Many people go out of their way to transform their bodies, from diet and exercise to drugs and surgery. My question is why not? It’s your flesh puppet; decorate it how you like.

I see that you mentioned there are studies that point to Trans likely being a mismatch between the brain and body at development. But, do you think there is also a link that involves childhood trauma? Or is the science very clear?

Gender identity does not seem to be influenced by trauma, and we have decent evidence it’s genetic, though it’s a complex trait and there isn’t a single “trans gene”. Trauma might be more common in trans populations, but that is true for gay folks as well, it’s not that the trauma makes them gay, but being gay does make them more likely to be victimized and experience trauma. I myself thought that trauma caused my gender dysphoria (or the experiences I had, which I now realize are gender dysphoria), and it took a long time for me to learn there is good evidence trauma isn’t causing my dysphoria (part of this is that I recovered from PTSD, and this alleviated my PTSD symptoms, but did not alleviate my gender dysphoria).

Here are some follow-up articles and citations I have read, and which you may find helpful:

• Joshua Safer’s “Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity” (DOI)
• Joshua Safer’s “Etiology of Gender Identity” (DOI)
• the collective research of Daphna Joel and Dick Swaab for the current scientific theories of “brain-sex” (which likely plays a role in gender identity and gender dysphoria):
  • Joel & Swaab, 2019, “The Complex Relationships between Sex and the Brain”, (DOI)
  • Joel, 2015, “Sex beyond the genetalia: The human brain mosaic”, (DOI)
  • Swaab, 2008, “A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity”, (DOI)
  • Swaab, 2000, “Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus”, (DOI)
  • Swaab, 1995, “A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality”, (DOI)

In a video format, some of this is broadly summarized in these videos:

• Neuro-biology of trans-sexuality: Prof. Robert Sapolsky
• Robert Sapolsky: Brain Gender

On biological sex more generally I recommend these videos:

• Julia Serano’s overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymYiwoRoC0
• Sex & Sensibility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVQplt7Chos

I also highly recommend reading this literature review to better understand why trans healthcare is so important, but also why it’s not considered controversial in an otherwise conservative medical establishment:

What We Know Project, Cornell University, “What Does the Scholarly Research Say about the Effect of Gender Transition on Transgender Well-Being?”, 2018.

…

often find myself uncomfortable with Trans people in person, but I often wonder if half of that is simply that I don’t know how to treat someone. The ones that I met that had relatively normal behavior I found pretty easy to talk to and I felt for them. But ones that were more complicated, say neurodivergent beyond dysphoria, or they had a lot of emotional trauma, made me very uncomfortable. Do you think most of this issue is that as children we are taught how to treat people that are squarely female or male, rather than learning how to treat people as a whole?

I don’t know all the reasons you have for discomfort around trans people. I can experience that discomfort too, and especially as you mention when there are other issues like neurodivergence (which is a common comorbidity with gender dysphora). Beyond the behavioral issues, I have identified in my feelings that gender clashing or inconsistency can bother me - a combination of a masculine signal like a beard and a feminine body like breasts can look wrong to me, and I suspect this is mostly a social norm - I have been raised in a society where being gender non-conforming is taboo. This is not unlike ableist perspectives - the ways that we might feel uncomfortable around people with amputations or birth defects that make their bodies not “normal”.

One of the ways to help with this is exposure therapy - being around or exposing yourself to positive experiences with people who are “not normal” can help acclimate you to those differences. It’s a long, hard process to undo that cultural programming, though - I have internalized a lot of transphobia, and that has made my transition much more difficult, as my body becomes “not normal” (the experience is akin to feeling like a monster, like being less than human).

So you would have to examine what about trans people is unsettling to you, there is a lot there to figure out - but probably it’s just your internalized transphobia (which is fairly typical, you shouldn’t feel especially bad for this - it’s not like you chose to be raised that way).

I often wish the world wasn’t so hostile, but I also find that some things that were set in motion in my childhood are the hardest to change. It’s easy to change what I act on, but harder to change how I feel.

