It is absolutely ridiculous. Most trans people with genuine gender dysphoria don't like the idea of being seen as a 'man with a vulva' or a 'woman with a penis'. It's actually woke transphobia lol. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that men and women are different.

I do still talk to her on occasion as she used to be one of my best friends, but for now I kind of just have her as a follower and see her posts every now and then, and each one just confuses me more than upsets me. I guess a part of me just worries about those sentiments becoming mainstream? There's already been erasure of certain gendered experiences or words in order to appease a minority, I just get to thinking, what else is coming? But I am also mentally ill with a history of OCD and anxiety, lol. Not a good combo altogether.

You're super pretty, I love that dress, too! I'm happy that you were able to finally get away from the borderline propaganda. There are indeed a lot of freaks online, especially Tumblr... literally half of Tumblr now is just MTF making up really creepy sexual scenarios, at least from my experience 😐

I love this so much, I agree wholeheartedly with everything. Thank you for sharing your story.

You will undoubtedly get pushback, I lost nearly everyone I thought was a friend when I desisted (even though I never medically transitioned), but I also don't regret anything that I said when I did.

I also have BPD so I struggle even feeling like a human being sometimes, let alone a specific gender. That definitely didn't help in my case. There needs to be more mental health awareness for cases like these (especially where assault is involved), and more care put into them instead of just treating visits like a family doctor checkup where they leave with body and mind altering drugs.

Ultimately I'm glad that you managed to find your happiness after all 🫶 that's the most important part of this awful journey. I only hope more people are able to come to the same conclusion and that this madness ends very soon.

Yeah being in art circles is tough because they are, in my experience, populated mostly by extremists. Literally 80% of the Western/European artists I used to follow on social media would constantly post about trans rights or politics (even ones not in their own country), or were trans themselves and made it very apparent in their art (drawing characters as trans despite them not being so canonically) or having huge DNI lists/virtue signaling in their bios, and it got irritating. I now follow almost exclusively Asian artists because of that...

Just know you're definitely not alone in feeling overwhelmed by it. I almost feel like I have to hide my interests because I don't want to be lumped in with the gender extremists.

I see. And yeah I was kind of rude about the shaming looking back on it. Wasn't meaning to be. It's just something I feel strongly about. To me, bottom surgery isn't even comparable to breast implants, because that's not giving yourself a gaping hole between your legs that has to be routinely dilated or else it'll close up and fester 😅 Just my opinion though.

I am somewhat glad that bottom surgery isn't used on minors though, like other forms of gender affirming surgery. That was one thing I'd thought about but didn't want to dig deep into again. It makes me wonder how often they're actually done each year?

I can imagine. Whenever I seen cases, I feel like most of them were of MTF, only seen a few FTM and they looked awful, way worse than the neovaginas, like just straight up tubes of skin between their legs... it creeps me out even thinking about it. But honestly with how fucked up the medical industry is right now with all of the trans stuff being so heavily pushed on everyone even remotely questioning or struggling, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if some doctors or surgeons get a sick kick out of transitioning people.

In my experience when I was going through what I thought was dysphoria, it went away shortly after I actually matured. Mine was literally just a phase, one that was partly brought on by me being friends with other "trans" people and being lured into those circles. Not sure how it is for you, but my dysphoria started as a kind of 'I'm not a stereotypical girly girl' and escalated once I met the 'egg' crowd online.

The best advice I can give is to acknowledge that for a lot of teens, it is a phase, or peer pressure, and that it may go away with time. A lot of people these days are shamed for not being a stereotype and because of that, there's been an ungodly large increase in people who identify as trans that, without the internet and modern influence, likely would've just been gender non-comforming.

If you specifically feel like transitioning as a way to feel 'feminine' you can also just try being a feminine guy. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, no matter what society says.

As far as fighting the thoughts, you can look up strategies on how to fight intrusive thoughts which is essentially what they are. I hope that helps :)

Yeah, as I mentioned before I feel like it shouldn't even be an option, because of how dangerous and honestly pointless the surgery is. It feels like people are just turning vulnerable into Frankenstein's monster so that they can continue having an even more expensive forever patient. All I see when I look at bottom surgery, I just see doctors making bank. Not helping people.

That's exactly how I feel too. The need to have a label on everything has just made people feel more pressured to conform to gender stereotypes, and if they don't, then something must be wrong with them, they must be different. And now there's so many labels, and ones that are overused and not used correctly, that most of them don't even have meaning anymore. It irks me so much