Evan Urquhart

The ROGD stuff is genuinely very personal to me, because I could be a classic ROGD case study. Tender, personal thread alert!https://twitter.com/RileyFaelan/status/1370795988458291201 …

I'm NOT a classic ROGD case study, mind you. I'm a successful late adulthood binary medical transitioner who passes and has been on T 5+ yrs, which is a class of transitioner which tends to command a fair level of respect, even among assholes.

But when I was 16? I was a suicidally depressed, low self esteem, overweight female self-cutter who started wearing men's clothing in junior year of high school.

My men's clothes were considered a sign of possible bipolar illness (as was my interest in women). GD (or whatever the diagnosis was) wasn't well known enough for anyone, myself included, to have it on their radar. Everything was interpreted in the lens of female mental illness.

Pre-puberty I was not a tomboy. I did not have only boys as friends. I hated sports. I liked dolls. At puberty I lost by goddamn mind for reasons no one, including myself, could find a reason for.

Now, almost 30 yrs later (ACHK!), I see it for what it was: Pubertal onset of gender dysphoria. And I can say that and not expect to be contradicted bc I'm an adult transitioner who passes with 5 yrs on testosterone.

But if I was growing up now, with knowledge of trans men available to me, I would have seen it for exactly what it was at 15 or 16 years old, not looking back as a 40 yr old. And no one would have believed me. I would have been a classic ROGD case study.