That’s my experience too, and it’s a shame because a lot of things set in motion when I was a child are not adaptive or good for me or others now. 😅

Thanks for your questions and thoughtfulness, I hope I have been helpful. ☺️

My sibling, what you need is a sun jacket! They’re very light, breathable, and baggy. I got mine at REI but it was kind of pricy since I try to do as close to Buy It For Life as possible, and there are more affordable ones out there.

That would be the dysphoria flannel shirt

I think this is all extremely variable from person to person and can’t really be generalized, including the libido thing. Transition brings unusually deep change, including to sexuality, but the way it plays out is extremely individual

No worries, these are personal questions but that’s what I’ve signed up for.

The answer is that it varies significantly. It’s not uncommon for trans women to experience a reduction of libido on estrogen, but I experienced increased arousal and libido (much to my dismay, I wanted libido to reduce). However, I think viewing libido as just “more” vs “less” does not portray the changes accurately. Testosterone libido felt different, more desperate and animal-like. It was like a simple biological urge, like hunger or the need to pass a bowel movement. It felt imposed on me, and like a hijacking of “me”.

Estrogen libido was deeper and more meaningful, more emotionally connected and harder to just stamp out. Testosterone libido was like performing a duty, estrogen libido was like yearning, pining, burning lust. Estrogen libido feels right, testosterone libido felt awful (to the point where I wondered if I was on the asexual spectrum).

The further into transition I got, the more my dissociation melted and the more dysphoria I experienced as a result - and in this case, the more I experienced bottom dysphoria. I started to wear underwear to bed to hide my genitals, and I started to recognize when I was dissociating during sex, and trying to avoid it by opting to not be touched. I couldn’t stand being the center of attention in sex, focusing on me and my orgasm was very upsetting and usually I disappeared when this happened.

All this varies significantly among trans women - many of them feel no bottom dysphoria at all, and enjoy topping. Many of us feel varying levels of dysphoria, and either cannot use their genitals at all, or very little.

I was a middle case - I could have sex, but it required accommodations and working around my issues, usually by hiding the genitals and treating them more like female genitals (treating the glans like a clit, and so on). I found using a vibrator much more pleasurable on estrogen than before transition, and I really did not like having erections so I did everything I could to promote penile atrophy (but ultimately I didn’t have much penile atrophy - I would have trouble being hard enough for penetrating, but still technically could sometimes). This was all pre-op, obviously post-op sex changed significantly - I am finding I am surprisingly more comfortable now being the center of sexual attention, though I still have dysphoria and there are struggles I have to work around (like feeling my new genitals are like the old ones).

I’m not sure my prostate changed much at all, to be honest. I didn’t notice any difference, but post-op, vaginal penetration is prostate stimulating and featured more heavily. (Anal took more prep and time to do and could be painful, so it was admittedly done less frequently. Also, it could introduce gender feelings in a way, which could increase my dysphoria - sometimes gender-affirming activities can emphasize how much I’m not a woman, and can ironically backfire and make things worse.)

That particular episode was one of the final steps in breaking down my own internal resistance to accepting myself.

I might have to try to find this, thanks!

Are there any self-identities which you would consider invalid?

I just want to be clear. Blahaj lemmy does not allow invalidating of other folks identities.

Basically I don’t think otherkin or transracial identities are related to being transgender.

I wrote more extensively on my thoughts on otherkin identities in this comment.

I wrote more about transracial identities in this comment.

And in general, it is a good idea to respect people’s self-identity even if you feel skepticism about its validity - I don’t have to know someone has 100% figured themselves out and has the self-awareness to back up their identity claims. This goes for cis people as well as trans people. Whatever skepticism I feel can remain private so I don’t cause that person any distress, and so I remain polite and respectful.

I do believe non-binary, gender-fluid, and agender people are natural variations and are “valid” as much as binary-gendered people, the science and evidence does not really contradict these identities and only seems to affirm their existence.

