It was always obvious to me that what I felt was dysphoria, but somehow I never made the connection between that and what it meant to be trans. The biggest moment I had was once when my aunt was talking about somebody’s cat and used a cutesy voice, and I felt a pit in my stomach as if my heart had sunk straight into it. I thought “I will never be able to do that with my voice”, yet somehow didn’t come to the conclusion that I wasn’t cis.

For me it was “gender euphoria” that I realized after the fact. During the pandemic we had to wear masks and people constantly addressed me as a girl until I spoke, since my beard and masculine facial features were obscured. It gave me a lot of confidence, and suddenly I realized that the only way I’ve ever felt confident in my appearance is through feminine expression. Then I told someone I was playing with in Overwatch about all of that, and they said something like “I don’t know any cis people that do or think like this” and I had a moment like this.

(edit): Some more moments…

• When I learned how to write, I liked how my mom wrote more than how I was being taught to write so my Y’s looked more like this than this. The teachers told me I wasn’t allowed to do that while the girls would go on to do it anyways, and it really frustrated me as a child.
• I’ve always texted like a teenage girl, using lots of text emojis :3 :P :D and one time a friend of mine said “you text like a 13 year old girl.” And I just thought…well that only makes me want to do it more! Still cis, though 🫠
• I always wanted long hair, and when we moved I saw a lot of boys with long hair and after getting over being nervous, I decided to start growing it out. My mom protested because she thought it was me being lazy, but eventually she realized maybe I just wanted long hair and we drove back home.
• When my hair started to get really long, I was going to turn off my light to go to sleep one night and saw my silhouette on the wall looked like a girl. That awakened something in me and we’ve only been going deeper ever since. Still cis, though 🤦‍♀️
• At first I always picked male characters in RPGs because I thought I was supposed to. But one day I decided I wanted to restart Pokemon Diamond to try a different starter…and I chose to play as the girl, and it felt scandalous lol. But it felt so right! From then on, I always played a girl if it were an option, and when my friends started to notice they called me out on it and I’d sheepishly pitch the excuse “well choosing to look at a man the whole time over the woman is gay” (jokingly) knowing it was a lie, but not really knowing the truth either.
• One time in middle school I was talking to my very progressive girlfriend and she said I was handsome and whatnot, and I told her I didn’t want to be handsome, I wanted to be beautiful like her. She asked me “are you sure you’re not trans?” … “No… I don’t know. But I’m not willing to say I’m trans.”
• There’s been lots of moments where girls want to braid my hair or do my nails and I loved it, but I was definitely hoping people thought I was doing it to get closer to girls. I didn’t want anyone to know I liked it.

Those all make a lot more sense in retrospect lol. I’ve also had similar experiences with dysphoria but not as much.

• I’ve always wanted my handwriting to be neat and feminine like the women around me. I hate my handwriting…
• I once read a post about a blind man who judged attractiveness on dates by a woman’s hand, and I was suddenly hyper-aware of how manly my hands are
• In middle school Spanish class we had to wear weird outfits for an assignment while the rest of the class described it in Spanish, and one of mine was a pair of my girlfriend’s leggings. It was windy when we went to the bus, and the leggings were flapping around on the lower thighs because despite me having the same length of legs as her, my legs were a different shape. dysphoria.exe

Makes a lot more sense in retrospect…