Mastodawn

Lou 🏳️‍⚧️

@mallory_sinn
Could have figured it out way earlier¹ if I had known about trans and enby people but I only really understood trans-identity in August 2021… and promptly² understood that I couldn't deny it anymore.
First CO on TDoR³ 2021 to the only trans girl I knew as such offline.
Changed GP in August 2022 to one known to be trans friendly (she even had stopped taking new cis patients) and told her I wanted HRT right from the start.
But because I was still so unsure (what if I was faking it to have a reason to say I'm queer⁴? What if taking HRT doesn't help⁵? etc.), I only actually started in November 2022. And had to stop two days later 🫠 Resumed 3 weeks later and haven't stopped since (switched from gel to injections in January 2026)

1: I think I started wanted to be reborn as a girl in 2004 or 2005, although I thought I would be as bad at being a girl as at being a boy 😅 I don't have much memories from before ~2003 so can't talk to my relation to gender prior to that.
2: it "only" took a bit under 2 weeks and going through the GDB (thanks, Jocelyn! (Twipped)) with a highlighter 🙈 Funny enough, I only realised *afterward* that I had been putting myself to sleep for a few months by picturing waking up the next day as a woman and what I'd do 🤭 then I started remembering the previous times I had wanted to be a girl :') (there were no signs!)
3: either worst or best day to do that.
4: my dad is gay (and, I suspect, a transfem in deep denial) and my mom is bi, so I thought I only wanted to belong amongst queer people.
5: it did… applied the first dose of gel in the evening, was already feeling better the next day 🤭

Juniper 🏳️‍⚧️🌲12h ago

@koalou @mallory_sinn

> Funny enough, I only realised *afterward* that I had been putting myself to sleep for a few months by picturing waking up the next day as a woman and what I'd do

I used to fall asleep fantasizing about how my life would have been if I'd been born a girl

Lou 🏳️‍⚧️12h ago

@eruonna
I was doing that in middle school, and kept thinking about it while awake…
In 2021, it was either waking up the next day in my bed as a woman and having to handle it (getting new clothes, convincing the government to update my papers, etc.), or¹ getting reborn in another world (with magic!) as a girl².

1: I had forgotten when writing the previous message.
2: is it obvious I was reading too many mangas at that time? xD

Juniper 🏳️‍⚧️🌲12h ago

@koalou

I went the other direction. First, I fantasized about what if I turned into a woman, but dealing with it all seemed like too much hassle (and also dealing with the assumption people would likely have that this change would be upsetting to me), so eventually I just settled on the always been this way solution. I suppose yours is a slightly more realistic picture of transition.

@eruonna
Funny enough, it didn't occur to me that people around me would have an issue with it, only the government x) Waking up with a different body, without paperwork to prove who I am would be a huge issue, especially with how often we have to show an ID… the only thing I can think of that'd help would be for my fingerprint to still match the ones in my passport's memory.

Juniper 🏳️‍⚧️🌲11h ago

@koalou @mallory_sinn

I'd seen the scenario enough in fiction that I got the idea that you were "supposed" to be horrified, so I figured that everyone around me would assume I was

@eruonna
I don’t think I’ve seen it much in fiction 🤔
Actually, I can only think of 1 story: 1⁄2 Prince, and "she" clearly likes being a guy in the game x) although, I think I read it in 2014 or later, way too late for it to influence me as a teen.
I probably read other things that I simply can’t think of right now, but that would have been as an adult, I think.
(I’m not counting Ranma 1⁄2 as I only started it a few months ago then decided it wasn’t for me)

@eruonna
Also, for a while after accepting I was trans, I was picturing being sent back and living my teen years again, but knowing that I was trans, this time (plus keeping my current knowledge to be less bad in class 🙈). Well, I hope that never happens, really don’t want to live through it again, even if I can avoid the depression by knowing what the problems are xD

Mallie Sinn 12h ago

@koalou definitely no signs, total normal cis thing to go to bed each night dreaming of waking up as a different gender 😅😅😅

I say this as someone who did a lot of that in my tween years. And I think actually knowing about trans people, and then actually knowing what transness really is are the big thing here. So many of us had the vague notion of wanting to change gender/sex, and may have even had some idea that there were people called “transsexuals” but had only misinformation or skewed representations to go on. And heck, I learned what transgender really meant in the mid-10s, but didn’t understand non-binary until 2018/2019, and that’s what cracked my egg finally.