from r/LesbianActually

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from emolesbianbiopolargenius

i am actually happy to be female for the first time in a long time. possibly for the first time in my life. it is a miracle because i spent so much of my younger years dysphoric. but i am very happy to be a woman because i love women and i love talking to women and i love being around women. and i love how diverse women are and i love how even though men try to paint us as vapid unintelligent creatures we continue to create art and music and ideas and life. i love how resilient we are. and i love being a woman

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

Bell says that, for many young people in a similar position to her own, “Regret is really what we’re talking about, as opposed to detransition itself, which has an abstract sort of meaning, and people interpret it in different ways. 

“There are people that are technically still transitioned, who have those regrets, and they wouldn’t dare mention it. So it’s a much bigger issue than people realise.

“It can be painful for people to turn back. And I don’t think a lot of people will. They’ll continue with it out of fear. People wouldn’t dare speak up because suddenly they’d be called transphobic and ousted from their friendship group.” 

She adds that it is not only trans rights campaigners who can cloud the conversation. “In an ideal world I would want political influence to be taken out of these services that are dealing with vulnerable people,” she says. “I worry about political influence on both sides. The trans rights side and the people that are more focused on women’s rights, which can sometimes get in the way of real care in this sort of area.” 

Today, Bell, who has been so honest about what she has been through, is now trying to spend some time out of the limelight. 

“I want to feel I’m in a bit more of a stable place. But I’m making moves. I don’t want a crazy life. My life has been so up and down, from a young age, so I’m just trying to find peace. It’s a work in progress.” (x)

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from butchazepam

This study is used to affirm that top surgery doesn’t cause any regret. They questioned 235 people, 96 (41%) of which did not rate their satisfaction or regret.

These nonresponders had some complications, but no one had a “reversal procedure”, which i can only imagine is putting breast implants.

Nonresponders had lower anxiety and depression, and i was curious how they managed to figure that out since these people did not respond. The test results must be from the first consultation, meaning they don’t show how they are doing when they dropped out. They concluded this because they stop having evidence of these disorders in their medical record. This is a bad way to measure mental health in your population, since not going to the doctors doesn’t mean you aren’t sick. Also, assuming this is an accurate reflection of reality, it means the healthier someone’s mental health is the less likely they are to continue at the gender clinic.

The people that did continue rated 5/5 satisfaction and 0/100 in their regret scale. These rates are ridiculous because people don’t even say this to life-saving treatments. They are scared on the implications of their actual responses. And you can’t say there are no regrets when almost half of the population didn’t respond.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

I enjoy being a detrans woman. There are downsides, of course, but they’re mostly about how I look.

I enjoy having experienced radical changes in my worldview and knowing I’m fallible yet capable of learning.

I enjoy having gained so much perspective on the world, on my thought processes and on my emotional processes.

I enjoy the self-knowledge.

I enjoy knowing I have always done my best to free myself, with the means and knowledge I had at the time.

I enjoy the connection to other women like me.

I enjoy contributing to the narrative we collectively build around this kind of female experience.

I enjoy being a woman.

I enjoy being the woman I am today, my personal values and choices enabled by living several years inside a male-looking cocoon in which I had the freedom to discard everything I had learned about womanhood, one thing after another.

I enjoy rejecting the patriarchal idea of womanhood.

I enjoy learning to accept loss, imperfection, and regret.

I enjoy shifting my perspective from monitoring myself and my looks to interacting with my surroundings.

I enjoy learning what it is to be an animal, a living body.

And I dare to say, I enjoy the stigma, the attempts to silence women like me, I enjoy the potential for societal change we hold in our hands because we are the ones to contradict both the new definition of womanhood and the old oppressive idea what women are supposed to be: we are trans and not-trans at the same time, we are or were dysphoric yet cis, we are “masculine” yet women. We don’t fit the categories we’re supposed to. We will raise questions just by existing. No one would hate us like we are hated if we didn’t hold the power to change the narrative.

from terra-feminarum | thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from dickevandyke The other day a friend of mine said they hardly even consider me detrans because I "didn't really do anything to detransition". I didn't ask what they meant by that, because they're not really the kind of person I can have that sort of conversation with. I didn't want to have to explain to them why I detransitioned. I didn't want to have to justify finally feeling okay with myself after spending my teenage years being miserable and stressed about being trans.

