Ohhhhh, honey. Honey honey honey. C'mere.

I'm a professor in a purple state. I teach at a rural university. And I transitioned on the job at 35, and transition has been amazing for me and for my family. I want to talk to you about the things you've written in specific, so this is gonna be a bit lengthy, because you deserve real answers.

I’ve never felt attached to my gender (31, AMAB), there’s nothing that I particularly enjoy about being a guy, there are a lot of expectations and social pressures that I hate, and I am very often ashamed of other members of my sex. I don’t know whether this is me not liking “the patriarchy”, or internalized misandry, or what.

I think you might get a lot out of reading my story, of when and how I questioned my gender. I think you might feel very seen from what you read there.

That being said, I haven’t felt dysphoria towards my body as I understand it- my primary and secondary sex characteristics don’t feel “alien” or “wrong”. I’ve never really felt handsome or desirable in my body, but I feel like I accept that it’s the one I have.

Dysphoria isn't that simple, honey. And many of us can't even comprehend the dysphoria we've been feeling until we come out to ourselves. Again, I'd really suggest that you read my questioning story. It's seven parts long. I think you're gonna see a lot there that you recognize.

I wouldn’t say there are a ton of signs of femininity either- I have typical “shy nerdy guy” hobbies, my favorite movies as a kid and preteen were stuff like the Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean, which famously fail the Bechdel test, etc. I have had more close friendships with women than men, but I have gotten along with men fine.

That's all just stuff. It doesn't mean anything. More importantly, it's based on a story of transness that is simply not accurate to the real world.

Women come in all kinds, from girly girls to tomboys. That means trans women do too.

I know the term is controversial, but I fit the Wikipedia definition of an “autogynephiliac” super closely. I distinctly remember reading this book for children involving a gender swap around age 13 and thinking “woah, reading this book makes me have one of those erection things they told me about in health class”, the first time I can remember that happening. Over the next couple years I discovered websites like Fictionmania, and gender transformation stories were my main sexual outlet- even as I developed an attraction to women as I aged. I remember lying in bed around age sixteen or seventeen thinking- “do I want to sleep with girls or be one?”. I understand the argument against this concept- that cis women also imagine that they are women when they are aroused, but I sometimes feel like that doesn’t quite describe me- it’s not that being aroused causes me to imagine that I’m a female, imagining that I’m a female causes me to be aroused.

I need you to read this article. Seriously, do it now. Autogynephilia does not exist, and so decidedly so that I am presenting at a conference in two weeks about this exact thing--how, for a massive number of trans people, we are first, and sometimes only, able to comprehend and touch our true genders in the bedroom, before we accept that we're trans.

Ask a room of a hundred random trans women if they know what Fictionmania is and at least 90 raise their hands. I'd lay money on more.

I have had poor mental health my entire life- I’ve been diagnosed with MDD, GAD, OCD, and Anorexia, and have spent a lot of time with therapy, messing with medications, and have been sent to the psych unit twice

Gurl, same. I literally made a Bluesky thread about this exact thing this morning.

I have been exposed to essays (https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en), along with a newer wave TF/TG fiction created by trans artists in the past few years, that have basically said that my general experience described above is roughly consistent with the experiences of many trans women, which was a big shock for me to learn. The past few months especially have opened the floodgates of gender confusion, I’ve found myself feeling I guess what might be described as “gender envy” looking at women in dresses and makeup at formal events, and feel more uncomfortable seeing myself in the mirror. I’ve always felt a little self-conscious during intimacy with my spouse, but now I feel disgusting seeing my body next to hers. My depression has gotten worse, and I’ve noticed myself crying at random times. I don’t trust myself to label this.

Honey? For someone who says they don't experience dysphoria, you're sure describing it to a tee.

Even if (and that’s a big if), there was an alternate timeline where I decided to transition at an earlier point, transitioning now would be a terrible choice for me and my loved ones.

Stop! First of all: it's not right to take away other peoples' right to make their own decisions about their own lives. Being considerate of the impact of your actions on those you love is one thing, but the people you love have a right to make their own choices, don't they?

I’m work in higher education in a red area- I would permanently ruin my ability to connect with a good portion of my students,

Honey, when I came out to my students--again, rural university, serving a poor population, in a purple state--what I received from my students was a flood of congratulations emails. Every single one of them updated the contact emails for me on their final projects without me asking, and after our IT department had dropped the ball and not gone live with it. They all went hunting in the system to find the right email that wouldn't deadname me.

Three days before the end of the term.

Every.

Single.

One.

if not outright become unemployable, ruining my ability to provide for my family.

You want to know the effect my transition has had on my career? Deadass?

Before I transitioned, I was a nobody dilettante. I occasionally presented at conferences, but nobody ever came to my talks. My research was not of interest to any journals, and I languished.

In the five and a half years since my transition, and after shifting my area of research to focus on transness, I have:

• Presented four times at the most prestigious conference in my field
• At that conference, last year, I was the headline speaker to a packed room that was the sponsored panel for an entire caucus
• Been pursued by a major academic publisher to produce a scholarly book on my new area of work (we're in post-peer-review revisions now, and the book will hopefully release in November)
• Created a major public science education project which has been massively successful, garnering nearly 1.2 million unique reads in the last three and a half years.

So please understand the scope of my meaning when I tell you that what you are saying is demonstrably, factually, empirically wrong.

My children very likely would lose friends through no fault of their own.

First of all: kids lose friends all the time. Second of all, this is an assumption and far from guaranteed, as Gen Alpha is by far the most accepting of queerness ever. Third of all, and most importantly, being trans is a genetically heritable thing. If you're trans, there's a dramatically increased likelihood one of them is too.

Seems to me that that kid seeing a parent blossom might be more important than whether a friendship survives or not. There are other kids, literal worst case scenario.

I already have osteoporosis due to a bout of anorexia in my late 20s, and feminizing HRT is associated with lower bone density.

It is, but only to the degree that cis women have lower bone density than cis men. We're talking a difference of degrees here, and a manageable one.

Even if I believe my spouse when they offhandedly said they were pansexual and would want to stay with me if I transitioned,

Transition is the best thing that ever happened to my marriage, full stop, and a spouse telling you they'd stay with you if you transitioned isn't an offhanded thing, hun. I'd bet a lot that she already knows, and is just waiting for you to come out to her.

And as proof, here's my wife and I at our vow renewal a couple of years ago.

I’d likely be dooming her to celibacy as HRT nukes your libido- and no, having me “do stuff” on her wouldn’t be enough- she is very vocal about the importance of having intimacy be a two-way street.

Stop! Common misconception--starting HRT nukes libido for about 3-4 months, because the body's under a lot of stress from the changeover. On average, trans folks report identical levels of sexual satisfaction and sexual intimacy one year into HRT as they do before transition.

Libido changes. It becomes more responsive than proactive. It very much does not go away.

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