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I'm not discounting your experience, it sounds like it is working out for you.
I am describing my private mental experience of finding out that someone who I thought was a woman, was not. Im not at all convinced that I wouldn't suspect it in any case.
Perhaps the man 'pretending to be' is overdoing it, 'identifying as' is kinder. And I'm not necessarily talking about public life, but private spaces. I don't know why someone would hide that info and I find it condescending, or even infantilising for people to agree that trans identified are that sex, and self-denying of the person to deny their actual situation.
More broadly on the topic, i think that society should change to be more accepting generally of difference. It feels like a regression from social liberal goals to accept that hiding as a woman is the best path. We also don't know enough about the effectiveness of transition to push it as a culture. Its not ubiquitous that people experience relief, some people suffer regret, ongoing medical problems and persistent dysphoria post-transition. I'm worried about the child safe-guarding implications of pushing transition to younger ages so boys can look more girlish and pass better and I think we should run solid research that tests other approaches and gives us a more robust evidence base. We should seek to understand body-identity issues better and investigate why the rates are increasing.
None of this happens if we adopt a trans-human stance and push trans as a solution as a culture. We are not even currently measuring the desistors well.
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