It's kind of a fascinating mindset, though. I think it gives really wonderful insight as to how their brain works. Like, I stopped taking testosterone. I stopped asking to be referred to by male pronouns. I "came out" as a woman, and I Came Out as a Lesbian after also spending most of my teenage years trying very hard to repress my attraction to women. This person doesn't view that as doing anything. Why?

I imagine it's because I dress fairly masculine - as Butches generally do. I wear still wear, mostly, "boyish clothes". I didn't start wearing make-up. I didn't let my hair grow out long. I haven't done any voice training, or really made an effort to make my voice higher pitched like it was before. I haven't gotten breast implants. I rarely correct people when they call me "sir". I don't need to do any of those things. A stranger calling me "sir" doesn't mean I am not a woman. Not having breasts anymore doesn't mean that I'm not a woman. The point of my detransition was not to turn myself into a stereotype or to dive head-first into femininity.

The point of my detransition was just that I am finally comfortable with myself, just as I am. That doesn't mean that I love my body, but I am okay with it. I am at peace with who I am.

Do I regret getting a mastectomy? Yes. There was no other reason to remove my breasts, they were perfectly fine, they were small and didn't cause me any back pain, I didn't have any medical issues related to them. Do I regret wearing a binder? Absolutely. It has screwed up my ribs and back so severely that I am probably going to be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. Do I regret going on HRT? Sometimes, sometimes not. Honestly, it didn't really change much for me outside of my voice and making my body hair slightly thicker. Do I regret social transition? Absolutely. I dug myself into such a deep hole of self loathing and repression that it took me three years to finally crawl out of it. So after going through all of that - after putting myself, my body through all of that, why would I want to do it all over again in the opposite direction, when there is absolutely no need for it?

I "didn't do anything to detransition" because I don't need to do anything to be a woman, I just am one. Woman is my natural state. I "didn't do anything to detransition" because I already put my body through three years of cross-sex hormones, five-ish years of binding, and an unnecessary mastectomy which has left me unable to feel most of my chest more than a year post-op. I don't need more unnecessary surgeries or expensive treatments to make myself into a woman, I never really stopped being one. Getting breast implants wouldn't make me more of a woman because I don't need breasts to be a woman. Voice training to make my voice a higher pitch again won't make me more of a woman because a high pitched voice was never what made me a woman in the first place. Wearing make-up, growing out my hair, wearing "girly" clothes wouldn't make me more of a woman, because femininity does not make a woman.

I didn't argue with them when they said that because, to be honest, I don't want to hear what they think makes a woman. I don't want to hear them trying to justify why they barely consider me detrans because I have not tried to turn myself into a feminine stereotype. It just really struck a chord with me, because if I'm not really detrans to them, am I really a woman to them? Or do they see me as some kind of "failed" woman because despite explicitly and openly accepting my womanhood, I am not their picture of what a woman is suppose to be?

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from fernstream

for anyone out there looking for ways to deal with dysphoria other than transition: you will see a lot of people mention things like weightlifting. and I agree — but. anything you do with the intent to change how your body looks will feed your dysphoria. the only way out is to stop treating your body as the problem ever. things like lifting can give you a powerful experience of understanding your body for what it can do instead of what it looks like, of being inside your body instead of looking at it. OR they can be just another avenue to fixate on the ways you wish you were shaped differently. if you try to solve your hating your body problem by changing your body you will be chasing something unreachable for the rest of your life. there is no end point at which you will find rest. women dealing with dysphoria can learn a lot from women recovering from eating disorders in this regard. we have to completely let go of chasing appearances if we ever want to be free. pay attention: what are your goals? are you hyper analyzing your body in the mirror for any change? or are you focusing on how you feel (learning to feel from inside your body can be life changing) and what you can do now? lifting etc can be freeing if we approach it with care and intention. good luck out there

thinking of detransition? you're not alone

Am i still detrans if i never underwent hrt or surgery in the first place?

some people do use detransitioned/detrans as an "umbrella" term for anyone who identified as trans and then stopped, regardless of HRT, surgery, etc.

however, speaking as an individual, i believe that specific terms are needed for specific experiences. it's a specific experience to be someone who stops identifying after medical intervention or before. detrans people deserve to have specific, common-sense based language to talk about shared experiences, and those that aren't shared. desisters (which i use here as its the most common term right now) also deserve specific, common-sense based language to talk about their experiences. grouping things together under an umbrella for convenience may save time, but clear communication is often worth a few more words or new terminology.

some terms that people who have stopped identifying as trans without medical interventions are:

desisted/desister - this term came into usage when the theory of Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) was developed reidentified/reidentifier/re-id - more popular in gender critical/radical feminist circles

reconciled/reconciler - an alternative to re-identified that shifts away from "identity" and instead reconciling with your sex. a lesbian/radical feminist term.

right now, it seems like desisted is the most popular term due to its usage in gender critical community & ROGD terminology.

i have occasionally used the term d/d (for detrans/desisted) in personal writing to refer to all detrans & desisted people together.

