I can't tell if I'm actually a trans woman or if I somehow artificially got these thoughts...

TLDR: I (23 AMAB) think I might be a trans woman, but I never had any trans thoughts / signs before I started consuming MTF transformation content, and I don’t feel anything from wearing feminine clothing, which makes me have doubts about my possible transness. I want to see what people think about my situation.

I’m having issues figuring out my relationship with gender…

I (23AMAB) have been questioning my gender ever since around the end of 2021, so for around 4 years at this point. Before that point, I didn’t know trans people actually existed. 

When I was young, I didn’t really care about my gender and never really had thoughts of wanting to be a girl. When I began puberty, I disliked the changes it brought. I disliked having facial hair, and I was very glad that I had not yet started to get bad body hair. Now, I have more body hair and I hate how it is visible and that I can even feel it. As for my facial hair, there are some times where I can’t even touch it without slightly recoiling and withdrawing whatever is touching the hair.I used to have short hair all the time, and never was able to experience longer hair, yet now I get jealous of girls with longer hair and dislike it when my hair is cut short. I never had any interest in wearing feminine clothes or doing feminine things, and that feeling still persists. When I try out feminine clothing to see how I feel about it, I just feel nothing… I try painting my nails, and I feel nothing… Yet I still have this feeling telling me I want to be a girl I think?

I feel like I can’t trust myself, since when I was a young teenager, my first introduction to porn was sexualized male to female transformation sequences (long story short I used to watch LeafyIsHere (Eww) and saw a video he made where he made fun of a MTF transformation animation that was on youtube, and I went and looked for that on my own after). I feel like years of consumption of this content has made me develop a transgender identity… I eventually started learning towards more wholesome MTF transformation content and thinking that it would be nice to be a cute girl, and these thoughts started occurring in non-sexual situations…

Conveniently, a few months after I started thinking it would be nice to be a cute girl, I managed to find r/egg_irl while browsing r/popular between college classes, and my mind was blown. Before this I didn’t know trans people even existed, or that actually transitioning to an alternate gender was even possible. I found several trans resources, including the gender dysphoria bible, and had a breakdown reading it. I realized that I might be trans. But were these feelings real? Did I artificially create these feelings from the NSFW content I consumed? Due to my breakdown, I had to be placed on antidepressants, which I only very recently finally stopped. I had tried experimenting by buying some feminine clothes, but just my luck, my parents opened the package containing the clothes… Furthermore, I made the situation worse by admitting that I think there was a chance I was trans. They had a negative reaction, and I stopped doing any kind of experimenting, feeling dejected. I tried pushing the thoughts away, but they would always eventually come back.

At this point, I have started my work career and these thoughts are still persisting, and have become more frequent. I am unable to go a single day without either feeling gender envy from women at work, disliking my body hair from the point of recoiling, or just feeling like life would be nicer if I was a woman. I had gotten a therapist earlier this year, and they had given me a diagnosis of gender dysphoria based on my answers to the CS GIDYQ AA questionnaire my therapist had given me. I feel massive amounts of stress from the thought of experimenting with my gender identity publicly, especially since I live in the deep south of the USA, but at this point all these thoughts are tearing me apart. I feel like I want to just try out Estrogen with Androgen blockers so I can see how I feel about it, so I can finally either know if it is something I really want or not, but the way I got these thoughts makes me think I’m wrong… 

I just wanted to post this to see what people think might be going on based on my situation, sorry this is so long...