This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, the account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags indicating it is a bot or an inauthentic detransitioner/desister.
The user demonstrates:
- Consistent, nuanced arguments across multiple complex topics.
- Personal investment in the subject matter, referencing "my community, the lesbian community."
- A recognizable perspective that aligns with known radical feminist and detransitioner critiques of gender ideology and medical transition.
- No scripted or repetitive language that would suggest automated posting.
The passion and strong opinions expressed are consistent with a genuine individual who has strong feelings on this topic.
About me
I started transitioning as a teenager because I felt a deep sense of wrongness with my developing female body and thought becoming a man would solve my problems. I took testosterone for years and had top surgery, believing it was my only path to happiness. I eventually realized through therapy that my discomfort wasn't with being female, but with the social expectations placed on me, and that I had been trying to escape my pain. I now live with permanent changes, including infertility, which is a profound loss I regret deeply. I've found true freedom in breaking stereotypes instead of changing my body.
My detransition story
My journey with transition started when I was very young, around 13. I was born female, and I remember feeling a deep sense of wrongness with my body when puberty began. I hated the development of my breasts; it felt like a betrayal. I now see that a lot of this was puberty discomfort mixed with a low self-esteem that I didn't understand at the time. I was also deeply influenced by what I saw online; the message that if you didn't fit a certain feminine ideal, you might be trans, really resonated with my confusion.
I started identifying as non-binary first, which felt like a safer way to step away from being a girl. But that quickly escalated to identifying as a trans man. I think, for me, it was a form of escapism. I was deeply uncomfortable in my own skin and being a man seemed like a way to escape the pressures and limitations I felt were placed on women. I had a lot of internalised homophobia too; the idea of being a lesbian was terrifying to me back then, and becoming a straight man felt like a much easier path.
I took testosterone for several years, starting when I was 19. I was convinced it was the solution to all my problems. For a little while, it felt like it was working. I liked the deeper voice and the facial hair. But the health complications started piling up. My blood pressure shot up, and I was constantly worried about my long-term health. I kept reading about how synthetic T makes the female body weaker internally, increasing the risk of heart disease and diabetes, and I started to feel like I was poisoning myself. I got top surgery when I was 21. I thought it would finally make me feel complete, but after the initial relief wore off, I was left with the same emptiness, just now with a scarred chest.
The turning point for me was when I finally started therapy that wasn't just about affirming my trans identity. This therapist helped me unpack the real issues: my depression, my anxiety, and the trauma I had from growing up and feeling like I was never enough as a girl. She helped me see that my problem wasn't my sex, but the box I felt society had put me in because of it. I began to understand that I could be a woman and be powerful, brilliant, and commanding. I didn't need to change my body to be those things.
I regret transitioning medically. I regret the permanent changes to my body and voice. I am now infertile, and that is a profound loss that I have to live with every day. I look back and see a young girl who was desperately trying to find a way out of her pain, and I was sold a solution that was permanent and damaging. My thoughts on gender now are that it is largely a set of social expectations placed on our sex, and that true freedom comes from breaking those expectations, not from trying to change our bodies to fit them. I don't have animosity for people who transition; I understand the desire for a neat solution. But I also know the cost, and I believe we need to be honest about that.
Age | Event |
---|---|
13 | Began experiencing intense puberty discomfort and hated breast development. |
16 | Started identifying as non-binary, influenced by online communities. |
17 | Socially transitioned to identifying as a trans man. |
19 | Started taking testosterone. |
21 | Underwent top surgery (double mastectomy). |
23 | Began non-affirming therapy to address underlying depression and anxiety. |
24 | Stopped taking testosterone and began detransition. |
25 | Came to terms with infertility and other permanent changes from medical transition. |
Top Comments by /u/wide_gyres:
Adding to this: puberty blockers aren't some sort of innocuous way to "buy time," either. They're known to inflict permanent and severe damage in some cases.
The new Enlightened Centrist position regarding children, particularly among trans people, seems to be "hormones and surgery, bad; puberty blockers, permissible." It's a myth that puberty blockers keep the body in a stable equilibrium until the introduction of sex hormones, though. Halting natural sex hormone production, even briefly, can harm pretty much every system in your body, from your bones to your heart. Women who've taken Lupron report mobility issues, bone frailty, and joint pain persisting well into adult life, sometimes requiring multiple invasive surgeries to correct.
From what I've seen, a short-term course of puberty blockers looks more dangerous, medically, than a short-term course of HRT! But because the symptoms aren't outwardly manifest, only internally damaging, and are functional rather than cosmetic, no one seems as alarmed.
No.
David's body was surgically altered, and he was continuously administered exogenous hormones. Even if a child can't recognize exactly how his biology has been changed, he can certainly recognize that it has been changed. This a traumatic realization, it goes without saying.
David's parents imposed the social performance of femininity on him, as a young child, exactly as they forced him to change his natural biology. Correlating the two forms of coercion, social and biological, is pretty much inevitable.
As a result, David rejected social expressions of femininity as a proxy way to reject the associated but more invasive form of coercion: the abuse of his body.
