"you can totally just choose another name, people do it all the time"
"yeah try out any pronouns! doesn't matter if you're cis, you can be called what you like!"
"oh damn, I love that hairstyle/haircut/outfit"
"yeah, why not play around with drag or costumes, it's fun. let me know if you need help finding good quality bras/breastforms/binders/packers"
"you can totally go on hormones if you want, like technically we're all already producing hormones in our bodies, so if you wanna try out different hormone ratios you could talk to an endocrinologist about it"
"even if you're cis you can get top surgery if it makes you feel good, there's no rules about who is 'allowed' to have larger or smaller chests."
"it's totally cool if you don't think you're cis but you're not ready to use the term trans. use whatever labels you want or none, it's chill"
"you don't need to pick apart all your memories to justify what you want your life to be, it's enough to just want what you want for your own life"
"thank you for trusting me with that, I'll support you no matter what"
"who do you want me to use that name/those pronouns around?"
"hell yeah, so proud of you for realizing that about yourself"
we sometimes joke about how cis people entering a trans friend group often "become" trans, but on a serious note, just having a social context where, when you do stuff for yourself that feels good, you are met with reaffirmed friendship & confidence boosts, that's inherently going to help you become more comfortable identifying as trans if you are trans. and another great thing is it also helps people realize they can be as gender nonconforming as they want & still be cis if that's what feels right too.
it's win/win to have friends who are cool about gender-- everyone is better off when we can make decisions about our own bodies without fear of social ostracism.
consistent acceptance (& encouragement) of radical gender nonconformity is always going to make our relationships with each other safer and more fulfilling.
to be affirmed by friends in any context is wonderful, but to be affirmed by friends in a context where you are feeling vulnerable & still learning about yourself and yet you still consistently feel genuinely understood and believed about yourself by those friends is profound.
