I wasn't going to title my post that way at first, I was actually just going to talk about the rise of more and more regret posts I saw today and yesterday on r/detrans, but pivoted in a different direction when I saw something that instantly made my blood boil.

Anyways, I have lurked r/detrans in the past; last time I was looking it was some time back, I saw mixed posts about regret and just general detransitioning questions.

But today, I see so many posts and comments from the past weeks and even just from the past week. So many young people (almost all of them women or girls) talking about missing their breasts, hating how they cannot change their voices after testosterone permanently changed their voices to being read as very male, being coaxed into transitioning as minors and having the major surgeries as minors. So much sadness and pain emanating off these posts. Lots of confusion too, many posts asking if they did the right thing because they feel very confused, distraught, and thought everything would get better after these changes, but they feel much worse.

And so much regret, and a lot more posts open about how misogyny affected the way these women and girls viewed their bodies. Posts about how transitioning made them dissociate from their bodies, and they just did not want to accept their female bodies. One post regarding a woman getting the cosmetic double mastectomy ("top surgery") starts off with "I think I made a mistake, I ignored my true feelings because all I kept thinking for the last 10 years is that this is what I wanted", questioning if this was just her obsession and how she now has open wounds on her chest and lost a nipple due to complications of the surgery, too.

Comments offering condolences and saying they feel/felt the same way, "I never got over it, I still don't feel right in my body because I am missing something, internalized misogyny is a disease. I'll always miss the girl I could have been".

Some refreshing comments about these surgeries, too. I see lurkers in other places always comparing these surgeries to necessary ones, like cancer surgeries, which is absolute bullshit, but one said it well here:

The thing they neglect to consider is that it is an unnecessary surgery. You don't tell someone to ignore feelings of doubt about a cosmetic procedure. Feelings of doubt are very important when the surgery is a lifestyle choice, not a lifesaving choice. It's only the necessary surgeries that you have to try to ignore your worry about.

However, that one woman I just mentioned that simply expressed regret and stated these complications and asked some basic questions, dared to also ask a mainstream trans subreddit if her feelings are normal, and do you know what they did? They locked her post, and put this pinned message at the top of her post:

DO NOT CHECK THIS USER's PROFILE. It contains graphic medical imagery that is extremely unpleasant, and designed to try to cause people to doubt transitioning. Also, we know it's tough to recognize, but not everyone who posts here is doing so in good faith. This user was one of bad ones, telling horrific stories and using graphic imagery to try to convince people to not to transition. Please, be careful everyone.

Now tell me please, how in the FUCK is this not a fucking cult? A poor woman is talking about having serious complications (which actually are not "one of the rare bad ones", you fucking moron mod who locked the post; these complications happen ALL the fucking time), asking if anyone else felt intense regret and pain, and gets told SHE'S in the wrong, HER story is going to DOUBT others in making permanent completely unnecessary and dangerous medical procedures for themselves. What the fuck?

And these young people posting are not brand new accounts that just started posting a second ago, most of them have lengthy post histories. Whilst there are a few that are throwaway accounts because people don't want their real life friends or whoever else knows their main Reddit accounts to know these things about them, even the throwaway accounts, many post literal proof of their own bodies, and they got scoffed at and called bad actors. This really pisses me off.

Making someone doubt transitioning??? You SHOULD ALWAYS make sure somebody knows all of the risks and all of the information and complications of surgeries, ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE ENTIRELY COSMETIC. IF YOU HAVE TO SAY "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT NOT WANT TO HAVE IT DONE", you're a fucking cult. Actual fucking cult behavior. And plenty of these young people are literally children! They don't fucking know what could happen to them. They don't get any information besides "it'll definitely solve all your problems and you'll be in the 'right body' and everything will be sunshine and rainbows!" How the fuck do these people sleep at night?

This also reminded me of how when Jazz Jennings, that little boy whose mom started to transition him when he was 3(?) (to the lurkers: obviously not with surgery or hormones or whatever at this point, but she did have him on "hormone blockers" and then subsequent estrogen and whatever else before he was even a teenager). That kid had the "bottom surgery" at 17 and had horrific complications, and had "revisions" at least 5 times if not more. He had complication after complication. Doctors doing his surgery were arguing about how to do his surgery, laughed about him on camera (I believe one of his surgeons was also a TiM who got all his surgeries in his 40s, but happily does surgeries on minors), he was paraded around as the "trans kid" posterchild.

His MOM and the network would not allow him to discuss the length of his complications because his mother literally said it would "discourage other people from transitioning".

What the fuck is this line of thinking? Genuinely what is it? There is no basis in reality for this line of thinking. These "surgeries" have no clear way of even being performed for these purposes, have a fuck ton of complications, but we "can't talk about it"? And actual "trans" people by your definition, can't talk about their complications and regrets because somebody else might not want to permanently ruin their bodies forever?

What the fuck. Sorry for the rant.