That “typical trans experience” is mostly the experience of freshly hatched and early transition trans people, because they spend a lot more time in public-facing trans spaces and make up the majority of users there. And there’s a tendency for certain common experiences to be amplified and stereotyped and everybody who has gone through something similar pitches in with their own variant of “oh yeah i had funny feelings when i saw Ranma” or “this makes me feel so dysphoric” or “this gives me so much gender envy” while most of the people who don’t feel that way stay silent and wonder if there’s something wrong with them for not sharing certain experiences.

I used to die inside looking at old photos of me, now i just find them hillarious and love to post them. I mean, yes, i do look less radiant in a lot of them, but it’s not as if i was never happy as an egg, i’ve had a lot of good days back then, too. Nothing wrong with that.

And when i look at timelines in my community, i see a lot of people who looked really hot before they transitioned. Usually in a way that aligns with how we rate hotness for their AGAB. And all of them still look hot now, just in a way that aligns with who they actually are. Going from hot guy-looking person to hot goth girl or from hot gal-looking person to handsome hunk or from hot binary-presenting person to smokeshow elf thembo is fairly normal. The idea that you fuck something up has no basis in reality, hotness isn’t a question of your gender expression.