I def rec Gender Outlaws the Next Generation edited by Kate Borenstein and S Bear Bergman! It’s full of personal essays that show so many different perspectives and experiences of being trans!
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaws-Generation-Kate-Bornstein/dp/1580053084
They're from Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. It's an essential anthology in my opinion!
> I have personally found the idea of real life experience as a requirement to be stressful, and frankly insulting to the actual life that I lead every day.
1) Isn't the concern that you will be given the hormones and discover that perhaps you are actually gender variant as opposed to trans? Male puberty is not easily reversible... it's part of why FTM are more successful (generally) at "passing." 2) Have you changed your outward expression to at least resemble a more "masculine" appearance? Or is the problem for you more an issue with the binary gender system? 3) Have you read Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation
It has a lot of really wonderful personal, real-life, stories from members of the trans and gender queer community!
Here's a great book:
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaws-Generation-Kate-Bornstein/dp/1580053084
"Gender Outlaws" is a great book with personal essays, poetry, comics, etc. from different trans and nonbinary people. https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaws-Generation-Kate-Bornstein/dp/1580053084
Leslie Feinberg is also a trans philosopher/historian/novelist who you should look into. They were nonbinary and exploring gender long before most people were even thinking about it
I think the label nonbinary is a safe bet when you're not certain that you fit into the boxes of "male" or "female". Often times people will identify as nonbinary and then eventually "decide" on a binary gender, but I think in the future it will be a lot more common for people to identify as nonbinary because it really just means you fall somewhere in between male and female. This book helped me figure some stuff out: https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaws-Generation-Kate-Bornstein/dp/1580053084
"Gender Outlaws" https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaws-Generation-Kate-Bornstein/dp/1580053084 < This book has a lot of first-hand accounts and different written pieces from trans/gender non-conforming people. It's really good and something I read a lot when I was learning about this kind of stuff.