This hit me like a week ago. I straight up panicked. I still kinda am. I don't know what to do. I'm fucking terrified. How do you learn how to be a girl in your forties? I don't even know how to do makeup, every time I tried it looked like shit.
I thought I was a femboy. A kinky weird femboy with a supportive girlfriend that didn't mind the occasional dressing up. This is probably way too much for her. I think it's too much for me. But now that I know this I can't not know it. It's like my subconscious just came out of nowhere and was like, "Hey you know that quirky thing about you? Well it turns out that's entirely you, and you're miserable trying to deny it. By the way everything in your experience tells you that people will hate you for it, and the state is actively trying to harm people like you. Also crazy people will probably want to kill you about it Byeeeeeeee!"
What do?
Edit: Thanks everyone for all the helpful comments. All this is still big and scary right now, but I feel a little better about where I am now, and the first few steps. This is a good community here.
That isn't a thing.
It absolutely is. It's okay to encourage people to explore their own identity, but interpreting signs and telling people who they are or should be is unhelpful and rude.
It is.
Some folks call it the Trans Prime Directive instead, but the lesson is the same.
The single most invalidating experience is to have someone else try to tell you who you are, so as trans folks for whom that experience is an ongoing and nigh-universal source of trauma, we should avoid repeating that mistake even when the fact of an egg's identity is obvious to us.
Better that they come to the realization themselves belatedly than to have it forced upon them.