I know this is a quite insensitive question and I’m sorry about that. My intent isn’t to downplay people here as faketrans or to say I’m “trannier than thou”, if it comes off as that, I’m truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart. It’s just that I’ve been really perplexed about this for the longest time.
If it isn’t clear yet: I’m a youngshit. I know people here get really upset at reading anything youngshit related so I’ll try to not extend myself too much: classic youngshit backstory (I’ll talk a bit about how I realized I was trans, if you don’t want to read this but still want to answer the question, please skip this paragraph and read the next one!), knew it since very early childhood, even before I knew what a trans person was I knew something was wrong with my gender and that I wasn’t a boy, even though people insisted that I was one. When I learned what being trans meant, about when I was ten to eleven years old, I immediately knew that this was what I was, got on hrt at thirteen after getting a part time job, I’m about to turn nineteen now.
I never thought of myself as better than midshits or lateshits, I always saw them as people who have been living in unfortunate times and/or places, who knew they were trans but never had the opportunity to do something towards their gender dysphoria until they already went through natal puberty. However, some time ago I found out that some people genuinely never knew they were trans until puberty, and some only figuring out they’re trans long after puberty, not only that, but many engaged in more stereotypically masculine things too, such as working out and “masculine-coded” hobbies (other way around for trans men). I know none of these people are faketrans (not that I believe in that bullshit), since all of you display really heavy dysphoria, which just confuses me way more. Once again, I apologize if I offended anyone, it wasn’t my intention, I’m just really curious.
I was bottom dysphoric in early childhood, but I never figured out until my twenties, largely because of being autistic and growing up in gender essentialistic, traditionalist family, where boys are boys and girls are girls. I never met any queer people that I knew about, my only knowledge about trans people was largely that there are some men who do a ton of surgeries to look like women.
So I never even considered a possibility of me being a woman, because there is no way a boy can be a girl, at least that’s what was in my mind. I did identified as agender at some point, funnily enough, but I didn’t see enbies as the same thing as trans people then.
Most of my life I just saw myself as “not a man”, rather than a woman.