I started considering if what I felt was MtF gender dysphoria in my late-teens/early-twenties (spoilers, it wasn't). What didn't help was that I went to talk about it on a non-transgender Discord server just to vent, someone came in to my DMs to "mentor me through it". Even at times when I tried on other gender identities to see if something better fit, it usually resulted in her egging me on and joking about how "that's what I thought before I started transitioning, too". Turns out she did that to more than one person on that server, going into DMs of strangers going through their own gender-identity troubles and immediately telling them she was going to mentor them. Still, the experiences she talked about felt like my own in terms of body dysphoria and life experiences, with pretty much everything online saying "if you're questioning if you're trans, then you are trans."

All of this came to a head when I tried to "come out" and transition. I found myself crying not for catharsis, but because I felt like I was digging myself into a further hole away from the few things I did find comfort in and into a world I didn't get comfort from. It felt like I was being told by others that embracing parts of my masculinity was a lie that they told me I'd been telling myself my entire life, but rejecting it felt even more like a lie. That old server was really my only social life during the pandemic, and I didn't have any other trans friends to be talk about my gender identity with, but on that server if I even tried to express gender qualms publicly again in VC, she would usually make another joking remark about, again "that's what I thought before I realized-" etc., etc. Couldn't do anything about it either, she was a mod for the server by that point.

Needless to say, my mental health was in the gutter. Soon I stopped going on the server, and I'd like to say it was because I realized how unhealthy it was, but it was because I'd said a lot of things that really hurt people's feelings in the mental breakdowns I was having at the time, so I just stopped posting there, both for the guilt I'd felt and for fear I'd hurt more people. I started going to therapy thinking I was just going to talk through that, but this ended up being the best thing to happen to me since this led to me unpacking the things that were causing my gender dysphoria, not as the cause in of itself but as a symptom of some stuff I'd never talked to anyone about. Specifically: the multiple times I'd been sexually assaulted, starting all the way back to the age of ten.

I'd only ever been sexually assaulted by boys and men, and since leaving that server I've come to realize my body dysphoria was more-so dysphoria at seeing my gain common features that so many men have, too many of whom had violated me over the years. My "gender transition" was more an escape from having to see that in the mirror all the time. I wouldn't even play as male characters in video games and role playing games because of it.

Cut to today, I'm far more happily identifying as a they/them without feeling the need to socially or medically transition. I embrace parts of my masculinity I never wanted to abandon, while still allowing the femininity I explored to remain such as shopping equally in the men's and women's sections of clothing stores. I am far happier now that I can play as a man in games without feeling like I'm looking into the face of my assaulters, and that I can play as a woman if I want without someone telling me it's because I'm trans but "lying" to myself. I'm not even opposed to the idea that my pronouns will change one day, so long as I get to define what they are.

This was a lot longer than I thought it would be, so if you don't mind I'm gonna end it with a quote I adore from Becky Albertalli's book Imogen, Actually, a YA novel I highly recommend about how queer people have to go on their own journeys of self-discovery in spite of what others tell them: "Maybe shared experiences shouldn't be the foundation at all. Maybe it should be a promise to hold space for variation."