r/MtF•
NeonDeath52

How offensive is it if I'm AFAB but align with the transfem label?

I am AFAB but see myself as a transgirl in a lot of ways, hear me out before telling me I'm wholly wrong

To compress my life experience with gender down into one paragraph: I knew I wasn't a girl in kindergarten, before I knew there was any other option. I was firmly a "tomboy" for all of elementary school, and came out as a boy in grade five. No one was surprised, and treated me practically the same since I had socialized myself as a boy already. I continued being a masculine presenting boy for most of highschool, I passed as a boy and was treated as one. My parents didn't know about my transgender identity but never gendered me much anyways, the only thing that marked me as a girl was my name, and outside of my house I used a masculine name. Near the end of highschool I still didn't feel right. I knew being a girl wasn't right, but presenting masculine also felt wrong. The answer isn't as simple as 'that just makes you non binary', if that was the case than it might as well just be another box rather than the fluid thing that it is. In my last few months of highschool I came out as genderfluid as it was the closest label I could find, I kept the he/him pronouns but lost the masculine presentation, and gained feminine descriptors, and, most of all, a new feminine name. Not my legal name, but a different chosen name since I was not the same type of 'girl' that I was as a young AFAB. Coming out as feminine cost me my closest highschool friendships, they truly treated it as me coming out as transfem, because in a way I was.

This is radically condensed, but gets the jist across I think. I have never used the transfem label before, because I think real transgirls would take great offense to that, my question is - would you? If I'm being honest, my goal is to have people assume I'm a transgirl. I want to be one. I know that maybe sounds a little insane or a lot delusional. But I feel a connection to the transgirl label. I am truly interested to hear actual mtf's opinions on this

  1. Am I a transgirl?
  2. How bad would it be if I called myself a transgirl?
  3. How weird is it that I want to be a transgirl?

Posted Feb 26, 2026, 8:11 AM UTC

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