I feel like i never hear a lot of people talk about their experiences detransitioning.. well none that aren’t just blatantly transphobic.. Anyways i feel like gender identity is so SOOO so tricky and maybe getting this off my chest will help anyone else LOL
i decided to section out each part since i wrote so much bs..
1. transitioning
2. detransitioning
3. what i learned.. and i really don’t like labels.. (most important imo..)
anywaysssysysysyssys onto my story
1. transitioning
first and foremost, I was FtM for maybe 4 years? I’ll mainly be discussing socially (?) detransitioning because i didn’t have access to gender affirming care LOLL…..
For MANY many years i’ve played around with gender identity and it really did just feel impossible to figure what was goin on with me.. I was literally every lable under the sun: Demi-girl, non binary, genderfluid, trans, cis, everything….
I really just think it was me growing up and just trying to find where i fit in. I wasn’t very girly and finding out about all these labels felt like a good outlet for myself, and for a while they definitely were. The first time i came out (to myself… everyone else was transphobic lololol) was as a demi-girl when i was maybe 10 years old?? There were these two youtubers i was really obsessed with at the time which both happened to be trans (i’ll find their channels later.. i forget their names) and i remember after finding them something just.. clicked.
I was at first in a little distress and denial after realizing i was trans and definitely was upset that i had to get medical help to actually BE a dude.. which costs money and i did have a severe lack of acces to anything trans care related. After getting over that initial hump, was really proud to be trans after a while. Even as someone who detransitioned now, i won’t even try to deny it because those feelings of dysphoria and such were real. If you’re not trans i probably couldn’t explain it in a way that would make sense, but genuinely i was in constant distress that i wasn’t a cis dude.. it felt like a huge pit in my stomach. i hated when people pointed out my girly features and i hated looking girly. I chopped my hair short and only wore big baggy clothes and did those weird “trans hacks” that in hindsight i don’t think even worked.. green tea and almonds that allegedly make your chest smaller and trying to make my voice all deep..
Then i changed my name to will… named after will wood.. very of its time. (don’t bully me i was in middle school) Ironically i still go by that name to this day as a nickname. Even my bf still calls me my trans name and we weren’t even really together when i was a dude.
some other fun names i went by were: velvet, nikki, ollie (which funny enough is thats my bf’s name), wil (with ONE L cause i was quirky..)
ALSO fun fact i used to go by neo pronouns.. which are really randomly controversial.. Idk i just thought they were fun. Also went by xe/xyr/xem.. i’m not embarrassed or anything but i always get questioned the purpose of unusually pronouns.. and to answer why i just liked them.. they’re not as deep as most people think.
lol.. i get so nostalgic looking back. I don’t regret being trans at all, which maybe it’s because i didn’t fully medically transition, but i genuinely think it was just a time in my life where i felt like i was a dude. People grow and change and go through phases and eras and that’s what happened to me. Not to say that being transgender is a phase for everyone, but sometimes it’s just a chapter of self discovery you dabble in before you find out where you really belong. gosh i sound cheesy.
ANYWAYS for the main part
2. my detransition.
It’s been maybe around 2 years since i detransitioned.. at first i was really scared to. Everyone knew me as a dude and i really did think people would be upset at my or ticked off that i was actually a “phony” or “liar” or something because i wasn’t a dude anymore. It was all very eventual..
The moment that really sparked me to detransition was when i got this huge crush on this dude. I was so in love with him but he was straight, so subtly i began to abandon all my “manly” ways and became more girly because i thought it would make him like me more. WHICH is a pretty sad story in hindsight.. don’t change yourself for someone else.. BUT after introducing myself into more girly things was new territory for me. I didn’t let myself do ANYTHING feminine for years because it made me feel dysphoric and not dude-like..
It more or so made me realize that i had totally like starved myself of all feminine things for years on end. I forced myself to be so masculine, but i never really gave being girly a chance. I mean before i transitioned i was always a “not like other girls” kinda girl.. maybe one of the main factors i wanted to transition was just because i didn’t fit into the “dumb bimbo female” stereotype that i thought being a woman meant to be.
So quietly 13/14 year old me quietly detransitioned and didn’t tell a SOUL. I didnt even tell anyone who was closest to me either.. my bestfriend at the time literally got me a binder that christmas. awkward… but i DID wear it (and kinda miss it sometimes..)
