CW internalized transphobia, gender dysphoria
To be clear, I understand there’s no cutoff on the age of transition. But I swear to god I keep coming across this talking point made in the worst way possible. They’re trying to reassure young people who are insecure about having gone through their first puberty already but they’ll say some shit like, “I didn’t start transitioning until I was 24 and it still turned out well for me.” And you look at their before pictures and they were conventionally attractive and had other advantages like being transfemme with minimal natural body hair growth. Like goddamn that is not reassuring.
If it's of any help to you, i started getting on HRT in my early 40s and i turned out fine and have a nice dating life and can cross the street without getting rocks thrown at me. A lot of things just sort themselves out with time. Besides that, people tend to vastly underestimate how much of transitioning is social and psychological. I'd never deny the usefulness of HRT or laser hair removal, my life was daily hell before these things, but getting rid of dysphoria, actually healing that damage and being able to enjoy and love and be proud of being trans, that wasn't just a question of medical changes, it sure as hell isn't a question of passing perfectly and living up to some cissexist, transmysogynist standard of normative beauty, it's a matter of tearing out your internalized transphobia, your transmedicalism, your believe in the gender binary, your subservience to patriarchy. It's about cutting yourself loose from these things, accepting and honing your queerness and your will to resist, learning to love trans people and be loved by them, learning to claim your place among cis people not by stealthing it, but by asserting your right to be your authentic self.
The entire narrative you're describing is assimilationist baby trans garbage. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, i get that people hyperfixate on their deep regret over going through their first puberty when they are new to this and are in the phase where dysphoria hits the hardest, but outgrowing that mindset is the only way to a fulfilled, happy life as a trans person. No amount of passing will help you when you secretly want to be cis.