10 weeks post ffs!

Hey guys!!! I missed this community :))

TW dysphoria

Some days, I have a really hard time they past couple of weeks I have, I deleted my old account and completly detached myself from myself I don’t always know why, but my dysphoria just shows up out of nowhere and completely destroys my self-image. Sometimes, all the things I was finally becoming comfortable with about myself become things I struggle to look at. It can feel like all the progress I’ve made disappears in a matter of minutes, and I find myself questioning things I thought I had already made peace with.

But at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that I deserve to be comfortable with who I am. Comfortable with the way I look, with the person I’m becoming, with how I treat others, and with how I treat myself. I can’t let the days when I struggle define my entire experience of being trans, and neither should you.

Having dysphoria doesn’t mean you’ve failed yourself. Having a bad day doesn’t erase the good days. Feeling uncomfortable in your body doesn’t mean you haven’t grown to love yourself. And questioning your appearance doesn’t mean you’ll never reach a point where you feel at peace with it. Sometimes, you can feel completely confident one day and struggle to recognize that same confidence the next.

And if you’re experiencing this right now, please be gentle with yourself. You don’t have to force yourself to feel beautiful, confident, or happy every single day. You don’t have to prove your identity to anyone, and you don’t have to meet some imaginary standard of what being trans is supposed to look like. You are allowed to have complicated feelings about your body while still deserving love, respect, and happiness.

Try not to punish yourself for the things you struggle with. You’re already dealing with enough without turning against yourself, too. Give yourself the same kindness you would give another person who came to you feeling the exact same way. You would never tell them they were less deserving of love because they were having a difficult day, so please don’t hold yourself to that standard.

Your worth is not determined by how comfortable you feel in your skin on any given day, or how closely you resemble the person you see yourself as. You are so much more than the things dysphoria tries to make you believe about yourself.

And most importantly, you don’t have to love every single thing about yourself to deserve peace. You can simply exist. You can take things one day at a time. You can have days when all you manage to do is get through the day, and that is enough.

I know it can be exhausting to keep reminding yourself of these things when your own mind seems determined to convince you otherwise. But please remember that the way you see yourself on your worst days is not necessarily the truth about who you are. You deserve to experience the world without constantly feeling like you have to fight against yourself.

At the end of the day, I want to be comfortable with myself, not because I’ve finally reached some perfect version of who I think I should be, but because I deserve to live without hating myself. I want to treat myself with compassion, to be kind to others, and to build a life where I can feel at home in my own existence.

And I hope that for every person reading this, too.

We deserve to have good days without being afraid of the bad ones. We deserve to feel joy in our identities, to be loved as we are, and to find moments of peace even when dysphoria makes that difficult. We deserve to be here, to grow, to change, and to exist without having to justify ourselves.

Please keep going. Be patient with yourself. You are not any less trans, any less deserving, or any less worthy of happiness because you struggle sometimes. You don’t have to win every battle with dysphoria to deserve a life filled with love. And that love includes the love you give yourself. 🖤

Do you guys think ill ever pass or am I doomed fr fr

I had pre existing gynaecomastia which gave me a big advantage

Been dressing in some outfits I used to dream of wearing.

Look, let's get one thing straight. If the word "bro" makes some trans women and cis women uncomfortable, why is it so hard to stop using it?

In trans communities, where gendered language can carry particular significance, I think it's worth asking why this particular word becomes such a battleground.

Personally, as a trans woman, I hate this word. I am sick of having arguments with people when I explain why I don't like it and I have heard and seen countless other trans women (and cis women) express their distaste for it also, so I know I am not alone.

I've seen people write entire essays defending their use of this word, explaining why it's supposedly gender-neutral, why it's just an interjection, why younger generations use it differently and why its historical associations no longer apply. And honestly, I think all of that misses the point.

Let's say you're right. Let's say you genuinely don't intend "bro" to be gendered. Let's say it's just a meaningless interjection that has no particular significance to you. Let's say the word has evolved beyond its historical associations and everyone in your social circle uses it without a second thought.

