Yea, I don't really talk about being trans that much since I focus on my intellectual passions. Truly once you connect with a person, it goes deeper than the physical body itself. Look at all of the friendships made on here, world of warcraft, etc. All of which are real, and gender is assumed, but in reality the two physical people never actually are around each other.

It's only a big thing because people make it a big thing, like with the HB2 bill in North Carolina that undid and preventing any further anti-discrimination laws in the state. This was done in response to the city of Charlotte passing a law that would protect the human and civil rights of the LGBT community. It's really strange hearing that an anti-anti-discrimination bill is passed, but it happened. This unfortunately has just been the latest and most covered scenario, but similar occurred in Indiana (driven by now VP candidate Mike Pence), Arkansas (in response to Fayetteville passing an LGBT anti-discrimination law), and even here in the city I live in had passed similar LGBT protection laws only to have it repealed about 6 months later by a razor thin vote. I actually made a post describing what happened here in this post a few weeks back.

Luckily things here aren't like the damage HB2 has caused people, businesses and public organizations for North Carolina. But I won't travel down that rabbit hole. lol

To answer you very fair question telling people that knew be before:

It was by far the hardest to tell the first people that I felt I was transgender. At this stage I was logically ONLY telling people that had known the 'old me' since that had been the only thing I had presented to anybody at that stage. Part of the difficulty was that there was no organic way for this conversation to start (being before transgender celebrities like Laverne Cox and issues started to be included in the main stream media.) It always had to start with a "So.... There's something I wanted to tell you..." statement, that are never comfortable. Honestly at this stage, the difficulty to tell somebody stayed the same while the DRIVE to tell someone constantly increased. Basically it was going to come out sooner or later.

While I did get a lot more comfortable presenting and interacting the way I wanted to rather quickly (it helps when there is only supportive people) I did notice that I had a harder time saying anything to people I had known since childhood...it was easier for me to talk to a new friend/stranger...specifically because of the reason you mentioned.

It's hard to shift the mental model we make for others, especially after being ingrained for so many years. To some degree the same holds in pronoun usage. I can understand why my dad slips a 'he' periodically. He's not being mean, I have no doubt he's trying, it's a tough thing to be 100% on after switching.

I assume the same reasoning holds with asking to be called a new name by people that knew you by another name for so long. I had it easy on this one since I didn't change my name.

Wonderful question, sorry for the long answer :)