FTM Detransition: How I Confused Tomboy With Transgender đ¤ˇđźââď¸
Tomboys arenât broken. Ten years of testosterone erased the cowgirl in meâproof that medical transition can destroy the very identity it claims to save.
Overview
After ten years on testosterone, Chance detransitioned and now unpacks how childhood tomboy traitsâbaseball with boys, toy guns, declaring âIâm a cowboyââwere mislabeled as proof she was trans. She shows old photos and writings, explains how transition erased the very identity that made her feel special, and argues clinicians rushed her onto hormones without exploring other causes.
Full Video Summary
Chance, the host of the YouTube channel âDetransioi,â begins the video by introducing herself as a detransitioned woman who spent ten years on hormone-replacement therapy (HRT). Framing the episode as part of âbringing the joy back to detransists,â she explains that she will revisit her childhood as a tomboy, show artifacts that once seemed like âproofâ she was transgender, and then describe how she untangled that interpretation. She promises to close with brief remarks on the concept of gender dysphoria. To illustrate how easily tomboyish behavior can be misread, Chance displays three items. First, a snapshot of her at about seven standing with an all-boys baseball team labeled âBoys Club,â chosen not out of pity, she insists, but because âI have an awesome arm.â Second, a photo of six-year-old Chance gripping a toy gun while her best friend stands nearby. Third, an excerpt from a sixth-grade autobiography in which she wrote, âWhen I was three ⌠I decided I had to be a boy and a cowboy,â recounting how she told her mother she refused to be a girl. She pauses after each artifact to ask rhetorically, âIs this proof Iâm trans?ââclearly signaling that she now answers no. Chance then narrates the arc from tomboy to transition and back. She recalls refusing girlsâ clothes, running shirtless through the neighborhood until age eight, and being constantly misgendered. Puberty felt alienating, but meeting lesbians in college allowed her to âbe myselfâ for a while. Nevertheless, she later transitioned, an experience she now describes as erasing the âmost important part of meââthe cowboy identity that had made her feel special. She says the attempt to live as a man âjust messed me up,â and while recovery took work, she now asserts that âtomboy is not a precursor to being transgender at all.â Identifying again as a lesbian, she reports feeling comfortable in her female body despite ordinary insecurities about weight and breast size, and she denies ever having had gender dysphoria as clinicians define it. In closing, Chance argues that true gender dysphoria is a lifelong, persistent condition that should be diagnosed only after every other avenue has been explored. She criticizes the âgender dysphoria therapist who didnât ask me the right questionsâ and laments how easily people are âput on the transgender train.â Her takeaway message is that being a cowboyâor any unique childhood personaâis what makes a person special, not evidence of being born in the wrong body.