let me tell you a story. it's a long one, but its important.
throughout my life, I was always a tomboy, I disliked dresses and always fit in more with the guys than I did with the girls. and I never thought much of it, because i was just a kid. I was bullied heavily in grades like 4 and 5, and it was very damaging. I went home crying every single day and I hated my life and who I was.
in grades 6 and 7, I had a lot of Male friends, I was into gaming and was introduced to some older dudes who were mutual friends that grew very close to me, stuck up for me and treated me like they cared about me. they'd tell me I'm mature for my age and they tried wanted me to do things that werent explicitly sexual to me then, but are now. one was 21, he would ask me to go in the rain with a white shirt and a dark bra and show him. he would tell me that I'm cute. the other one was 17, he wasn't as nice to me. he made me promise him that when I was 18 I'd come lay on a couch with him because he didnt like that I was sad. once i started to question if i even liked guys, they both stopped talking to me. one of them even continued to come telling me that I had changed and that's why he hated me. up until last year hed harass me every once and a while.
I started to distance myself from my femininity and my life because I hated it. I was disgusted. beyond belief. I was on the internet and decided that it fit to identify as genderfluid, since I never steadily felt masc but always hated myself enough to misplace it as dysphoria. I was out at school as gay already and then genderfluid too. I went by a different name and they/them pronouns and forced people to refer to me as such.
a year later, I was more depressed, in a heavily abusive relationship and didnt know who I was. I was unsafely binding my chest often, hardly eating and hurting myself. I didnt want to live. I thought I was trans since I hated the way my body looked unless I wasnt feminine at all. it hid who I was. I identified this way for about a year.
fast forward to grade 10 now, things were clearing up slightly, I was only binding often and the only actual dysphoria I felt was social. I realized that I hated my body but it wasnt because I was trans. I was starting to eat again, it had been a while since I hurt myself and things werent fantastic but they were something.
in grade 10 I started dating my boyfriend, and we have been together since. he has helped me love myself and realize that it's okay to be feminine. currently, I still go by they/them and ID as nonbinary. and I feel confident with that.
one of the reasons I hated myself so much was because I was trying to be something I wasnt. i misplaced my self hatred and gave myself actual dysphoria because i thought i was trans. it is so important that if you do not feel dysphoria at all that you DO NOT transition !!! its okay to be GNC but that doesnt mean you're transgender.
thank you for coming to my Ted talk. good night.
