say that it is best to tread lightly here. I like what the other poster said about how it's important to have a foundation where your kid can exist however they need to at home.

If your stepchild has going on anything like what was going on with me - making binding into a whole huge Thing probably won't help. I'd already had so much shame and bad feeling inculcated into me about my breasts by that point, and adding yet another layer, like "NO!! You MUST wear x kind of undergarment and display them in x way!" would really, really not have helped, and would likely have made things worse. Unfortunately, I don't really know what can help with all the shame and bad feelings. I grew out of it, but it took ten years, and for a long time it was too painful to even think about what was causing the dysphoria. Better not to have it there in the first place, but once it's there ... I don't know. I guess it might have helped if my parents had just ignored them, instead of shaming me over my normal clothes (that they bought me!) being "too revealing" or whatever. Do they have clothes (including bras) that fit? I didn't, and while it probably wasn't a major cause, it's never going to help your relationship with your body if none of your clothes fit right and all your bras are uncomfortable and ineffective.

I'm still working through a lot of this stuff myself, and don't have the answers.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) explains that detransitioning is not the end of the world and can be a predominantly joyful experience, offering a unique perspective on gender.
8 pointsMay 25, 2023
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Not at all. People fearmonger about it and act like it's the worst thing ever/it'll ruin your life but honestly I have not felt that way at all. It's just another thing you can choose to do, if you think it'll be positive for you. There's nothing wrong with being trans and nothing wrong with being detrans.

A lot of people come to online spaces like this to post and look for support when they're having a bad time, so maybe that's what gets more visibility. For me though, detransition has been a predominantly joyful experience. I really like being a girl now! I liked my body when I was trans too, but now I love everything soft and feminine about myself now, in a way I doubt I would have been able to had I not transitioned first.

And I think transitioning and then detransitioning gives such an interesting perspective, too. If you do choose to detransition, it doesn't have to mean you made some life-ruining mistake or that you did something you regret. Some people's life paths are a little different, that's all.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) explains how Tamora Pierce's *Song of the Lioness* quartet provided relatable fiction for her detransition experience, finding comfort in the main character's journey from living as a boy to returning to life as a woman.
8 pointsDec 23, 2023
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I wouldn't say it "helped me to detransition" because I'd already done it, but Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet had some relatable scenes when the main character (who had previously disguised herself as a boy for years) started living as a woman. I read the first book (where she was pretending to be a boy) over and over as a kid, so it was nice to revisit the series as an adult and find that the later books were relatable, too, albeit in a different way :)

It's been lonely not knowing anyone else irl with experiences like mine, but reading fiction with something approximately similar helped some.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) comments that it's okay to like your post-detransition body, sharing that she has mixed feelings about her top surgery but genuinely likes her deeper voice.
7 pointsOct 15, 2024
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People have a range of feelings about their bodies, and especially their bodies after detransition. You see more of the negative feelings here because it's a support space, but not everyone feels so bad. It's okay to like your body (shocking)! It's even okay to like the version of your body that bears the results of a decision that is no longer serving you.

I have mixed feelings about my top surgery, some days more positive, some days more negative. And I like my voice now quite a lot and think it sounds nice and pleasant. You're definitely not the only one :)

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) comments on the challenge of exclusively encountering polyamorous people while trying to date.
6 pointsMay 21, 2023
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God yeah I've had such problems with only running into polyamorous people, too. It's so frustrating and I don't know how to avoid it; it's not a common thing and it's not something I'm looking for at all, so I don't know how I'm somehow filtering for it or how to stop doing that :(

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) shares clothing tips for a feminine shape after top surgery, suggesting silicone breast forms, flowy crop tops, and strategic layering with knotted t-shirts or button-downs.
6 pointsMay 24, 2023
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I like to wear small silicone breast forms a lot of the time, so you could try that and see how you feel, if you want. The ones I wear look and feel very comfortable and natural on my body, and it's easy to forget they're not attached to me. Finding the right bra helps a lot, too.

I usually dress pretty girly so we might have different tastes in clothes. But, as the weather warms up I've been wearing a lot of crop tops. Tight ones don't look very good on me, but more loose/flowy ones are very flattering. Sometimes I pair them with high-waisted jeans, but they look good with regular-waisted shorts too.

