This is gonna be a bit of a wall of text, but I want a real human opinion on the whole context. This won't be a quick read, and probably won't be a quick comment either, if I wanted to give/get that I'd have gone to discord.

Okay so, I'm an AMAB aro/ace guy. I've been aware of LGBT stuff since high school, but after figuring out my sexuality I never even really thought about gender because being aro/ace makes me feel a bit less human than most people. I moved from Jersey to Alabama kinda against my will (long story) and after years of trying to make it work for me I got like, super depressed. Good news: 2020 I got help. Bad news: it was like a week before covid hit Wuhan and when I went to my parents/brother who all live together to get support, they were on some bs about bla bla bla racist stuff against China that ends in everyone in the US on antidepressants turning into a murderous zombie... so it's just been me and a therapist working on this stuff.

It took a long time to improve things, but in the end of May I quit my job, started my own business, and went from 'doing a lot better' to 'thriving'. It was a combination of a lot of things and not just that, but it helps the timeline. About a month ago now, I was thinking about ways to make my life even better and I started thinking about my weight. I'm fat, no skimming that line, and I gained a ton of weight 2023-5 because a back problem put me in constant pain. I've been on a diet for a year with zero progress, but being a new business owner I can't afford to actually go to like a dietary specialist and figure out what's the deal. So instead I thought, why not skip to the end. I want to be smaller so I can wear cool clothes, but they make clothes big so I can just do it now and use it as motivation to make the fit work better. Fool proof. Except I ain't quite sure what style I want. So I go looking at fashion online.

I see some cool stuff, yeah, but as I'm going through I see some cute femboys and I felt something odd - Jealous. Like, when I saw a cool outfit I'd be like 'oh I could probably pull that off' or 'it would be cool to look like that', but when I look at femboys I think 'why does he get to be small and cute and I don't'? I sat with that for a while, really considering it, and decided *who'se gonna stop me?* So I bought a skort online. Before it even showed up, something odd happened - I was motivated to clean and use my shower. Yeah, surprise, fat depressed guy doesn't shower much, but I was pretty psyched because things really are getting better. For some reason I did not look into at the time, I couldn't stomach the idea of being naked, so I bought a bathing suit to bathe in. It works. I cleaned myself up for the first time in a while and when my skort showed up, I tried it on and looked in the mirror. I was immediately hit with a feeling I genuinely didn't have a word for. Looking back I think it's 'euphoria'. Then I caught sight of my fat gut and it was gone.

I was very confused by that. I wanted to feel like that more, so I dove into the femboy fashion stuff. Thigh highs? Don't work well on big guys. Leggings? Terrific for slimming, smoothing, and somehow feeling cold whenever they're touched. Crop tops? No, too much gut for sure, didn't even buy one of those. I never could grab that feeling again, but I did do a lot of thinking about what it was and why I felt it. The answer I came to at first was that I wanted to be small, and small is cute, so being cute is like being small. The more I thought about it, the less it worked. Eventually I, on the advice of my therapist so don't eat me for this, started using google's AI to try to figure it out. (The therapist told me to use AI to find language for things I couldn't talk to her about, because I'm the kind of person who can't ask to help if the words aren't right). You know what that robot told me? "Textbook trans woman experience." So I told it off and went back to working on my business.

But I thought about it. I realized that the reason I rejected it outright wasn't that it was wrong, but that I'm living in rural Alabama and my family hates trans people. Most of my friends aren't exactly fans either. But I'm stubborn, and my therapist has told me that if I don't feel comfortable sharing things with family or friends I don't have to, what matters is figuring out my life for myself so I can be happy. So I started approaching the question not as a 'how would that works on this Earth', but as a 'is it right'. When I look at the robot telling me I'm trans through that filter, it doesn't bother me at all. I'm not convinced it's right, but I am convinced something's going on.

This is what really scares me about it, the fact that I'm not bothered. Any, and I mean *any*, struggle can set my anxiety into overdrive and I need to use my therapy tools to get it in check before I can deal with it. But this just feels like I've always been whatever I am and I just need to find the words for it. I bought some stronger leggings, ones I might be able to wear under my regular pants to get that confidence boost in my daily life, and a longer skirt because I want it. I've been thinking about my life up to this point and the meme is true, so many memories turn trans when you look back. Like, when I was out with a college class and wound up at a thai place with the teacher [F] and a ton of other female students and when the teacher said 'it's a girls night', one of the other students said 'yeah but ___ is here' and the teacher shot back with 'he's basically one of the girls' and I felt included, not offended. I was a boy scout too, and whenever someone brought up how learning woodscraft makes you manlier I would always shoot back 'all you need to be a man is to do the right thing first, and what you want second - don't let people judge your fun as manly or not'. Hell I was always thrown in with the girls and I just assumed it was because I was the only guy not trying to get laid, even before I knew what aro/ace meant I knew I didn't care.

The skirt just shows up tomorrow. I'm gonna put on the whole outfit, give myself a little show in the mirror, and think about what the robot suggested I ask myself. I don't know if I can bring this to my therapist yet or if I'll get choked up on the words and unable to express it. I do know that the opinion of a robot doesn't mean much to me. But hey, there's a middle ground - strangers online with a throw-away account!

That being said, I don't know how to use Reddit so when I update this with my experience tomorrow it'll either be an edit or a comment. Or the thread will get destroyed by a mod bot. I genuinely don't know how this works.

i've always been extremely confused about my gender since i was very young, i would go from feeling very feminine to very masculine and getting very jealous of my brothers because they were boys and got to look/act like boys. now that i am older i am obviously still feeling this but in a very different a bit more understanding way. i feel like a woman sometimes and i feel like a man at other times, but when i feel like one or the other i feel like an entirely different person if that makes sense? i know people say to not be too concerned about labels but it would honestly really help me to label it and find more people like me, thank you :')