What is something you learned or experienced from being trans that you wish you knew pre-transition, or that you wish cis people knew?
I’ll go first: the temperature differences when going from testosterone-dominance to estrogen-dominance is not just real but significant, my body just puts out less heat and I feel colder much easier now even when otherwise maintaining a high metabolism, eating in excess, etc.
It may have just been my trans denial before, but I really wanted to believe that the difference was not that great and I was wrong.
What’s something you wish people knew?
That gender dysphoria exists
Yes, such a great one - it’s so hard to believe that gender dysphoria is real, people seem to want to think it’s just delusions or trauma or anything but what it is.
It’s incredible to me that the conservative medical establishment has endorsed gender affirming care and transition for trans youth and adults in this country, over centuries and decades trans healthcare has developed to this point while the culture at large continues to lag behind.
It is like the gradual process of (largely Christian) scientists ruling out creationism over a period of centuries and decades, but we’re in a time still when the majority of people still believe in the religious explanation rather than the scientific one.
It makes me feel like I’m living in a kind of medieval era of sorts, when people are still largely uneducated and in the dark, a time when the gap between what humanity has discovered and what most people know is huge.
!!! REAL !!!
I spent so long putting off estrogen and when I went on it I magically felt better and started getting excited at the changes in my body???
I still can barely believe it, lol
Yeah, idk about you but I still have the underlying anxiety that I’m going to finish transitioning and not be happy. But I also have anxiety about pretty much every decision I make.
I can get that way too, but what I’ve done to cope is to recognize that my situation is vastly improved, and that’s good enough - transition doesn’t have to make me happy all the time, it’s enough that it makes me happy so much of the time. The same strategy was really important when deciding to get a vaginoplasty, and when choosing my name - because I had a lot of perfectionism and anxiety around both, and I had to realize that it’s about being practical and not about finding perfection.
Even just getting estrogen in me really changed my mental health for the better, even if that’s all I ever did, it would have been worth it.