Fear, confusion, rejection, hostility, being cut off from your family...

I worried about all these things and all I was doing was coming out as gay. And I live in the UK, which has strong legal protection against discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender, and a relatively accepting culture.

I can only imagine it was a thousand times worse to come out as trans. Or even to understand it in yourself - again, this took me years and I was "merely" discovering that I was gay.

Recent studies seem to peg the rate of regret of sex reassignment surgery as below five percent--a rate that has declined over time, which I presume is due to less ridiculous prejudice and hatred aimed downrange at them. I don't have journals access where I am at the moment, but one that I was able to track down on the Google machine:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analys...

(This study also omits the large proportion of transgendered folks who never get reassignation surgery and instead opt for HRT, or even no treatment whatsoever.)

But you don't care about that, of course. This post is for the people you would otherwise offend and hurt out of some peculiarity.