When cis ppl come asking questions about “what’s it like being trans”, I always approach the general sociological early life tone like this. Imagine you are a girl. Imagine the CIA or whatever has Truman Show’d everyone into treating you as a boy, from birth. They did it so well that the people around you are also Truman Show’d. They don’t know that you’re a girl, you don’t know you’re a girl, everyone is completely confidant you are a boy. Somehow, you develop as a boy. Everything is as usual. Except, you behave weird. For unexplainable reasons. Every peer you encounter during socially formative years can sniff that something is up. As you get older, the scope of that “something” narrows, for reasons no one can really explain, it just does. It’s not obvious unless all the pieces are laid out, and no one, including you, even knows there’s much of a puzzle to be solved. But anxieties are building. Social dynamics start to stack year after year, people notice oddities, rumors, teasing. Over what? They think you’re girly? What’s girly about you? You’re not girly, you’re shy. Girly? Never. You just take after mom a bit since you’re always clinging behind her and copying her social mannerisms. What do you mean most boys copy their dad? I mean, that’s probably generally true but come on this is a bunch of crap. They’re just being mean being you’re kind of an outcast. There’s nothing girly about you, in fact, you don’t even like being around girls! Girls have the opposite issue than the other boys do! With the boys you’re clumsy and the way they interact just seems unstrained and like they’re all already friends somehow. With the girls, you almost seem to get along too well, atleast at first, until they start talking about girl stuff and you don’t know anything about girl stuff and then one of them asks why’s there’s a boy over here and you try to say you just like this area better and then they’re all saying ew and pointing at you.
So whatever. You go home and you don’t tell anyone about this but you do go to your room and you think about it for a minute because you just can’t figure out how you’re supposed to be friends with girls or guys or both when you can’t seem to get along with either. This whole subject is stupid anyway, it’s not like anyone can control which one they are, it’s not like it’s possible to do anything about it, so why exclude anyone. It’s unfair and it’s stupid and people are stupid and you don’t understand them and they don’t understand you and it’s been like this every single year in school and you decide to just embrace being a loner. Both groups aré stupid, I mean, bodies are embarrassing anyways. You don’t think anyone really likes their bodies or how they look, that’s why fashion and style and products and accessories and makeup exist.
And then you’ll limbo in that for a few years until you begin having the onset of puberty, and so it everyone else. As per magic Truman show, you’re developing as a young man would, and you hate it. Sure when that height started going up and those first few hairs popped up, you were excited! Maybe that’s the secret after all, normal puberty stuff will do its magic and you’ll start liking it! You just don’t like being a kid and that’s why you’re so sensitive to people calling you small or little or weak and maybe the added macho will get rid of that pesky shyness. This all of course comes crashing down the moment you lock eyes with yourself in the mirror and feel a knot. A sinking, slimy throated, palms trembling suddenly knit in your stomach. For a second, you can’t breath. You look different. You… hate it. You absolutely hate it. Wave after wave of self revulsion start welling up. You place your fingers on the mirror and it almost doesn’t seem like you. In fact you almost look. Less like you than ever. Like a direction that is only sadder. It dawns on you, that this, this is not normal. This is by no means normal. All that time sitting in your room was not normal. Being unable to maintain any friends in any more than one-on-one format is not normal. The way you think skirts probably feel nice to wear isn’t normal. You’re fixation on gender as a major social force beyond what the people around you seem to infer is. Not. Normal.
So you panic. Maybe not all at once. You google things then close a tab. Maybe you see some fiction concept exploring the themes of gender. Maybe you start tinkering with that fashion, try to find a way to alleviate this weird problem, you won’t be a normal guy you’ll be doing-their-own-thing types, that loner thing you’ve been doing but try a positive spin, maybe really try to land a few jokes and just disarm people by dressing edgy and acting friendly yet distant. Maybe it works maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you get a friend group of weirdos going and it’s kinda chill, for like the first time ever. It’s all great until the fuckers start dating. Great, cooties part two, the part where everyone wants the cooties. The idea is revolting… not because of them, but. The idea of anyone being like that… with you… liking your body… suddenly you bolt up. You’re leaving, before you cry with no explanation. Someone jokes about if you’re jealous and if you liiiike her and you start blowing up at your friends, angry in a way you really cannot justify to them. The tenseness starts to go down until someone jokes that maybe you’d rather be with the guy. One especially jackass friend jokes maybe you’d be the girl in the relationship. You leave. You punch a tree on your way home. When you get home, it’s racing thoughts. Your carefully constructed social life is ruined, in a flash. Even your only friends would joke like that about you, that’s so disrespectful and disgusting. But… most people would have just shrugged it off. Why… why can’t you stop crying… why can’t you look in any mirrors. Why can’t you swim without a shirt on. Why do you have to look like this and sound like this. Why do people perceive you this way and pick at how you talk and act. Who wouldn’t wish to be a girl. Why couldn’t you have just been a girl. Why can’t you just fucking be a girl. If only you could just be a girl
That’s not a thing…, right…..?
For the sake of my hands I’ll cut that off there. This is more or less how my own experience was, minus the religious parts and other more personal / traumatic aspects. For the record, traumas like what I’ve omitted from above are very commonplace for trans girls, I just don’t want to over-relate my specifics. When I walk it through like this, most of my cis friends were able to really actually kinda get it, far more than most cis ppl I encounter even within queer spaces.
