I like Ovarit a lot, but many of the women there are more hardcore GC than I am. I consider myself more of a moderate, but sometimes it's hard to strike a balance. I try to inject moderation where and when I can. Do you use a different name there? I don't think I've seen your Fleurista user name.

I'll keep saying good things where I can (at least until I'm banned for it lol)!

Ha, don't worry. The mods here are not ban happy. Unless you do something really crazy, you shouldn't be banned.

It kind of seems to go like this (correct me if I'm wrong): early onset/childhood GD persisting up until puberty starts likely will desist or cure itself at puberty, but if it continues past the start it's almost assuredly permanent; in later onset GD, it will start during puberty, and likely desist by the time the brain is fully developed (age 25-ish I think), but otherwise will be permanent beyond if it persists beyond that.

Seems like it, although things are happening right now in the natal female population that do not fit known historic models. We're seeing women in their 20s, 30s, or even 40s transitioning out of nowhere, with no history of dysphoria. I firmly believe this is social contagion. But otherwise, I do believe the actual transsexual population is still operating much as it always has.

I would probably still look and act the same, but I would be just shy of actually calling myself a woman in public. It's hard to conceptualize!

This is one of the things that leaves GNC men and boys in such a bad spot. There's really no option for basically living and presenting as a woman without calling yourself a woman. Whereas for GNC women, that's not the case. We can wear men's clothes and have men's haircuts and people don't look at us as freaks, for the most part. I'm fairly well accepted and employed in a conservative city in a conservative state. That could never happen if I were a GNC male wearing dresses and makeup. My small town childhood would have been entirely different if I'd been born a GNC boy.

If you don't mind my asking, did you experience much resistance or bullying from your peers or adults when you were growing up? It sounds like you had a lot of acceptance in a lot of ways, but I don't want to make an assumption. Especially as you say that your social troubles began once you reached a certain age.

I was never bullied as a young child. So up until the age of 11, things were fine. My grandma didn't particularly like me being masculine, but she didn't bully me over it. My grandfather and my parents and my brother and sister and all my male peers were fully accepting. Now as I got into middle school, things changed. For the first time, I had to go into the locker room with other girls. They would call me homophobic slurs and generally give me a hard time. Nothing physical, just verbal.

Then as I got older and it became more obvious I was female, I got occasional slurs from other people as well, including the general public. Lots of whispers and stares. But I was never physically threatened. The worst thing that happened was that a bunch of drunk guys in a parking lot yelled "what the fuck is that" at me as I passed by. They looked like they might have wanted to start something, but didn't. If that's the worst thing that ever happens, I count myself very lucky.

None of this stuff bothered me that much. It was more a sense of alienation that I felt. It seemed like society had no place for me. Aside from my one lone sighting of a butch woman at a carnival, I had no role models. I had no image of what I could be. My future was just a big blank. I could not see myself growing up to be a woman. I also knew I wasn't a lesbian, so that just left me feeling like a complete freak of nature. If I was supposed to be a straight girl, why was I so different from all the others? I firmly believed I would live and die alone, that no one would never want to touch me or be with me. That also lead to suicidal ideation. Like I didn't belong on this Earth, so I might as well just join the army and die heroically in combat because life as a freak wasn't going to be worth living.

I did get over that, thank God. I went to college instead of the army and met my partner and found GC thought which gave me a sense of acceptance about my birth sex. But I can easily see how things might have gone the other way for me. I still struggle with not wanting to be female because of the horrible stereotypes associated with womanhood. But I refuse to let misogyny defeat me. I feel like I have a responsibility to the younger generation to be a visible GNC woman.