@FinalGirl
I know a LOT of trans peeps have this defined and set date as to when their "egg cracked" "flower bloomed" or "on this day" beginning of transition.

For me, my slow descent into madness began with questioning in 2014.
From then until June of 2019, before I tripped and fell backwards out of the closet and I extemporaneously came out to my wife, I did the following:

— experimented with clothing, expression, presentation.
— chose a girl name for being online (not my current one)
— thought I might be trans in early 2016.
— participated in the gender wars, debating the minutia of gender, definitions, theory, feminism, queer history, etc.
— started what would become two and half years of extensive research into endocrinology and hormone therapy for transgender people.
— therapy sessions starting in 2017 that would have three different therapists, hoping one would tell me I was anything but trans.
— slowly began to lean toward the idea I might be trans after two years of therapy.
— I tripped backwards out of the closet coincidentally during Pride Weekend 2019
— began laser hair removal on face August 2019
— first pill taken Father's Day 2020.

Sooooo... am I in the club?

@JoscelynTransient

@WrenArcher Yeah, I have a lot of problems with egg crack terminology because it doesn’t fit with my path so I have no real way to apply it.

Like was that when I was a kid and told my mom? When I was in college in the 90s and started but didn’t finish? There were 75 moments.

I mean you could maybe say it was when I talked to my doctor about hormones, but I was seeing an endocrinologist about hormones for like a decade before that and he had me on testosterone but I talked to him about how estrogen would feel better.

Like if the criteria is “remembers Trans Twitter” then that makes sense, but “started transition” is hard for me because I started transition at least three times.

@JoscelynTransient

@FinalGirl @WrenArcher “egg cracking” definitely doesn’t apply to plenty of folks and people’s journeys are all over the place. And I’m really happy you all are sharing them! That’s also why I try to be intentional about including as a possible starting point among others that a person might mark the beginning of their transition or current gender embodiment.

And the way I think of egg cracking is a moment a person can have where all the defenses, rationalizations, and denials break down and it becomes in some sense inevitable to know oneself as trans/nonbinary (which does require access to knowledge and language a lot of times). It’s the point at which humpty dumpty can’t be put back together again and there’s no return to believing oneself to be cis.

@JoscelynTransient @FinalGirl @WrenArcher kind of chipping in to a thread that is about a different era & definitely not in the club

Like I say I've know since I was a child BUT the whole "you have to live as a woman for some period" etc all seem insurmountable. I experimented a lot with gender presentation in the 90s - wearing skirts & dresses, always wearing makeup (pretty makeup)

then buried it deep

but in my 50's I kind of came to the realisation that I was "allowed"

@JoscelynTransient @FinalGirl @WrenArcher

& kind of slowly revealed myself to A. - _really_ helped by learning terminology from social media and seeing other peoples experiences

been an odd old journey

Now I wish I'd understood better in the 90s that not all trans people were like the medical world said they were.

if only I had heard the term "genderqueer" my life might have been different...

@junklight this story reads a lot like mine. I transitioned at 50 and yet I was effectively out as transgender in the 90s, but didn’t have that terminology and didn’t know hormones existed. I thought it was either man or fly to Scandinavia for “a sex change operation,” which left one not a woman but a Frankenstein monster.

So like it didn’t matter that I knew because in rustbelt Northeast and then in South Carolina the level of epistemological oppression was too high for me to know what that meant.

If someone in the 90s had said “you can just take a pill,” then I would’ve transitioned in a hot minute. But all I knew of that path was weird weird prostitutes and Silence of the Lambs.

@JoscelynTransient @WrenArcher

@FinalGirl

god yeah - the information in the 90s was so bad. Ironically I actually knew a trans woman (& got off with her a few times - she was gorgeous) but she thought I hated her for some reason (we were all taking a lot of drugs - it was a chaotic time) & I never _actually_ talked to her properly...

but yeah wasn't any better in the uk than you describe.

I'm still like gobsmacked I can just take hormones and things are changing!

but yeah. hard relate!

@JoscelynTransient @WrenArcher

@junklight @FinalGirl @WrenArcher I’m younger but feel you both so much on this! I have to explain to trans kids now how different the ability to even *know* or conceive of transness was. If the concept of non-binary had been available to me and I had known open non-binary people earlier in my life, I probably would have done an initial transition (or at least understood something about myself better) in the 90s or early 00s. The cruelty of that epistemological oppression and the harm it’s done is so fucked.

Glad you’re both here now 💜

@JoscelynTransient @FinalGirl @WrenArcher

Thank you 💕

Looking back. I realise I am actually pretty lucky to be here. A lot of the time I wasn’t acting in ways conducive to that !!!