In cases of the neo-Nazi who identified as a woman, I know this is a major controversy but if there are reasons to believe they are earnest in their identity it should be respected, even if they are despicable. How we know if someone is being earnest is harder, it’s a way trolls exploit this respect of self-identity. So we look at a troll’s other behavior to help us gauge, and we judge them for their other behavior, not their identity.

All bodies contain the ability to differentiate into what we know as male and female, to varying degrees and in various mixtures. Transgender is just a medical variation in how this normally plays out and spans times and cultures, whereas these other things don’t really have a similar basis.

Femininity has nothing to do with my own experience of gender. I wasn’t feminine before I transitioned, I’m not feminine afterwards.

My very existence challenges gender stereotypes, and I wouldn’t have it any other way

Don’t you think transitioning reaffirms gender roles and stereotypes?

No, because transitioning at all requires massive amounts of gender transgression that trans people are often severely punished, or even killed for.

I also don’t think it’s correct to blame societal problems (like sexist gender roles and stereotypes) on individuals. If it’s the individual’s responsibility to dismantle gender roles and stereotypes every single day in the way they dress and interact with society, are you doing it? If not, why do trans people carry a higher burden than you?

This also presupposes that trans people all become gender conforming upon transition, when in fact many trans people are also queer and/or gender nonconforming on top of being trans.

I’m probably missing something, but why isn’t being a really effeminate man enough, that there’s the need to take hormones and change your pronouns?

I’m a trans man and not a trans woman, but let’s pretend that says butch woman instead of effeminate man. So why couldn’t I be a butch woman? Because I wasn’t one. Seriously, people did not know what sexuality box to put me in before I transitioned. I clearly wasn’t a straight woman (no makeup, a mix of teen boy clothes and some feminine tops) and I was too feminine to be a butch lesbian, but not feminine enough to be a lipstick lesbian. And I don’t say this to mean ‘nobody accepted me in the lesbian community and I had to transition to fix it,’ because I never got any shit from other queer people over it. (And I’m not attracted to women regardless.)

So, socially not transitioning wouldn’t have made me any less gender-confusing to other people. And on the personal level, I needed HRT because periods made me suicidal, all the effects of T make me happy, and it’s my body and I get to do what I want with it. Male pronouns also feel more natural to me than female, so I see no reason to not use them.

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Gender =/= interests and personality. We all have a diverse range of those things and it’s never the reason we transitioned - our gender is something more core , abstract and personal than that. There are butch transfemmes, there are femboy transmascs. Many trans men I know were very feminine children (some are now very feminine men), I wasn’t, but we all had the same sense of wrongness in the way we were shaped and treated by people that all clicked into place when we tried to change that.

The reason trans folks may (but not always) cling to gender norms is often to pass better and stop other people gendering us wrongly. I love being a trans guy with long hair and nail varnish but it means that I get misgendered at my job constantly, which causes a conflict in myself because it doesn’t feel like who I am. Makes those things I love a bit less enjoyable :/

Since middle school and throughout high school and college I got progressively more and more depressed due to repressed gender dysphoria, and starting HRT has almost immediately started reversing that. I had always been outspoken about how gender roles were stupid and never cared about using “women’s” things (like I shared my mom’s hair products and stuff), but none of that changed the fact that I was extremely uncomfortable in my body, and being perceived as a man was something to avoid as much as possible. If people made jokes like “that’s how you know you aren’t a woman haha” I would always fight back against that, but being compared to women felt like more of a compliment.

Plus imo anything a trans person does that could “reaffirm stereotypes” wouldn’t do that more than any cis person doing it. I’ve heard similar things from some cis feminists, where they felt that if they did something stereotypically “girly” it would be hypocritical of them, until realizing that the entire point was that you should be able to do those things if it makes you happy. Avoiding stereotypes can reinforce them just as much as doing them, since then it makes the people claiming the stereotypes as universally true seem like they have a view worth changing yourself for.

