I've decided to share my detransition story so that other people might benefit from it and not be harmed by transgender healthcare in the way that I was. My hope is with stories like mine the standard for trans healthcare may improve and people will be treated properly.

I am an MTFTM short term HRT detransitioner. I am thirty five and tried HRT for medical transition at the end of thirty four. I have been detransitioning for just under six months. It has been the worst experience of my life.

It started out as sexual for me. Early on I was very aware that my wanting to be a woman was a fetish. I knew any kind of change to my body or clothing style would not give me the natural female body I'd fantasized about and I was ok with that. I kept it to myself.

In my early twenties I became more aware of trans people and hormone therapies, and I started to admit to myself that I had a deep jealousy of women. I wanted to experience what I saw as feminine social privileges. I wanted the attentions I thought they got. I was ignorant.

I eventually got over it during college and moved on to be comfortable with my masculinity and accept that the jealousy I had was a product of abuse and isolation I'd experienced as a child. I became comfortable with myself as I was. It was still with me, but it wasn't an issue.

Trans visibility happened when I was approaching 30, and I started paying close attention. I was already very involved in left activism and felt like even if I didn't fit as trans I at least shared enough with them that I should hear their perspectives. I wanted to be an ally.

I met some trans people in real life but most of my exposure was through the internet. I interacted with trans spaces on Discord, Twitter, and YouTube. I began to devour gender theory and trans views. I found myself wondering if I'd been wrong about myself.

I became concerned that I'd wasted my life. Was I always trans? I was comfortable with myself as a man and I loved my body, but did I mistakenly decide my jealousy of women and my sexual fantasies were something to grow past instead of gender dysphoria?

The more I talked to trans people and read and watched trans discussions the more I heard that there was no such thing as autogynephilia, which is the fetish for thinking of yourself as a woman. My confusion increased.

Trans communities welcomed me and told me I had always been a woman and I needed to work to become my true self before I got any older because I was running out of time. I became very frightened. I didn't want to miss out on my true self.

The more I doubted the more people would manage my doubts away by telling me I had internalized transphobia. They publicly and privately told me the only option for me to be happy with myself was to start HRT and transition like many of them had.

One of the more frightening public conversations I had involved a trans woman telling me bluntly that because I was trans I "have no choice" but to take hormones. It felt wrong. How could they say what was my choice? Still, I didn't want to be transphobic and argue...

I was overwhelmingly pushed toward medicalization by people telling me I'd eventually hate myself or become suicidal or break down mentally if I did not get treatment for being a woman in a man's body. I was afraid but it was also somehow seductive.

I felt liberated because now I had a socially acceptable excuse for my strange fantasies and history of jealousy. I could say I was a trans woman and I'd get attention, love, acceptance, and I'd be listened to and appreciated. I was heard just for who I was.

Every sense of self preservation I had was systematically broken down. I forgot how I loved my male body. I forgot how I primarily wanted a natal biological female body. I questioned my sexuality. I forgot how I looked extremely masculine and would never pass.

I still had some concern that I needed to get proper evaluation, however. I didn't want to regret. I was under a lot of pressure because I was moving to a new country, but I also knew that my new country did government funded routine long term evaluations for trans people.

Because I trusted the healthcare system I was moving to, but didn't trust the American informed consent healthcare system, I decided to wait one month until I'd move and could access their public trans healthcare. Unfortunately I also told my trans friends about this plan.

Exactly four weeks until my move date I got two messages from trans friends who pleaded with me to use informed consent to get HRT. They told me I'd face transphobia if I got an evaluation. I'd lose years of my future life. They urged me to do it now and not think it over.

They told me I'd get stuck and never become my true self. They told me I was throwing my life away. I panicked. I didn't want to lose my chance. I went for a same day HRT appointment. It took 30 minutes. It was like buying aspirin. No questions asked. No one cared.

I still asked questions of my own. I don't like breasts much on myself or anyone else so I very clearly asked my doctor if I could expect to be able to use hormones for a month without breast growth. He said I could. He said no physical changes happen in the first month.

I was told it would be impossible for me to see physical changes in the first month but I might get some mood swings. This was false. Within two weeks I was growing breast tissue and it was massive by four weeks. I barely had time to react.

I had lost control of my body. I hated what was happening to me. My muscles melted away. I lost body hair. I lost weight everywhere. My skin lost definition. My face looked like a teen. My chest looked like an old man. It was like having a cancer. It felt wrong!

The trans communities I was in told me that I had to stick with it. They told me I was going to like it if I kept going. They told me it was normal to be panicking. They told me I just hated myself for being trans. But by the end of the four weeks I was done. This was awful.

