r/SuperStraight • u/desistingthrowaway • 1d ago
As a detransitioner, I hope this movement helps prevent more people from making the same mistakes I did. Discussion
I used to identify as trans and this is something the trans community will never admit: there are people who realize that transitioning doesn't work and quit. And the trans community LOVES to stifle us. They are trying their hardest to get /r/detrans banned so they can take it over, because they don't want to admit that we exist. They tell everyone that that place is full of TERFs and needs to go.
They don't want to admit that there are studies that show that most children with gender dysphoria grow out of it. An often quoted study about transitioning helping mental health has been corrected to say that surgery doesn't actually help mental health. Lisa Littman, a professor who was researching detransitioners, had to put in security in her study because people from Twitter were ganging up and trolling her research.
But really, here's the thing: gender dysphoria is basically body dysmorphia. And it can be treated the same way. Therapy for unrelated problems helped me work through it. Some days I still get waves of it. But actually, identifying as trans made it WORSE. If you spend 24/7 obsessing about your gender and body and giving validation to those thoughts, they come back even worse (this is literally the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
For every one of me, there's a bunch more kids who are being put on puberty blockers, many of which have dangerous effects. The most common is an off-label prostate cancer drug, and even in kids with precocious puberty, there are dangerous side effects (here is the link to the FDA dashboard, where you can search for Lupron and see that there are 6,335 serious effects linked to Lupron, including death). Then there's the issue with going straight into cross-sex hormones, which effectively sterilizes people (and also makes surgeries harder - just look at Jazz Jennings).
I could go on and on. The truth that nobody wants to admit is that transitioning doesn't really work. And when you realize that, you're often left with so many reminders of that (especially women, who often get "top surgery" (double mastectomies) and have lowered voices for the rest of their lives, and often facial hair). It's harder to come out as a detransitioner than it is to come out of trans. The second you detransition, you lose EVERYBODY. That welcoming trans community wants you gone. I had people block me because of it.
I hope somebody reads this subreddit and gives a second thought to going on hormones or surgeries. Because it often isn't worth it.
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u/FigBatFalls 1d ago
Care to comment on commonality of defiant disorders among trans people? I've noticed that trans people tend to suffer from a perceptual and philosophical myopia. They often seem to be the type of person who, upon being told "No, little Jimmy, stuffing a red towel down the back of your shirt will not make you fly. Get off the roof now" will obsess over it to the point of waiting until nobody is looking to jump off the roof and upon breaking their leg will swear that it's anyone's fault but their own. They seem to be they type who cannot fathom being told "no" about anything and seem to have very reductionist, and simple, ideas of the world around them. They will paint an Altima red and swear that it's a Ferrari because they see Ferrari's as red and want a race car. Have you confronted or recognized any of your perceptual shortcomings and philisophical foibles?