Everyone is saying the exact same thing I am but I hope one more voice might help reassure you to think your decisions through.

Just picture this: You’re having a terrible day, you got caught in the rain, nothing is going your way so you’re in a terrible mood and sex is the last thing on your mind. In that moment, do you ALSO want to be a man that looks like a woman?

My point is, there are silicone breast forms, there are entire silicone bodysuits now that can allow you to look down and see the body of a woman. You can get wigs, makeup, whatever your heart desires. But you can enjoy yourself, and then take those things off. Transition permanently changes your body, negatively effects your health, and it might not even give you the traits you desire. If you want the face of a woman? HRT won’t give you that. If you want the voice of a woman? HRT won’t give you that. Do you want to be a social outcast? HRT WILL give you that. Based on what you describe in your post, it sounds like you have a fetish and I really hope you don’t let it ruin your life.

I distinctly remember being seven years old on my computer, hearing about Jazz Jenning, and thinking: “I wish I could be trans so I could be a boy.”
Three years later when I was ten years old I started identifying as trans after one of my online friends told me I was probably trans.

The indoctrination is insane. I remember, like seven or eight years ago, one of my older Internet friends said that detransitioners were never really trans and shouldn’t be part of the equation because otherwise they wouldn’t have detransitioned. And I just took that as fact, and repeated it to other people.

When the fog broke, I was left evaluating so many statements that I took as fact and realizing I never had ANY logic or evidence to back them up.

I’ve never thought about this before but you’re right. When I identified as a man, I completely disconnected myself from my face and body. I retreated into video game fandom communities on Discord, and from there made friends who said I acted like one of the male characters, and from then on I absorbed that into my identity, hardly took selfies or spent time looking at my face anymore, and I seriously pictured myself as that video game character. When I tried to picture myself I would picture a pixelated drawing of a male.

When I started identifying as a woman again, the hardest part was understanding my face and body again. It took me about a year to be able to picture my own face and body in my head, and it took me six months before I felt like I could even SEE my face and body. It’s like there was a mental block stopping me from seeing myself, I categorized my body and face as a temporary form that would soon be replaced with that of a man.

I’ve always wondered where the feelings I had during childhood came from and trying to unpack that has been a difficult part of my journey because I feel like most of the things that triggered my urge to transition happened around the age of nine. I was outwardly always a very stereotypically feminine kid, I loved fashion, I called myself a diva, and my favorite color was pink. At the same time, though, from the age of six when I got access to the internet the first time, I “wanted to be trans.” I learned about trans people and thought to myself that I wished I was trans more than anything so I could be a boy. I stumbled across the part of early-2000s internet where people claimed to be posting magic spells online and every night I would find as many gender changing spells as I could and read them out with the specific hope that I would wake up in the morning having always been a boy and nobody would think anything was weird about that. During this time, I only used male video game avatars and the idea that the people I was playing with thought I was a boy made me absolutely giddy.

I didn’t think I would say this until checking back, but the shorter hair does make you look more feminine. Or at least more your age. I know that you say your face structure isn’t right for makeup, but have you experimented with some of the subtle makeup looks you might see on masculine lesbians? I hope none of this is too blunt because I’m trying to offer the kind of honest opinion without sugarcoating I wish I could get about my appearance, but anyways. When I picture the first image with more prominent eyelashes and something to color the lips, it’s easier to read you as a very masculine woman. I do think makeup with the longer hair may feed your fear of looking like you’re mtftm, but it might work with a short feminine haircut.

I went on to repress this, lost contact with all of my female role models at the age of nine, and at the age of ten I told a friend how I felt about my body after being abused and she told me that maybe what I was experiencing was “gender dysphoria”, which sent me fully down the pipeline.

I’m a feminine woman who still experiences heavy gender dysphoria.

I wouldn’t say I’ve completely disconnected from my “male” persona. I really enjoy taking on the “male” role during sex, I still enjoy my traditionally masculine hobbies, I experience autoandrophilia, and I retained a lot of the personality traits I picked up in male social circles.

But, I have long hair, I love to do my makeup, eyebrows, and keep myself clean shaven. I like to wear dresses, skirts, and very feminine clothing. My favorite color is pink and almost everything in my bedroom is pink. I want to work from home, have children, and care for my family someday.

Some of my feminine traits feel authentic to me, some don’t. I’ve been obsessed with fashion ever since I learned the word and I was intensely jealous of the way girls my age dressed when I identified as a man, so I know I’m expressing myself authentically with my clothing and hair. But I don’t do my makeup the way I really want to do it, and I don’t wear my hair the way I really want to wear it. I’m overcompensating for years of being treated as a genderless outcast by trying to become the perfect woman.

My gender dysphoria is still so intense that I get angry at the men in my life for being men, and I have to take a break from being around them. I start crying and hitting my head on the wall when I hear men talk about how women have it easy. I want to dig my nails into my arms and rip all of the wiring out when a man who is close to me overlooks or underplays one of the horrible parts of being a woman. And even beyond disliking being a woman, in my fantasy of an ideal life, I’m a hypermasculine male. I play sports, I crack jokes openly without waiting for my turn to speak, I could have helped my family in highschool by doing blue collar work, I can look in the mirror and see pecs and hair and a beautiful jawline, and I can flirt with any woman I want under the assumption that she’s straight.

But during my journey back to womanhood, I realized that I have terrible genetics and if I’m physically disabled and anxious as a woman I would probably be the same way as a man. And that made me realize how feminine I would still be even if I took hormones, and that made me shift my mindset to: “Why am I trying to become the perfect man when I haven’t even given being the perfect woman a shot?”

I understand that this comment is really old and you may not even look at my reply, but no it isn’t. Maybe ableist people have picked up that talking point, but there are both non-biased and pro-transgender sources that back up the fact that autistic people don’t fit into social norms as innately as neurotypical people do, and they often don’t understand/perceive gender roles the same way that neurotypical people do, which can lead to identifying as transgender. Autistic people are also prone to struggling with alexithymia (inability/difficulty understanding your feelings or putting them into words), and a few autistic people I’ve spoken to who are considering detransitioning have come to realize that some of their “gender dysphoria” was just the discomfort/despair caused by all of the changes happening in their body during puberty and not necessarily actual gender dysphoria.

I never medically transitioned, but I can give you a few words of advice about how I overcame the fear of what family and friends would think:

They’re going to react how they react and literally nothing you do will change that, so you HAVE TO focus on yourself, no matter how hard it is. If you truly aren’t trans, you’ll realize it eventually one way or another, and the consequences could be more severe if you only realize after another year or three on Testosterone. I would encourage you to try out referring to yourself as a woman and having others refer to you as a woman, whether that’s online or with a trusted circle of friends. If you really want to, you can even go off of hormones for a while without telling anyone. You don’t HAVE to tell anyone you’re detransitioning until you’re sure, even if people start to notice that you’re changing, it’s your life and they don’t have any concrete proof, nor is it any of their business.

The most important thing for me to remember was: It’s YOUR journey, point blank period. There are few things more personal than transition and detransition. You can’t let anyone else’s opinions influence your decision, because the timing of your transition and possible detransition will affect YOU for the rest of your life, and it won’t affect anyone else. Please try to find the strength to focus on yourself, your inner voice, and nobody else.