I basically believed this most of my life, and it was a big part of why I never transitioned. I felt it was offensive to women for me to claim to be one. Even once I transitioned, I had a really hard time using makeup because I felt like a traitor.

Ultimately, I found reading Julia Serano really helpful. I learned that my fear of embodying feminine stereotypes was more about not wanting to appear feminine (even as a woman), and that ultimately this was more about an entrenched anti-femininity perspective than anything like feminism. I learned that makeup is pragmatic and useful, a way for me to alleviate dysphoria, to help me cope, and that I am not a “traitor” for using it. Being pretty and feminine is important to me, as a woman, and it’s not surprising other women want to be pretty and feminine too. They shouldn’t feel bad for wanting to be that way, even if not everyone woman should feel obligated to only be one kind of hype-feminine woman.

Regarding being an effeminate man: I have had conservatives tell me this, that I need to just live as a really effeminate man. I just don’t know what to tell you, being a man is not right. When I first transitioned, I didn’t care as much about the social elements. It turned out testosterone was ruining my mental health - I had severe depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation - all of which cleared up quickly after blocking the production of testosterone and getting on estrogen. Estrogen consistently makes me feel high, it’s better than opiates. Not every trans person is this way, but a lot of us are. It’s called “biochemical dysphoria”. In a way, I would have been willing to settle for having an orchi and living as a eunuch with estrogen supplementation - it would be a lie to say I was a man, and I would know that, but if I could have estrogen and live without testosterone in my body, that is most important to me. Living as a woman has always been important to me, but I never thought I could - that was a dream too far, in a sense. It felt like how I should have been born, but since I wasn’t, I resigned myself to living as a man. That estrogen will make me look like a woman and i am able to live and be a woman now is like going to heaven, it’s a dream I never thought I would live.

So, tl;dr I have to take hormones because I was born with a condition where my brain can’t handle testosterone, and I would have probably killed myself, and generally I lived a very low quality of life before HRT. I was a burden to those around me, and I transitioned for my health and to be a functioning person in society.

I think we all live within the language of gender, and trans women who have lived as men and are insecure in their womanhood often lean heavily into feminine roles as a compensation. I did this even before I transitioned, but it didn’t feel like I was contributing to a stereotype of women as a man - I was “gender non-conforming” then. But as a woman the very same behaviors become stereotypical. I like to cook, sew, bake, etc. and those were comforts to me before I transitioned, but are also important to me now. If anything, once I transitioned I felt more freedom to stop clinging to more stereotypical roles, and the more I can validate my womanhood, the more freedom I feel within my womanhood. Either way, I tend to make an exception for myself when it comes to being stereotypical - I figured being trans is rough enough, I can’t solve patriarchy all by myself, and it’s not up to me as an individual to overcome such huge social and structural problems. I like being feminine, and I am lucky enough to enjoy it now, so I will. If anything, I’ve learned to stop judging other women for when they are feminine, as a whole I have become more embracing of women as a result of transition.

But my experience with being cisgendered is one of feeling like my spirit would belong wherever it was born to

The few cases we have of cis people being medically transitioned in some way without their consent suggest that this simply isn’t the case, at least for many cis folk.

Alan Turing and David Reimer are both examples of cis folk who were medically transitioned without their consent, one as an adult, one as a child, and both experienced severe dysphoria. They ultimately both took their own lives

The current science points to gender dysphoria being caused by the brain developing as one sex while the body develops as another.

If you ask whether someone is primarily their brain or their body, I think most would say identity resides in the brain and subsequent mind. In that sense, gender dysphoria is a genetic and hormonal disorder, basically a condition of yes, having the “wrong body” for the brain they developed as a fetus. This glosses over a lot of details and sex is complicated, but that’s the rough sketch. The condition arises from the brain and the mind, and in that sense can be labelled a mental illness, but that would ignore a lot of context and evidence we have about what is going on.

