This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the provided comments, this account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or a bad-faith actor.
The user's writing is highly personal, nuanced, and internally consistent. They describe a complex, questioning relationship with gender, autism, and asexuality that aligns with the experiences of genuine desisters. The passion and internal conflict expressed are consistent with someone authentically struggling with these issues.
About me
I was born male but always felt like I didn't fit in, so I started identifying outside the binary and planned a medical transition to escape my masculinity. I now realize a lot of my discomfort came from my autism and the shame I felt for not meeting society's expectations of a man. I also came to understand that I'm asexual, which helped me separate my body issues from sexual pressure. My journey wasn't about finding a new gender, but about learning to accept myself as the male person I am. I've stopped transitioning and am finally finding peace by reconnecting with my body through simple joys.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started with a deep discomfort I couldn't quite name. I was born male, but I never felt like I fully fit into that box. For years, I felt I was somewhere outside the binary, not fully male or female but something in between. I thought this feeling was my true identity, and I believed medical transition was the way to align my body with that internal sense of self.
My goal was never to become a woman. I didn't identify with femininity or feel internally female. Instead, I wanted to be less masculine. I saw being male as a kind of hell—a source of self-loathing—and I thought that escaping from it through transition would be the light at the end of the tunnel. It felt like a utopian goal. I started my transition socially by using they/them pronouns and adopting androgynous fashion. I wanted to be seen just as a person, without any of the expectations that come with being seen as a man or a woman.
I researched everything intensely, as I always do when I'm confused about something. I was diagnosed with autism as a child, and I think this played a huge role in my experience. I struggled to understand social rules and my place in the world, and gender felt like another confusing set of rules I was failing at. A lot of my shame was also tied to being autistic, being asexual, and being romantically attracted to the same sex. I felt like I was just wrong on every level, and transitioning felt like a way to fix that.
I planned to take medical steps. I looked into taking feminizing hormones and possibly having an orchiectomy to make my body less masculine. But I hit financial and practical barriers, so I never started hormones or had any surgeries. I got stuck in a kind of mid-transition limbo.
Over time, I started to question everything. I realized that a lot of my desire to transition was about escaping from myself—my low self-esteem, my discomfort with puberty, and the social shame I felt for being a certain type of person. I hated the idea of being seen as weak or inferior because I was a man who didn't fit the stereotype. I began to understand that I didn't have a problem with my body itself; I had a problem with what my body meant to other people.
A big turning point was accepting that I am asexual. I don't feel sexual attraction to anyone, and that's okay. My romantic attractions are to the same sex, but sex itself isn't a part of my life. This realization helped me separate my feelings about my body from the pressure to perform a certain sexuality.
I started to see that my journey wasn't about finding a new gender identity, but about learning to exist in the body I was born in. I began to understand that dissociating from my maleness wasn't a healthy goal. I just needed to find a way to be at peace with myself. I benefited from stepping back from online discourse and focusing on other things, like playing table tennis again, which helped me reconnect with my body in a neutral, joyful way.
I don't regret exploring my gender because it led me to a deeper understanding of myself. But I do regret that I ever saw my body as the problem. I now believe that my discomfort was rooted in internalized shame, autism, and a struggle with societal expectations, not in being born male. I have desisted from transitioning and am working on accepting myself as I am.
Age | Event |
---|---|
Childhood | Diagnosed with autism. |
Early Teens (approx. 13) | Taken out of IEP (Individualized Education Program) in 7th grade. |
Early 20s | Began to feel a persistent sense of being outside the gender binary. |
21 | Started social transition (they/them pronouns, androgynous fashion). Researched medical transition (hormones, orchiectomy) but did not start due to financial barriers. |
22 | Began to seriously question my transition motivations, recognizing links to autism, internalized shame, and societal pressure. |
22 | Realized I am asexual and same-sex romantically attracted, which helped clarify my feelings. Began the process of detransition/desistance. |
Top Comments by /u/xxxx6406:
I actually feel a similar way! I can't claim to have the experience of transitioning fully, as I'm kinda stuck in mid-transition as an agender-identifying person, but I do sometimes fear that people will think I'm trans because of my voice. I'm more on the opposite side of the spectrum; my voice tends to fluctuate a little but is naturallt usually on the higher side. I'm biologically male but I've been mistaken for a woman multiple times on the phone (very rarely in person, too, and I'm not even that androgynous) and I hate having to tell whomever's on the other end that I'm actually not a woman. It's annoying at best and very disturbing at worst.
Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it greatly. All of these are great ideas, but as for the second one...
