I am still very early in this whole process, and there is still a lot of self doubt, so I am reading a lot of literature on “Am I trans” and dysphoria.
One concept that people often like to propose in these ressources is the button that makes you the opposite gender, and, crucially, also makes everyone else believe that you have been that way forever.
I don’t really like this, because my time as a boy/man is part of who I am. I would not be me without it, and despite all of the problems I had and have due to my gender, it is still part of who I am. I fought through all of this and worked to find out who I want to be by myself. I wouldn’t wanna be cis, and I also don’t want to cease being the me born out of this struggle.
(I’m not trans myself so I have an outside perspective)
I remember watching a video that basically said that gender essentialism (“born trans”) is something you tell conservatives to accept you. The radical stance on the other side is “gender isn’t something you are but something you do” if that makes sense. So in your case, you did a lot of male and now you want to do female. There is nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to say that your former life was a lie nor that it defines what you are.
This isn’t against people who say they felt it since they were little. So they did the other gender without showing.
I hope that makes sense. It’s my outside perspective and I’m willing to learn. I can look up the video if you ask me to.
Edit: I took the time to rewatch the video and it is worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4r0CoXsGmk
This isn’t “radical”, it’s literally just an attempt to uphold the status quo by reinforcing gender norms as fixed things.
What is a gay femboy doing? Is he doing the female gender? In all ways in every aspect of his life he is behaving withing feminine norms, and having sex with men. All aspects of his behaviour, of his everyday life, are indistinguishable to others as the same actions that a transwoman might perform.
Is he doing female gender? No he’s not. He’s just being outside of typical social norms.
Gender is not defined by behaviour.
A woman can be a bodybuilder, that dresses masc, that behaves masc, and still be a woman. She’s not “being a man”.
The premise of gender being defined by behaviour is just a conservative attempt to reinforce social norms that they wish to uphold because they’re trying to preserve patriarchy and various other social pillars they view as essential to preserving the existing hierarchies of power.
Gender is not something you do. Gender is something you simply are, and it is incongruence with what you actually are and what you’re socially perceived as that produces feelings of discomfort. Which is precisely why acceptance is absolutely crucial to positive feelings, and why suicide and depression rates in trans teens pre-op and pre-hormones that have a fully accepting social and familial network (basically their whole lives) drop to essentially near cis levels. The social factor is extremely significant.