So I've been watching a ton of detransition videos and a few things stick with me:

I transitioned rather slowly. Understanding I was some flavor of trans in my early teens, but not medically intervening until 19.

This helped me not see hormones as a make or break, but also helped me take time to really understand what hormones would do and how I'd be impacted by them.

It also gave me a lot of time to be gender non confirming before recognizing that I was just a woman, not because I always wanted to be feminine but because that's just who I was.

I was on hormones for about 5 years straight and then stopped because I could not afford them anymore. Stopping hormones felt good and made me feel less unstable, but I didn't magically consider this to be detransitioning as many seem to think

I stopped towards the end of being stealth. I didn't get back on them until the beginning of this year. I was always a woman, but to be fair, I've always been quite naturally feminine

Dfab detransitioners often experience sexual abuse as children and use transition to escape that. Being female in this world is pain, so it makes sense to me that some people would pursue ftm transitions to avoid being seen as women and being targeted again.

Dfab detransitioners rightfully point out that they aren't often given the freedom to be just butch women or gender non confirming, they're encouraged to transition.

It gets complicated for me because adult me would love if I was given hormones immediately and I didn't have to do sex work to pay for them when I was younger and there were less hoops to jump through. Would have saved my life in many ways. But I can't deny the benefit of time

Dmab detransitioners usually get to s point where they can't perform femininity anymore or they get tired of being targeted as women. I see a commonality in why both dmab and dfab folks detransition -navigating around femininity

When I listen to dmab detransitioners so much of their gender is wrapped up in their clothing and makeup and feminine performance. Usually these people don't go more than a year or two living as transgender women and it all goes kinda fast.

It seems more common for dmab people to be encouraged to transition because they do not adhere to one narrow gender expression. Often men in the gay community encouraged to transition when they are too feminine.

Listening to detransitioners it's interesting because our concepts of gender are just so radically different. The idea of changing your body because you have certain interests or like certain things seems do bizarre to me.

The one thing I'll say is that transition is really serious and I definitely think that people aren't seeing it as that these days as much as when I was coming up.

I would never detransition. I couldn't and I'm not sure why I ever would. The idea of doing that I'd just do far outside of what I see as remotely possible. But I think that's because of how I came to my gender.

I think detransitioners have valid and important concerns and should be listened to. I think anyone considering transition should listen to why people detransiton.

I didn't transition to run away from trauma or to be some sort of glamour model. I transitioned because that's just what made sense and I'm pretty happy about it. Barely think about it these days.

I think that holding off medical transition would prevent a lot of detransition, but I also know that this is a tall order for a lot of trans folks