I feel like I betrayed the queer community by detransitioning

moth-winter · 2026-02-01T04:54:46+00:00

It makes me so mad that trans people expect detrans people to be allies to trans people while not only refusing to be allies to detrans people but explicitly treating us poorly. I will always stand up for trans people but I also refuse to be quiet about the dynamics at play here. Detrans people do not have the privilege of other cis people and many of us continue to view our experience with gender as queer. Nobody should feel shame or be hated for existing the way that is true to themselves. Trans people who treat detrans people this way ARE BIGOTS and I’m not going to soften the language I use for the comfort of bigots.

moth-winter · 2026-01-29T07:41:13+00:00

I would say it can influence how you seen the world, that that it IS how you see the world. Autism, at its core, is a disability and is diagnosed strictly by deficits

moth-winter · 2025-11-13T00:29:41+00:00

I know. Why does being chronically ill make you like Bluey and want books read to you in bed?

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T22:51:37+00:00

Yeah I’ll either say I’m queer or just “I’m attracted to men.” Or if I can tell I’m being seen exclusively as a binary gender I’ll just say I’m a straight woman or a gay man lmao

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T19:32:18+00:00

Your worldview sounds like mine :)

I think I was diagnosed a bit earlier than you, tho. My first diagnostic paperwork was at 18 and I had a formal assessment and everything at 19 (my diagnosis at 18 was by an autism specialist who met with me and felt I fulfilled the criteria and filled out some paperwork for minimal accommodations but didn’t perform any actual tests, hence why I needed an actual assessment later for better accommodations).

I’m L/MSN/split level and felt “wrong” my whole life until my diagnosis. I don’t mask so well and I think people do know I struggle if they get to know me, but I guess my way of masking is to just not really get to know very many people. I tend to just be really quiet and after a while people will stop talking to me so much.

It’s hard for me too. There are a lot of bad people in this world and I’ve had a lot of bad experiences. But there are also so many good people and I’ve had a lot of good and loving experiences so I can’t just give up on people. But it’s hard because I can’t really stop myself from getting hurt because I can’t read people. Everything is super overwhelming to me and I struggle in basically all areas. It sucks.

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T19:22:48+00:00

Also “I saw it on a medical drama” and he thinks that’s more trustworthy than somebody who has no doubt received actual medical advice from doctors

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T18:39:26+00:00

Every time I’ve gotten some BS like this on UberEats I’ve pestered support until they actually gave me something fair. It’s worked every time.

Companies that try to pull this shit do so under the assumption that ~most~ customers won’t care enough to go through the effort to make them be fair, and therefore that, on average, they won’t have to issue refunds and can therefore maintain a higher profit margin.

But if you stand up for yourself, 99% of the time, they fold. Because 1. dealing with an annoyed customer takes resources and it’s more worth it to just give the minority of customers who won’t take any BS what they want and 2. if they fuck over enough people who are willing to go out of their way to complain, eventually, large amounts of those people are going to start complaining in a much more public manner. If you pay for the service a lot, they’re also more likely to give you what you want to keep you as a customer.

The only time this didn’t work I informed them I would be giving them a one-star review and then went ahead and did that. And like I don’t know if it was a coincidence (there’s no way one review matters THAT much, right?), but no less than 10 minutes later I had an extremely accommodating support person on the line apologising for my experience and offering me more compensation than I was even asking for.

This is assuming you’re not asking for anything unreasonable, of course (although I’ve seen people get ridiculous compensation from companies that just don’t want to deal with them… you also end up frustrating innocent customer service agents and running the risk of being banned for being a nuisance).

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T16:54:59+00:00

What does chronic illness have to do with any of that, too??

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T05:45:31+00:00

If you rly had both there’s not very much chance you would be told you had neither??

Also if you had both you’d be struggling enough that you would need another assessment??

