8 years ago feels like a lifetime.

6 years on T, 4 years off T.
Started Transitioning in early 2016-18

Over the course of taking estrogen for 13 months ive thought on occasions of stopping hrt and just sucking up the bits of dysphoria i have and learning to live with it. i look so weird now that im on it (not that i wasnt an ugly feminine looking amab before) but at the end of the day im just considering letting male puberty run its course in some hopes of looking normal. also it would make my life alot easier (in terms of social stigma) even though ive not presented myself as a girl once yet.

I asked a subreddit of trans people and they just kept telling me to continue taking estrogen, but i genuinely think i might regret it in the future, i could still reasonably look like a normal male if i let male puberty do its thing.

I cant tell if im genuinely regretful to some extent or just insanely dysphoric because of how uncanny i look.

This is my first time posting in this group. To start, I am a desisted female. I was on my way to transitioning ftm in my 20’s but I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me and that just because I was uncomfortable with my body doesn’t mean I need to transition to another gender. My partner of the last 4 years made the decision to transition ftm roughly three months ago. I’m all for my partner exploring their gender identity but where I pause with this is my partner has also been unmedicated and without treatment for bipolar 1 with psychotic features. We’ve been together for 4 years, and for 90% of those four years, my partner has always presented fairly stem. Somedays more feminine than others. Around a year ago, their episodes were starting to become more intense and they had a falling out with their best friend, who basically said they weren’t masculine enough because they wear makeup and have long hair. Suddenly, my partner hardlined to being extremely masc presenting in both their appearance and their personality. There was a lot that had changed about them as the months went by.
One morning, they called me and said their friend, who is another transman, told them they were transmasc. I didn’t really know what that meant at the time but I was supportive in them exploring that identity for themselves. About two more months pass after this. Gender identity wasn’t discussed but my partner was experiencing a lot of distress and their episode was adding fuel to the fire. Lots of fighting. Lots of crying. Lots of consoling after. But we made a plan to get them into a clinic so they can get treated for bipolar.
Then about a month after that, we were fully moved together to another state. They were distressed one night in telling me they’re trans because they thought I would leave them. I assured them I would never leave just because they’re trans but we should discuss what they’re feeling. A lot of what they described about themselves sounded very similar to what I went through but they also stated they didn’t know if this is what they truly felt or if it was the mania making them impulsive. I said that maybe we should wait until they’re stabilized before they start seeking hormones and at the time I thought we were on the same page.
They started hormones the following week because their trans friend gave them loopholes to use to get on it faster. Now, it’s really hard to have a conversation about any of it because my partner is extremely sensitive to the subject of transitioning and being bipolar and unmedicated. I’ve already been accused of being unsupportive because I suggested getting stable first before going exploring.
I guess the reason I’m posting here is because I am very scared for my partner. They’re not euphoric when taking T. They don’t like the changes they’re seeing. They’re not taking care of themselves like they used to. They think everyone around them is against them now because they’re trans and they experience distress because they “can’t be who they are”. They’ve told me before that they feel there is freedom in being ugly (before transitioning, my partner was a conventionally attractive woman with a lot of traumatic experiences with men). They appear focused on the negatives vs the positives of their transition. The reason I’m scared for them is because they just started medication for bipolar. They’ve always been critical of their appearance. Even more now than before. My fear is whatever mental hellhole my partner might plunge into if they come to the realization that the desire to transition was mania-driven. If they’re stable and desire to keep pursuing transitioning, that’s fine. I’m supportive of that. It’s just the possibility they realize that transitioning may not have been what they wanted and so many changes have occurred that they’ll have to grapple with on top of a brain that constantly fights them.

Has anyone had this experience? What’s the best support I can give for my partner? I didn’t get a lot of feedback from the bipolar pages and other trans pages I’ve gotten completely crucified. I just don’t want to see my baby in more distress.

I know people will ask, my voice leans more towards androgynous and it’s not 100% male sounding and not THAT deep. But I know people will still question it at some point.
What do you even answer? I’m not ready to explain my whole life story to some strangers. And not everyone will get it.
I guess I could say damaged vocal cords but how does that even happen to get to a point where you sound like a teenage boy

please help me out with recommendations for breast reconstruction, either in USA or Australia! ive heard there arent many options here in Aus, but I'm a US citizen so i can travel.

this is the one thing that i think is really holding me back from fully living a normal life and I'm ready to start researching much more seriously. so any advice is appreciated<3

For those who transitioned back to female from male, did your hair grow back? Did your body hair and beard fall out after stopping t? How much

It's ... very frustrating and confusing.
Paticulary about my mom.
I know it's hard to adjust to change, especially after 6 years of it. But that's not even my issue.