I also like to take a loose t-shirt (men's t-shirts work well here) and tie it at my waist. Wearing the t-shirt this way shows off my hips and waist (pretty feminine by now) and gives a looser fit over the upper torso and creates some interesting folds so that it doesn't show the exact contours of your body. I don't know if this is a good explanation or not; if you want I can try and add a picture, though I'm not sure how that works on reddit.

Another thing that I like is to layer a button-down over a t-shirt. This can also help disguise what is or isn't there.

Reddit user white-china-owl (detrans female) discusses her nuanced feelings on top surgery, explaining her lack of regret, the unclear origins of her chest dysphoria, the relief of surgery, and her current lack of dysphoria despite sadness over the inability to breastfeed.
5 pointsJul 5, 2023
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I might not be your exact target for this question since I would not frame my feelings as "regret" - if I had it to do over again, sometimes I think I might have chosen something different, but I did the best I could at the time with the situation I was in, so it seems weird to look back and say I "regret" my actions. But anyway:

What was your experience with chest dysphoria like at the beginning of puberty and throughout teenage years?

Tbh, I don't really remember much specifically. Developing breasts was fine at first and I remember being excited to grow up into a pretty woman like my mom. And then later it became not fine, for unclear reasons. I found that I was more comfortable dressing in a way that hid them, and later binding. I might have become uncomfortable with them because they became too large (in my late teens I went from like a B cup to a D cup very quickly), but I'm not sure that the timeline works out. Though I will note that even nowadays when I wear breast forms, they give me a small A cup and I wouldn't want anything larger than that.

Is there a specific reason you can point to that lead to your decision to pursue top surgery?

Eh, not really. I had been uncomfortable with my breasts for several years and had no reason to expect that my feelings would ever change. And (I'm sure you know) binding sucks and is hard on your body. So, with the information I had, it just seemed like the best thing to do.

Sometimes I wonder if I might have internalized some negativity around having breasts from my parents (well, really my dad) and society at large. Much has already been written elsewhere about how society is insane about breasts so I won't reiterate stuff you're probably already aware of. And my dad was just fucking weird about it; everything I wore was "too revealing" even if it was just normal clothes from like Target. Eventually I did end up with a lot of shame around my body, even on top of the "normal" baggage that most girls pick up. But, who even knows. It's easy to pick out random stuff from your past and make it into something more than it was. Currently I think that that stuff was likely related, but probably not the whole story, either.

What was the surgery and the healing process like?

I went through basically an "informed consent" process, in which I paid for a service and then the surgeon provided the service, much like any other cosmetic procedure. Nothing out of the ordinary here; probably about the same as anyone else's experience. Same for the healing process, though I don't remember a lot of it since I am apparently pretty sensitive to opiates, lol. It was all fine 🤷‍♀️

How did you feel about your “new” chest immediately after?

I was quite pleased! I have, like, 90th percentile results, probably. After I was out of the immediate recovery stage and able to just wear whatever clothes I wanted, it was an immediate relief. I'm still cosmetically quite happy with it - I had double incision surgery with nipple grafts and the scarring is not very noticeable. And my nipples are moderately sensitive and becoming more sensitive over time (unsure if because of estrogen or because your body keeps healing even a couple years after surgery)

If you regret top surgery currently, why?

The main thing is that I wish I could breast feed, but now I can't. This was not something I even though about or could have cared about at the time, but it's important to me now, so I'm sad that it's not going to be a thing for me. Secondarily, I sometimes feel like I'm less attractive than other women because I am flat-chested, though this is not such a major thing for me. I wear breast forms most of the time and stuff's fine. I would say that I am considerably less neurotic about my body (breasts/lack thereof included) than most women. Everyone has to work to have a good relationship with their body.

And finally, what is your experience with chest dysphoria CURRENTLY?

Don't have any. All my gender stuff/dysphoria just kinda went away, for no reason. When I feel like having tits I wear breast forms and this has been great for me (I can forget they're not my actual boobs), but I'm unbothered by having a flat chest, and still often prefer it. Probably I'd be fine having my original breasts too, but I don't feel any desire to get a reconstruction or w/e, since I like how I look now and the only things I would care about would be ability to breast feed (not happening) and nipple sensation (have it; don't want to do anything to damage it).

edit - formatting