Detransitioner Perspective: Where do the doubts go?

When I was a fourteen-year-old boy, I decided I was transgender. This was around 2012 or 2013, when the trans wave was still barely a ripple. My reasons will sound familiar to anyone who’s had experience with this phenomenon: I had undiagnosed autism. I was being sexually harassed in school. I didn’t have any close friends. Most importantly, I spent a lot of time online. That was where I was exposed to transgender ideology for the first time.

That ideology told me: any discomfort with restrictive gender roles or your developing body is a symptom of gender dysphoria. The appropriate response to gender dysphoria is to transition. You need to transition as soon as possible. If you wait too long to transition, you won’t be able to “pass”. Anyone who restricts your access to hormones is a bigot who wants to hurt you, which means you can lie to them with impunity. (This looks like claiming to have had gender dysphoria for a long time, exaggerating symptoms, hiding or underplaying parts of your experience which might be red flags, and making suicide threats you’d never actually go through with.)

The truth is, I didn’t buy it at first. What changed my mind wasn’t that I was exposed to convincing evidence or that I was hypnotized and brainwashed. I changed my mind because I wanted to believe it. My life felt like a nightmare, and becoming trans seemed like a way out. If I was trans, I’d no longer be an oppressive “cis white male”. I would be special and valuable. I’d have friends. People would stop hurting me.

In any one of the many trans forums scattered across the internet, you’ll find dozens of posts from people admitting that they’re not sure they’re really trans. They think, maybe they’re wrong, maybe they’re “faking it”.

The thing is, everyone else is faking it too.

Source: Detransitioner Perspective: Where do the doubts go?