why i call myself transfem as someone in a perisex afab body
i noticed that there's a lot of assumptions that go around whenever a system member in an afab body calls themselves transfem that dont apply to me. i also noticed that nobody ever talks about my experiences or even considers them so i guess im gonna have to be the one to talk about it
i think the first assumption that gets on my nerves is that i just formed as a woman with a penis and "decided to be transfem" (or reduce/d transfemhood down to "woman with penis") when i formed as a guy. (i know some trans people think of themselves as always being their current gender, even in my own system. i find the language of changing genders to be more comfortable to my journey)
i did have to go through the full journey of figuring out that im a woman and not a man. i did have to ask myself the hard questions. it's uncomfortable when people ignore that i have had a transition and it was towards femininity and womanhood
the next assumption is that we havent gone through t-dominant puberty or have finished e-dominant puberty. the effects of 5 years of testosterone on my body starting from the age of 16 dont give a shit that im a woman. i dont think they make me less of a woman either but i know i don't pass as one to outsiders. even in a wig and mask and dress, i get asked my pronouns the moment i speak. it probably doesnt help that my preferred names are traditionally masculine, but they're still my names when i dont conform to their cultural connotations
and its frustrating as fuck to not have accurate resources on (de)transitioning medically and to have to go off of mtf timelines and experiences for some semblance of an idea. its frustrating to be in a grey area of "transfem but not bodily mtf" and want to talk about shared experiences and ask for relevant advice but to not know how to navigate the fact that there are experiences that we don't share without making the conversation about nonshared experiences.
its also frustrating to be in the grey area of "trans and detrans". none of us hate our body but i hate the way its percieved. i dont regret testosterone or the extra body hair or the deepened voice or the sharper bones or the larger calves. i didnt form before we had these traits and its been so long that i cant remember what it was like beforehand.
this is just what my body looks like right now. this is just what i look like right now and it's important to me that i don't forget that just because i also look like my innerworld appearance. im not just my body, but my body is part of me.
i do use detransfem/retransfem/transfem fairly interchangeably for myself as opposed to exclusively using transfem, but i don't see discourse over the other labels in system spaces so i dont feel any need to defend my use of em