It is with this understanding and with the guidance of substantial empirical evidence that transition and gender-affirming care are recommended - it is the only treatment that alleviates symptoms (conversion therapy, for example, increases risk of suicide), but also these are treatments with a very high success to failure ratio. Gender affirming surgeries have lower regret rates than practically any other surgery, much lower than knee replacement surgeries, for example.

So we deal with gender dysphoria differently than we deal with other mental illnesses because of what we know about the condition. We know that people with body dysmorphia like anorexics feel distress about their body and might seek surgery to “fix” their bodies, but we don’t have the large body of evidence that those surgeries improve patient outcomes, relieve symptoms, or are low risk. So we treat anorexia differently than gender dysphoria, because they have different causes and require different treatments.

So gender dysphoria could be classed as a mental illness in a way, but it’s important not to be confused by this and think it’s a fabrication or that people with gender dysphoria could just think their way out of their condition - it’s biological and not able to be solved with therapy or anti-depressants. Trans people respond really well to living as their gender (go figure!), and we see the same with cis people who are raised as the wrong gender (like in the case of David Reimer). We also see that cis people who are forced to take cross-sex hormones, like when homosexuals were given criminal punishments of estrogen treatments in the UK as in the case of Alan Turing, that those people become gender dysphoric in the same way. Gender dysphoria is not just for trans people, forcing cis people to be on the wrong hormones make them depressed too - are cis people just mentally ill when they have symptoms from being forced to live and medically transition to the other sex? It’s not different for trans people.

So, much of gender is a social construct, but being a social construct doesn’t stop it being real. Society has a bias towards a gender binary, and that creates the social context in which we come to understand and experience our own gender. These social frameworks creates the lens through which we learn to understand ourselves.

Lets say I grew up on an island full of men. I had never seen or met a woman, and didn’t have a concept of women. In that environment, my experience of gender would have been different. I’d still have experienced the discomfort, and disconnection, I’d still have experienced dysphoria, but it would have manifested very differently. I wouldn’t have identified as a binary woman in a world without women, and I wouldn’t have had the language to describe my experiences, but I’d still have had a discomfort I couldn’t address, and I’d still have known that I was different to the men around me in ways I didn’t have the language or the concepts to explore.

But I didn’t. I grew up in country town Australia in the 80s, when societies bias towards a gender binary was strong. And my own gender is binary too.

I do sometimes wonder what my experience of my own gender would be like if I’d have grown up in a different context, if society allowed space for genders that don’t have to fit a binary. Would I still be binary? The truth is, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that my experience of my own gender does fit on the binary, and knowing that, and thinking about it doesn’t change it, because however I got there, my gender isn’t a choice. It’s just who I am.

I don’t know what to tell you, most aspects of being a woman feels right to me. Even without knowing consciously a specific change will feel good, making changes that make me more like a woman end up feeling good. There is nothing about being a man that seems right to me.

I think we can’t choose to be binary or non-binary, just like cis people can’t choose to suddenly be the opposite sex and be trans. Gender identity seems to be biological, and we can’t change it (e.g. through conversion therapy, it’s just not effective). if we could change gender identity, probably the conservative medical establishment would recommend those methods rather than transitioning, but as is, transitioning is the only effective way to alleviate gender dysphoria.

So there are problems with the binary model, but I do believe some people are women and some are men, anyway, including trans people. Not everyone is non-binary, or find an identity like that affirming or “right”.

While I can see there are many problems with gender, I don’t think trans people should feel primarily responsible for those problems. We live and breathe within gender, as do cis people, but trans folks are the least advantaged in that context. We struggle to live as our gender, so when we use gender to feel ourselves, I don’t think it’s this horrible act of reifying gender as a sin, but instead I think it is a positive and life-affirming activity. That’s not to say there isn’t anything toxic about gender, or even problematic about the way trans people use gender, but I’m not going to wring my hands about this any more - trans people were dealt a bad hand, they’re trying to survive within their context and we should grant them some space for that.

