I think I’m enby now, but I always just thought I was weird, and people certainly told me so a lot. To be fair, I’ve always been pretty contradictory and would seek to enjoy things that others disliked or couldn’t understand. A lot of unusual fashion and music.

At some point as an adult and through a confluence of elements of my life, I opened the “gender is a social construct” box and I realized that in my mind I haven’t been passing as a man for a while, and I don’t really need to try. I can just be myself. Still a lot of unusual tastes, but they’re mine.

Repression. I never hated being my birth gender, but there was 100% a whole other half of me that I tried to hold back out of fear. That half of me was the half that knew what I wanted to wear and what I wanted my voice to sound like, all that stuff.

The only thing I ever did for that half of me (until I was in my 20s) was grow my hair out, because that’s socially acceptable for men. I was envious of people like Jaden Smith for wearing skirts, and of the women around me, both for dressing how I couldn’t and for being able to dress like a boy and still be pretty.

Tbh I haven’t gotten over that fear to this day.

I was afraid. Still am. Basically I learned at a young age expressing my preferred gender would cause me harm, and that it would be terrible if anyone ever found out about it. I was aware that there was something I desperately wanted to feel but was terrified to face or understand it. So I constructed ways to access that feeling in a cheap and pornographic manner that barely satisfied the need. Fortunately I realized I can feel it any time I want by just telling myself, “I’m a girl.” or when people use feminine pronouns. It took me forty years to figure it out.

Repression. I fought most my life, telling myself my thoughts and feelings were wrong while also finding outlets that felt “safe” and telling myself that was it, I just needed a way to get the thoughts out and they’d go away. Anything and everything was a way to stave off the thoughts about myself, my desires, and my own needs.

It’s taken me time to really accept it, but it’s more than a dislike. I was fucking miserable identifying myself as a man. Looking back now, all I get in my head is Edgar, from Men in Black. Ill-fitting, angry, and ugly(more mentally/emotionally than physically).

Repression. I had some thoughts that aren’t cis at all but in my mind possibility to be trans just didn’t exist and I had execuses for those thoughts. Society played big part there. In country where I live a lot of people are anti LGBT and whole community is missrepresented. Because of that I didn’t know what being trans actually means. After I actually learned about gender identity and gender dysphoria it took me some time to start questioning, while I realized that what I previously thought wasn’t true it still made me repress. I’m not sure how to answer 2nd question because I never really thought about my gender before my questioning phase, it was just a neutral thing to me, but I did feel like I’m different than most boys I knew.

It was mostly not knowing that I would like being a girl. Before I was an adult, I never considered that being femme would be something that I might like. Even when I considered it to be an option, I legitimately couldn’t figure out how I felt about it. I don’t recall ever thinking that it was what I wanted, only being very interested in other people crossdressing.

Thanks to my autism, I need to observe myself like I’m observing another person to figure out what I’m feeling or what I want. I look at my behavior, physiological responses, thought patterns, and the context to figure out how I feel. I have wants, but I struggle to know what they are. I knew I hated something about myself, but not what it was.

I questioned myself so much because I didn’t want to be a girl consciously as a kid, but after enough experimentation, I finally realized what I wanted. It took me longer to realize that I fucking hated being male. I feel so much happier as a woman than I expected would ever be possible. I never really felt alive until I realized who I was.

I’m as cis as it gets and I’ve often thought about being a pretty girl not because I feel like I’m a girl but because I’m starved for positive affirmation and would love to actually experience that for once.

But really though. Dresses look fun. If I had a body to pull it off, maybe I’d give it a go.

But I don’t think I could deal with even more social ridicule than I already face lol

that’s just the egg phase