What internalised prejudice means

Internalised prejudice is what happens when a person absorbs a culture's negative messages about a group they belong to and turns those messages against themselves. The prejudice stops being something other people do to you and becomes something you feel about yourself: shame, disgust, fear or a quiet conviction that your kind of person is lesser.

In detransition accounts, three forms come up again and again:

• Internalised homophobia: shame about same-sex attraction, or about being visibly gay or lesbian.
• Internalised misogyny: contempt for, or fear of, being a woman, usually in women and girls.
• Internalised misandry: shame about being male, or a belief that men are bad, usually in men and boys.

Each can be channelled into a wish to change sex. If being a lesbian is shameful, being a straight man is not. If being a woman means being weak, watched and unsafe, being a man looks like a way out. If men are the problem, becoming "not-a-man" can feel like a moral act. The distress is real, but in these accounts it is not evidence of a cross-sex identity. It is a reaction to what one's own sex or sexuality has come to mean.

This hub introduces the concept, compares the three forms, looks at how they overlap, sets out the "transing away the gay" debate (including trans objections), and summarises the evidence. Each form has its own in-depth page:

• Internalised homophobia
• Internalised misogyny
• Internalised misandry

See also the wider causes and correlates hub, which covers trauma, autism and mental health.

Where the concept comes from

Minority stress and internalised homonegativity

The best-established version of this idea comes from research on lesbian, gay and bisexual health. Ilan Meyer's minority stress model (2003) explained the higher rates of mental illness in LGB people as the result of stigma and prejudice rather than anything inherent to being gay (Meyer 2003). Meyer split these stresses into distal ones (rejection, harassment, discrimination from outside) and proximal ones that operate inside the person. The central proximal stressor is internalised homophobia, also called internalised homonegativity or internalised heterosexism: the gay person's own adoption of society's negative view of homosexuality.

This framework is widely used in LGB and trans-affirming research (Frost & Meyer 2023 review). It is worth noticing that the same framework which explains why gay people suffer under stigma also predicts that some will try to escape the stigmatised category altogether. Historically that escape was the closet, a heterosexual marriage or religious "conversion". Detransitioners argue that today, for some young people, it can be transition.

Objectification theory and internalised sexism

For women, the closest equivalent is objectification theory. Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts proposed in 1997 that girls raised in cultures that routinely sexualise the female body learn to view themselves from the outside, as an observer would. They linked this self-objectification to body shame, anxiety, depression and eating disorders (Fredrickson & Roberts 1997). Related research on internalised sexism describes women devaluing women and anything coded as feminine, including in themselves.

There is no equivalent formal theory for men, and "internalised misandry" is not a clinical term. But social psychologists have documented the pressure behind it: precarious manhood research finds that manhood is widely seen as a status that must be earned and can be lost, which leaves boys who fail its tests feeling like failed men. The internalised misandry page covers this in detail.

None of this research was designed to study gender dysphoria. What it shows is that people can absorb prejudice against their own group, that this produces real distress, and that the distress is often felt in the body and hard to name. That is the ground on which, for some people, a trans identification can grow.

The three forms compared

The common thread is a confusion between a category (female, male, gay) and the stereotypes or stigma attached to it. A person who cannot bear the stereotype concludes that they do not belong in the category. See gender stereotypes for more on how this confusion arises.

How the forms overlap

In practice these forms rarely appear alone. Gender-nonconforming gay and lesbian people are on the receiving end of more than one prejudice at once, so they often internalise more than one.

Butch lesbians: homophobia and misogyny

A masculine girl who is attracted to girls hears two messages at the same time: that women are lesser, and that women like her are especially wrong. Research on lesbian and bisexual women has found that internalised sexism and internalised heterosexism each predict psychological distress, together explaining a meaningful share of it (Szymanski & Kashubeck-West 2008). In detransition accounts, the two often fuse into a single conclusion: the only way to be strong, to be taken seriously and to love women is to be a man.

I knew I was gay before I was 10 years old and I have always been absolutely repulsed by the idea of men or boys touching me. I still feel that way, and I finally understand so much of my gender identity confusion was more about just wanting to be accepted as me loving women, wanting to be the strong one but constantly told as a woman myself I could never be these things … —avow0fsilence, desisted female

I was so ashamed of being a masculine woman who liked other women. I ended up convinced I needed to be a man to ever have other women actually like me. —Rougesugar, detrans female

Feminine gay men: homophobia and misandry

The male mirror image is the feminine gay boy who is bullied for being "girly", grows up ashamed of being attracted to men, and comes to see masculinity itself as something hostile that he has failed at. Becoming a woman can appear to solve every problem at once: his attraction to men becomes "straight", his softness becomes normal, and he leaves a sex he has learned to associate with cruelty.