Why are there so few male sex workers in general?

Ada already covered this.

“chemically induced transition process” is not the right language - you would do for a trans person the same thing you would do for a cis person undergoing problems with puberty, something that children have been safely doing for decades, and which cis children with precocious puberty continue to do even as trans children are banned from having access to the same care.

The answer to your question is determined through a discussion with a doctor, mostly with the aim of reducing the harm for a trans child of going through the wrong puberty, and that’s just whenever puberty starts in their body.

This pausing of puberty is the only care minors usually receive, it does not “induce [a] transition process”, it pauses a transition process until they are of legal age and can decide to undergo the puberty of their choice.

Here is a decent article written by a bioethicist covering how trans affirming care for minors came about, and why it is endorsed by every major medical association: https://www.openmindmag.org/articles/care-not-controversy

dysmorphia

Dysphoria

At what age do you think it’s appropriate for someone with gender dysmorphia to make a decision to go through the medically assisted chemically induced transition process?

This is another one of those questions that exist as a wedge tactic designed to make trans people sound dangerous.

The reality is, the only medical option offered to young trans kids is the option to pause their puberty until they’re old enough to be responsible for their own decisions, at which time they can choose which puberty they want to experience.

And what time is the right age for that? Whenever they need to do it, because going through the wrong puberty is a traumatic experience.

As soon as puberty starts, they should at least have the option to delay their choice with puberty blockers, and probably soon after to start HRT, if it’s clear it’s a permanent thing.

When ever a doctor thinks is suitable

Neither trans men nor trans women become more aggressive due to HRT! Early on, you might have some mood swings as your body adjusts (you’re going through puberty after all) but my understanding is that because of the regimented way we receive it, we’re actually much less likely to get those sorts of shifts because our hormone levels are more controlled than cis peoples. But it also just depends on the person, T has made my partner a bit more crabby but I’ve chilled tf out. It sounds like this particular person just has a very reactive personality

It’s complicated, hormones can influence behavior, but most trans women who take estrogen don’t subsequently shout at people as a result. We don’t know what was going on with her, but it’s not just the hormones, even if they may play a role.

For what it’s worth, I became a much more pleasant, well-tempered person as a result of hormone therapy. Calmer, happier, and more social, and I attribute that mostly to the benefits of being on the right hormones.

Are there cis people that are angry and emotional all the time for reasons you don’t understand?

Well, it’s the same thing when you see it from trans folk…

I guess there are multiple factors. I think the biggest one is just the personality of the person. But starting taking hormones is basically a second puberty for the body. Most trans folks do not become as irretable as a person in their puberty but if one has a predisposition to it, a transition may trigger that a bit.

For me it was the opposite, I became way calmer and happier once I started HRT.

Before I got top surgery (boob removal), being alone in my room with my boobs just there would give me dysphoria. I didn’t really have a way to exist in my body without feeling dysphoria after puberty started (although I felt it at times before then as well). Other people noticing and treating me like a girl made it worse, but being away from them didn’t make it go away. Periods made me suicidal, and that’s not really a public event (unless you’re having a truly terrible day).

Some trans people don’t like the ‘I was born in the wrong body’ explanation because it’s kind of overly simplistic. Not problematic or anything, just at the level you’d explain things to a child. Like, if you were born with a clubfoot or cleft palate you wouldn’t necessarily want an entirely new body, you might just want your foot or mouth fixed, right? Some people feel that way about transition, and I think I lean closer to that myself.

I can only speculate on what I’d be OK with if I didn’t need HRT and top surgery, but I will say a decent number of trans people, even trans people on HRT and who have had/want surgery, are also gender nonconforming for their actual gender as well. Not ‘oh they don’t pass,’ but for example lesbian trans women who specifically choose a butch look, or gay trans men who choose a twink aesthetic.

