"It's the old narrative, the Johns Hopkins in the seventies narrative: the only people who are really trans are the people who knew explicitly from a young age, are pretty without hormones, and can't survive without transitioning. Trans women on the internet looked around and were like, well, maybe surviving for the first part of your life in the role of a cis dude is an adaptive strategy. Maybe convincing yourself that you could never transition is a defense mechanism that enabled you to survive high school, family, work-but like most defense mechanisms, it wasn't conscious, and like most defense mechanisms, it became a pattern you weren't aware of, and then, like most defense mechanisms, at some point it stopped making your life easier and started making your life harder.
Plus the world has moved on from the narrative that says being trans is something to be avoided at all costs; it's moved on from the narrative that says the only way to be trans is to be young and tiny and pretty and into men and to transition and then disappear. There's a much better understanding of what it means to be trans now: you just are trans. The fact that your transition might not go smoothly because of the shape of your body or the shape of your family or the shape of your personality or the way that your sexuality has been does not mean that therefore you can just decide not to be trans. You can't will it away. Deciding to will it away is a defense mechanism that is inevitably going to fail and you'll be back where you started: trans."
