Passing genders

How long was I wrong about my gender? From an analytical perspective. I've thought of it a bit. Cause it's a bit hard to tell. Let's try to map it out how I've identified my gender from now and back to early childhood, and see if I can get the ages somewhat accurate:

- Age 29 (and presumably onwards): Except from my short moments of wondering if I may be nonbinary, I've this age, since summer, thought of myself as a binary woman.

- Ages 19 to 29: Except from a couple of months at age 27 (when I saw myself as bigender: male and "something else") I saw myself as a binary man during this time period.

- Ages 15 to 19: This was an exceptionally confusing time and I used to refer to it as my "trans denial" period. In hindsight I guess it was my "cis denial" period... I had "discovered" I'm "actually a trans guy" at age 15 and then tried to live as a girl but it didn't pan out well, which led to me reaching the conclusion I was really a guy, at age 19. However at moments during this time I really did enjoy being a girl and having a feminine body. I liked my body, but I felt wrong in it. I did want to be a girl, but I felt like I just couldn't be one and like I couldn't connect to it. Like I had failed at it or couldn't handle it, and that it would "free" me to be a guy instead.

- Ages 13 to 15: Was probably the only time of my life I thought of myself as somewhat/kind of a girl, but I hated it and the trans thoughts kept popping up from time to time.

- Ages 10 to 13: I saw myself as gender neutral or a "third gender" and wished I could stay pre-pubescent into adulthood. I hated the way my body was developing and feminising. I started getting clear signs of body dysphoria/dysmorphia at around age 10 cause of puberty, but had no real signs of that at any younger age.

- Ages 6 to 10: I had a few random wishes of "wanting to be a boy" but I think mostly it was just because I thought boys had more social advantages and I didn't want to have to deal with all the casual misogyny that I was exposed to.

- Ages up to 6: I already then had wishes of being a boy, but they weren't yet as intense, and mostly I just felt completely detached from gender and thought of myself as simply a person with a human body. I felt estranged from both boys and girls, I felt like an alien among everyone. I dissociated from my body being human but wasn't dysphoric about it being female, specifically.

So, to lump that up into slightly narrower categories and just list what gender I saw myself as:
Age 29 (and presumably onwards): Woman (cis).
Ages 19 to 29: Man (trans).
Ages 15 to 19: A trans guy who didn't want to become a woman, and/or as a failed girl.
Ages 13 to 15: "Probably a girl" but also I wanted to transition.
Ages up to 13: "Gender neutral" with random wishes of being a boy.

So, well... I think that clarifies that I've never known my actual gender before now, in detransition, current age. But it was always right there, in my knickers, how did I miss it?! Well, maybe sometimes things are just too close up for you to be able to see them. Maybe my vagina was "too obvious" or "too simple" of a sign that I MAY just be a girl/woman... cause I've always been the kinda person who complicates everything.

But I struggled so much with myself. What I thought of my body, the traumas that made me hate it. That even when I had figured out what being a trans guy meant and it seemed to fit dead on, I still doubted and didn't want for it to be true. It felt like it would be the worst thing ever if it turned out I was trans! Well in a way it WAS the worst thing that ever happened to me... oh boy, if only I knew the total gravity of that at the time! But that's how it felt at age 15 after I had found out that trans men exist, on Qruiser. That same lgbt dating site, I've been on ever since. And it was the first online site I ever created an account on. I still use the same account with with the same cringey teen username. It was my first source of knowing that trans men, not just trans women, exist. Which hit that last nail in the coffin. Back in January 2005. Was a while ago. But yeah, that means I've more or less thought of myself as a trans guy/man since age 15, which was 14 years ago. During my 4 years in denial, I sometimes forgot about the whole trans thing, but it always came back again and again. I didn't truly deal with it: I only tried to brush it under the rug.

Transsexualism felt like the one shoe I didn't want for to fit, but it did. I tried at first, at age 15, to see if trans life could work out for me, but I was way too scared to even bind my chest in public, let alone come out. I became kind of a cross-dresser in secret, and it felt dirty. When no one could see me in my teen room I bound my chest with elastic bandages, stuffed a sock into my pants and wore tight white jeans and a white tank top. Androgynous rocker guy, that's how I liked to imagine myself back then. Well, my idols were the Swedish "poodle rock" heavy metal band Europe, then metal dudes like Judas Priest, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, David Bowie and all except from Brolle those guys had long curly hair, wore makeup and tight spandex tights that showed off a big bulge. I was heavily inspired by 1980's heavy metal style, with the big hair, lots of makeup and yeah... spandex that showed everything.

But transsexualism was the horrible curse I could not accept as part of me at the "prime" of my already disastrous teens. I just realise that what I deeply wanted and wished for back then... was actually what could be considered a form of conversion therapy. I wanted therapy that could teach me ways to learn how to be fine with my body the way it naturally was. I didn't want to transition! I wanted to become fine with my body the way it was! So THAT's where my passive aggression towards the trans agen-- I mean community (sorry *cough* got something in my throat there) is all about. Cause fucking "conversion therapy" for transgenders likely would have saved me. Saved me from transitioning and the devastating consequences of it that I now have to live with. I even wanted it, I begged to the gods for it! But it's considered "inhumane" and not actually available to get as legit treatment for gender dysphoria. If I had started something like that around age 15-16, or even possibly up to around age 20, I think it would have worked. And of course adressing my traumas at the same time as well. Well this explains so much why I feel so angry at the trans... narrative? Oh god what do I even call it...

