Post #2838831

2026-05-19 17:28 UTC

I think a huge factor in this is that outsiders never see all the inner thoughts and ruminating on it. I can’t tell you how many of my close friends/family say “This came out of nowhere/we saw no signs”, despite there being fairly obvious signs as young as 4, but also an insane amount of repression and masking of those feelings because I saw the attitude my parents had towards queer people, and literally calling my friends slurs behind their back for expressing even the slightest amount of femininity/queerness. Gee, I wonder why you never saw any signs? They expect over the top displays of “transness” and when they don’t see it, they only see the “sudden” change, which usually isn’t even that sudden. I grew my hair out for years beforehand, had experimented with women’s clothes/fashion for a decade at least, and even had some friends who were very “in the know” on trans people who were not shocked in the slightest when I came out, because I was already not particularly masc presenting by the time I came out. The other friends just couldn’t see past the masc persona I had put on, so when that act finally dropped, it was some shocking and sudden revelation to them.

Replies (2)

@captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2026-05-19 20:01

I feel that hard. It didn’t come out of nowhere, it came out of me exhausting every alternative I grasped for despite knowing full well that it would always end here. And of course the signs were all easy to brush off like me hating being photographed, I saw how people who violated gender expectations were treated. And especially I saw how trans women were treated in society. Why the fuck would I have been open about having these thoughts until I was damn sure? I spent a lot of my teen years trying to stay safe and wantable while also trying to push those boundaries and see what I could get away with

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@WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com 2026-05-19 20:36

> I saw the attitude my parents had towards queer people, and literally calling my friends slurs behind their back for expressing even the slightest amount of femininity/queerness. Gee, I wonder why you never saw any signs? My parents and siblings were sorta the opposite; we generally agreed gender norms are BS, so none of us saw things that would sometimes be considered signs of being queer in some way to actually be signs, so only things like clear expressions of bottom dysphoria would count. And I had kept that stuff to myself.

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