I can't see hope, I want to apply conversion therapy on myself but I have tried and it didn't work. Now I'm a long-haired man with boobs and no one likes me.

Long story short I have never been the "classical transsexual" that media and psychiatrists love to tout. I wanted to be a girl since as long as I could remember but I never had severe genital dysphoria or a strong desire to get bottom surgery. Neither was I the stereotypical girly girl that cis media loves to portrait, I was raised with NERF guns and air-filled baseball "bats" and loved them. I still love baseball and tanks to this day.

In the latter half of 2023 I decided that I have had enough and that I would do something about this desire to be a woman. I went to multiple therapists, all of which told me that I was trans. In May 2024 I started hormones and I finally felt alive for the first time. In August, under my TERF mom's pressure, and with decreased gender dysphoria, I tried stopping HRT, but by the fourth week dysphoria was coming back like a truck, stronger than ever before, making me barely functional and constantly s**cidal. I resumed hormones in the fifth week and have never turned back.

In September I started laser hair remover, November my first feminine haircut, and in February I started publicly malefailing and I'm getting correctly gendered more and more frequently now. Every "lady" or "girl" I get feels so right. However I still don't pass consistently and it's pretty much a coin flip which gender I'm called.

Three days ago my TERF mom (Chinese) had a long conversation with me about "psychological conversion therapy" and "autism caused your gender thoughts" like a garden-variety British TERF, and told me that she would never accept me as a woman and that she would k1// herself if I did bottom surgery.

Now I'm just so afraid. I don't want bottom surgery, my mom doesn't want it on me, but in my country bottom surgery is required to change your official documents which means that I have to live illegally as a woman. I already have C cup boobs and look fairly feminine and I know that it is not possible or desirable to turn back. I'd rather be dead than be a man again. I tried conversion therapy on myself, twice, and either time it didn't work. I just don't see hope if I don't even want to get bottom surgery (too painful and I like to stand to pee) and without bottom surgery the best I'll get seen by conservatives is "femboy" and the worst a pervert and freak.

I know I have to stay for the sake of myself and the transgender community. I'm a doctorate student in an elite university and have a Q1 publication, two more in the process of peer review and one more under work. If I emerge successfully as a gender non-conforming trans woman, I am confident that I will be able to do a lot for the transgender community and humanity as a whole. I just don't see hope in such a transphobic world, as a "non-classical" trans woman.