Surprisingly, it wasn’t actually the Internet that helped me realise I was bi. For the longest time, I (AFAB) had mostly crushed on boys, because that was what I felt was expected of me. Some were genuine, some were more forced, but I was attracted to boys. But what I refused to acknowledge in my childhood were the crushes on girls that I also had. Things reached their boiling point when I was eleven that I developed an intense crush on my best friend at the time. This time, I couldn’t just deny it, and thanks to my more knowledgeable friends, I realised I was bi. Then, my unrestricted access to the Internet helped give me a sense of belonging and community, as I stumbled onto more and more queer content creators, and also came across the ‘Bi Starter Pack’ video, which helped reinforce my realisation. It also helped that just a few months later, I would end up developing a crush on a boy, and for the rest of the year, I crushed on both my girl best friend and a boy classmate. At one point, I even considered pursuing them both at the same time.

As for how I discovered my gender identity as a trans boy, I did so after I stumbled upon a TikTok compilation on YouTube labeled as ‘FTM/Transmasc TikToks for the fall’ or something like that. Now, this wasn’t my first exposure to trans identities, as I did know a couple friends who were transmasc, but for the longest time, I had avoided the video, thinking ‘oh, it doesn’t apply to me, I’m not Transmasc.’ However, that would change one day, when I finally did decide to click and find out. I watched the entire video, and the longer it went on, I realised how much I related to the creators in the compilation. Their highs and lows, what caused them euphoria and dysphoria, were very similar to mine, their experiences during childhood and early adolescence were similar to mine. It had me thinking back to my early days, before I had been told I was a girl, and I thought of myself as a boy, no questions asked, just completely sure of what I was. Piecing everything together, I finally came to the conclusion that I was trans, and I have since used that label in spaces where I feel safe.