For me I realized projecting being a woman was trying to avoid/cope with internalized misandry homophobia etc. and fit in socially. —ExactSandwich3710, desisted male

I hated masculinity in myself and others because I felt left out of it, I wasn't a masc guy as a kid and had a weak male father figure. I had a lot of negative associations of masculinity with just being a bad person. —NeighborhoodFit2786, detrans male

Trauma as an amplifier

Internalised prejudice often sits on top of trauma. Homophobic abuse at home, sexual abuse by a man, or years of bullying give the prejudice a personal, bodily weight. One detransitioned man summed up his own history in one line: "I probably transition due to extreme internalized homophobia after a traumatic childhood" (xBarbieBoy, detrans male). In these accounts it is often impossible to say where one cause ends and the next begins, which is one reason why gender as an explanatory framework can be so persuasive: it offers one clean explanation for a tangle of painful experiences.

The "transing away the gay" debate

The concern

The sharpest form of this argument is that paediatric gender medicine, however well-meaning, can function as a modern form of conversion: turning gender-nonconforming gay and lesbian young people into "straight" members of the opposite sex. The concern rests on several pieces of evidence:

• Most clinic-referred children who desist (whose gender dysphoria fades without transition) grow up gay or bisexual. In the largest follow-up of boys referred to a Toronto gender clinic (n = 139), 87.8% no longer had gender dysphoria at follow-up, and 63.6% of those with data were bisexual or attracted to men (Singh, Bradley & Zucker 2021).
• Many referred adolescents are same-sex attracted. The Cass Review (the 2024 independent review of NHS gender identity services for children and young people in England) cited 2016 data from the English Gender Identity Development Service in which, among patients over 12 with recorded sexual orientation, most girls reported attraction only to girls and most boys reported attraction to boys or both sexes. It recommended that clinicians explore young people's emerging sexuality, which was no longer routinely recorded (Cass Review 2024).
• Detransitioners themselves report it (see the evidence section below).

One desisted man described the logic this way:

Growing up, I was told that my problem was that I was too girly. When I discovered the trans community, I was told that my problem was that I was actually a girl incorrectly "assigned male at birth." Both agendas wanted to convert a feminine gay boy into something more socially acceptable —HeForeverBleeds, desisted male

Trans objections

Trans commenters push back on this framing, and their objections deserve to be stated accurately.

First, many trans-identified people point out that they were already openly gay or lesbian before transitioning, and that many trans men and trans women are themselves gay or bisexual after transition. If transition were a way of "becoming straight", they argue, it would be a poor one. One trans man described identifying as a lesbian before transition and then exploring bisexuality afterwards:

Coming out as trans allowed me to explore being bi in a way that doesn't feel dysphoric. —shaggyyguy, trans man (FTM)

Second, trans commenters often accept that misogyny and homophobia exist in their communities but deny that this says anything about whether a given person's dysphoria is genuine. One trans man wrote that "A lot of us carry misogynistic or homophobic views at the beginning of transition" and that these "should definetly be worked thru and changed", while rejecting the idea that this makes anyone less trans (SkyBluSam, trans man (FTM)). Others offer self-tests to separate the two, such as asking whether "it sucks to be a girl/woman because it sucks to be oppressed, or because it sucks to be identified as something you aren't" (Calm_Hall5045, trans man (FTM)).

Weighing the arguments

Both sides can be partly right. That some trans-identified people are openly gay does not show that no one transitions to escape being gay. And the existence of people who did transition to escape homophobia does not show that this explains every case. The real question is clinical: whether, for a particular young person, shame about sexuality or sex has been carefully explored before irreversible steps are taken. Detransitioners' accounts suggest that it often was not. Several also note that the internalised shame was not visible to them at the time, which limits how much self-tests can be trusted in the moment.

How detransitioners recognise it

"I didn't know I was doing it"

A recurring theme is that internalised prejudice was invisible from the inside. People did not think they were homophobic or sexist; they simply "didn't feel like a girl" or "didn't feel like a man". The recognition often came late, sometimes after hormones or surgery.

It's AMAZING how far we'll go to convince ourselves that we aren't gay, even when the alternative seems just as stressful. Even when you thought you knew it for sure. —lez-dykawitz, detrans female

i always argued with people that I don't have internal misogyny and that I wasn't affected by misogyny in general (what a bullshit!). I hate how stupid and naive I was. —thistle_ev, detrans female

What detransitioners report

The cost of not recognising it earlier is a strong theme. People describe years spent on hormones or recovering from surgery to solve a problem that, in hindsight, was about shame. lez-dykawitz describes realising her transition was "a coping mechanism" only when she was "five years into being 'him', a year on T, and a month away from top surgery". Others, like the women in the internalised homophobia and internalised misogyny pages, describe permanent changes from testosterone or mastectomy that they now regret.

