Hi! My peaking was a long time ago but I had never sought out a community before discovering r/GenderCritical about two or three months ago. In my early twenties (28 now) I had a Tumblr account and I spent a lot of time digging in there, I had just accepted that I was bisexual and was looking to feel like part of a community, tbh I mostly reblogged memes, nothing too serious, but of course most if not all of the people I followed were TRAs. At first it all seemed pretty reasonable for me, "trans people just want to pee" etc, but the more time I spent there and looked at some arguments the less they made sense to me. I first noticed the trend of TiMs saying that they knew they were trans because when they were children they liked pink/dresses/other "girly" things. This didn't sit right with me as I grew up being bullied for having "boyish"/nerdy interests (obviously this was the 90s and being a nerd wasn't anywhere near cool) and also for being non-conforming to some degree (think long hair and does some basic make-up sometimes but doesn't own any high-heels or dresses/skirts type) and I really struggled with my self-steem during that time, I even had a pretty cringy "not like other girls" phase until I actually met and spent time with other girls who were like me and other girls who weren't like me but were cool either way and I dealt with all the internalized misoginy that made me think that "girly" things were inferior anyway. It took me so long to finally say and believe "I am a woman and I can be, dress, and do whatever I want" that the fact that now people going back to enforcing gender stereotypes was gross to me. Although I didn't partake in Tumblr discourse I would often read the replies and just like that started visiting radfem blogs, "just to see what the other side thinks" I would say lol. It felt almost illegal reading these but they made so much sense! Eventually I left Tumblr but the cognitive dissonance followed me, and only kept getting bigger until I couldn't stand it anymore. Trans in sports, "you don't have to have dysphoria to be trans", kids being transed (esp. the whole Jazz Jennings stuff), Caitlyn Jenner, all of these just kept confirming what I already knew but didn't want to accept. Honestly I always considered myself a feminist but in a kind of vague "of course we are being opressed and of course I want that to change" way which I now realize was pretty useless and may have contributed to the state of affairs we have now. Finding this community was vital in my desire and possibility to achieve a more educated state through radical feminist theory. I thank you and I hope to continue to visit this sub frequently, keep informed and take action.