But back to reality of how it was back then. I tried to stuff it away and I really did try to just "be" me, dress the way I wanted to as a girl and try my best to just ignore what all of that "being a girl" meant, for myself and others. But then my rapist, and R changed all of that. So after them, I stopped trying to be a girl and I wanted to escape ever becoming a woman. It makes me sad to think about now. All the sadness and pain that I brought upon myself.

But to answer my own question, I have never before thought of myself or wanted to be a woman. I have to some degree thought of myself as a girl in my mid-late teens but it didn't feel right or good for me ever. So no, I have never actually seen myself as a girl or woman ever, before now.

It didn't feel like I had any choice in the matter at all. It all happened so suddenly that day in mid summer this year. I went from thinking I was a man to knowing I'm a woman as quickly as you can snap your fingers. It shocked me, and damn it if I'm not still in shock. It's like a mortal enemy of mine all of a sudden, out of the blue, dropped her battle axe and embraced me in a gentle hug. And I was so shocked by it I didn't know whether to fight or flee. And I did both, I think, but my enemy never stopped embracing me and eventually it became soothing, warming and comforting, so I began to respond to her embrace. I became a little gay for myself, in perhaps more than one, mostly metaphorical way. And we've held each other ever since, both very loving and caring, me and my female gender, but we're both very overly emotional, fragile and like we're both afraid to ever let go. May nothing ever tear us apart again.

I was at odds with my gender already from as far back as I can remember, from early childhood, and it took me this long to come to peace with it. That's why I call it "internalised misogyny" cause even though it's a term coined by radical feminism and not well-liked by the trans... whatever, the term explains my personal experience with my own gender feelings all the way from childhood. A self-hatred specifically targetting everything gendered about myself, because I am female.

I don't think there is a term known as "internalised misandry" as an equivalence for males, because I know feminism enough to highly doubt that... but I'm sure the males can have the same kind of self-hate experience that's because of them being male. So for all intents and purposes, I'm sure that there is a male equivalence that could be called internalised misandry.

Because I don't believe that just because I hated being a girl/woman for my entire life until the last fraction of it, that somehow must have meant I wasn't a girl/woman. It is really just a fraction of my life so far that I've been completely fine with being a woman, cause really, how much is 5 months out of 29 years and 8 months? I'm guessing not a lot, percentually.

Quick maths, 29 years is a total of 348 months. Add 8 to that so it gets more exact: 356 months. Now take 5 divided by that, as in: 5/356 = 0,0140449438202247. Let's round that off a little bit though, looks kinda clunky. (Yes, I calculate percentages in an unnecessarily complicated way.) That's for how many percent of my life I've been comfortable with being the gender that I am: the last 0,014% of my life. I'm not a math nerd, but I think this little calculation puts things into perspective, of why I'm so incredibly shocked and dumbfunded by this huge revelation that I've been a cis woman all along.

Quick sidenote: I finally think I managed to calculate how many percent of the entire population of people detrans, if 0,3% transition in the first place and 2% of them detrans. My result is that out of everyone, cis and trans combined: 0,0006% detransition. That's equal to one in 60 thousand people, I think. That number... is basically statistically inexistent.

Back on topic. I feel like I'm such a cluts at being a woman because I didn't get to learn about or practice it during the entire decade of my 20's. Most women who are 29 know that stuff better cause they've lived as women/girls for 29 years. I didn't. I started living as a woman 5 months ago. So it's not so fucking strange I'm an awkward, stumbling cluts... with trying to be a woman. Of course I come off as some iffy drag queen. If you consider the circumstances, it's not strange at all. So no, I don't, and I never did, fail at being a woman. I'm just a newbie at it.

It doesn't really come natural to me, I don't think any kind of gender or expression of such ever has for me. That's part of why it's been so hard to figure out. Cause gender simply doesn't come natural to me, and clothes don't either. It's actually known that asperger's messes with one's gender-feels, especially among females who have it, and now I think I understand why. But always running around naked and never being gendered at all in any way, doesn't really fit well with society. Especially not the being naked part. People would start complaining pretty quickly, and I'd freeze my ass off. But being a woman feels good to me, and a whole range of strongly positive emotions, everything from feeling empowered to feeling soothed, and that's what I'm mostly basing it on.

I'm so glad I finally found that love and connection to myself, but I'm sad it had to take a gender reassignment that ultimately was the opposite to what I truly needed, to find that loving connection.

Tell me again, is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?

Cause I began to love myself after I had lost myself in ways I can never regain, and that's what's causing this intense grief. So would it have been better if I had never found that self-love and instead lived a half-assed self-hating life as a trans man, never even knowing myself as a woman? No, I don't think the latter would have been better, but it's clear to me that the former is merely the lesser of two evils, and the whole fucklot of reality just pains me.

It feels cruel, but I am still glad I eventually did find that self-love. And it makes sense that the price of it was so insanely high... cause isn't it the most valuable thing you could ever get? It reminds me... although it's really fucking difficult to bring these words out of me... through hardships immeasurable and inexpressible pain... it was worth it. (Now I really want to cry.)