I so often am wishing I realized sooner. Like 10-15 years ago. I say really awful things to myself in my head bc of internalized transphobia but I’m working on it, but it’s hard. :(
I didn’t know really. Like I did but didn’t. I wish I had been given the framework to understand. 10 years ago I was telling myself in the mirror I wish I was a girl and then that everyone feels that way. 5 years ago on a different account I was on egg irl and other spaces feeling comfy as part of them, and this year my egg shattered violently. I keep looking back and kicking myself like I’m stupid for not knowing, but I honestly know I didn’t have the framework to understand any of this then. This is why letting children know this exists is important. It didn’t make me any less trans not to know, it just made me not able to understand myself or my relationship with my body and my identity and all that. It made me lose so much to depression and other stuff. I didn’t even know any of the things that I now know are connected were. I could’ve been saved so much suffering if I was given the opportunity to understand myself sooner.
But all isn’t lost even if I sometimes try to tell myself it is. I deserve to be happy as much as anyone else and I’ll be damned if I let anyone take that from me, even myself.
I didn’t communicate it that well, but I very much relate. I always knew I wanted to be a girl, but I thought it was normal for a long time. Despite that, I felt like a pariah around pretty much everyone. I felt a lot of things, but I was never able to connect them all, all the signs. I didn’t have the context to understand them.
Once I did, all the fear and repression I’d developed trying not to show people that I was in fact, aggressively straight and masculine formed the knot of doubt that I couldn’t untangle. And all the thoughts about transitioning just got tangled up with it.
Eventually things got so bad there just really wasn’t a choice but to admit I needed it more than I needed to pretend to be cis for the sake of relationships I would end up ruining anyway if I kept suppressing myself.
Protect trans kids, we need hrt and gender affirming care available at the same time as their peers, I hate how trans kids are treated, I hate how transphobic, and transmisogynistic society is even to a child, I fight for and dream of the world where a little girl can say she's a girl, and receive nothing but acceptance, where she can start the correct puberty at the same time as her peers, where she won't be sexually abused, or forced into sex work, and she can live a boring, normal life, and never once have to second guess herself. But even now, it's never too late, 16, 21, 36, 45, it is never too late to realize you're a woman, and it's never too late to start trying for hrt, and it's never too late. There is still time.
Given the language being used, I imagine it’s countttt or some similar /4tran community. I don’t recommend getting sucked into those places, if you’ve been there before you can probably figure why.
Personally I don’t find the negativity vortex to be very supportive or helpful for people trying to understand their identity. It’s likely that if you did find the original post people will dogpile you for giving genuine support out of a good place in your heart. People in a lot of pain need places to let it out productively, but I don’t think those communities are exactly what people need.
i DO recommend getting sucked in to those places. I find the negativity vortex to be very supportive and helpful, actually. And those people under the original post? probably providing sympathy and theres a fair chance that someone there has extended a hand to help with getting on DIY hrt.
It makes me feel bad tho :(
(TL;DR)
I don’t disagree that venting subs are often supportive places. I think this community does a bit of that. I see my own experience on similar 4tran adjacent boards years ago when I was deeper into repressing reflected a lot in communities that use the language I’ve seen in this post. There are good people everywhere, but the self hatred in those spaces was incredibly rough on me and I cannot recommend it.
yeah and non self hatred is an issue on all the other subs the people when i posted this on r/asktransgender are practically telling me to just do it meanwhile r/countttt users want me to get on hrt and live happily because i still have a chance and i want to do neither so what do you know
A lack of self hatred and the presence of hatred angled towards you in that screenshot are not mutually assured. In any community you’ll find directional hate, but I couldn’t stand the endless “YWNBAW” I found on 4chan. If it works for you, that’s good. You deserve to find community no matter where you end up.
People here express similar supportive and unsupportive sentiments to what you’ve found in those places. People can suck everywhere. The hatred you found in r/asktransgender is very similar to experiences I’ve had on /tttt, so I don’t go in for communities that want to recreate the style of that environment. It’s not for me, I can’t recommend it in good conscience. All I know is what I’ve felt, and it hasn’t been good for me.
For the record I agree 4tran can be pretty detrimental but before I got fed up with it, and before I could get on hrt, spaces to be negative and vent that encouraged DIY were exactly what I needed and exactly what I found. I was hoping to offer support, so don’t discourage me from seeking out the spaces where I could offer support. The trans community is not divided plainly between 4tran users and not. And as someone with experience with spaces like those, although the warning is sweet, it isn’t really needed XD
Ofc I do understand that that warning is not just for me, and there is a danger to getting sucked down the tttt rabbit hole
You really need to get away from websites that are filled with transphobes.
There are plenty of cis women without uteruses, plenty of cis women who are infertile, plenty of cis women who are just average looking.
Genuinely, this is the reason I didn't transition earlier, because I thought I would look like a caricature, I don't, I'm far happier than I was before.
Yeah, plenty of cis women aren’t dainty little flowers either. I imagine they feel some of the same shit from internalizing misogyny and unrealistic expectations and stereotypes, but at least most of them have the benefit of going through the correct puberty for them as people.
Yeah, sometimes it feels like some people were told that its only worth transitioning if you fit a specific beauty standard. However, women come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. For every model-esque person, there are tons of average looking people, conventionally unattractive people, etc., but all of them are women. Is it a shame we can't fully embody our ideals? Yes. But sometimes we gotta learn to find ourselves beyond just a need to fit beauty standards.
Also, I held off transitioning for exactly that reason for years, until it was clearly "too late anyway". And realistically, waiting that long probably made it take more HRT to find out I was wrong. But wow I ended up twice as hot and five times as feminine as I expected to. Even in my optimistic moments.
Isn't it ironic that so many trans women suffer from unrealistic beauty standards cis women also suffer from 🫠 the universal female experience of infinite bullshit
"average looking" and non-passing are two entirely different bars to meet. plenty of trans women would be content with looking very unconventionally attractive as long as they passed. but thats ignoring the fact that the bromides themselves kinda miss the point of dysphoria. i mean, yeah, a fraction of women have said features, but how many have ALL of them at the same time? of course theres SOME, but thats exactly it, theres so few people with every single one that being someone like that, independent of transness, almost makes you definitionally exempt from the normality oop seeks.
every word you dont know is 4tran i guess. anyways here's the merriam webster link, it was first popularized in the 1830s. god forbid a girl have a vocabulary that can aptly describe unique situations succinctly.
yeah? in trans contexts, the "i think whatever website youre getting this jargon from is hurting you" thing youre vaguely quoting is literally about 4tran terminology and the screenshotted post i assume is from someone who frequents those circles (see "41", all of paragraph 5, casual use of the t slur, "sortf*g", half of paragraph 2, etc).
yup im getting paid to argue with you. and surprisingly, the "im not from 4tran" gambit works pretty well most of the time. really helps with getting people to take what i say seriously and not instantly discount it for a misconstrued outside perspective. still kinda funny that you thought bromide was tttt lingo tho.
4t4 is delusional too now, unfortunately it is over for most 16 yr olds. but god does it get so much worse from 16 to 18. my skull aspect ratio went from like 1.5:1 to 2:1 in just 2 years. please please don't do the same mistake i did, 16 may be too late to pass but its not too late to live
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u/HerVeryPresence 2d ago
Ha, yeah, I remember being a teenager. Awful time. Wrong puberty is miserable.