Okay, I appreciate it, you two, but I'm talking before I ever even started transition.
Mac, you've known me since I was posting on the Eunuch Archive and still thought that transition was impossible, and was just using story-writing as a coping mechanism. Before I'd even considered starting transition. I was actually a pretty happy and upbeat back then. Ironically, starting transition and getting on hormones was the thing that opened the floodgates and made me realize what I had been missing my whole life, and anything less than full transition no longer became an option because I realized how much I'd been denying myself for the sake of not offending others.
But back before those floodgates opened, I did cope just fine.
So again, I do think that it's possible. Not recommended if it's just fear over social rejection that's keeping you from doing it, like it was for me, but possible.
And to be fair, I didn't have much to lose... my "social rejection" fear was nothing but worrying about people making fun of me or looking at me funny, or my parents begrudgingly disapproving of it. And I was unmarried, had just broken off my only long-term relationship, and had JUST entered the workforce. I pretty much had nothing to lose by trying. For those who have real things to lose, though... stable long-term careers, rejecting families, marriages, kids, hostile environments, it really might not be in their best interest to transition. A lot of trans people can't cope with losing those things. So weigh your options. What do you have to lose? How important are those things to you? How bad is your dysphoria? Is it therefore worth taking a shot at being rid of the dysphoria at the risk of losing those things?
And here's another question that really drove me into it... what about the risk of getting more and more like your birth gender and less and less like your identity gender with each passing year? Because yeah, that happens. The older you get, the more and more your natal hormones affect you, and the more and more like your birth gender you get, and the less your body replenishes and heals itself, and thus the harder it becomes to transition. That was one of the things that pushed me over the edge... I realized that I was losing my hair FAST, my skin was losing its youthful luster, my face and body were getting thicker and thicker and more masculine with each passing year, that that it genuinely might be too late for me to transition and pass unless I acted quickly. Consider that too.
There's a lot of positives and negatives to weigh, and again, they vary from person to person. Some people age more slowly so that's not as big of a factor. Some people have families that are more likely to be accepting. Some people have job protections, some don't. Some have worse dysphoria than others. And some are able to cope with loss and personal hardships better than others. These are all things to consider.