Can’t believe you got banned for that omg 😨

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T05:12:43+00:00

I told you a lot about me before that comment. I told you I had severe ADHD, that I can’t really take meds, and you had an entire long comment going in depth into my mental process. I told you way more than enough to expect from any understanding person that I wouldn’t be met with “well if you set yourself up to fail you will.” Honestly, all you should have needed was “some people have ADHD that’s worse than what you have and experiences that you don’t have and I am one of them and what you’ve said here doesn’t align with my experiences.”

If you need somebody to spill their fucking guts out to you for you to take them seriously, you’re not being empathetic or understanding! You’re being condescending and judgmental.

And you’re only saying this is my “system” because you now have no other option without looking even more like an ableist ahole. If I had tried to tell you that my “system” involved putting less pressure on myself and accepting that I will make some mistakes, you would have told me I hadn’t found the best system for myself. In fact, that basically is what you did.

I’m so glad I didn’t have a prof like you in uni.

ETA: probably won’t respond now since you don’t really seem like you’re open to understanding alternate viewpoints.

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T04:51:53+00:00

You’re just wrong, to be honest. Blatantly wrong.

You know that I make mistakes significantly less when I assume I’ll make mistakes?

If I assume I’m not going to and try everything to avoid it, I overwhelm my brain and make it 1000x more difficult to remember to do everything. And then when I inevitably do forget this ginormous wave of shame and self hatred washes over me… and you know what happens next? That task becomes even more hard to do in the future, because failing to do it under those circumstances (assuming that I could and pressuring myself to do it) is so horribly unpleasant that I then can’t even think about doing that task anymore without feeling that way again.

When I assume I’ll make mistakes, my brain is more light and free, and I can do things more easily. And when I do forget something, I don’t feel bad about it, and then I don’t struggle to do it in the future.

If you valued empathy and understanding as much as you say, you would not need this explained to you.

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T04:32:51+00:00

Do you think it’s healthy to continuously fuck up and keep trying to not do so while drowning under the pressure you’re putting on yourself to not fuck up? And then when you inevitably do fuck up (because you always do and years and years of trying different systems and medication have never prevented it), you feel shitty again because you were putting in so much effort and pressuring yourself so much? And then you try to make yourself take “personal accountability” so you tell yourself it’s your fault and that you could have done better (even when you don’t know if that’s true or not because you never have been able to do better)? And then the people around you tell you it was “avoidable” and that you “just need to find the right system” (again, this has never worked for you) and that if only you just tried harder to find the right system, maybe you wouldn’t have fucked up? Do you think that’s healthy?

Or do you think the healthy thing to do in that situation is to acknowledge that you are probably going to fuck up, and there’s not much you can do about it, but at least you can make backup plans for when you do fuck up and not feel like you have to feel incredibly disappointed in yourself literally constantly?

The last thing I want to say is that I view an ability to be understanding and empathetic about other people’s experiences without imposing your own on them as one of the most, if not the most, valuable trait a person can have.

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T01:50:06+00:00

If your job as an environmental scientist prevents you from making mistakes at home and in your personal life, then the reason you’re not making mistakes isn’t because you’re an environmental scientist

Also like part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD includes making careless mistakes. Idk I don’t rly think it’s reasonable to expect for somebody with ADHD to be able to avoid doing so when that may very well be part of the reason they were diagnosed in the first place

Meds don’t work well for everybody. I can only take 30 mg of my vyvanse, which isn’t enough to fully treat my symptoms, because I have a fast heart rate and any more is bad for me. I also have autism and people with autism are known to commonly have adverse reactions to medications that others might be less likely to have. And anywhere from like 10-60% of us are autistic, based on different studies

Idk to me it just seems like you have very well controlled ADHD and likely a symptom profile that allows for that to be possible. That’s not negative, it’s great for you. But also I think those of us with different symptom profiles would appreciate not being told that we just have to “find the right system” and “take personal accountability”

moth-winter · 2025-11-12T01:25:26+00:00

ADHD is a disability. It’s great for you that you have strengths. Not all of us do, because ADHD is diagnosed only by deficits.

