i'm still figuring it out: why i haven't uploaded, my identity, detransition, & where i'm at now
Eight years on T left me with irreversible changes and no way back. I’m learning to love the woman I am, but the permanent damage is real—transition isn’t always the answer.
Overview
After an eight-year medical transition, Jalisa realized she was simply a masculine woman, not a man. She now faces permanent physical changes and daily struggles to accept herself, urging viewers not to weaponize her story against trans people while she rebuilds self-love and reclaims her identity.
Full Video Summary
Jalisa begins the video by explaining her year-long absence from YouTube: the overwhelming response to her 2022 detransition video made facing the camera daunting, transforming something she once loved into a source of anxiety. She feels the need to “go backwards a little” to help both longtime followers and newcomers understand her journey. Born and raised as a girl, Jalisa remembers always being a masculine child who favored Tonka trucks and boys’ clothing, came out as liking girls at 14, and felt like “a spectacle” because no other girls around her looked or acted similarly. Negative remarks from peers’ parents and the lack of visible masculine women led her to believe something was “wrong” with her. This belief clashed with online transition narratives when she stumbled upon a video of someone transitioning and thought, “oh, what’s this?” She highlights that many complex factors influenced her decision to transition but keeps the details concise, noting that living as a trans man named Tyler felt right for eight years. Toward the end of that period, however, “something clicked,” and she realized she was “not a man trapped in a woman’s body—just a woman.” Jalisa stresses that this is her unique experience and explicitly warns viewers against using her story to attack trans people: “Support trans people. I love trans people. Don’t fucking use my videos to try and tear down trans people.” Now, after medical transition, Jalisa faces the reality that there is “no going back”; the physical changes are permanent, and she is learning to “love and accept myself how I am today as the woman that I am today.” She describes daily struggles with self-validation, shame, and the exhaustion of spending years “changing myself to be digestible to others.” Her main goal for the year is to stop shrinking herself to make others comfortable and instead find validation within, even if it means “making other people uncomfortable so that I can be comfortable.” Looking ahead, Jalisa wants to live a life “little me would be so fucking stoked about,” becoming the woman her younger self could never have imagined. She concludes by expressing her hope to return to YouTube simply for the joy of it, “figuring it out in all forms” while moving forward with peace and self-love.