There’s no need for you to feel fake! “Born this way” and similar ideas have been a mainstay of LGBT+ narratives for a long time–and in many ways that’s understandable, they largely arose as a response to particular social forces as a way to fight back against certain strains of queerphobia.

Unfortunately they’ve also become sort of entrenched in the way a lot of people think about their identities, as something inherent, constant, and static. This is…simply not the case for many people. Many identities are fluid, they shift and change and grow and evolve as we do, in response to ourselves and our environments and our experiences. There’s a lot of stigma around changing the way you identify, and a lot of stigma about having your identity be a product of external forces, and both of those ideas harm a lot of people.

It is completely normal for you to change the way you identify and it is completely normal for that to happen in response to circumstances and events that have changed you, your life, and your environment. 

-Dew