I started dressing more feminine and finally grew out my hair after all those years of having a weird bob. (i thought it made me look like film cooper so it was cool at that moment..) looking back WHAT was that haircut omfg 😭😭😭 even ryan ross would side eye my bob that’s how bad it was. BACK on topic, But this one day of school i showed up in a skirt and heels. Something about that day CHANGED by brain chemistry. It was strange because it gave me a sense of CIS gender euphoria.. i was like wow i feel so girl so pretty so magical
I never really stopped going by my trans name for a long time though, it had just kinda become my name and id rather people call me that than my real name.. it felt too personal. LOL
I was too scared to come out as cis, so then later that year i came out as agender. (for those at home who don’t know, is a lack of gender completely. zero gender) Looking back i’m not even sure if i really felt agender or if i was just in such severe denial of being cis and being some sort of fraud to people.
Summer of 2024? i think is when i officially detransitioned to a girl. What really helped me come out at the time was that my bestfriend at the time had recently detransitioned as well which made it feel like i was in a “safe space” to come out. It was definitely weird at first, i felt guilty for “pretending to be trans” for all those years. But on the other hand i think it was a really important time where i explored just being a girl for the first time.
It’s funny because now i never feel quite like a girl now. I feel like a girl like how a trans-woman feels like a girl. Like i feel dysphoria when i act too manly and i constantly have to do stuff to make me feel like a girl again. I always feel like i’ve been so behind on being a little girl and i’ve just been trying to reconnect with all that i missed. I watch all these chick flicks, make myself like 2010’s boy bands, make everything about me girly and pink, always wearing tight clothes and girly tops, watch teenage sitcoms, etc.
i’ve been in this really weird phase where i can’t wear anything baggy. Like it makes me EXTREMELY uncomfortable looking so masculine.. which is odd because i totally could pull off my 13 year old dream closet now. it’s also totally funny how i feel the constant need to “prove” to myself that i am feminine enough. I even wonder a little bit if trying to be a girl is just another phase and i really am a dude.
3. what i learned
which brings me onto my present feelings.
I think i’m in a weird gender spot right now.. dude feelings resurfacing recently.. they come and go but sometimes i’m feeling gender sparkily. sorry that feels like saying neurospicy but genuinely how i feel. gender questionable. But recently this has been bringing me to this conclusion that so many labels exist but i feel like nothing ever fits perfectly. But i don’t think that’s an issue, i just think that’s just like being human. I feel like what gave me the most struggles with my gender identity was the fact i NEEDED to give myself some sort of social label to be understood.
which leads me on to saying 6 years later i finally understand the song I/Me/Myself by will wood. stupid totally but i did find that song when i was really young and maybe it just flew over my head. I always took it as a song about being a trans woman. I was SO sure it was about being trans and i was so confused why will wood was all weird about it.. and i totally thought he was just being oddly transphobic..
BUT. I think looking at this song with my older detransitioned lenses makes it make so much more sense.
“All identities are equally invalid, don’t you think there’s a chance you could live without it”
it’s what Will wood whispers at the end of the song.. It was always a confusing line to me. But i’ve realized over time that we have so many labels for such specific little things it makes finding yourself SO stressful. And the worse part is that nothing changes no matter what label you pick. It’s just a social thing we use to just explain ourselves to other people. i feel like.. (no shade at all genuine) but the idea of pansexual and omnisexual is very weird to me. along with bisexuality.. when they all kinda mean generally the same thing with TEENY discrepancies. Not to invalidate anyone under those labels because if they make you feel like yourself then keep your label. I feel like we are all so hell-bent on picking our social labels that it’s really just not human.. like sometimes you just are a little feminine or a little masculine or just prefer one gender more than the other and it doesn’t mean you have to reconstruct everything about your identity just to accommodate something. Not only that, but you don’t owe anyone a single explanation about who you are or how you define yourself.. For a long time i even went without giving myself a single label for anything and i think during that time i discovered the most about myself and was the most comfortable with my identity than i ever could’ve been because i wasn’t fighting tooth and nail to find my category. I didn’t even come out as bisexual to anyone because to me my label generally wasn’t what i felt was the most important thing about me. not everyone is the same way and trying to clearly define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. If humans could be perfectly and entirely described in a few labels then we’d all just be clones of each other.
of course: if labels help you then use em. I am just a girl on the internet.. i feel like the way i explain myself comes off rudely or badly or out of poor taste i don’t mean it that way at all if it comes off like that. I love everyone………. but if anyone is getting my point please discuss with me..
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