Personally, I was thousand percent sure I wanted to transition, because I thought that was the main source of my misery, discomfort and issues.

Last year (took T for almost 10 years in total) before my last T shots I was incredibly panicky about getting them, because I absolutely didn't want anymore masculine effect on my body, or the other health risks and problems that came with it. But I had to have hormones in my system to stay healthy after a full oophorectomy.

After first half year the sort of "T high" and excitement began to fade away. Till at five year mark everything crumbled down. But I still kept going for years after it, too, because I had had the surgeries, did the social transition and all and it was really hard to admit to myself this was a mistake. And that I have understood myself and the surrounding world around me wrong.

Gender roles are subjective, as are masculine and feminine, but I took them as some sort of strict facts.

Becoming aware of the issues that had led me to grab on transition, in hopes it being a way to gain happiness and peace with myself, was hard.

Transitioning was easier for my young (ill and neurologically different) mind to comprehend: It would and did change me physically and mentally. I got further away from "past self" and the issues and pain. Transition symbolized, I suppose, a new change and a start for me. Away from the rough world of womanhood and it's pains.

Put what I thought I could shake off and leave behind only grew bigger and uglier, and I hit my worst point mentally in my life after that five years on T and surgeries.

I faced the painful past traumas, ptsd, identity issues, mental health issues, became aware of my internalized misogyny and the external. Now that I was in a different and healthier environment I began to realize how some damaging things were normalized so casually in my past social circles - or even nowadays in our culture and society. And personal struggles ofc, family, experiences, self-esteem issues and such. List is long. And most of them were not even directly linked to anything gendered. But they formed my identity, and being linked to the gender views of myself more or less.

Also men's gender roles sucked too :') I got to realize that when I began to pass. Grass is not greener on the other side. Also health issues HRT causes were not nice. The more masculine I got, the more comfortable and peace I began to be with my femininity. And being born female. Having female socialization and people who had gone through similar struggles in the system, abd with these body functions and what not.

I didn't like the negative connotations, associations and expectation laid on female/woman. But I didn't had to. Not many do.

Pre-everything, as a kid and a youngster, I was teased for looking androgynous and a masculine woman/girl. And when I was trying to perform femininity, I got teased and even laughed at. I can't win as long as I try to please others and be a stereotype (which would be impossible and uncomfortable).

Your text is relatable to me, but we're two different individuals. Only you can say, by doing self-reflectioning, perhaps with time, if transition is right choice for you.

The last part actually got me; I'm so happy to see your realization, and how enlightening it must have been to you! Reading this made me feel proud of you and happy for you. And to be honest, it made me be happy about myself as well in turn. Hearing experiences like these you can emphatize with is very powerful and healing.

Masculine looking and/or behaving, gender non-confirming women are no less of a woman. Let's embrace the various shapes and forms women comes as, instead of trying to punch people into a tiny one-size boxes of performative gender roles.

Gosh, you look stunning!? First thing that popped into my mind were all the magnificent marble sculptures. There's something really captivating in you in these photos; how you have this strength but at the same time vulnerability? Sensitiveness? Present in the images. I don't know how to put it. To me you radiate these very open and approachable vibes. Hashtag goals, to be honest.

The journey to oneself is hard and painful. So is finding a peace and balanced physical health after transition. After the HRT and surgeries and the social transition, all that jam. I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, and I wish you all the best to keep on pushing through the rough days and moments. But I also want to congratulate you for having gone through all of this, self-reflecting and everything. And having the courage to face yourself and the world, as tough as it can be.

Thrive! The world is (still, apparently) not ready for gender role and stereotype defying people. But something like makeup, fashion, colors, hobbies and interest are not gender locked.
We, people, create the social limitations for those. The most radical thing is you being yourself (not meaning you need to take a part of some sort of political activism), not giving a s*it about the narrow frames our cultures have shaped for the sexes.

I can't add anything new to this as a reply. I agree with you, I hear you and share similar thoughts and experiences with you.

