I want to try and express a nuance here, and I hope I can get it right.
A friend said, in another place, that she remembers the 90s, and how it was stacked against us. And without letting cis people of the time off the hook - because when provoked, they could be viciously transphobic - I think there are ways in which it is much harder to transition now.
In 1992, almost no one knew anything of trans people. We were an occasional joke on most sitcoms. So the open hostility? It wasn't there right away. It would arrive, if you made a nuisance of yourself (like asking for rights, or recognition of basic human dignity, y'know, high-falutin' stuff like that). You'd get smacked down, hard. But there weren't organizations raising money to power legislation against us. Our governments, for the most part, weren't directly persecuting us. They weren't helping, either, but they weren't generally seeking to deny care to trans people.
Now...now you have billionaires funding legislative pushes against us. You have organized armies of trolls, ready to hound to sh someone who has the notion to be trans in the world. You have governments at every level working against us openly and proudly.
I'm not sure it *was* harder then. The other big difference is the existence of the Internet. In 1992, it was infinitesimal. Academic, largely, and research government types. Thus, I have no Internet presence under my deadname. None. Never have. No photos to live down, either. When I went stealth, it was quite easy to go stealth, in some ways. People didn't know to look for us.
And last, the phones. When I was young enough that bullies were an issue, they stayed at school. They didn't follow me home, sit on my nightstand, and leave me nasty messages for when I woke up. Young folk today can never get away from their tormentors. It's incessant.
So...I'm not sure I deserve a medal for transitioning then rather than now. It's just when I reached my limit, like all of us.
I am not gay or trans so will try and respond,
I agree about the 90s, being Trans was not heard of, being gay was starting to become more acceptable but could still cause career problems, esp for celebs. Things have moved forward in a positive way since then. Back then if you did insult someone you had to do it face to face and risked the target hitting back, if you said something in the media, you or your newspaper ( for example ) risked being sued, as articles were attached to that publication which was attached to the publisher for example.
Of course back in the early 90s we had HIV and AIDS, this was more common within the gay community which lead to fear and abuse of gay community members, HIV didn't care, it was infectious.
Good point on the internet too, mostly academic, but there were pockets of people with more malicious intentions, we had web (just) but usenet, gopher and a host of other services.
Fast forward to now, the internet is open to everyone and anyone, you can be who you want to be online and another person offline, You can find comminities of like minded people, aroundj the world, band together and campaign in some cases. However this still means we have those keyboard warriors who have found they can abuse behind a keyboard / screen with impunity, until they make an error and are identified in the case of recent riots in the UK, we have people filming themselves and sharing, so it makes it easier for the police to deal with.
Back in the 90s we probably had better moderation, but less people to moderate, Some IRC channels had an "automatic moron ejection system", would kick you from a channel for typing caps (shouting of course) even accidentaly,
I think people are starting to realise, that, backed by research the internet can have a negative effect on people. hence moves to limit how much time kids should spend online, or maybe get kids to actually talk to each other, communicate in other ways, which will be beneficial, right now if you don't fit in some people are just frozen out of their peer group, but I think this is going to be challenging esp when parents spend time glued to phones, it sets that as the example. Talking face to face you learn facial expressions and inflections and how they are related to meanings.
Keep up with what you are doing, keep sharing, keep talking we learn far more about people that way and regardless of which 'gender' you are, we usually type with fingers so we are all the same in that respect.
