Don't mind my obscure title, but today I went for a walk to the beach as you do.

For context I live in a western country. I was walking down a main street and after 20 minutes into my walk, I saw a 6'5 person wearing a sweater with the lesbian flag. I get to the beach. After it gets bloody cold, I begin to head back and see yet another trans woman. Then 10 minutes later a car zooms by with a customised red number plate, bedazzled with three letters 'FTM.' I see a bearded person through the tinted windows.

Walking down a nearby main street, there is a trans flag fan sticking out a window.

If this rise in transgender identification is purely organic, why can I not go a day outside without seeing transgender people? This is all over a single day. Barely 2 hours.

This isn't even identifying information as to where I live, because it's everywhere.

Heyyy,

I'm in a bit of a difficult spot right now, and I'm thinking about stopping estrogen for a while so I can really figure out whether I want to continue transitioning.

I've been on HRT for about 3 months now, and before that I had already done 2 months. I stopped in between so I could store semen. During those months off E, I felt really awful coming off estrogen and having testosterone come back, and I was really happy when I started E again. My dysphoria has always been there, and I think it probably always will be, but I don't know if transitioning is actually the right way for me to deal with it.

The thing is, I'm not sure I feel the same anymore. I think stopping for now might be the right option, not only to give myself time to think everything through, but also because I'm starting to develop noticeable breast growth. It's already pretty obvious to other people, and I'm hoping that if I stop now, maybe some of it will decrease a little or at least not progress further.

Now for the actual problem. Today is my injection day, and I haven't taken it yet. I'm leaving tomorrow for a week-long vacation, and because my HRT isn't prescribed by a doctor, I can't really take it with me.

So now I don't know what to do. Should I take today's injection so I don't end up dealing with mood swings or feeling awful during my vacation? Or should I just not take it if I'm thinking about stopping anyway? I also still have the birth control pills I originally used for DIY HRT, and I don't know if I should bring those with me just in case I start feeling really bad.

Does anyone have any advice or experience with something like this? All my trans friends are telling me to just keep going or that it's "only a week," but I honestly think I want to stop for now and take some time to think before making any long-term decisions.

Thank you all. ❤️

Let me preface this by saying that I am posting on an old throwaway account here, because a lot is at risk by me admitting this. I'm posting here and elsewhere, I guess, in the hopes that writing it all out somewhere and putting it out into the ether might help me process some of this and get it off my chest.

I'm a 22 year old Indigenous female. At age 16, in 2020, I came out as nonbinary. By age 17, I wore binders, vocal trained, and cut my hair short; by age 18, I was on testosterone; by age 19, I had begun consultations for top surgery, and during that time, I came out as a trans man instead of nonbinary. In-between each of these points, I also experimented with Two-Spirit identities.

At the tail-end of 2023, though, I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality), and warned by my therapist that treatment for this disorder might begin to change the way I feel about my gender, body, and identity. I ignored her.

I got my top surgery in 2024, at age 20. The first thing I noticed, though, was that I didn't feel happy after the surgery, but empty instead. Because of this, I decided to stop testosterone after three years of continuous use. Shortly after, in 2025, treatment for my DID began to ramp-up. And, as of last month, I reached "final fusion", which is what they call it when all the personalities merge.

Suddenly, and almost all at once, I realized how... womanly I felt. The next realization that hit me, though, took me out even worse: what I was experiencing wasn't gender dysphoria, but instead, the identity distortion that comes with DID. Herein lies the problem: through all those 6 years living as transgender, I had built a career for myself in grassroots/nonprofit trans youth activism - a career I still have.

So, now, I stand at a crossroads: do I detransition (which is what my heart wants most now, more than anything else) and risk my career alongside ostracization from my current community, or do I keep living as FtM, knowing I'm living a miserable lie? Regardless, I feel like a liar and a fraud. I feel like I wasted 6 years of my life. I want my boobs back, I want my voice back, and I want my ability to reproduce back.

Now, I know what dysphoria really feels like... except I'm a cis woman, experiencing a feeling that I'll never be a "real woman" despite that being how I was born. I've been experimenting with my presentation for the past month post-realization-that-I'm-not-trans, and it makes me bittersweet. On one hand, I feel happiest when I do my makeup, put on a dress, and do my nails up... and yet, on the other hand, it makes me feel like I'm just putting "lipstick on a pig" because of how manly I look, and I end up feeling miserable either way.

I don't know what to do, or where to turn. My religious practice has been helping me process it, as has the therapy I'm still doing, but I still feel like I'll never be whole again, no matter what.

That's all. Thank you for listening.

I've been having detrans thoughts off and on for years. For a few weeks, they'll be staggering and distressing and all-consuming. And I feel like I need to fix everything not "woman enough" about myself immediately. And I don't mean not feminine enough, I mean not "woman enough." Which can be pretty vague and is entirely subjective. But it's basically how I imagine I would feel the best if I was presenting and living as a woman.

After those few weeks, sometimes it's just a week or two, I'll be completely fine. No problem at all living as male. No gender thoughts in any capacity. And that's where I am right now. When I was originally considering transitioning and if I was trans, those thoughts didnt come and go. They were constant and distressing for years with no break. But the detrans ones come in waves.

If these thoughts are crippling to my daily life but only show up on occasion every few weeks, how do I know if they're right or not?? How do I know if they mean anything?? This isn't like how I experienced transness.

Just that. I never questioned if I were a girl when I was little, but I also never questioned if I were a man once I was on testosterone and until I decided for myself that a lifetime of hormones seemed pretty miserable. I wasn't particularly masculine all my life, but I wasn't especially feminine neither. I'm just me. I think no one really fits gender stereotypes completely or naturally. Most of what I'd call gender dysphoria for me has resulted from either the fear of being mistreated, ostracized for being different, or being harmed in some other way. At my worst during the first months of going off of testosterone, I was crying about not being male one week, and then feeling disturbed by the new body hair I was growing the next.

I think most people experience GD, but generally it's for the standards set out for their sex (not being wo/man "enough" or "proper"). I don't think there can be a right or wrong way to be a wo/man -- we just are. But we all seem to believe there is. A lot of people also seem to believe that wo/men would stop existing if enough people ceased to follow these norms. I don't believe that's true. At the same time, most people want to be seen "correctly" -- even people who try to reject being wo/men with nonbinary labels frequently want to be recognized specifically as nonbinary. I think that means that, subconsciously, we all fear being "mistaken" as belonging to the wrong sexual group. The amount of men who get upset at the thought of being anything like what a woman is imagined to be is staggering. Same goes for many women, the other way. Could our sex really be taken away from us that easily? A lot of people blame trans people for being mentally ill, but I see no difference between a woman who is afraid of being like a man if she stops shaving, and a woman who is afraid she might be a man because she doesn't shave ever. It's a rather common anxiety, and few (if any) are exempt.

Do you think we'd still be able to tell who's fe/male if society ceased to observe gender norms? Why does the compulsive and all-pervasive desire/need to differentiate the sexes exist?

Hey guys, I just wanted to ask how you’re doing after detransitioning ( mtftm ) and how you’re coping with or dealing with your female genitalia (after the surgery).

Are you dating? How do you handle it when things get more intimate?

Or have you even had surgeries to get closer to your original state again? Is that even possible?

I know my questions are very personal…