I would still want to transition. I was a very proud soft “tomboy” growing up, parents who encouraged it, had no reason to not be perfectly happy as a butch woman except for the fact I still felt a disconnect and dissociation from my body that I couldn’t place. I tried different pronouns online, put on a binder and suddenly I crashed back home into myself. Felt like I was in my body rather than floating around it and dressing it up and no longer felt misshapen like a crushed bottle. I still have shoulder length hair, still paint my nails, I’m just perceived and look a way that feels right to me now.

I also have a trans man friend I knew from childhood who was always very feminine, mainly in his love of dolls but also a very gentle and sensitive personality. Surprised us all when he came out really. But again, it’s nothing to do with our personality or interests (and there are loads of transmasc femboys too), it’s something more abstract and core to our sense of self than that

I’m a trans woman. I’ve never been feminine. No one picked on me because I was “girly”. No one secretly thought I was gay. My interests were geeky, but they were “boy” geeky.

I don’t believe in gendered personalities. People have genders. Personalites don’t.

it does seem like those with body dysphoria actually feel uncomfortable in their bodies, and want a different body

That’s often a part of it, but it’s not universal. There are many trans and gender diverse folk who don’t experience things through this lens.

if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition?

Yes, but it would look different. The social part of my transition was important to me, because it influences how people see me. It shapes whether they see me accurately, or see me as someone I am not. My appearance can cause them to stick me in the wrong gender box, and that is something that I needed to change.

But if we existed in a world where there were no gender boxes, where gender was as diverse as people themselves are, then my transition would have looked different. I’d still needed to have addressed the physical aspects of my body. But socially? If my birth name didn’t automatically carry a gender with it, if my clothes and my presentation didn’t automatically carry gender with them, then my social transition would have looked very different.

There being no gender norms would actually be even more liberating. It means we’re not pressured into only wearing femme clothing (when going the estrogen route) or masculine ones (when doing testosterone).

It’d open up a ton of possibilities for cis and queer people alike; wearing skirts on warm days for men also, or wearing pretty nail polish, or short hair for women…

So, my question: if there were no gender norms or societal expectations, would you still want to transition?

Yes. The evidence of that is that butch/masc leaning trans women and femme leaning trans men both exist.

Yes, without gender norms or social expectations, I would still transition, at least medically.

Testosterone made me depressed, anxious, suicidal, anhedonic, and gave me night terrors. That was true for me even when I socially transitioned and lived as a woman full-time in every part of my life. Estrogen’s impact on my mood is hard to overstate, and those benefits happened well before there were changes to my body. This has been called “biochemical dysphoria”, and not every trans person experiences it, though it is common.

When I transitioned, it was mostly for my health and well-being. I had little hope of ever passing because I transitioned so late in life, so my goals were fairly minimal - basically I just realized I was a burden to the people in my life who cared about me (like getting those phone calls that I was in the ER again), and I realized being a repressed trans person might be causing problems for me and making me this way. I felt an obligation to do what was right by me, so I could be a better person for those around me. I underestimated the effect hormones had on mood and well-being. If I knew what I know now, I would have transitioned much earlier. I have no idea how I survived so long (looking back, I really almost didn’t).

So yes, I transitioned without the social aspects ever being the main goal, because I never was motivated by that primarily. I felt dismissive of gender (I even hated gender) and whatever gendered desires came up were a low priority to me. I would never be so selfish as to prioritize those needs over practicalities like holding down a job, or not being a hate crime statistic. It turned out my closeted cross-dressing wasn’t just about a silly desire to wear dresses and skirts, I didn’t know that.

Yes, HRT both improved my mood, and I also feel far more comfortable in the body it’s giving me. Fuck gender stereotypes, though.

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It’s a non issue. Broadly speaking, trans people are far more afraid of rejection and violence from cis people than cis people are of seeing unexpected bits. Which is to say, this idea that trans people are just wandering around bathrooms flashing their bits at people is nothing but a narrative designed to stir up fear and anger aimed at trans folk. In reality, we tend to do everything we can to make ourselves small and invisible in spaces like that, because there is no safe way to navigate it