I have a careful, shy, small wishful thinking that someday the issues with all of this can not be ignored and silenced anymore (which of course is tragic in a way, but I guess things always have to hit the peak of the worst case scenarios, till they are considered worthy of giving a second thought or change). Maybe it'll need someone rich and famous enough to open up about their own experience or present the facts (or the lack of them) till we can have conversations about them in general?

Detransition doesn't bring money on anyone's pockets in the same way. Maybe it'll be spoken about when someone figures out a way to monetize it?

This is honestly a really good advice and a reminder. Pride Month always makes me stressful and feel pressured to perform the queerness somehow. It doesn't help how detransition is not taken well by the big LGBTQ+ organizations, pharma, and by some loudest individuals.

2010's spike is explained by social media sites and apps.

This site's boards, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram. Nowadays the list expands to Tiktok. There's some smaller apps and forum boards, too, of course. Do I even need to mention fandom spaces?

First hand experience of that era, and in 2020's I haven't really gone back to social media.

If any researcher were allowed to study, well, all of this, they would have a field day in the tags. If professionals were made aware of the material in these sites, they would see why and how we've ended up here, into these numbers, in as short time span as this.

If all the media around me shoved down from my throat that: you have to be a hyperfeminine woman, who needs to be sexually available from as young age as possible, have money and interest to wear trendiest fast fashion, I'm being a b...h if I don't have sex with you, I'm a wh..e if I do, not allowed to have time to figure out own preferred values in life and get used to the body during and after puberty at my own pace, not let known my discomfort is not unusual for a female being, can not get help for painful female specific medical conditions, I'm being told certain colors/hobbies/interests/sexual and romantic attraction are reserved only for males, I'm told I can never be as [positive adjective here] as the other sex, My value as a human depends heavily based on my looks and that I have to achieve an impossible standard (and never age), get told I'm boring/ a bigot/-phobe if I don't have a microlabel like all the other quirky kids and young adults, if I get told I could somehow change the body that gets all this negative feedback (I then internalized due to lack of not having developed a critical filter at that age) or has gone through traumatic events, I get told if I fix my body no one (even I) don't need to dig inside my own head to face the traumatic crap because it couldn't be a cause of the discomfort, I could trade the pain for a pill

why wouldn't a tween me take the first chance to grab some and transform my life to something without all those nonsensical limits and horrible expectations? When I see a rainbow colored promised land advertised in the social media by cool kids and adults, who seem to have all of it together (with an appropriate amount of personal struggles publicly announced)? After all, there's no downsides, and if there is, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger! Or chronically ill, lose some bodily functions and abilities and quality of life, but you gotta admit it would make my future autobiography a lot more interesting.

And being uninteresting in the era of social media is the worst thing you can be guilty of.

Youngsters are desperately trying to find their place and themselves, while going through transition to adulthood. You want to belong and be socially accepted, but also be special enough that people won't lose interest in you and shut off from the group because of that.

Transition is marketed as a simple and quick solution to a complex, sociopsychological issue. And is highly profitable too. We should fix the system, not the bodies that were not wrong in the first place, imo.

Hey, just wanted to drop by and say how relatable and similar your experience seems like to mine. I did not, however, began transition that young, so I do not have any medical advice on that matter.

Sorry for what's coming next being long, sidetracking and being very simplified in a way it might seem even blunt, but I thought maybe there's something familiar which could make you feel less alone with struggling with these issues (hopefully more people will reach out to you to share their knowledge and experience):

Changes makes me uncomfortable, especially when it feels like there's no time to adapt, or I can't keep up with others or understand them. Puberty was absolutely horrible. While my classmates made a celebration about becoming adult, growing breasts and having periods, it was the opposite for me: I wasn't ready to jump on the world of adults what the enviroment of minr seemed to imply I had to do now. The body and mind and people changed too fast, and it was scary, foreign and uncomfortable. The pressures to perform femininity to be accepted socially, while having a bit more masculine physical features that confused ppl didn't help much.

What I know now, twenty years later, after meeting and seeing a lot more different woman is that I was just like the other girls.

Few of us are a stereotype of a woman. Few of us enjoys painful, waterfall like periods, not everyone wants kids, many has body dysmorphia, not all like being sexualized without own will, most don't like being overlooked just because they happened to born with certain chromosomes and set of genitals. Not many enjoys misogynia, or recognize internalizing it.

