I want to scream reading this. I fucking hate them both but I can't say which one I hate more. Glad that piece of shit is your ex-husband.

I get fawn from cptsd and it fucking sucks. It comes with people pleasing and saying yes to things you don't want to do. It's really hard to break if formed as a coping mechanism in childhood. Like I'll literally be trying to say no and I just say yes instead.

Oh I could cut a bitch. Never let your partner speak to you this way. I hope he apologized at least.

sorry, what is fawn? i've not heard of that one before.

As far as I'm concerned, you're a woman. Plus I mean, look at you, you're already suffering and being crippled by misogyny. It's already preventing you from existing as you want to be. You're a woman.

As for the rest of what you said. I want to tell you something. I think you're making a mistake.

I'm part of a mutual aid network. I get to see and talk to a lot of trans people. Your story is a very common one, and I can tell you this: Every single person that I have met like you eventually eecided to go ahead and actually transition socially and all had the same thing to say: I wish I did it sooner.

Being trans comes with a lot of suffering sadly, but not just. Quite the contrary. It's so much more than this. And, in a lot of ways, it's not that it makes the pain worth it, it gives it meaning. It makes it makes sense. You're not just suffering in the void anymore. It won't fix any of your problems, but it will give you so many reasons to fix them.

There was never a good time to transition. And because of that, the best time to transition is always now. No matter how painful things can be, living through life and through these pains as yourself, your real self is always better. Even that pain at least can be real, but it's not just that. It is so much more than pain. It's community, it's living, it's freeing. It's so much joy that most people will never be able to understand.

If being transfeminine is who you are, you can try and run away from it, but it will chase you and it will find you eventually. You're trying to avoid something that can't be avoided. You can't change who you are. You can't wish it away. One day it will need to come out, and when you do that, no matter when it is, you will be filled with regret and bitterness about not having done it sooner. Might as well do it now.

You can do it.

You deserve it.

It's worth it.

Don't let anyone stop you.

Go be you, girl.

When I was on testosterone, my sexual drive was a problem. It doesn't help because I'm on the asexual spectrum, and it felt just like this primal instinct, this need that I had, and I hated it. However, I don't think it's a biological issue. I think a lot of that would have been helped if I wasn't taught some bullshit about it being just a natural way of things. That men have this primal desire for sex, and that women don't desire it as much or whatever.

No, we have different ways of handling our emotions and our brains, and what we need isn't just a blanket, "well, biology." No, it's a "how do we handle these things? How do we learn to live with a body that's under testosterone? With a body that's under estrogen?" That kind of things. We're never taught that. Never. And on top of that, men are taught that women are a completely different species, one that is inherently inferior.

In fact I know it's not a problem because trans men don't have that issue, trans men who are under testosterone face changes that are challenging to them and eventually they may get assimilated into society depending on if they want and achieve a certain level of passing which testosterone helps a ton with that, it depends on if you want or not. But if they do, yeah eventually they get kind of like blinded to the suffering of women around them, because they don't go through it anymore, they don't have to deal with it anymore and they start seeing it less.

However I have yet to see any trans men becoming these predatorial shits that cis men are around women. And I'm not trying to say that they can't be predatory with women, anyone can be. Trans men are not excluded from misogyny. First of all because no one is, and second, because at the end of the day, they are still men and the longer they spend their lives living as men, the bigger the issue become with them, because they forget more and more about what it was like before for them when they were still perceived as not the gender identity they actually are by society.

Yes, it's all men and that includes trans men. But I strongly believe that for the most part. They are at the top of that and not the bottom in a good way.

When I find out that a guy is trans, I get relieved instantly. I don't have to worry about my drink with him. I don't have to worry about what his intentions are in speaking to me. I don't have to worry about him following me home. I don't have to worry about what is going to happen to me after we have sex because I'm a trans woman. I don't have to worry about any of that with a trans guy. Ever!

And I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that, contrary to cisgender men, trans men, no matter how testosterone-filled they are, don't tend to be haunted by this deeply-rooted fear of finding out that they're gay, controlling their entire fucking lives. I swear to god if we could take this away from men, if we could make them feel comfortable with the idea that maybe they're not heterosexual and that's completely okay, so many problems would be solved. It's fucking insane how so much of men's issues are dictated by this because it's why they can't show a affection to one another and it's why they're such lonely miserable motherfuckers all the fucking time because they're unable to get affection without feeling like it's emasculating them.

The problem is not testosterone. The problem is never being taught how to handle their emotions. The problem is living in a society that is dominated by men, aka patriarchy, and a society that is like that to such an extent, and that has been like that for such a long time, that most people are completely incapable of acknowledging it, let alone conceive it. That's the thing you see with misogyny and you see it with trans misogyny and you can also see it with transandrophobia, aka: bigotry against trans men, which is a real issue that we are often unaware of, and it's also why I am so insistent on their defense, especially in trans online spaces that are often dominated by trans feminine people and especially on the fediverse, for example. We have issues with transfeminine people hating transmasculine people. That is a big problem. But anyway, it often comes down to this:

Testosterone... is not magic.

We have a tendency to give it all sorts of properties that it simply doesn't have. It's the magic hormone. It's the reason why trans women can't participate in sports, and it's the reason why trans men can't participate in sports either. It's the reason why men behave the way that they do. It's the reason why women are inferior. It's all because testosterone and its magical properties. It somehow makes you more aggressive, more sexual, more prone to anger, more this, more that, stronger, better... But it doesn't do most of these things actually.

You can take the testosterone out of a cis guy and that won't fix him. In fact, I invite you to look into what happens to men that are chemically castrated, which is basically being put on the testosterone blocker with no substitute. It's barbaric. And it doesn't work. The results are often taking a damaged individual and essentially finishing what their fucked-up childhood or whatever happened to them started and breaking them.

Anyway, I could go on and on and on. We don't have a testosterone problem, we have a patriarchy problem.

In most places in Asia you're in a lot less physical danger than in North America, but it's still unnerving and off-putting as Hell when that happens, yes.

I can't even imagine, but you've got my knife, too.