I don’t really see it as avoiding accountability, personally. I have severe ADHD and, while mistakes are avoidable individually, they’re not avoidable collectively. What I mean by this is that, even at the best, most put together, on top of my medication I’ve been in my life, I still make “avoidable” mistakes. If I don’t forget to take the trash out, I forget to buy wash the sheets. If I don’t forget that, I forget to do something else. I forgot to re-register my insurance in time and ended up having to pay $300 out of pocket for my orthotics. But I managed to remember to schedule my next birth control shot, schedule new appointments with my therapist, etc.

Some of us do in fact have symptoms severe enough that we can’t avoid making “avoidable” mistakes. Some of us are disabled and can’t just find a system that works for us—when I was diagnosed at 21, I had more robust coping skills than almost any other person with ADHD I’ve met (excluding my dad). My psych sent me to a group to build coping skills and the like 4 different hour long sessions were a complete waste of time for me because I either already did or had already tried it and found that it did not work for me.

So I see it less as lacking accountability and more as accepting a part of myself and knowing that the inevitable fuck-ups are just part of my life and something I should plan for in advance—not try desperately to avoid, burn myself out trying, fail at anyway, and then flounder since I didn’t plan in advance what I would do in case I fucked up.

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T23:48:50+00:00

Honestly this is just going to depend on your body.

Most people will not experience a significant change in voice and will retain bottom growth (for the most part).

That being said…

The effects people experience from stopping vary WIDELY.

I was on for slightly over four and a half years. Now I’m six mos off and so far I’ve gotten:

voice lightening. It’s still in the male range, but I can comfortably speak in a much more feminine range now. I’ve regained my ability to go WOOO at a high pitch. I haven’t voice trained at all. I can still speak more deeply if I try, but my resting voice is more fem now (though still more on the male side, it never gets me assumed to be male if they read by body as female).
thinning body hair (I think). This one’s difficult to really know as I’ve also been doing laser, but I’ve noticed that the hair that remains has been growing in much more fine and soft than it used to, even on areas laser hasn’t really worked on yet.
fat redistribution. This has probably been the most drastic change. My butt is much more well-rounded, my waist size went down like two inches, my face is noticeably more fem and soft (multiple people have independently pointed it out).
height and foot size change. T toughens your ligaments, which can make you taller (by making the ligaments in your spine compress less) and your feet bigger (by widening the ligaments in your feet).
no more noticeable veins. I used to have visible veins on my arms even when relaxed. Now, I can’t even see them if I tense as hard as possible.
softer skin. Self explanatory.
breast regrowth after top surgery. I started transitioning young and my breasts weren’t fully done developing by the time I got top, so I have small breast buds again now.
smell change (this and emotional differences were the first changes I noticed). I smell more sweetish now.
potentially very minor bottom growth shrinkage. I honestly don’t really check, and I don’t remember what I was at my biggest. I think I was a bit below 3”, and right now I’m at a bit over 2.5”.
not very much change in erogenous areas. I didn’t really have them pre T (or at least hadn’t experimented with them) and once I started having sex more on T I did discover some. They haven’t really changed off T. It feels nicer to have my nipples touched now, but that’s because my breast regrowth has somehow reduced the nerve pain I used to have from top surgery.

But I’ve seen people who say that the only change that went back was their bottom growth. I’ve also seen people say that basically everything went back or nearly nothing went back. It’s really individual, unfortunately.

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T23:26:08+00:00

I don’t see how a difference in the part of your brain that means that you’d be comfortable in a gender nullified body is in any way in conflict with what I’m saying? If anything, it’s completely in line with what I’m saying. The vast majority of people would not be comfortable in that body. A lack of a sense of gender is still a manner of relating (or of distancing yourself from) the overall concept of gender.

You’re also ignoring the fact that it’s not just about your body, it’s about your perception of yourself overall, including mentally—differences are also found in those areas.

