You’ve gotten a few helpful replies, so I’m going to respond in a slightly different way. My favorite poem, by Alastair Reid, discovered long before I accepted my gender identity but which carries more weight every day I live in the present:

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely the cat was just unlucky, or else curious to see what death was like, having no cause to go on licking paws, or fathering litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious is dangerous enough. To distrust what is always said, what seems to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams, leave home, smell rats, have hunches do not endear cats to those doggy circles where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches are the order of things, and where prevails much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity will not cause us to die– only lack of it will. Never to want to see the other side of the hill or that improbable country where living is an idyll (although a probable hell) would kill us all. Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible, are changeable, marry too many wives, desert their children, chill all dinner tables with tales of their nine lives. Well, they are lucky. Let them be nine-lived and contradictory, curious enough to change, prepared to pay the cat price, which is to die and die again and again, each time with no less pain. A cat minority of one is all that can be counted on to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell on each return from hell is this: that dying is what the living do, that dying is what the loving do, and that dead dogs are those who do not know that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

It’s either worth it or it’s not: sexual drive or physical appearance or anything else has nothing to do with it. And that fucking sucks, but it’s true. For me, 3 years in at 30+ years old, there’s no other choice. It’s all worth it and I’m thrilled for every day I get to live as my truest self.

You don’t owe your coming out to anyone! It’s a personal choice and if you want to just let people figure it out on their own, well that’s more than okay. I actively came out to family and friends I’m close with, but I’m sure plenty of people wondered who this new Facebook friend was and sorted it out on their own from there. Or my mom called them to announce the news like I just got engaged or had a baby.

Is 185 not already high enough? It seems odd to characterize “anti trans (healthcare) bills stayed essentially stagnant at ~185” as anything other than “that’s a shit ton of discriminatory legislature aimed squarely at trans people’s access to healthcare.” Also, unless I’m reading that website very wrong, that’s only healthcare bills. The total targeting trans people is in the 600s for 2023 and 2024, with a 9% increase from 2023 to 2024.

Trump made headlines just yesterday for fresh comments promising anti trans executive actions on day one of his presidency. I truly can’t figure out the logic behind this post. Anti trans legislation isn’t going anywhere, it’s increasing actually, and no one should think that Republicans are focusing any less on trans people today than they were a week or a month or a year ago.

I’m all for seeking sources of joy and optimism, but ignorance to reality isn’t a viable path forward.