There are two factors that are at play during transition: social and medical. Both take an incredibly long time and are necessary for a large majority of binary transgender people. Trans women take E so that they can move on to F. You commonly see social transition at play without hormones (or anything other than personal expression) with femboys, and likewise you see medical transition at play without social adjustment with boy/manmoders (with the former being out of fear and the other mostly of mindful choice), but even then, there exists those outside of this bubble entirely. Binary trans people sometimes don’t feel the need to transition medically, same with gender-nonconformists and non-binary people. Because of how gender has been formed in queer culture, with a mixture of self-identification and medical intervention as the forefront depending on the person you ask, in-fighting has occurred spurring names for groups of people who are on one side or the other. Most commonly you hear about the transmeds or “truscum”, AKA those who believe you cannot be trans without wanting to undergo medical alterations/dysphoria, and the “tucutes” who generally believe that being transgender is as simple as believing you are, regardless of your dysphoria or desire to get on HRT and have surgeries. Self identification. Transmeds are undoubtably the minority nowadays and as I see them are nothing more than gatekeepers as their beliefs are exclusionary in nature, booting non-hrt non-binary people from what they consider as trans.
But as much as I am not a transmedicalist, the concept is supple as I cannot relate to those that do not desire to be on HRT or have dysphoria but do wish to become something other than their AGAB, because my experience in transitioning is that it is a necessity. You can socially transition all you like and still be balding at age 30. You can wear feminine clothing, makeup, you can even voice train, but if you don’t have medical intervention your body will continue to vitiate into a form that you despise, and ostensibly into a form that others will clock. I tried leaning heavily into social transition before HRT made a noticeable difference and it was fucking terrible, because it didn’t represent me for who I was. This doesn’t mean someone isn’t valid for being non-binary and not wishing to undergo hormone therapy or have a mastectomy, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not trans for not having dysphoria, but the gap exists regardless and in it these in-groups have formed. Since at large transmedicalism has been dismissed, the result is a mixture of different sorts of people who don’t align with their gender, which is for the better. But there remains an air of differentness, superiority, or struggle that those with dysphoria exude. Resentment grows when a groups social transition is flourishing on full display while the other is locked down or diminished by the timeline of hormones, or by ones dysphoria. It’s not fair, it doesn’t make sense, these people aren’t like me, I believe feelings like these brought transmedicalism to a head. And while the label is gone from every friend group I’ve made, the notions absolutely still remain but in an anodyne form. People who gleefully express transmedicalist rhetoric to others having a different lived experience should consider that someone suffering less than you or in a different way is not a reason to dismiss someone only being themselves. The kneejerk reaction to the unknown should be curiosity and not disgust like those who hate us. And, as always, both sets of people in the trans community should try to love one another despite our differences. Individually we are weak, like a single twig, but as a bundle we form a mighty faggot.