forreal though not every trans or genderqueer person redacts their whole life once they realize their gender. the ‘i always knew i was a boy/girl, i was never ever the gender assigned to me at birth, not at all, not in any way’ narrative is very true for some people, but that story’s positioning as the only correct non-transphobic way to describe trans people’s lived experiences silences a lot of people who have very different (and less simple and convenient) journeys to their final identity.
some men were girls. some women were boys. that’s how they feel and it’s important to me that they’re respected for it and not scolded for telling the stories of their lives wrong just because other people can’t (or don’t want to) relate. there are so many different ways to grow up trans and to be trans, that someone’s life is always going to be totally alien to someone else, a total contradiction to their own experiences.
that should be okay. we should all be okay with it. no one narrative about any group of people should be the very definition of all of those people. activism needs to respect diversity of people’s lives, stories, and agency, or it’s just more useless shouting at people who have enough to fucking deal with already.
