Please forgive my error, I think you are the first I’ve personally met under 50 that has embraced the label.
/phew I was a little worried that you would just tell me 30s count as old. 😉
But I understand completely where you are coming from, and let me just take a moment to entirely refute the entire concept of “truscum transmedaclist non binary erasure”, it’s gate keeping bigotry that has no basis in understanding of gender and just pure outdated hogwash. Very much not an ideology I agree with nor support. You are absolutely allowed to feel however you like about the term transexual, we all have our own personal history that comes with emotional responses. Yours are very understandable, and even if I couldn’t understand it, you would still be valid in those feels.
For me, this type of conversation comes up a lot around the term “queer”, which I prefer to use as a more encompassing alternative to LGBTQIA+ acronyms. But at the same time, I also recognize that there are people who have had the term applied to them in a defamatory way and I don’t blame em an inch for feeling reticent to reclaim the term for themselves.
At its core, it’s just the pedantic in me that feels like transexual is the best term to describe my body when I look in the mirror. I haven’t, and don’t have plans to, have any trans related surgery. But with my particular combination of secondary sexual traits, transsexual just feels “right”. However, I also know that because I haven’t had surgery there are transmedaclists out that will say I’m not a “real transexual” either. Far be for me to think I am any different from any other trans person, no one is more or less trans based off their medical history or diagnostic requirements and that is a terrible metric to use for identity. Much less identity policing of others.