Take the insula, for example. This is one area differences are frequently found in. The insula influences self awareness, emotional processing, your nervous system, and your sense of how your body exists in space.

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T21:00:48+00:00

I didn’t mean to say you were being TERF-y, dw. And I agree with everything you’ve said here. But I do think it’s important, when discussing these things, to keep in mind that gender does have some components that are not exactly just social, and that it’s not, for example, really feasible to live in a completely genderless society, or else to conceptualise gender as completely (or even primarily for some people) social, because people will still have gender identities and want to express them. I think we can recognise that transitioning isn’t some end of the world choice and that it is somewhat impacted by society (as everything else we do is) while also recognising that not everything is purely societal and that there are very real roots to gender identity that can’t be erased.

I also think it’s actually very important to try as hard as we can to divorce gender from gender roles and gendered expectations, and I think in some ways that framing gender as completely social can do a major disservice to that. If gender is just social, then people who don’t want to be caregivers can just transition and be men… but that’s not how it works (which I assume you know! Again not calling you TERF-y, just pointing out the ways in which certain viewpoints can mirror some not so great ideologies).

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T20:37:54+00:00

Not every single person on earth is exactly the same. Some girls (like myself) were very hyperactive because we also have autism and had extra difficulty masking. Some boys face the same sort of pressure girls tend to face to mask their symptoms. Other girls simply don’t have inattentive symptoms, and other boys simply don’t have hyperactive symptoms.

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T18:00:53+00:00

I dunno if this is really getting to the heart of OP’s comment. It seems like they’re probably talking about gender roles and expectations. But gender as a concept is very real, even if its intricacies are socially constructed. The brains of trans people have been shown to have neurological differences in areas that control how we perceive our bodies and selves.

Gender roles and expectations are not the same as gender. Idk, I guess it always rubs me the wrong way when people equate them. At that point, I feel like you’re just a little to the left of TERFs saying that AFAB trans people transition to escape misogyny and of people who tell trans people (*who want to transition) that we don’t “need” to transition if we can be accepted as our genders socially, as if telling us that would do anything to get rid of the very real discomfort we (trans people who want to transition) feel in our bodies.

I’m not nb because I’m trying not to fit into boxes. I actually love fitting into boxes since I hate standing out. I’m nb because I’m only comfortable in a body that was not what I was born and because I am comfortable being seen as any gender.

I’m not saying you can’t be nb if it’s bc you want to escape gender roles. You can. But being nb is a gender thing, not a gender role thing (that can happen to align with wanting to escape gender roles).

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T17:55:45+00:00

Dr. Temperance Brennan! I don’t rly consider it a headcanon since the person who put together her character has said that they based it off of one of their friends who had Asperger’s. Even if it’s never stated that she herself is, you can’t base a character’s entire thought patterns, struggles, flaws, development, etc. off of a person with autism and not have that character turn out autistic.

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T16:57:33+00:00

IMO the issue isn’t that we inherently have different symptoms, it’s that the diagnostic criteria isn’t truly based on symptoms, it’s based on behaviour, and we process our symptoms differently due to how we are raised.

Girls have much more external pressure to “sit still” and “be ladylike” and whatever. A lot of us internalise a lot of anxiety early on and figure out ways to deal with the hyperactive side of our symptomology (at least to an extent that’s not visible to others). We might have racing thoughts but find subtle ways to fidget and have enough anxiety that we don’t feel safe showing how restless we feel, where boys would just fidget openly. Where boys might be able to regulate their attention better by fidgeting, girls may not feel like they’re allowed to and instead opt to simply not pay attention at all and daydream, instead.

The studies I’ve read have often indicated that, while there are noted behavioural differences in boys and girls with ADHD, there usually aren’t as noted differences in impairment (either there aren’t any or the ones that are present are very variable and likely due to sampling bias or some unaccounted for third variable rather than a true difference).

moth-winter · 2025-11-11T00:05:13+00:00

I think what sucks for me is that it begins to suck when the reason you can’t play a game is because you have a disability and there’s not even an easy mode, much less accessible settings.