Something I should have mentioned is that while I am attracted to the same sex romantically, I'm asexual and don't feel sexual attraction to anyone, so sex and sexuality isn't a big part of my life. (I'll make a longer post about it since it's become increasingly relevant to my detransition; stay tuned.) I only... do it solo infrequently when I feel like it, and only for short periods of time; otherwise, I don't think about it at all. Though I guess whenever I am doing it I'm not usually thinking about how much I hate my penis, so you did bring up a good point.
Thanks for the kind words, I can relate to that. In fact, just accepting my form as itself alone as you said was part of what motivated me to transition in the first place. I wanted to exist or be seen just as a person at the base level rather than as a man or a woman, and to not have any of those expectations attached to me.
Thank you for the advice. As for that last point, it's definitely the latter. I just wish it were easier to just exist without being seen as weak or inferior, those are the kinds of things it's very difficult for people like me to deal with. Not that I'm not working on it, but still.
Thanks for responding, I appreciate your time!
Greatly relate to the last part; it's mostly that, shame over being autistic, and my asexuality as well as my romantic attraction to the same sex, all of which could also technically be grouped as GNC in a way.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by ego dissolution? Just curious since you mentioned gender deconstruction (i.e. removing the concept of gender or gender identity from the person)
Thanks for replying, I really appreciate your time. That's a completely valid question. I guess it means different things for different people, but for me it means taking some kind of feminizing hormone to make at least part of me less masculine, possibly having an orchiectomy, using androgynous or unisex fashion, and using they/them pronouns, among others. One could say I've started my transition already, especially socially, but haven't finished it because of the medical and financial barriers.
In fairness, though, there are a lot of elements of my transition ideals that are similar to a binary transition, only the goal takes a different form. Rather than using medicine to align my body with being female, it's about using medicine to align my body with being some kind of non-binary. Instead of focusing on being more feminine, my focus is/was on being less masculine, if that makes sense.
In other words, I don't have a sense of being internally female, as you described, but I do have a sense of being internally somewhere outside the binary, and I suppose(d) science could accomplish that in the same way it could for a trans woman.
I've occasionally felt like I want to be a woman, but I've never identified with femininity or the opposite sex to any significant extent. However, throughout this experience, I have always felt that I was not fully male or fully female, but somewhere in between, and that's how I've felt for years.
It's a little weird, though. Every time I try to internalize the idea that it will go away with time, it just feels ludicrous. I have considered professional help, as my mother recommended when I told her, but I don't know which route to take. It always felt like dissociating with maleness was some kind of utopian goal, that being male was a kind of hell and that being not male was the light at the end of the tunnel of self-loathing. I don't know how to place it for sure, though. Part of me just wants to be happy with the way I was born, but it sometimes makes me feel like I'm undermining trans people by desisting.
Thank you for your time and effort in replying! I'm not a very outdoorsy person but that could be helpful. I live in a (very) big city but at least there's a park nearby, even if it's a little small. Your suggestion reminded me of how table tennis was something I used to do a lot but fell off of as of late, and I realize how helpful it could be for at least temporarily drowning out the dysphoria. It's one of those sports where the scale is so small that a majority of physical differences or advantages subside or aren't relevant, and it's more about technique and agility than brawn. Not that sports like e.g. football don't require skill, of course, but it just becomes more apparent in things like table tennis where strength doesn't come into play as often.
On that second note, I appreciate your perspective. It's difficult for people like me to discuss these things because of gender roles and stigma. I don't want to get political at all, but the more radical side of feminism may contribute to that. Sometimes I've felt guilty for identifying as NB because it felt like a cop-out to try to avoid being labelled the same way a male would be (which of course complicated matters because I feel uncomfortable identifying as male too).
Also, on that last note, I can see why you would correlate that, but can you explain what you mean by that a bit more? I research a LOT, both for school and for personal hobbies, and I've always been the type of person that whenever I feel confused about a subject or experience, I read a lot of literature about it and interact with people who know or experience it (I guess I have that to blame for finding this sub, but also for finding other places too). I've never really been big into gender discourse - the whole thing can get really toxic and confusing and leads to a whole host of ontological questions I'm not even prepared to answer for my own self, let alone on a general level - but I started thinking more critically about it when I researched it more.
Ah, yeah, I totally get it now. (It's hard to convey tone in text, but that isn't sarcastic.) That's how I tend to be as well. I was diagnosed with ASD when I was little and did IEP for a while in elementary school, but was taken out of it for some reason in the 7th grade. I've been running in those same circles about whether I'm "truly" a boy a lot recently.