There are trans people who were lucky/unlucky enough to be strongly gender nonconforming from early childhood, but there's also a lot of us who figured out what the expectations were and conformed to them, and I think we often feel a lot of self-doubt and shame because of it.
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Its hard to imagine what I'd be like if my mom wasn't so freaked out by gender nonconformity, or if our relationship had been different. I eventually learned mom took an anti-miscarriage drug when she was pregnant with me that was later found to have masculinizing effects.
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This explained a lot. It even explain why I'm trans- born that way not due to genetics but a drug in the uterine environment. But mostly it explains my moms intense anxiety around me showing any signs of masculinity.
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I was never a tomboy. I was not a particularly masc little guy. But my mom told me how feminine I was *constantly* and never did the same with my sister. It a weird experience, constantly being told which toys I liked, which clothes I liked, and how girly everything I liked was.
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It was basically classic gaslighting- but I know my mom believed. I can now understand that she was anxiously reassuring herself that I hadn't been masculinized by that drug... but as a child and adolescent the effect was disorienting.
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Mom never once told me I wasn't allowed to have boy stuff, but she did tell me repeatedly that I didn't like that stuff and had never liked that stuff. Contradicting her felt impossible, even though I sort of knew something was off.
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