What, exactly, are you losing by not using it?

If the word is as inconsequential as you claim, then giving it up should be inconsequential too. There are countless alternatives available. You can express surprise, disbelief, affection, frustration or whatever else you're trying to convey without using this particular word. English is a rich language, full of alternatives that allow us to express ourselves without relying on one particular term.

So why the attachment? Why the lengthy justifications? Why the defensiveness?

I think there are a few things worth considering here.

Firstly, people can become defensive when their behaviour is questioned because they interpret criticism of something they do as criticism of who they are. If you suggest that a word they use might have patriarchal associations, they might hear an accusation that they're personally sexist. Rather than examining the argument, they defend the word because conceding any ground feels like conceding something about themselves.

Secondly, people can interpret requests to change their behaviour as restrictions on their personal freedom. They become more concerned with defending their right to say something than considering whether saying it is worth the discomfort it causes others. The discussion shifts from whether the word is worth using to whether anyone has the right to ask them to stop.

Thirdly, familiar language becomes habitual, and habits can become attached to our sense of identity and belonging. People associate particular expressions with their friends, communities and ways of communicating. Being asked to change can feel like an imposition, even when the practical change is trivial.

These explanations might help us understand the defensiveness, but understanding why someone resists change is not the same as justifying that resistance.

None of these things establishes that continuing to use the word is more important than accommodating the people who are uncomfortable with it.

And this is where I think the argument about whether "bro" is inherently gendered becomes a distraction.

Language doesn't exist in a vacuum. Its meanings are shaped by history, culture, social conventions and the experiences of the people who hear it. The fact that a word is used as an interjection rather than a literal form of address doesn't automatically erase its gendered associations. Nor does the fact that younger generations have adopted it or that people in a particular social circle use it without thinking.

We should also be willing to question why masculine-coded language so readily becomes the default in mixed-gender spaces, including spaces for trans people. When masculine terms are routinely extended to people of all genders, they can come to seem universal, while feminine-coded language remains marked as feminine. That's worth examining as a cultural pattern, even if individual speakers have no intention of reinforcing it.

Of course, people can disagree about the extent to which "bro" reflects patriarchal norms. But you don't have to agree that a word is inherently harmful to recognise that avoiding it is a small, reasonable courtesy. We can debate the cultural significance of a word without pretending that its everyday use is beyond criticism or that its meaning is determined entirely by the speaker's intentions.

Think about how long it has taken to challenge the use of slurs and to establish respect for people's pronouns. Changing deeply ingrained language takes time, particularly when that language reflects broader social attitudes. I'm not suggesting that "bro" has the same history or impact as a slur. Obviously, it doesn't.

But that makes the resistance to changing it all the more curious. This is a casual expression with countless alternatives. Nobody is asking you to restructure the English language or abandon your ability to communicate. We're talking about dropping one word from your vocabulary.

And yet people will expend considerably more energy defending their right to keep using it than it would take to simply stop.

Ultimately, we don't even need to settle the entire debate about language and patriarchy to address the practical issue.

Some people have said that being addressed that way makes them uncomfortable. You don't need to put the burden on them to tell you individually that they don't like it, and you don't need to police yourself only around the people who have specifically asked you to stop. You can simply stop using it. You don't need to win an argument about linguistics first. You don't need to establish that their discomfort is objectively justified by your own standards. And you certainly don't need to make them defend their feelings before deciding whether accommodating them is worth the effort.

Which brings me back to the original question.

If "bro" means so little to you, why does giving it up seem to mean so much?

Because if the word genuinely is as insignificant as you claim, then surely the comfort of the people you're speaking to matters more than your attachment to using it.

And if you're unwilling to make even that small accommodation, perhaps it's worth asking yourself whether this is really about the word at all.

1 year 1 month HRT at 25 ✌️

First day on HRT. Picked up my first box and applied my first patch. I know it’s going to take a while, but I’m excited. Finally on my path to being me.