ive seen a lot of posts lately about dmab vs. dfab socialization and i wanna put my experience into a thread but it’d take. a LOT of writing. tl;dr it was Bad

growing up, i was always the “weird” kid. from the perspective of being a “girl,” a lot of the harmless silly stuff i did (for example, stuff like picking up bugs, realizing the other “girls” were grossed out, and then being like haha why don’t you like this bug??? like, i was -

amused that a lot of stuff that bothered them didn’t affect me, and found it a mixture of entertaining and self-validating to emphasize that difference) would make girls uncomfortable. yet, at that age, everyone is always grouped in with their sex cohort, so despite my behavior -

being within a typical range of reasonable “boy” behavior, girls saw it as weird and unpleasant. their opinion of me transfered via osmosis to the guys, rather than them forming a take for themselves. i didn’t have many friends (since kids generally make same-sex friends before -

branching out to others, due to being encouraged to do so) and i felt i had no place. girls didn’t relate to me, but neither did guys. i never got into sports because i had bad asthma, so i didn’t have that as a social bridge either. all these foundations were set as early as -

elementary school, but then followed me through middle and high school, since most of them were the same kids. i was super alone and never had more than 0-2 friends at any given point for most of my childhood, and i could always tell i invested more into the friendship than them

i was very alone and always an outcast. i’d fit in with guys more than girls (like in middle school, the whole table of people i sat with during lunch were guys, and we weren’t all close but we got along) but there was still a notable fundamental rift between me and anyone else

anyways. this all wore on my self-confidence for the better part of two decades. i thought i was fundamentally unloveable and broken, running on a different mental “operating system” than every other human i met. i was depressed and suicidal for most of my formative years

eventually i realized i was Not A Girl. my first revelation was “i want to be more androgynous,” back in like 2011. my mom shut that the whole hell down, and still dislikes me being non-cis to this day. i did manage to convince her to let me see a gender therapist guy, but -

he sucked super bad, was a 70-year-old gatekeeper, asked me invasive questions (at age 15!!!!) about how i masturbated and if i was a man in my dreams, if i hated my vagina, how i have sex (i didn’t yet back then), etc.

at one point, i came in after a 2 month break between appointments, and hadn’t gotten a fresh haircut in that time. ive always liked guys with long hair. he said “are you SURE you’re trans??” and i proceeded to keep my hair shorter than i wanted for the next few years.

eventually he was about to refer me to an endocrinologist to finally start T, but i was still a minor (17ish) and my mom was like “hm....i’m still not convinced. lets examine this further first” and pulled me from that therapist. sent me to like 2 more counselors afterwards

meanwhile, i’d been living “as a guy” during my last 2-3 years of high school. when i had to go to different counseling, my world got shaken up again, and i put transition on the back burner. eventually, after being forced back into and out of the closet a couple times -

i was finally able to get back to that shitty gender guy (hated him, but was the only one i knew in my area, and at this point we had history) as a legal adult, and was referred to an endo to start T.... in june 2019.

2011-2019. 8 years of waiting. 20+ years of being ostracized.

anyways, i guess this spun off the tracks a bit, but it’s been hard. i had to wait so long to start transition, fighting to survive the whole time. my mom still calls me she/her every day and i live with her; i get picked on for being trans by her and my brother. it wears on me

the most painful part of this whole process was realizing, after a lifetime of being the “weird kid” no one liked, that i was never weird. i was normal. i never had to be bullied that bad, or made to feel like an outsider. i was just being forced into and judged by a box i never-

should have been put into.

unlearning the baseline instinct of “i’m weird and probably wrong” has been a long, hard process that i’m only now starting to emerge from the other end of.

it’s like that quote about judging a fish based on its ability to climb a tree.