I'd imagine its pretty common. How often do we all read internalized transphobia spirals on this community? How often did it start there for many of us... I was once there years ago.

5 years ago, I was straight-up transphobic. Like, literally unexplainably scared of trans people. I grew up in a super conservative town, and while I wasn't conservative, I had never been exposed to trans people and the concept was entirely new. Mind you - that time I wore a dress out and was nearly strangled to death for it didn't do me any favors in asking questions either...

But 5 years ago I met my first trans friend. She had finally gotten away from conservative parents heading into college herself and was starting to socially transition. We argued. My arguments... Calling them transmedicalist would be giving me too much credit, I was straight-up transphobic. But I was as careful as I could be and wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and try to learn if maybe this stuff was legit. That night, as anyone following the scientific method would do - I went to acour research trying to prove myself wrong... I didn't want to hurt my friend and wanted to understand. That night, I learned "oh..." - theres plenty of evidence that suggests brain sex can be different from body sex. I was wrong. I apologized the next morning and became an ally. I often ended up leading things in uni, and despite not understanding much I'd always put pronouns in my username to signal a safe space the best I could.

Eventually I get a girlfriend, who herself is trans. With her, I learned more... But she's my ex for a reason and part of that had to do with how cagey she was about everything and anything so admittedly didn't learn much. But in that relationship I did eventually realize there was no way in hell I was a man. I started identifying non-binary, and well... She'd still call me her "boyfriend" and such, further ruining any chance of my questioning myself further. But in helping her with her parents, I figured they may be responsive to the same stuff I was years before and started searching for research. 22 peer-reviewed journals. All backing the existence of trans people, several backing that gender was absolutely not binary.

Eventually we broke up over some seriously traumatic issues, and I spent a long time recovering from that. Somewhere along the line I read a post on a trans community talking about brain sex by a biologist. This gave me even more insight on the whole non-binary stuff, because it elaborated on the research I had already read. Gender markers in the brain tend to lean toward the gender one identifies as - I knew this already (which already gives precedent for other genders given these markers are individual points of data that could hypothetically be plotted multi-dimensionally together - not a line). But what I didnt understand was that not only is that the case, but there are more than 2 ways lots of these markers can trend, implying the markers themselves can be more than a line. Suffice to say, gender is incredibly diverse based on what we know scientifically.

A transmedicalist who claims to follow science and is a bigot or doesn't accept multiple genders... Isn't very scientific in their shit themselves.

As for what people choose to label themselves as - idgaf. You do you. There's very clear evidence supporting your existence scientifically. If you choose to find a label that works for you - well its nobody else's place to figure you out, particularly in a place with so little research but very much has enough to support you - in this way, my modern line of thought aligns very well with lots of the other positive stuff in this thread. I hope for the day everyone can be better understood by everyone <3

And nowawadays I identify as a woman, so well, journey goes on. But that's how I got to "geez, its REALLY stupid to claim transmedicalism. You really gotta ignore what research has been done, which is ironically not all that medical a way of doing things, to come to these opinions..."

Sincerely, A rambling transfem who hopefully got her journey of understanding across without accidentally insulting anyone.