I wanted my old body back desperately. I was told this would be slow! I was expecting to just grow into it over a year or more and barely notice it. I thought one day I'd just look more like a woman than a man. It wasn't like that.

The truth is that HRT happens aggressively fast and happens in spurts before you have time to even realize it's happened. You can't monitor it to stop when it's gone too far. You can't control it. It doesn't stop when you quit. I had been told otherwise by the trans community.

I had been cajoled by messages like, "You can just try it and see how it feels!" "You can control it by managing the dose and reacting to what you see." These are lies. Once you start your genetics are in control. You're rolling the dice with what will happen.

They told me it wouldn't be permanent if I didn't use it long. That's also a lie. It's been six months and I can tell you some of what happened to me is permanent and surgery will not give me back the body I once loved.

I had never known what it was like to have body dysmorphia or hate my body. I didn't know I could feel like that. Now I did. I can't describe how awful it was. How awful it is. But there was something else painfully wrong with my chest...

I was noticing that my nipples were so sensitive that I couldn't tolerate clothing. Like hypersensitivity that hurts. At first I thought it was growing pain that everyone gets but eventually it became obvious it was something else. I went to doctors to try to get help.

It was explained to me that my breasts had grown so quickly that I had developed nerve damage in my nipples from stretching of the tissue. They told me maybe it would get better over a couple years. It was extremely painful. I had to cover them with bandages to wear a shirt.

During my time on estrogen I also had urinary urgency problems. I felt like I had a UTI constantly for the entire month. It was unbearable. My body was falling apart. I was told by doctors HRT may have weakened my muscle control. Apparently hormones regulate the bladder.

It has been six months since I quit and I'm a little better. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. My chest is improving, though the nerve pain still troubles me. It doesn't look as bad, but it will never be the same. I'm trying to move on.

I want everyone to know that the trans community acts as a kind of echo chamber that literally indoctrinates you like a cult. When you leave you feel like you've left a cult. They treat you like you've left a cult. They will treat me that way when they read this.

I want you to know that the medical community does not treat gender questioning properly. People should not be in control of their doctors. Doctors exist to make an educated diagnosis. They should question. They should challenge. They should know more than their patients.

Children are absolutely not mature enough to handle what I experienced in the trans community and medical system. They should not be allowed to transition medically. I was 34 and I still got it wrong. 14 year olds have no chance.

Is transition bad or wrong? Absolutely not. In fact, I loved social transition. Social transition is under your control. You can take the clothes off. You can change your name at will. It's all fun and games. The fun stops when the drugs start.

Are trans people bad? No. I used to be a trans person. I did trans activism. I think that many trans people mean well. The ideology is what has gotten out of hand and that's bigger than any one of us. It's become a religion with full recruitment.

Is trans healthcare bad? It is as long as it harms people. We deserve trans healthcare that accurately treats people and takes its time to get it right. We deserve research that proves effectiveness of treatments. We deserve experts running the show.

Trans guides and resources and even doctors lie or are ignorant. There's one truth for trans people and another for everyone else. We know gynecomastia happens within 2 weeks of hormone imbalance but trans literature will say after 3 months!

We know virtually nothing about side effects like the neuropathy that I experienced and when you detrans no one knows what to do with you. They default to acting like nothing happened to you. Doctors have no training for detrans people. How can we do this without that knowledge?

My clinic never followed up with me. They didn't have any help for me when I called them. They just said wait a while and you'll be fine. They treated me like nothing had happened, but I was in distress. Doctors should not abandon patients because they don't fit the narrative.

Therapists typically don't know how to deal with detrans patients either. I'm lucky enough to have one who will listen, but most people don't. It's not surprising because all they do for trans people is say, "Go for it!" This is often legally or academically mandated.

Detransition is trauma. I lost my life over this. I have been emotionally unable to do anything I did before. I've been destroyed. Therapists need to be prepared to help people with this kind of trauma. There will be more. This should be basic to trans healthcare.

Therapists should not be cheerleaders. We go to them so they can help us figure ourselves out, not rubber stamp our perspective without exploring it. That isn't therapy, it's red tape, which is probably why the U.S. ignores it now and doesn't require therapy.

Informed consent is not informed. It takes a team of interdisciplinary doctors to even begin to understand this process. How can a patient? How can any patient understand it on their own? Thinking you know does not mean you do, which is why doctors exist!

I will end by saying the detrans community is the minority that it's ok to hate right now. Trans people changed the entire medical industry. Detrans people by comparison have no power and no voice. We need your support so that we can gain a voice to be heard.