My parents made it clear by their behavior that they preferred girls to boys and were disappointed when my brothers and I were born because we weren't girls. Being assigned male was responsible for quite a bit of the ill-treatment I suffered as a child.

I've often wondered if that is what made me want to live as a woman. (As a woman I would actually be worth something, nor would people try to beat me into being a proper boy.)

But I've come to the conclusion: it doesn't matter.

I am what my past has made me, and the damage that was done can't be undone. If I had grown up in a different family and a different society, I would have been different. But: that's true of just about anyone. We are to a large extent shaped by the environment we grow up in (though the results are often not what the "shapers" intended! We are not tabulae rasae -- our individual natures affect how we respond to the "shaping.")

I only know that I've always felt like women were "my team" or "my people," even back when I didn't think I was one. Transitioning was like getting out of prison -- no, out of a dungeon cell, like in the Chateau d'If. When I started living full-time as a woman, it seemed like the black-and-white world I'd been living in suddenly started being in color (remember The Wizard of Oz?) And the thought of detransitioning makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I am trans (to use society's category), and will be so until the day I die.

(And after that, I'll be neither trans nor cis, just dead. :-) )