I relate to quite a bit of this. I've had passing privilege as a white man all my adult life, so that has profoundly shaped my experiences, the same as it has for anyone who is (or is consistently perceived to be) a white man. Then came covid-era transphobia, or as I think of it, JKR-era transphobia. G. Samantha Rosenthal calls it "third wave," the first two waves being Nazi Germany and then the late 1970s in the US. I'd been used to enjoying a certain level of peace and privacy for 20–25 years. Then, the right-wing messaging machine upended what felt like my status quo seemingly overnight. So I began writing about transphobia online, but this pursuit feels very separate from my daily life. My transition wasn't at all shaped in response to the third wave since I transitioned so many years before the third wave. Today, my gender (as nebulous as anyone's gender is; I don't mean to thing-ify it excessively) still doesn't feel as though it exists and has meaning primarily in reaction to organized transphobia, especially not that of the past few years. It's just who I am and who I've been for a very long time. However, the essays I write today are often directly in reaction to various kinds of transphobia.