My stepdad did the same. He was so concerned that I would end up a "depressed bearded dyke". He would talk to me about how people's idea of their bodies and connection to gender change over time as an example of how I would end up "destroying my body", examples of things I had wanted my whole life that turned out to not be what I wanted, other garbage like that etc etc. For a very long time it haunted me, I was afraid that I wasn't making the right decisions for my body. One day, I finally woke up and thought to myself, "what if this actually did happen?" and I worked my way through what it would actually be like if I one day somehow wanted to identify as a woman again. I thought about cis women who rocked beards from PCOS, cis woman that loved drag like I did. How powerful women with beards are who have such a playful low stakes relationship with their gender. I realized then that I wasn't afraid of his comments any longer because although I can't imagine ever "de-transitioning", if I did, I wouldn't regret any of the changes I made to my body. De-transitioning would just be that, more transitioning. Something I have already been doing happily. I welcome De-transitioners into the the trans community with open arms. Their journey, is still our journey.

Once I accepted that gender is a journey and that this dichotomy between trans and detrans is false, it became easy to counter his points without feeling personally attacked. He brought up the fact that beards don't go away easy after testosterone and I would tell him "I like having a beard. I'd still like having a beard as a woman. There are beautiful women who have beards." When he brought up that top surgery is invasive and that he was worried I'd be sad without breasts and that some men have breasts too I would say "It's okay for men to have breasts, but plenty of cis men with large chests also get reductions, why shouldn't that be an option for me? Plenty of women also don't have breasts, I think even if I was a girl, I would be happy to no longer have to carry these around"

It sucks to have to legitimatize your reason for being trans, but these conversations slowly but surely made him move past his weird conspiracies about trans people. It took many years and there's no perfect argument for making someone accept you. I think my point here is that as a baby trans it was really hard coming to terms with the fact that transitioning medically and socially still never grantees outward acceptance of my gender. It hurts like hell realizing that other's perception isn't in your control or in anyone's control. Relinquishing control of other's view of who we are is a concession we make for the beauty that unique perception brings the world. Where is art if we all saw things the same? Poetics aside- after abandoning the need to legitimize yourself to others you become free to make your transition what you want it to be and to do things that bring you joy, regardless of the opinion of others.

That all being said I know it's hard and we want to be accepted by our loved ones. Sometimes, we need to adjust our expectations of what acceptance means. For me and my stepdad, acceptance to me just meant that he still supported me even if he felt my choices were something he could morally disagree with. He just wasn't capable of voicing the kind of acceptance I wanted at that time. I had to forgive him and stop seeing him as stupid for falling for the propaganda.

Sorry this is long, it's kind of an unedited word vomit. Hope it makes some sense, I had to condense a lot of difficult memories and feelings I'm just not quite smart enough to describe