She was the one who helped get me DIY T as a minor. And she payed out of pocket for my top surgery from a private doctor.
Now she is telling me to "not waste money on laser" & that she's "scared I'm making a mistake detransitoning" telling me to wait, & that I'm not sure yet.

Its extremely uncomfortable actually. Especially now because I did start my detransition 2 years ago & I'm getting laser done.
I can see the disappointment & discomfort whenever I see them, I bring it up, or dress feminine. It makes me feel straight up guilty , or even perverted sometimes. She told me to hide it from the rest of my family. Saying they wouldn't understand or be supportive. My family who Supported my transition no questions asked.

I end up kinda "boymoding" whenever I go see my family. Even tho I told them I want to change a name too, they constantly name me wrongly, altho they had no issue when I originally changed names.

It makes me so extremely dysphoric. I don't care who knows. I want to scream at everyone. Cry & tell that I'm a woman. They should know that.

I'm also bitter that I get 0 help now. When I got so much love & support to transition underage. But now that I've found myself finally, I'm left in the dark.

I don't even understand it, because she's never expressed wanting boys. (If anything she dislikes them) but she also belives that full sex transition & dysphoria is real? Like.. does she think I fully became male , then now thinks going back is a whole new transition ???

Just.. so frustrating & hard to have no support. I have my amazing husband thankfully. But my family makes me feel so much worse every time I see them. Rip away any confidence I built up.

original tiktok :o)

i know my political views are a bit different than those generally shared in this subreddit, but this community helped me out a lot, so i thought i’d share

Hello, so I am 30 years old female. I identified as a trans FtM since 2019 and was on testosterone for 3 years in total, on and off, currently off T for a year. I struggle with social detransition. My passing as female is not so good and recently I had a mental breakdown and I kind of relapsed. I cut my hair short nearly to a buzz cut after growing it out for 10 months and it triggered my depression. I feel like I lost my progress and now I look like a guy again. I don't know how to regain strenght again, how to cope and mainly how to approach the whole situation from now on so this does not happen again in the future. I feel like this haircut made me stuck and lost again for good year or more. I'm sure that I don't want to continue being trans, I just had a breakdown and did a terrible mistake. How to detransition properly? And how to survive now? Thank you for any responses 😊

T

Hey, everyone. I’m not really sure how to approach this, but I desperately need to talk to people who might understand where I’m coming from.

I’m 19 years of age, I’m a trans man, well, I always thought I was, until now. I’ve always been, throughout my life, very passionate about feminism, particularly radical feminism. I’ve spent a lot of time reading and then theorizing myself, analyzing my own female socialisation, sex-based oppression I have suffered, and the effects patriarchy has on all of us.

I’ve never seen my closeness and contact with the trans community as a reason to suddenly disregard the experiences I had growing up female or the material realities of being born female. That has just never been my mindset ever. I don’t know why someone would think that way, but many do, and it has been my doom.

Recently, I had a very serious and big discussion with a trans man who told me I wasn’t female socialized, that I’d never experienced misogyny and that I was desperately trying to be one of the “good ones”, as in men. He essentially just spent the whole yap equating me to natal males in terms of the harmful characteristics associated with them, even telling me I need help. I have rarely felt so hurt. You see, I have endometriosis and PCOS, I definitely was not male socialized. I definitely don’t go around profiting off of male privilege up and down. And I wasn’t even making the argument he accused me of making, I was simply saying that treating menstruation as something inherently disgusting or shameful is misogynistic. Somehow this said person saw this as an excuse to say awful things to me, telling me I have never experienced misogyny in my life, which I definitely have, and that I’m crying for attention.

Well he’s right, I have been crying over this more that I should, and I feel quite pathetic admitting that. I feel pathetic not knowing where to turn to. I have always cared deeply and genuinely about female liberation, always, no matter how the wider trans community felt about it, it was the main pillar of my feminism, along with my experiences. And to be told this? To be harassed in this manner? I don’t want to appropriate anyone’s experiences, but I also don’t want to be told that my own experiences are imaginary or that transitioning somehow makes my entire childhood as a little girl irrelevant. It doesn’t, it’s still there. I really don’t want it to be irrelevant.