Detransition does not always resolve the underlying prejudice either. Some men describe accepting that they are male without ever coming to feel that being male is anything good. The internalised misandry page discusses this in detail.

Reconciliation

For those who do work through it, the shift is usually not from "man" back to "feminine woman" or from "woman" back to "masculine man". It is towards accepting oneself as a gender-nonconforming member of one's own sex, often alongside accepting one's sexuality.

Addressing my past experiences with homophobia and misogyny and how I've internalized them has changed how much of a woman I view myself as being. I know that I am one now. —Takeshold, detrans female

After a lot of therapy I settled down as I realized I can be a masculine woman and that's ok. —Sauron_78, desisted female

Common routes described include gay and lesbian role models, feminist reading, gender-exploratory therapy, peer support from other detransitioners, and simply time. See gender nonconformity without labels, healing and recovery and the support directory.

What the evidence shows

Surveys of detransitioners

• In a survey of 100 people who had medically transitioned and then detransitioned (69% female), 23% said homophobia or difficulty accepting themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual was a reason for both their transition and their detransition (Littman 2021).
• In a survey of 237 detransitioners recruited from online communities (92% female), 52% said they needed help learning to cope with internalised homophobia. Some respondents also named help with shame and internalised misogyny as an unmet need. The author concluded that many detransitioners need psychological support with "internalized homophobic or sexist prejudices" (Vandenbussche 2022).
• In a survey of 78 young adults who had stopped identifying as transgender (91% female), participants rated how important 57 possible influences had been in their trans identification. "Internal feelings of misogyny (or misandry)" was rated second-highest (mean 3.87), just behind interpreting feelings of trauma or a mental health condition as gender dysphoria (3.96); wanting to avoid how women (or men) are treated in society (3.83) and exposure to other people's misogyny (or misandry). "Difficulty accepting self as lesbian, gay, or bisexual" was rated lower (mean importance 2.86, against 3.87 for internal misogyny or misandry). 43% of the women were exclusively homosexual, compared with none of the men (Littman et al. 2024).

detrans.ai statistics

Among about 3,100 r/detrans stories analysed by detrans.ai, internalised misogyny or misandry was identified in about 28% of stories (861 of 3,094): about 30% of female stories (712 of 2,344) and 20% of male stories (149 of 750). Internalised homophobia was identified in about 8% (262 of 3,094): 7% of female stories and 13% of male stories (detrans.ai stats). These figures come from AI extraction with a conservative threshold, so they count only stories where the theme was stated clearly; they are likely underestimates of how often it plays a part, and they come from a self-selected sample of people who post on r/detrans, not from everyone who transitions.

Limitations

All of this evidence is retrospective and self-reported, and most samples are self-selected through online detransition communities, where internalised prejudice is a familiar and discussed idea. People may reinterpret their past through the language of their current community, just as they once did through the language of trans communities. No prospective study has measured internalised homophobia, misogyny or misandry before transition and followed people up. The studies show that this pathway exists and is commonly reported among detransitioners. They cannot show how common it is among everyone who transitions.

Related pages

• Causes and correlates: the full hub of factors behind trans identification and detransition
• Gender stereotypes: roles, socialisation, tomboys and feminine boys
• Gender as an explanatory framework: how gender can become an explanation for complex emotions
• Trauma
• Desistance
• Study archive and video archive

References

• Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697. source.
• Frost, D. M. & Meyer, I. H. (2023). Minority stress theory: Application, critique, and continued relevance. Current Opinion in Psychology. source.
• Fredrickson, B. L. & Roberts, T.-A. (1997). Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women's Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 173–206. source.
• Szymanski, D. M. & Kashubeck-West, S. (2008). Mediators of the Relationship Between Internalized Oppressions and Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Psychological Distress. The Counseling Psychologist, 36(4). source.
• Singh, D., Bradley, S. J. & Zucker, K. J. (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry. source.
• Cass, H. (2024). Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report. source.
• Littman, L. (2021). Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Vandenbussche, E. (2022). Detransition-Related Needs and Support: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey. Journal of Homosexuality. study page, source.
• Littman, L., O'Malley, S., Kerschner, H. & Bailey, J. M. (2024). Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• detrans.ai (2026). Detransition statistics from /r/detrans stories. stats page.