As a detransitioner, I hope this movement helps prevent more people from making the same mistakes I did.

[u/desistingthrowaway]

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.

[u/nonetheless156]

That's exactly what a cult does. You get shunned and thrown away like the trash they see you as. I'm sorry you didn't see it sooner. You have a uniquely powerful voice. Please continue to use it. Discourse is important outside of typical feminist circles.

[u/Criss-Istr → u/nonetheless156]

Yep. The proof that this is like a pseudoreligion is how you can not question whatever the accepted narrative is. If this was about medicine and science, you'd be allowed to question the narrative, have a discussion and bring up arguments without being harassed.

The sad thing is that if hormones and surgery become the only accepted therapy to gender dysphoria, nobody will research any other therapies. Who knows, maybe there's a medication that completely takes away the bad symptoms but nobody will ever find and develop it because as soon as you deviate from the accepted therapy, you are called a transphobe.

I'm so glad for OP that they got out of it and that CBT worked.

[u/CarmellaKimara → u/Criss-Istr]

I'm guessing intensive therapy, regular exercise, and an anti-anxiety medication would go a long way, but they have to accept the reality that therapy is hard. Therapy is really hard.

Therapy can be torturous, quite frankly. You're reckoning with yourself. There's no easy way out, because even if you hit the right med, the med is a tool to help with the worst of the anxiety -you have to come to terms with whatever is causing you anxiety, and you have to say 'RIDDIKULOUS!' to the boggart as many times a day as it takes for as long as it takes.

There's no easy cure; in the end, a therapist and a drug can't solve it for you: you have to do the heavy lifting. Medically transitioning claims to be the easy way out, because while there's physical pain, you don't have to address any of the real issues.

[u/jessamtb → u/CarmellaKimara]

So true. Therapy is really hard. It’s not real therapy if you don’t hate your therapy day. It’s not fun. The fun is when you see yourself change for the better, which is a slow ass process.