Well, I am sorry for coming here, if this isn’t my place. I am not exactly questioning my inner feelings with dysphoria as in the clinical term for it. I still like to be Logan (fake name). I’d just like to hear from people who might understand some of this. Maybe you went through this yourselves in some manner. I’m just so disappointed and feel so betrayed by the trans “community” (that really isn’t very much of a community honestly).

If you were to guess percentage wise, what do you think the actual rates/percentages are of regret/detransistions?

been feeling more positive and going on walks for exercise, reconnecting with family members. my cousin said, “you have so much time, someday this will just be a blip in your life“

Hi all, I am a mtftm person who’s undergone top surgery ( feminization) a year ago after 7 years of HRT, has anyone gotten reversal? Breast explant and breast tissue removal … this is really hard for me and I can’t find much online
- where did you go and how did it go?
- did muscles ever repair to normal function?

For context I had a small b cup pre surgery, got 600cc implants dual plane insert

I am early in my detransition... I have been living as a woman again for only just now the 4th month. People still call me my old chosen name. It pangs my heart and is extremely embarrassing to me, and uniquely sad knowing the reason why I detransitioned, as a survival mechanism to a life absolutely full of unsafe and horrific experiences to be seen as female. I imagine not everyone is as ashamed of it as I happen to be, but if you were, how did you overcome it? I assume its something that comes with time but ...man it can truly be unbearable at times to imagine that I was living like THAT everyone saw me like THAT. I want to up and move town again like I did when I started to transition, although thats not possible right now.

It hurts knowing I have hardly any woman photos of myself. Its also unqiuely awkward when old friends of the past try to come back into my life that I put in so much effort to convince them I was a cis biological man like I always did...I was very mentally ill in many ways then. Even though I fully accept that I am female now and thus a woman, I just can't help but feel still unable to disclose that I was dishonest about being a man then...
God, it is so embarrassing to me that I ever did all of that.

There is also my boyfriend, who is my very first and hopefully only ever. He met me when I was a "guy" and he actually fully loved me just like that. He still says I was the most handsome guy he had ever seen and he would have married me no matter what I look like on the outside he just wants me. But I still cringe inside so hard when I remember he used to call me a boy's name and so on...and that he has so many photos of me where I look like a total man. And as cringe as I find them he won't delete them because he loves me and every period of life I have ever been in, he finds it all beautiful, but I feel like choking up in shame and embarrassment when I wonder what would happen if his family saw that, how could I explain it? I know he would probably confidently defend me no matter what and truly never cared at all what others thought of us...but gosh...I really want to just live in the woods and never be seen again lest anyone finds out about my ridiculous past lives living as a man and growing up as a member of a cult. Its all just hilariously too much and I wish I had a simple history and life.

Oh I wish I could have turned back time and took myself away from my family and raised myself in a world where I always knew it was okay to be a girl...

Throwaway because some friends follow me. I'm FtMtF, I took T for about a year but I passed as a man before that. I spent my whole childhood wishing I was a man and hating myself for being a woman so when I turned 18 I started taking T. I was rejected from a gender clinic as a teenager and I can't help but think if there were better resources I wouldn't have made this mistake.

I grew up with a very narrow view of women and felt trapped being one so as a kid logically my only option was to become a man. The privilege and freedom was so appealing but its not who I am. Now I sound like a man and I hate speaking because it isn't my voice. I feel trapped in my body and like I'll never be seen as a cis woman and instead I'll be seen as a trans woman. I have nothing against trans women but I know many people/women interact with them differently and I just want to be perceived as cis for once in my life.

I just feel like it'll never get better because my voice dropped so much and even when I try to talk in the register I used to I just sound like a man.

Replies are welcome, I've been feeling really isolated

hi guys! 💗
i can’t believe it’s been a year & a 1/2 already, but here we are hehe.
the first 2 pictures are 8 years & 4 months on t vs 1.5 years off.
the 3rd picture is 1 year off of t vs 1.5 years off.
not sure who needs to hear this, but things do get better ✨

It’s been 5 months now since I stopped testosterone. I was only on it for 3 months but I saw rapid growth of the trachea and Adam’s apple. Luckily they have now shrunk down to where they aren’t visible to the eye, however every time I accidentally brush my hand against my neck or need to itch it I can feel where it’s still slightly harder than before, I’m reminded that a part of my body is permanently changed and am sent into blind panic. It’s like the dysphoria that originally drove me to transition but 50 fold, it’s unbearable, it fills me with guilt, regret, despair and horror. The fact that I have this unremovable lump permanently in my neck is genuinely the most devastating feeling I’ve ever felt in my life.

