My genuine deep disgust - for me- not saying ANYONE else 'is wrong' or anything remotely like that if they self-describe this way- is "FTM". I have to be careful here because EVERYONE experiences their gender, their lives differently from the inside. I fully respect and support how people say they experience themselves.
But my experience is NOT that I "WAS FEMALE and went to MALE". To me, that's brutally objectifying and nothing remotely true about me. I ALWAYS was male, everyone else was wrong. That to me is what my being Transgender is. I was always male, I have female reproductive and urogenital anatomy. Because of that I was forced, and a great deal of force it took and it was brutally scarring- to ACT in female role constructs, to dress in female role contemporary dress, to TALK in a more female manner. NONE of those damaging efforts was any too successful.
Female To Male is OBJECTIFYING. It's what it LOOKS LIKE from the outside to cis people when a trans person (trans. Brain A, reproductive, urogenital and metabolic B- that's it) refuses to continue to cave to gender role coercion.
I understand why we use these air-gap terms (female TO male, or transition from female to male, or trans-man, or 'identify as')
But the essence of freedom and authenticity is NOT TO BE OBJECTIFIED, not to have to describe myself as 'how cis people have historically and medically misdefined us, because they just see us from the outside'- but to tell the world MY experience as my own. I don't 'identify as' a man, I don't need the 'air gap'. I'm simply a man. I never was not.
I am trans man, (not one word, but I don't mind who uses the term transman). Because yes I'm one of the 0.5% to 1.0 percent plusminus two (that we know of) of the population who IS one gender, but has the repro-urogential anatomy and metabolic markers of the other. (Testosterone flipped my metabolic markers from female category to male category- in ONE month after starting T. That's the up and down of my transition. It was one month and I wouldn't have known it happened unitil the labs came back. My gynecomastia surgery was simply- gynecomastia surgery (I went to an actual gynecomastia surgeon, who works on men. Mostly CIS men. Some trans guys. Other people have long transitional periods, long psychological adaptations, and I'm totally cool with US ALL to a man, however we self-define, if that is true for each person as they experience it. I didn't experience a transition. I looked at my labs and it had already happened. But, I was always male. Now I'm doing puberty. Basically just a beard. (Bottom growth maxed out in the same month the lab values converted.) I self-describe it as 'growing a beard, putting on some muscle' or exognenous hormone puberty. And I want all the awkward medical language there, because I don't like the noxious shortcut cis people take to say "Oh, female TO male" as if I never was male when I ALWAYS was. Or the long-road to say 'transitioning' as if they have a spitsworth of insight into my experience WITHOUT EVER ASKING, and that it's some complicated delicate thing that's really super-difficult for mere mortal cis to understand. (I got booted from a hospital I'd been going to for 30 years because THE HOSPITAL thought none of their fancy diplomates coupd POSSIBLY understand 'being on Testosterone' even though they have a lot of cis female post-menopausal women, ON TESTOSTERONE hrt. But if I was on in for the wrong SOCIAL reasons. The actual biology is the same and it's not over the head of anyone who graduated med school.
But, I discovered that any bit of language I use to self-describe that casts any shadow over my being male or NOT-REALLY being male, undermines rather than explains - that I'm just another guy. With some biology workarounds. (I so far left my female reproductive organs there, because people with residual internal estrogen progesterone mfg, to keep my bp and cholesterol etc a bit lower nautrally. If the cancer risk outweighs the cardiovascular risk, out they go.)
So when someone asks (because I don't 'pass' - well maybe sometimes on zoom to older men, who guess don't see what they don't expect to see? Not sure.) I just say "male". Or "NO, I'm a man" and- well, that's all they need to know. Write down 'male' or you're in violation of my civil rights and I will own your house and car if I get any pushback on that, because the science is on my side, and so,so is the law.
I will defend and will take an absolute bullet for anyone here's right to define themselves as FTM, or Transman or anything else that is their experience. NO DIS on my trans brothers or sisters.
But, big dis on the thick-headed people (not all cis but historically... ) who keep electing themselves as stakeholders in defining us as objects, subjects.