I do think aphantasia made my self-discovery more difficult. I didn’t even consider the idea that I could be trans until my late 20s. And often, I also struggle with feeling like I don’t have an identity(gender or otherwise) at all.
Thanks for this; it helps me to get a handle on the difference made by being able to picture oneself mentally. I wouldn’t say I struggle with feeling I don’t have an identity. In some sense, I know there’s an identity there which might be impossible to pin down precisely but which nevertheless exists, and that I don’t need to be able to perceive it (and even if I could perceive it, what I saw would probably be a distortion anyway).