After a lot of soul-searching, I started to realize how my autistic traits played into my adoption of a transgender identity. Now I wonder how it can be possible to give “informed” consent when I was never screened for something that can play such a huge factor in how someone experiences the world and develops.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

Detransitioners do not owe the world a damn thing. We can walk away at any point that we decide to do so. We do not have to sit here and take abuse in order to be considered a good person. Our lives have worth.  Our lives have meaning outside of advocacy. We do not have to be martyrs for the cause.

thinking of detransition? you're not alone

Would you be open to using tags like actuallydetrans in addition to the current ones? Its just that detrans ftmtf mtftm detransition is all full of porn and spam accounts now :/

Yes, I will start adding that tag! Part of the purpose of the blog is to break up the porn/spam posting and give an alternative path for people who are browsing them for kink purposes, because no one deserves to be treated that way. Thank you for the tip!

from somenuanceplease

I think nearly everyone who transitions experiences that voice of reason. At least, when I experienced doubts about transition, people were certainly happy to remind me that everyone who transitions does. It’s just internalized transphobia. Maybe young transitioners don’t hear it as often, especially if they have a regular routine of people affirming them. As a transitioning adult, though, it’s a lot harder to live in the real world. It’s a lot harder to establish yourself in society. It’s a lot harder to find satisfying relationships. Over time, it gets harder and harder to ignore the fact that it feels like everything you’ve invested into this identity has been for absolutely nothing. All transition does is create virilized women and feminized men, and we have so few long-term studies about what lifelong synthetic cross-sex hormones does to a person. The whole thing is just one giant experiment.

Doubt is why so many true believers, when confronted with biology or the existence of detransition, feel like they have been traumatized by the interaction instead of being able to laugh it off. People who transition are invariably prone to rumination, and doubt can cause a spiral. Imagine the devastation if you are wrong. What’s been done to you. What’s been done to thousands of others. What we’re happily doing to naive little children. The thought would send anyone into a tailspin. Of course it’s easier to believe everything’s fine.

-- Actually, I was just crazy the whole time. (full essay here)

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from somenuanceplease (full essay)

When I was making the decision to transition, I came up with a list of evidence that I felt explained why I was not a woman (and was somehow a man instead). I now have better explanations for everything on that list.

I went from something that looked like this:

…to something that looks like this:

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from laundryandtaxes

I can kind of understand people’s inherent shock at the (growing, and increasingly difficult to ignore) existence of detransitioned people given the prevalence of the notion that transition is The Treatment for gender dysphoria and the prevalence of the notion that gender dysphoria is not at all like other forms of psychological distress- depression, anxiety, etc- but functionally a soul level characteristic that does not abate until treated with The Treatment.

But I have to say that their shock at the fact that lots of detransitioned people come out of detransition with very different ideas about gender than they had when they went in really highlights how little thought most people have given to any of the relevant questions around what transition is, around what gender dysphoria is, around what transition can do for someone vs what it cannot do, etc.

If someone went into a process being told (including by medical professionals) that something called a gender identity made them more or less inherently a person destined for cross sex hormones in order to actualize that identity, that their distress (dysphoria) was being caused by living out of alignment with that soul level characteristic, that this treatment would not only alleviate their gender dysphoria but would even alleviate the other mental health problems that many many people bring with them into transition, that this treatment would make their life better in immeasurable ways that would make it worth all of the downsides, only to find out that literally none of that ended up being true for them, it is absolutely not even slightly surprising that they might come away from the process not just feeling that they “made a mistake” facilitated repeatedly by mental health and medical professionals that they trusted to do right by them and to not cause them harm.