Autism made me, or still does, feel desparate to fulfill and match a certain role. Probably to fit in and to kind of know that I'm doing something right. As in not hurting anyone, being useful, being succesful at least one thing and performing it well, not being a burden to anyone, for example. So hearing often I did something like boys or that I looked like a boy -> Something is wrong with me, as these aspects makes me stand out, therefore fail performing the femininity in a socislly right way -> I fail at this thing -> I'm a failure -> I need to fix myself and match the expectation, they must be right if ppl keep saying this. Also, who can like a girl or a woman like this? Foolish me didn't know much outside gay men and heterosexuality back then, because nothing else got much visibility on mass media, like masculine women or lesbian relationships, so that contributed to feeling of not belonging and being somehow wrong, too. Transgenderism being summarized into "gendered brain" (debunked now) and "transition or you'll kill yourself" (setting a self fulfilling prophecy) back in my days were common and wide spread thoughts, which also didn't help, as they set a feeling of deathly urgency and doom on things.

Transition was easier concept for me to understand and emotionally to deal with and comprehend. Coming to conclusion I just had dysphoria didn't challenge me to face my traumas, psychological, body image and social issues and such in a hard way; I just needed to cut parts of me off and I would be healed, 'cause dysphoria was to be blamed for everything. No need to explore and explain what it was and where it came from, and how much external factors actually affects on my internal perception of myself and the world, or change my current way of understanding myself, thought patterns and world outside.

So it felt a lot easier to deal with (and quick), less scarier and easier to comprehend than going into a rough psychological therapy and start face everything painful.

You do seem to have taken good rational steps though, to untie the knots and taking a deep dive into yourself with the decision of reaching out to get therapist. I wish you'll find someone you can work with and feel comfortable! Unpacking all the things, past, feelingd, being brutally honest with oneself is going to be tough and can take time till the puzzle pieces find their places, and healing (and therapy progress) is not like a linear line going forward; sometimes you can get what it feels like a full stop, even backwards, back and forth... But I wish you can be patient and emphathetic for yourself, if you find yourself in moments like those.

I feel you, I feel and currently label myself like you describe here as well.

I at times wonder if a different kind of social circles or a profession would help to improve my mental health and things on this part, because I really would like to forget being stressed and obsess about this.

Things used to be more like just things before I became aware of the concept of transgender. Now I feel like everything has took steps backwards instead of forward, in a way if I do, say prefer, look or like something that's masculine I can't be a woman or a female, because those are things men typically do. Like I have to be trans man or non-binary at least, I gotta be some sort of trans because I'm not a stereotype of my gender. My gender non-conformity and me not fitting into misogynistic traditional views of a woman is something that needs to be medicalized away, or I need to make an identity out of.

I wish professionals would have taught or encouraged me to love and respect myself, to allow myself to be me. Not affirm and feed my hate and internalized misogyny and old views of performing gender roles. Like being a butch in these days is so rare, because god forbid, masculinity is reserved for men only. I don't lift heavy weights with a penis, but with my hands. I don't wear pants to imitate a man, but because they're comfortable and practical. I didn't choose this masculine facial bone structure, I was born with it.

The censorship and banning of certain huge and important topics is scary, like there's no room for nuance or alternative ways to approach things, not even a possibility to have a conversation.

I have been thinking how much normalization, representation of masculine women - not just young tomboys - would have helped me to be okay the way I was born, having features that are called and categorizes as masculine.

It's as other's have pointed out, masculinity is considered undesirable on woman. And generally often thought to be only exclusive to men, and men only, I thought so for a long time too because of how I was treated in a school environment, and as I saw in media and in society all around me. Maybe it's a sexuality related thing, maybe it's seen as a threat, maybe it's our culture and the f'd up beauty standards for women and how one who fails to perform them well, isn't seen as woman, but something less worthy. I mean, if a woman isn't desirable and seen as a potential sex partner or an sexual object, what is she good for anyways? /s

I don't want to be a walking political statement with my existence, but I guess it's time for me to become the person a kid me would have needed to see.