i hate how much power the “always known” transgender crowd has. some people, such as myself, had no idea until they were in their teen years. some people don’t know until their twenties, hell, i’ve heard of people realizing it later still.
not every trans person has known from the start. but that crowd completely dominates the trans narrative. and that makes me upset.
by only highlighting “always known” trans people, you serve only to make the ones who realized later insecure about themselves. for a while, i was questioning myself, thinking, “god, i didn’t know until i was 16 – am i just some transtrender?” i was genuinely worried that my feelings were not my own because the community at large made me feel like only those who knew from the start were valid.
of course, i now know that isn’t the case. but i have to wonder and worry how many other brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings we’ve lost because of this narrative domination.
tl;dr it’s okay if you haven’t always known you’re trans, and you should feel okay if you found out at a later age.
Not to mention the affect it has in convincing others. If you don’t have a bunch of stories about how you knew when you were little, often people think you’re making it up or it’s a sex thing…
I didn’t realize until I was 39. Looking back, the signs were all there, but, at the time, I could not read them.
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