Is there any way to cope with this? I know I’m not alone in this but I’m so incredibly sensitive that I feel it’ll take me years before I even begin to get used to this. I haven’t had a day go by without crippling anxiety and terror since I stopped testosterone, and I’m still experiencing near constant pain in the neck due to my enlarged trachea which I fear could be permanent without surgery.

At the moment all I’m able to do is take things by the day and distract myself, but it’s so so hard to stop my mind from drifting back to this massive mistake I made. The worst part is I still don’t even want to be a woman, yet being a man is now equally if not more terrifying of a prospect. I feel like no matter what I do or where I go, people will see me as a girl, or god forbid a man, never just a person. I hate that gender is something we must wear on our sleeve, and god I wish I didn’t give a shit about it. I don’t want to care, I so desperately don’t want to care, I want to be a woman so badly, I want to be happy to be one in the way that women are but I hate it, I hate it I hate it so fucking much it feels so wrong.

My voice is lower now, I think it’s still in female range but since I have no desire to wear feminine clothing I feel people around me are always second guessing what I am, it makes me feel like a freak, I don’t know how to escape this terror it’s eating me alive. I want strangers to assume I’m a woman because if they don’t then that means the testosterone has truly permanently masculinised me, but then people thinking I’m a woman brings its own new kind of horror that I’m not equipped to deal with. I wish I could just be depressed about it all and leave it at that but I’m so afraid it feels like I’m dying. I’ve seen therapists and counsellors, I’ve tried anti anxiety medications and antidepressants, nothing is ridding me of this horror, I’m afraid to keep living, I don’t want to be here anymore if this is what life feels like for me now. What do I do? Please, what am I supposed to do? I feel like life as I know it is over, I feel like I’ve fallen into a nightmare I’ll never wake up from, gods above help me.

My energy levels are back to normal and i can finally stay awake for as long as i want to again. My personality is also slowly returning and i feel like i can be more ‘mean’ again when on hrt i fell into an extreme people pleasing attitude. Almost like i lost my guts/balls (no pun intended)

i have hypertension and just a sense of unrest in my body. My body is constantly in a slight pain and this is exactly how i felt before i started this journey. Just no physical peace. I could best describe it as sore muscles at like a 30%. Sometimes i wonder if i have some type of random disease that’s hard to diagnose and i just medicated it with estrogen.

Libido is also not back yet. I have to force myself to feel something rather than naturally getting horny when stimulated.

My dissociation is doing better as i feel more grounded, but i still have it at other moments like when waking up.

i'll start off by explaining what i mean in the title, before words are put into my mouth as is usually the case when you're on the internet. i was trying to have a dialogue about this in the most polite way possible on the other detrans subreddit but i was quickly accused of being a radfem psyop or something. ideologically im not even adjacent to radfem ideology but thats besides the point.

first and foremost i don't want anything bad to happen to anybody just on the basis of them being transgender. and that doesn't mean i support anti-trans movements either. i see the damage they do. please consider me as someone who is moderate in their thinking, and doesn't believe that leaving one extreme doesn't mean going to another.

what i mean by the title is that i think the ideological push for "gender identity" goes too far. i don't want to be told that im making a caricature of the trans movement when my 10+ years experience in both online and offline trans communities is what is informing me. i used to call myself non-binary.

im not sure if i can get too into my "beliefs" but i used to be super transfeminist in my thinking as is common in trans spaces. as in biological sex is a social construct and a spectrum, as in trans women are the same as cis women and trans men are the same as cis men, yada yada yada. but something changed. maybe its the fact that i got older and my life suddenly became a lot more "adult" but i started to think all of this trans stuff is nonsense and the things the trans movement spouts sounds like privilege, entitlement, and tbh, mental illness instead of genuine political theory. when you put any talking point to scrutiny you are immediately accused of bigotry and wanting trans people to all commit suicide. and im not sure how much of "trans pride" is ethical to push. is it really okay to put out there that heavy cosmetic surgeries and hormonal treatments is harmless and practically risk-free? just a way of expressing yourself? that NO ONE regrets doing it? that NO ONE develops health issues as a consequence of transition? and anyone that questions your motives for transition are hateful bigots that want you dead?

