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do you think youve experienced #RapidOnsetGenderDysphoria? do you have a child or friend that you think may have #ROGD? i lived w #rogd for 3 years believing i wasnt a girl bc the #transcult told me i didn’t have to be. i wanna answer any questions u have abt #ROGD or #beingtrans
also if you’re too nervous to message or reply to me you can ask at my curiouscat! i don’t bite, i promise. :-) curiouscat.me/guessimafab
the basics: id been “part of the LGBT community” (aka, i ID’d as bi and was active on tumblr) thru of high school. i’d been a tomboy when i was young, had a sexuality crisis in middle school, and went thru HS as a “regular girl”- i wasnt feminine, but wasn’t gender nonconforming.
i often joked to my friends & on my twitter account that i “wish i had been born a boy” bc i “just didn’t GET being a girl”! i was a theater kid but not a “weird kid”, i was well-liked & all of my friends were either straight girls or gay boys- nearly all of whom i crushed on.
the boy i was seeing from the end of my senior year of high school through to the beginning of my second year of college was a jerk, but i thought i loved him. he policed what i acted and looked like to the point where i feared that if i cut or dyed my hair, he would dump me.
as he grew less interested in me towards the end of our relationship i could tell, & i began to panic. i just wanted to be someone he could be attracted to/into. when he ended things, i asked what i could do to make him change his mind. he said nothing, he just didn’t want me.
over the next six months, i alternated between deep, isolating self-loathing and rebounding with my (same) ex, though i knew i shouldn’t have, and would end up sleeping with him every few weeks even though i knew he didn’t want to get back together, which didn’t allow me to grow.
we broke up in september, i saw him periodically until march. in this time i first cut my hair into a bob (after days of agonizing fearing i’d be ugly) & it felt amazing. in nov., i discovered “non-binary gender identities” & started to research.
a look: TW for self harm ment
a look: TW for self harm ment
this is the time when my memories get a little foggy. i can’t tell you exactly what i was thinking. i just kept reading and internalizing all of the ideas that the #transcult stressed: it didn’t matter if i’d never had sex dysphoria, i could still be not cis, and that was valid.
& anyway, i’d never liked my large breasts, so maybe that HAD been dysphoria & i didn’t realize. the community said so. i was still VERY wary/nervous, hadn’t told anyone i felt this way til i joined a club in college where i met my first “trans person” (imo, another girl w ROGD).
she identified as “agender” and used they/them pronouns. the meeting was the first time i had to do a pronoun circle. i was meeting these people for the first time and had a chance to start over and be a new person. so when it came around to me, i said my pronouns were they/them.
no one questioned me. i took a deep breath. okay, so that felt fine. when they addressed me they used they/them pronouns. i considered how it made me feel: i didn’t mind it. i told them i was still “exploring my gender identity” & they all affirmed that & told me to take my time.
i continued to “research”. i got deeper into the online theory. my friends from the club & i went to an week-long event together that was INCREDIBLY trans-positive. i’d been thinking abt my discomfort w my female name, & they encouraged me to “try a new name” just for the event.
so i did. the name i chose was androgynous, not exclusively male, & i began to introduce myself by it. it felt... cool, i didn’t have to think about who i was or had been, which all felt tied to my female name. i could create an entirely new identity for myself, & it was “valid”.
while i was at this event i met a straight guy i started to like. i told him i was non-binary, so not a girl, & he was like “okay cool no biggie”. we started to date about a month later, and over the next six more months or so i “explored my gender identity”, with his “support”.
i cut my hair into a pixie and started to wear men’s/neutral clothes more and my bf still liked me! he said he’d like me no matter what! it felt amazing, like coming home after i’d been dressing up and playing the part of a feminine girl for my previous boyfriend for so so long.
this was the case, w my “NB” identity, til fall ‘16 when i transferred to living away at a new college. i started to feel stressed abt my identity. i knew no one would take me seriously as a “nb” person or see me as anything other than a girl. i didn’t WANT to be seen as a girl.
i looked to the #transcult. apparently, some non-binary people went by male pronouns! it didnt mean they were MEN (i’d insisted to myself since the beginning that there was no way i was a MAN, bc men were trash, and why would i wanna be one of them?). cool! i changed my pronouns.