It is not at all surprising that they might come away from the process with an entirely different understanding of what the process itself is. It is not at all surprising that someone who’s taken cross sex hormones for a length of time might eventually come to realize that cross sex hormones are not in fact magic, they’re just hormones, and that leaning on magical thinking (having been born in the wrong body, etc) to source their psychological distress and then on cross sex hormones to fix something that was not a medical problem to begin with, is an approach to this problem that they’ve personally tried and found to be fundamentally lacking.

If you dislike the criticisms that many detrans people make of transition as a process, that’s one thing, but it’s another to act shocked about how and why that happened simply reveals that you haven’t even allowed yourself to ask some very fundamental questions about what kinds of decisions people are making and what factors are driving those decisions.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

from fakeboitherottengirl

You learn to chase gender like you learn to chase any other drug. You chase gender euphoria like an anorexic chasing her skeleton. The next piece of clothing, the next haircut, the next injection, the next operation, THAT'S the thing you need to be happy. After this next binder or HRT or boob job or dress or tube of makeup your body will finally feel "right". And by the time you've eliminated all the things that could be "wrong", when no hair is left out of place and you "pass" you realize you are still yourself with that same pain you've been running from getting closer every day. And suddenly there's nowhere left to run. Your hair can't get any shorter. Your chin can't get any smoother. No shade of lipstick fills the void it once promised to. Capitalism lied to you and is actively profiting off your gender dysphoria/euphoria. Dysphoric people deserve better than the capitalist "solution" of transition.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

Things that have helped me | from sugargoblin (deactivated)

Thanking my body for what it does, and appreciating it just for functioning. It doesn’t have to look a certain way, it just has to work and keep me going. I’m so grateful that I’m capable, mobile, relatively healthy, and going strong.

Understanding the intricacies of female anatomy. My period gives me huge amounts of dysphoria, but learning more about how incredible the uterus is (and that it REJECTS 70% of fertilized eggs, so it is not a baby-maker!) has helped me make peace with it.

Menstrual cups! Because of aforementioned period dysphoria, it was a little tough for me to make the switch to the menstrual cup and it did take some practice getting used to it, but now I can insert it and forget all about my period except to empty the cup every 12 hours. This helps me avoid dwelling on it, so I can get on with my life.

Getting real about testosterone. Testosterone is the reason why men live shorter lives on average than women. It’s the hormone that causes spikes in aggressive behavior among breeding males. It raises blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol just by existing in the body, and sometimes to dangerous levels in women who take it. It ages the body. When you really understand what it is and how it changes the body, it’s easier to say no thanks. I still want my appearance to be more masculinized sometimes, but knowing the real cost keeps me from going back to renew my prescription.

Remembering that there’s no wrong way to be a woman. This one may not be as important for some women, but for me, I really did feel like I failed at womanhood and that I should/must be a man or try to become one as a result. Woman can be loud, strong, confrontational, etc, and being “masculine” cannot negate womanhood.

Unlearning internalized misogyny. When you believe that women really are inferior, it can create a painful need to escape from femaleness, but when you start to understand that women are just as complete, powerful, intelligent, and diverse as men, maybe even more so, it starts to feel good to be a woman, instead of a terrifying prison.

Dysphoria is a common female experience and we can beat it, no hormones or surgery required!

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

it’s hard to consider the possibility that some of your dysphoria might have been “created” as a result of like, pre existing aspects of your psychology/trauma and engaging with what are probably (somewhat to very) misguided groups of people/ideology, but honestly, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid or fake. humans are social animals, we are very responsive to our communities. their words, actions, and ideas create realities in our lives.

it took me a long time to consider the possibility that my dysphoria wasn’t innate, and even longer to acknowledge it publicly. but now i know it isn’t something to be embarrassed of. it’s very very understandable. misogyny sucks, dysphoria sucks, figuring out how to cope with dysphoria in a misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic world sucks.

generalizing my experience to others whose dysphoria escalated a lot as they engaged with trans ideology and community, i believe there’s a lot of potential for significantly improving that dysphoria through engaging with healthier communities and ideology

you have to use a lot of critical thinking, and you have to be selective about who you choose to engage with, open up to, and surround yourself with. this can be really, really hard to do, especially if you have a history of interpersonal trauma. working on developing self empathy and identifying the patterns of damaging relationships that you’ve had in the past is essential to being able to avoid being retraumatized as much as possible.

if there is a space you’re wishing for, chances are others are also longing for that. try to create it on the scale that’s available to you. even if that’s just person to person and friend to friend. you can build something better.

from max robinson | thinking of detransition? you are not alone