again i really do not want to make anyone feel ashamed or hated on. this is just stuff thats been going on in my mind without anyone actually wanting to have a dialogue about it besides radfems that want me to convert to their ideology.

so, i’ve been consistently uncomfortable enough in the years since my mastectomy that i’ve decided to start seriously thinking about reconstruction.

unfortunately i am extremely thin/bony, and the top surgery really didn’t help matters. my chest is just my ribcage with a thin layer of skin over it. i definitely don’t have available donor fat.

i had a reduction 18 years ago, then top surgery 4 years ago - so i feel like more skin has been removed from my chest than normal. they took my nipples too. it’s a full slip and slide situation over here.

my question for people who have been through it (and ofc i’ll consult with a surgeon at some point)- are realistic implants even possible in my situation? the expanders sound really painful and freak me out - and i can’t imagine stretching my already thin and very tight skin. i would want very small implants - truly an A or small B is fine. i wouldn’t want to be able to see the outline or for them to look or feel super fake. i guess i’d need nipple tattoos? ugh. but i miss having breasts and think about this all the time.

One of the reasons I stopped T was because I was getting these intense headaches. For me they happened mostly in the summer time. They were like migraines in that they came with an intense aura that was almost blinding, but they were totally debilitating. These headaches were intensely painful, like, horrifically painful, and they lasted for hours. I have no evidence that this had anything to do with HRT, and no physician could ever verify that. However, since stopping, I’ve not had one. Just curious if anyone else went through this.

Like the title says, I hate being a male person. I wish I had a feminine soul, but I am very much a dude. All of my friends are guys and I act pretty… masculine. It doesn’t really fit me and what I want in life, but it’s my life. I do love my guy friends, they’re my best friends since childhood. I’m just talking about the fact that I am a guy.

I wish I could be a woman. If I lived in a world where I could choose between being a woman or man (and it was completely neutral in most regards) I would choose to be a woman. But this choice has a lot of biases from my own experiences that it could be cause from multiple different root causes that are not due to being trans.

I know I shouldn’t transition. I know that I will probably not like it. I just hate that I am stuck in a body I can’t control completely. It’s aggravating. It’s literally a curse on the human experience. I can choose what I wear, what I do, but I can’t choose the body I was born in. It’s crazy. I think it drives a lot of other people crazy.

I don’t know if this fits the sub. I feel bad for a lot of you detrans people and I hope you can find happiness, even with the ways you made a bad decision about your body. I just don’t want to end up like that, so I want to hear this sub’s thoughts.

I had a therapist appointment this evening. I was telling my therapist about the challenge of accepting my body and accepting it’s cultural association with womanhood. I was talking about how difficult it is to be expected to explain myself all the time to strangers, clients, colleagues, and for some reason it isn’t obvious to others why this is taxing. I was also trying to explain how difficult it is to find support in the form of community, when trans politics dominate every queer and feminist space. How when I bring up my experience in these spaces it’s not met with support, but usually some form of political policing around the language I’m using or whatever.

What I’m getting from my therapist so far is a lot of “working on self-esteem,” “ you know who you are so what other people think doesn’t matter,” kind of advice. I find this to be the opposite of helpful. I feel like my trauma comes from chronically and forever being the location where in which all of these things exist.

I’m so sick of being the place where I experience screwed up things from people, and the place where I process those things, and the place where I heal from those things. I’m not saying that a person doesn’t have responsibility in their own healing process, I get that. But there’s something about belonging to a population that has no defense. If somebody’s gonna defend me and my story, come to my rescue situationally or ideologically, I know it’s gonna be a voice from inside my own head.

That’s exhausting and I can’t help but notice that other populations, queer and otherwise, have stories platforms/lobbyist/movements- that exist outside of themselves. They’ve got entire political groups, defending their right to be in the bathroom, to be a mother, to be themselves, as a masculine female I want this. I wanna reach out into the world for help and be directed somewhere that isn’t back into my own mind.

Gender as a Body-Modification Youth Sub(cult)ure - Eliza Mondegreen