Want

Is it hard? I’ve built several PCs and repair seems like a good line of work for me, but I know nothing about the individual components of the parts

If a gender diverse person tells me that their gender changed, then their gender changed.

The problem is that you’re assuming the past gender of trans women categorically.

But to say that the only way for trans people to be is the way you perceive them to be

I am quite explicitly not saying this.

You said:

She wasn’t born a man. Trans women don’t “become” women. They stop hiding the fact they are

I’m trying to tell you that this claim is not just wrong, but it’s a harmful over-generalization. I was not a girl for the first ~12-16 years of my life, and that’s why I’m telling you our identities (past and present) are ours to determine, not yours. I was a boy, I did become a girl. I was comfortably cis for a long time, but things changed as I grew up.

Reading this stuff today only serves to drag those anxieties back up, because if we assume your claim is true then I either wasn’t a boy back then, or I’m not a trans woman now. I have to sit here and think about how you’re wrong, and why trans people don’t have to have always been trans in order to transition and be valid.

That’s what motivated me to respond to you. Whether or not you’re willing to grapple with the idea that you may be hurting people is your prerogative, I’m just telling you those claims have done harm to me in the past and may be harmful to others now, specifically young people.

Different people use different words about their transition, and I think you’re imposing your own experience onto others. To say that trans women categorically weren’t men in the past totally invalidates how I have always described my transition. I don’t share your experience, and I don’t describe my past self the way you seem to think I should.

I was comfortable with my gender, and I don’t think it was invalid for me to have identified as a boy. That’s not who I am now, but that doesn’t invalidate my identity for the first 16 years of my life. And I think if speaking, behaving, or filling the social role of a male doesn’t make it valid to say that I used to be a boy, then that feels invalidating to everything I thought made me a woman. :/

But I think all of this is heavily philosophical and subjective, so I’m not saying your feelings are wrong either. But to say that the only way for trans people to be is the way you perceive them to be is not just silly, it runs the risk of invalidating everyone else who doesn’t share your feelings on the matter. Our identities are our own to express, not yours.

Highly recommend everyone that likes Portal to try speedrunning it. It’s pretty short, especially if you have practiced chamber 16/17/18. You can beat the whole game in 1-2 hours, but it will go down to more like 40 minutes without glitches if you have the solutions memorized.

Then you can save like 15-20 more minutes by learning a few really easy glitches. There’s tons of tutorials on speedrun.com/portal, too