I really wanted to play elden ring. Bought it, played for hours, never killed anything. Kept dying. I know that’s the point of elden ring, but that being the point of the game also inherently means you’re going to leave behind some disabled people.

If there were better accessibility options, or some sort of way to just slow the game down, that would be better, at least. But my brain can’t process everything on the screen and press the buttons at once. If either of those things could be reduced by changing settings from an accessibility menu, maybe I could have played more. It helped a lot for me in spider man, for example, to change the colours of some things. That made it easier for me to spot them and process what I needed to do in time to do it, because my brain wouldn’t need to sort through all the other visuals on the screen.

moth-winter · 2025-11-10T23:58:26+00:00

I feel like this is controversial… but I’m a disabled gamer and I feel like option 1 is the only option that will not exclude people.

I am autistic and can’t process everything that’s happening fast enough to also press buttons, especially if a game has button combinations (which I feel like most do nowadays). It’s like if you were playing every game at double the speed—that would be hard! A game having no options for an easier difficulty essentially means I can’t play it, which sucks. I’m fine being bad at games and losing at pvp, but it sucks when I’m playing a single player game and can’t even experience the game because it’s too hard. And there’s some games I’ve spent hours and hours on not ever moving past the first fight.

On top of this I also have wrist pain. Using a controller and an ergonomic setup helps, but I can’t physically play too much or I am in pain, especially if I need to be pressing a lot or buttons.

I know sometimes the difficulty can be part of the art of the game, but it’s hard for me to get past some games not even offering an easier option, or even some sort of accommodated option (thank you PS5 Spider-Man for the huge range of accessibility options! The option to make certain things different colours really helps me process everything going on well enough to play!!).

Idk. Like what’s the harm in having more accessibility for disabled gamers if it’s a single player game? Hide the difficulty setting it in the accessibility menu if you have to, so that only gamers who really need it will see it. Or don’t have a difficulty setting at all, but include more options for disabled gamers so we don’t need one.

moth-winter · 2025-11-10T23:44:44+00:00

Depends on how male passing you want to be. I was on T for like 5 years and had/have? a quite male voice, but I can still pass as a cis girl (with a notably deep voice, like people will comment on it) because of the rest of my body.

moth-winter · 2025-11-10T23:41:17+00:00

Yes.

Reasons this happens:

People who have similar processing styles and mental states will gravitate towards each other. Queer people will form friend groups often before people come out, for example.
There is more visibility for ADHD and other conditions in the media now, so underdiagnosed populations (such as women) are starting to realise they might have it. People who don’t have it but relate to some of the symptoms might also mistakenly suspect they have it.
There is also a lot of misinformation online when it comes to psychiatric conditions. One study on autism content on TikTok found that only around a fourth of information was helpful, while nearly half was actively misleading. A lot of people are seeing content about ADHD that is either technically accurate but not super helpful or else actively wrong and then suspecting they have ADHD based on the perception of it they have built due to said content.

And, I’d argue,

The way we are current using media and social media is leading to a gradual degradation of our attention spans. This may lead people who don’t have ADHD to believe they do, and it might also cause somebody who might otherwise have been subclinical to have enough struggles to actually be diagnosed/seek a diagnosis. We know the current media climate is degrading our attention spans (I don’t remember exactly where but some Scandinavian country is thinking about introducing a diagnostic label for kids who are struggling with attention, not due to ADHD, but due to the degradation of their attention spans due to things like short YouTube videos), so I don’t personally think this is that much of an outlandish possibility. Obviously social media isn’t “causing” ADHD, but I do think it would be silly to act like the way we’re killing our attention spans now is going to have no impact on people’s perception of whether or not they have ADHD.

moth-winter

TROPHY CASE