#also fantasized abt living as a dude and got into some conversations that would be v Weird for a cis person. all while i was in denial

[supinefermata]

Okay so my experience probably doesn't speak for all non-dysphoric trans folks, especially since I do have dysphoria, but I knew I was trans without just looking at dysphoria and you mentioned being interested (?) in an explanation so here's… this

Again, I am dysphoric, but I have not been dysphoric for as long as I have known I'm a guy or at least had that feeling. Like, I literally did no reflection whatsoever at first- that came later- but I was constantly trying to do what I could to Be A Boy.

On my first day of preschool I saw kids wearing jeans and wanted a pair of my own- I'd previously only worn the dresses my mom put me in. If I recall correctly, I didn't get a single pair of pants until kindergarten at least, and I actually got all my little kid pairs of pants from shopping trips with other people, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, speaking of kindergarten, that was when I experienced my first scholastic book fair! Through it I got into Pokémon and tried to make myself care about Transformers because I'd been told they were both Boy Things. I don't remember almost anything else from pretty much the entire year.

For about three years after that, I worked on a rather extensive collection of toy frogs, lizards, and snakes because these were Boy Things. By month two or so, I pretty much just pretended to work on it when I felt the need to remind the people around me that I Was Gonna Be A Boy, Dammit. It was never really about the frogs, lizards, and snakes.

My really young childhood was like this for as long as I can remember, just furiously trying to be seen as a boy in whatever little way I could because it felt good when people went along with it. None of the adults I knew took it seriously because of course they didn't, they were all cis, but most things went over my head back then, and joking acknowledgement was more than I normally got, so.

Anyway, I think my first traces of actual dysphoria started showing up around sixth grade- I was being flirted with by a guy who favored very grand, very gendered romantic gestures. It felt wrong. Don't get me wrong, I was very into him, and he got me some of the nicest chocolates I'd ever had (I hadn't really tried non-shitty chocolate before, but still) among other things, and that all made me pretty damn happy! But then I felt so bad when he implied I didn't have to flirt back because I was a girl. I mean, I wasn't planning on flirting back because he did enough flirting for the both of us, but I sure didn't let that stop me from being kinda on the verge of tears for about half an hour after that.

He compared my eyes to stained glass windows and I was super proud of my eyes for at least a month, but he called me beautiful and I wanted to remove my face, he said I was the smartest girl he knew and I wanted to take a melon baller to my frontal lobe, and he called me his girlfriend and I wanted to live alone in a cave for eternity.

So I avoided all contact until he moved to Denver over the sunmer. Threw out the paper with his number, even. You know, normal shit you do when your kinda-boyfriend who you really like moves to where he's an hour away.

And then my physical dysphoria's been this kinda omnipresent undercurrent of day-to-day life since like puberty, but I didn't even really notice it until this one time I was wearing a tight-ish sweater in, like, the early early morning one day in ninth grade. I passed in front of these huge windows we have that provided a very good side-view shadow and I saw boobs on myself and I was just horrified. They'd been there the entire time, of course, but this time they'd caught me by surprise. I actually stopped in the middle of the hallway until I could reach the level of dissociation where it didn't bother me, then I just kept going, tamped the memory down, whatever. This was fine.

So what was my original point? I don't know. I have ADHD. Fuck.

So I'm not, like, constantly dysphoric, you know? It just kinda jumps out at me. And as such, some of the indicators that I'm trans (the memories I gathered to talk myself out of imposter syndrome, more like) actually didn't all have a whole lot to do with dysphoria.

Like, there was one time a year and a half or so ago, when I was still in some level of denial about my gender. So I was sitting somewhere thinking about my (best) friend Jack. The context is that Jack is a trans guy and had some extra-shitty dysphoria that day, so I was thinking about how I wish I could swap bodies with him; that would surely help his dysphoria! I stopped there for a minute. It didn't seem right. I put my face in my hands when it occurred to me that I was a girl. Duh. Silly me, forgetting my own gender like that. Looking back, I know I thought I was a cis guy for a minute there. I did some more thinking and was able to find a bunch of other times I'd done that, up to and including basically my entire life.

Then there was this one other time- I was hiding from adults at some kind of house party with my twin and Jack and some other trans guy, I didn't (and don't) really know him. We were talking about… fuck, I don't even remember what brought it up, but Jack said something to the effect of "who wants to remove theur chest!" (it made more sense in context, probably, maybe) and I was like "I do!" sort of without really thinking, you know, and everyone looked at me weird so I sputtered something about how it's hard to play cello with boobs (which is objectively not true) and we moved on. This sounds fake as hell, but I swear it did actually happen. Seriously.

And there's also the time when I talked with Jack and someone who I'm pretty fucking sure was trans and in denial (went by their last name bc they didn't like what was probably their deadname, convinced an entire school they were a guy for the duration of at least a year of middle school and played football, yet swore up and down they were a cis girl while looking like they were telling the truth). We were talking about If We Could Choose To Be Men because of that whole large-scale ""deception"" thing, and it was quite the conversation. It felt like that kid and I prefaced every statement with "I'm a cis girl but…" and we got into a missing-the-point spree wherein we talked about If Only We Could Avoid Misogyny (I'm not saying misogyny isn't real, but there is no way that wasn't a red herring okay) and We Don't Wanna Shave Our Legs and stuff. I was going along with whatever that kid said as far as why, since I was sorta caught up in how great it'd be to live as a guy. I'm just saying, if my life were a book that'd be the peak of dramatic irony and I know that now. I was not particularly dysphoric during that conversation, but it's not hard to read between the lines. Also, Jack was there. I can't remember for the life of me what his reaction to it was, but still.

And by the way, I don't think this'll be relevant, but I've heard the occasional truscum argue that since non-dysphoric trans people are just following a trend or whatever, that you can also trick yourself into thinking you have dysphoria, and I disagree on so many levels but it's past midnight and I super don't have the energy to debate that right now, so. For the record.

I learned that trans people existed sometime in eighth grade. Like, I may have heard the word "transgender" before that, but I sure didn't google the meaning of it, apparently.

TL;DR I knew I was a boy since I was really little. Dunno how I knew, but I sure did know. Dysphoria showed up later, and for me it's kind of an occasional thing, so I have non-dysphoria-related memories that still tell me I'm trans

I’m sorry, but truscums are mostly gross people.

Like, I get the transmedicalist opinion of needing dysphoria to be trans because I personally don’t understand how you can figure out you’re trans otherwise (I’m open to explanation though) but if your “opinion” is that you get to decide who’s trans enough based on their experiences compared to yours or some goddamn stereotype, you’re a gross person. Not everyone’s experience is the same, not everyone figures out they’re trans the same way. Being the Trans Police helps no one, not even you. It just makes the trans community hated even more because we’re pushing other trans people out because of some fake-ass standards.

You’re disgusting and transphobic. Especially cis truscum. You don’t get to decide our identities for us.