my bf was cool with it. he knew i wasn’t MALE or anything so it didn’t threaten his sexuality or masculinity. the pronoun change REALLY amped me up. i was living in “gender neutral LGBT housing” on campus and we put our pronouns on our dorm room door. every day it was a reminder.
after a few weeks the anxiety i was experiencing from having my family unaware of my feelings & situation really started to weigh on me but i KNEW they would NOT understand being non-binary. once, i’d tried to talk to them about the agender girl i knew - they were lost (& amused)
but i felt SO MUCH BETTER & more comfortable in my appearance & my mannerisms using he/him pronouns & ~being trans. i decided if i had any chance of them accepting me i had to play it like i was a Trans Man, bc it was a narrative they knew. which leads to:
and then:
(come back to this thread when you’re done reading these links, i’m not done!)
(come back to this thread when you’re done reading these links, i’m not done!)
bc my parents hadn’t affirmed me & i’d left in a fit, all of my friends & the community were HUGELY affirmative following my “coming out”. luckily, i have amazing (non-bigoted) parents who assured me that they loved me & wanted me to be happy, they just believed i was mistaken.
i thought i was okay w my life. i had a bf who told me w/e i wanted to hear- when i caught him flirting w a girl, he insisted it was a mistake & it wouldn’t happen again (it would). i asked if it was bc i wasn’t a girl/feminine for him & he insisted no (it was). so i forgave him.
he was the only support i had/cared about at the time, bc i was hurt by my parents. i was terrified he‘d realize he didn’t want to be w a trans guy and leave me for a pretty girl. i was up his ass constantly looking for approval that it was okay for me to be who i wanted to be.
literally all i ever thought about was him and my gender. i lived away at school until may, either holed up in my dorm room on tumblr/leftbook or driving to my bf’s place to hang w him and our friends (his group of friends that i slid into). my isolation & depression was growing.
the weekend b4 i moved home for the summer, i caught him flirting with another girl. i forgave him again but it pushed my stress level over the edge & sent me into the worst gastrointestinal pain i’ve ever had & have been dealing w since. i had to have surgery when i came home.
so i lived home all summer, recovering from surgery, depressed, anxious, feeling misunderstood & disrespected by my parents. i had a lot of time on my hands. i started watching testosterone videos on youtube. i started thinking about what it would be/feel like to pass as a man.
i have ADHD, and have been unmediated my entire life. i got incredibly hyperfocused on watching testosterone videos. they were all happy. they all looked... like i wanted to look. they all talked about how being on T made them confident, self assured, comfortable in themselves.
my parents, seeing how depressed i had been, & having not had the past year while i was away to spend a lot of time with me, tried to understand. my mom reached out to a coworker whose son is trans and she was put in touch with my gender therapist.
i discuss this more in the replies to ^ that tweet, but i was SOOOOO THRILLED when i looked into who the therapist was. i knew this meant i’d won- he had diagnosed my mom’s friend’s child with GD and connected him w a doctor to prescribe T. i felt like i was set.
here i talk about my experience accessing hormones.
id moved in w my bf by the time i was able to get my appt for T. my family finally was happy for me. they watched me do my first shot on facetime & we all clapped. i think what ‘helped’ them was me insisting i was a Gay Man & that my femininity while young was me being a gay boy.
that was that: i was on testosterone. my bf swore he would still be attracted to me, at this point we were constantly saying we were gay together & we were gonna get gay married one day and live happily ever after. but the longer i was on T the less into me he was, i could tell.
which was difficult for me. i WAS happy w the changes T was giving me but my experience wasn’t as intense as a lot of ppl i knew. i have PCOS (my natural T levels are high), & i told myself that maybe i was always meant to be testosterone-dominant, i was just “in between” before.
all in all we latsted 9 months after i started T before he ended things. the way things ended were really bad, he was incredibly manipulative and gaslighted me for weeks before dumping me for a girl i’d considered a friend who looked exactly like i looked before i transitioned.
i moved home. thank god, thank god, thank god for my family. i really don’t know what i would have done or how i would have fared if my family wasn’t so incredibly loving, understanding, and patient with me as i healed from what i’d been through and reconciled the past 3 years.
one day i’ll get into my experience of reconciling and coming to terms with my body and my identity and myself. but i think this has gone on long enough for now and i’ve covered all of the important points wrt my #ROGD.
thank you all for reading, and please, ask me anything. 💛
thank you all for reading, and please, ask me anything. 💛
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