A vent about feeling like trauma influenced both my transition and my detransition

This post will contain discussion of some very sensitive and triggering topics, so be warned now for mentions of sexual assault, rape, etc. It does have to do with being detrans, I swear. If I need to censor this post better please let me know and I will do so. I don't want to upset anyone.

I don't want to completely overshare but there is something that I am struggling with tremendously and it's not something that I can really talk about to anyone because of how sensitive and humiliating it is. I am a detrans female who originally transitioned to ftm as an attempt to run away from the feelings left behind from a childhood of sexual abuse, which isn't even really the part I'm going to get into in detail here. Just providing context for the fact that my transition was primarily influenced by the body issues that particular trauma left me with, as well as a desire to stop being treated like a sex object as a female.

I began transitioning in my early 20s and only a few months in I experienced something absolutely horrific. I'd only been on T for 5-6 months at that point so I didn't fully pass, but I was trying to go out and make new friends so I decided to hang out with this cis guy I barely knew but who seemed cool. Unfortunately this man knew that I was trans and I was stupid and didn't worry too much about 'stranger danger' because I thought that being masculine protected me. It did not. I ended up being the victim of 'corrective rape' in which this guy violently raped me and spent the entire time telling me that he was doing it so that I would "learn to like it." I won't go into any more details, but just know that this assault was entirely targeted at the fact that I was ftm and things like my (incredibly sensitive and painful) bottom growth were used against me during the act.

For months afterwards I struggled to do my T shots because something in me just didn't want them anymore. Especially because I hated how it affected my libido and bottom growth and all of that. I couldn't cope with those side effects anymore, even though I clung to my masculinity more than ever in the aftermath in an attempt to protect myself even though it hadn't saved me in the first place. I saw a gynecologist afterwards to have an exam done, get plan B, get swabbed and examined and tested and prescribed preventative antibiotics and such. It was a humiliating experience presenting as ftm, being on T, and having medical professionals being aware that I was there to have my vagina examined. A part of my body that I'd already had so much shame around and now even moreso.

This is my own internalized misogyny at work, but I so badly just didn't want to be seen as an "assaulted woman" so I went extreme in my efforts to present as much like a cis man as I could for the next two years, all the while feeling so alone in dealing with my PTSD from the event. I looked into support groups or self-defense classes for survivors, only to find that all of the ones in my area were "women only" and my choices were either to out myself as trans or just try to insert myself into a women's space while presenting totally masculine. I didn't wanna do any of that so I just isolated myself more and more.

Eventually I managed to find things in my life to keep me occupied and give me purpose, and I've managed somewhat to move on from this trauma after three years. I'm still a mess, don't get me wrong, but I'm not quite so bad off as I was in the first year to year and a half. About a year ago I started questioning myself about my transition after going off of T. It took a lot of experimenting and a lot of self-reflection, but eventually I reached a point where I felt more comfortable no longer presenting as masculine as possible. I've taken it one step at a time reintroducing myself to femininity and accepting my body as a 26 year old woman. I've had moments where I freaked out about being treated like a woman again and backtracked on my detransition, but in the last few months I've really reached a place where I'm okay with myself. While my transition was fueled by trauma and fear and other people's perspectives, my detransition has been fueled by self-acceptance and introspection.

The problem that I am struggling with here is that I feel like me detransitioning is letting my rapist win. He assaulted me while telling me that I'd learn to like being a woman, having a vagina, etc. Every time I peel away an aspect of my transition and masculinity, I feel like I'm proving him right a little bit more. I KNOW deep in my heart that none of my detransition was actually influenced by him, because I actually clung to my transition harder than ever while I was processing the trauma. It's only after I managed to find a sense of life and purpose that I started questioning my transition. It was when I started allowing myself to be a human being around other human beings again that I started feeling okay with being female, rather than clinging to my shield of being a man. It's just so embarrassing because I was so fervent in my desires to be seen as a man after being assaulted in this way, and now I'm like "just kidding, actually...I think I am a woman." I have very very few people who even know about the assault (as in, only a few friends who were around when I was dealing with the aftermath) and they're all trans. Most of my friends are trans in some way. I feel like I can't talk to them about all of this because I feel like they will think I was influenced into detransitioning by what happened. I don't want any part of this trauma to define me. I don't want to believe that it could be contributing to my detransition. I don't want what happened that day to be influencing my thought processes, because I don't want him to have been right.

I guess this post is mostly to vent, because this is something I've been struggling with on my own for a long time and it's kind of eating me alive. I won't talk to my friends about this. I could do with any kind of words of reassurance or support. Detransitioning has actually made me SO much less miserable, and much more accepting of my body than I ever was while transitioning. It's made me feel like I can actually see a future for myself again. When I was transitioning I never saw much of a future ahead of me. The transition itself wasn't what I really wanted, because what I really wanted was to be respected and safe, and I didn't feel like I could get that as a woman. Then I was shown that no matter what I did, I'd never really be safe. And now I don't know how to deal with THOSE feelings without feeling like I'm losing to my assaulter in the end.

Sorry if this was a lot. I know it was a bit of an overshare. I just don't know where else to talk about this specific situation, because trans spaces definitely aren't the place, and I feel like people who have never transitioned will never fully understand the feelings I've had throughout all of this.