Some things from me:
- Early on, darkening of the perineal raphe was quite a surprise (aka the “sack stripe”). It’s not something I’ve seen mentioned in most HRT guides.
- How incredibly unreliable my own perception of how feminine I look is. People were treating me as a woman well before I could see even hints of it in my face.
- It’s nice that women will sit next to me on the train now. As the carriage fills up I quite often find myself in the center of a cluster of women, which is very affirming.
- Makeup areas in bathrooms. I had no idea this was a thing, and they’re great!
I guess I didn’t expect to feel so female after transition. I always thought I would be stuck “male”.
I think I really didn’t understand biology and how significant hormones are and how insignificant something like sex chromosomes are (they really initiate one developmental cascade or another more than they play a pivotal role in the on-going function of cells).
Even though I had already intellectually challenged my bio-essentialist views, I think on some level they were still entrenched in my perspective and how I saw things … estrogen makes you female. Where before transition I thought “trans women are women” felt like some kind of technicality (like, trans women will never be female but maybe they have a social role as women, so they’re social women but not biological women), after transition I now realize that trans women are biologically female in ways I never expected (and which I think is rarely appreciated or understood).