Who would want to "be a girl," socially, if "being a girl" also meant being subject to extreme bodily harm: endlessly pumping a healthy body full of hormones that damaged it?
The desire to escape that physically traumatic cycle says nothing about gender identity, or the relationship of gender expression to biological sex.
Two major disanalogies here. One, medical transition consists, by design, of altering a person's body. Altering the body of someone who has not yet reached physical maturity is, necessarily, much riskier than altering the body of a mature person, as it will interfere in formative development. This difference is irrelevant to driving cars, which doesn't consist of bodily alteration.
Second, when 16 year olds learn to drive, they aren't consenting to the certainty or likelihood of dying in a car accident. Far from it. They are acknowledging the miniscule risk of that outcome, under 1%.
When kids transition, however, they need to consent to the certainty that they are altering their bodies, against their natural function, and to the abundant likelihood that this will impact development.
If medical transition involved only a <1% risk of either, it'd be a different story, of course.
Reasonable question. For these purposes, I would say that an adult is both: (1) someone who has completed the physical maturation of puberty (typically, by around 16-17), and (2) someone afforded the legal rights and responsibilities of an adult in their given context (typically, 18, depending on the country). The former is important for physical and neurological development, and the latter is important for social development: the learned ability to make decisions and face consequences.
A child is anyone who fails to meet either of the two criteria. So, under 18 in the US. I don't think anyone under 18 can legally consent to elective cosmetic surgery, trans related or not.
What's the conflict?
Abortion is a decision about one's own body, strictly.
Transition, though, is compound: it involves both a decision about one's own body (medical transition) and a mandate around other people's language and behavior (social transition).
The coherent position is to grant that adults have the right to medical transition, just as they have the right to any number of elective procedures, but they don't have the "right" to dictate how others view them, treat them, and refer to them. That has nothing to do with bodily autonomy, it's pure coercion.
I have no animosity towards transitioned people, personally. I try to show compassion. It's a hard lot to struggle with that kind of thing, and I can understand the desire for a neat and decisive resolution, even if it's a fiction.
While I hope that medical transition pans out well for them, though, I'm realistic about the fact that it comes with immense physical and psychological costs, and that the goal, ultimately, is impossible. I'm also realistic about how deeply medical transition has harmed my community, the lesbian community, and I'm not going to distort the facts about sex and sexual orientation to accommodate a person's fantasies, even if they come from great pain.
I would recommend you spin your aversion into a sigh of relief. "Wow, I'm glad I've found acceptance with myself and no longer have to chase different sex characteristics. Whew."
It's obviously discriminatory and infringes on the right to privacy.
"Gender-affirming surgery" is just one form of harmful cosmetic surgery, among many others, yet Missouri isn't banning them all. Cross-sex hormone replacement is just one form of harmful endocrinological manipulation, among many others (steroid use by bodybuilders, etc), yet Missouri isn't banning them all. It's neither moral nor legal to be so arbitrarily selective.
I think medical transition is a terrible idea, of course, but it's not the state's job to limit what rights-holding adult people can do to their own bodies. Promoting alternatives to transition needs to come from physicians, and from organizations that establish good faith standards in medicine, not from partisan hacks looking to deprive us all of bodily autonomy and to instate Christian fascism.
For now it's medical transition, next its contraception, next its sodomy laws... this is a horribly frightening precedent that tramples on core freedoms.
Yeah, but removing one's ovaries is indisputably not a safe form of sterilization. It has all sorts of horrifying effects on a woman's long-term health, by inducing either premature menopause or life-long synthetic hormone dependence. It's the kind of thing you only do if it's really medically necessary.
Refusing to permanently ruin a healthy woman's hormone production is ethical, but refusing to tie a woman's tubes is another story. Tubal ligation is a safe and routine procedure, with no ramifications beyond fertility.
You can't pressure her away from transition. That approach will just inspire greater resistance, particularly in young people, who are developmentally inclined to be stubborn contrarians.
What you can do is go out of your way to celebrate gender-non-conforming women. Casually reference cool gender-masculine women in the public sphere, or in your own personal life, and uplift them. Hell, just express your admiration for accomplished and impactful women in general. Talk about how women are powerful, brilliant, commanding, about how women can be heroes, innovators, leaders, breadwinners, revolutionaries, protectors, adventurers. Whenever you encounter cultural messaging that insists women have to be one way and men another way, debunk it. If your sister is same sex attracted, normalize that, too.
Most young girls transition because they feel limited by sexist stereotypes about who women are and what women can be. Your mission, when in your sister's presence, should be to fight against them. Your example will be particularly transformative as a male member of her family.
If and when your sister realizes that she can be all that she is, and wants to be, as a woman, the desire to pass herself off as male will fade away. But it won't before then.
The health risks are truly insane. Synthetic T doesn't make the female body stronger, it makes the female body weaker.
Yeah, you'll have some physical strength gains, externally. But internally, your blood pressure and hematocrit will rise. Your risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and diabetes will skyrocket. Your immune system will slow down. Your fat will gather, dangerously, by your visceral organs.
When it comes to health and longevity, female bodies are superior to male bodies. Why would anyone trade away that incredible gift for cosmetic purposes?