i haven’t posted about myself to the broader trans community or tried to find other transfems who feel like me, but the more i keep my thoughts private the more alienated and alone i feel. i’m sure other people can relate to how my identity manifests for me. i’d like to share.
my physical body does not match the mental image i have of myself nor does it align with my gender identity. when i went through male puberty my dysphoria only got worse. i have the expected body of a man and this causes me significant anguish on a daily basis. staring at my reflection and not seeing a femininizing image looking back is so debilitating.
however, i was socialized and raised the way i was, and that was “as a boy.” i have an attachment to my male youth and i find comfort and affirmation revisiting those periods and seeing myself as a boy in some corner of my headspace. i developed as a boy, i made friends in “boyish” ways, i had some typically male oriented interests, and i genuinely became attached to gay romance and sex that i began seeing myself as male-but-in-a-girl-way.
if i “feel male” to some degree then why can’t i just be content being a man? who am i to say that i’m trans-anything? it’s something i have struggled with my whole life, but i simply detest the label of “man” being applied to me. the idea of being seen as one feels like erasure of my own identity to satisfy the morality of someone who isn’t me. i don’t embody masculinity, i don’t relate to it. more importantly, it causes me stress and physical reactions to be placed in the category of “man;” to be seen as broad shouldered, wide, bulky; a prominent forehead and thick arms and legs; to be assigned roles based on my perceived manliness
however, i do not see myself as a woman either. it doesn’t cause me significant distress to be seen as one, merely i can recognize womanhood isn’t what i’m channeling. whatever space i am occupying feels rather close, though. it is 10x easier to talk to women and i’ve noticed several traits of mine are regularly assigned to those same women and would be described as “feminine.” it’s clear to me that regardless of my varied interests that any gender could take part in, i run feminine as a default setting lol.
so, as someone who has a positive connection to certain aspects of masculinity and refers to themselves with he/they pronouns i think i’m at odds with the majority of transfems, but i genuinely feel like the label best represents me. if anyone is curious i can go in-depth or answer questions, i don’t mind. hopefully one of ya’ll can relate as well.
To be honest, this sounds like a fairly typical trans woman experience.
I feel all the same ways as you:
None of this seems at odds with being a trans woman, tbh, and seems fairly typical.
What label and pronouns you use is totally up to you, and what feels good. For years I basically detested all pronouns because nothing felt right (“he” was too much like being called or seen as a man, which was false and upsetting; being called “she” also felt dishonest because I couldn’t see myself as a woman, being called “they” was awkward and asked too much work of people and just didn’t feel affirming).
Anyway, I can totally relate - but you should know these are fairly typical experiences for a trans woman. I medically and socially transitioned and live full-time in stealth as a passing woman now, and life is much, much better. In particular, estrogen was very helpful for my mental health - I highly recommend at least trying HRT, you can take estrogen for a few months without permanent changes and see if it helps (I recommend injections, I don’t think oral estrogen gives the best results or experiences - it spikes your blood estrogen levels and then plummets in a matter of hours).
Even though everyone sees me as a woman now, it doesn’t mean I have learned to fully see myself as a woman - that is happening slowly over time, esp. as I live life as a woman. It’s not that different than being acculturated and living as a boy, tbh - the implicit gender identity responsible for dysphoria seems to be separate from the ways I have habituated thinking about myself.
I don’t want to assume anything, but if you haven’t already I highly recommend reading/watching these:
ah, see… i guess i don’t know. i see the majority of transfems use feminine pronouns and refer to themselves as women. i wasn’t sure if my experience was atypical or typical or what lol.
that is why i struggled until my early 30s before accepting being non-binary as an experience of gender, then it took a little bit longer to settle on transfem as a gender identity.
i don’t know about HRT. i have thought about it a lot; just to get some kind of feminizing blockers and whatnot, but i simply can’t run the risk of it impacting my already severely impacted sex drive. the medications i’m on make it very difficult to maintain and reach orgasm, and the sex i have is one of the only things i enjoy about my male body. i don’t have any genital dysphoria, if anything, i enjoy the parts i have and how i fit with the men i pursue. i worry HRT would reduce my ability to perform and that wouldn’t be worth it for me.
that is truly wonderful. i am glad you are achieving what you want! it’s gotta be surreal lol. i don’t think i’m a woman… idk though? i really just don’t see it. i did oppress myself forever so i could be blinded… but i do enjoy the life of a gay guy in terms of romance and sex… so idk what that means.
Have you seen a therapist that specializes in gender dysphoria, is trans-affirming, and works with trans patients?
You might want to work on this with a therapist, it’s important to recognize the significance of your dysphoria.
To be honest, estrogen made my libido stronger (and different), and my orgasms are much better. I repressed my genital dysphoria effectively until I socially transitioned, then once I was living as a woman and recognizing dissociation I had always experienced during sex, I started to want to avoid that and realized I had significant genital dysphoria. It’s hard to see, sometimes. Some people truly experience no dysphoria, some have a hard time recognizing it, etc.
For me, I think I could settle and live with a penis, but it would undermine my sense of being a woman. Having a scrotum was more disturbing, and erections sometimes would feel silly. Also, I just couldn’t center myself in sex - I was happy to please and service others, but being the center of attention with male genitals made me disconnect from the scene as a coping strategy.
Anyway, estrogen can cause penile atrophy and make erections less hard, but you can use a testosterone cream on the penis and give yourself erections on a schedule to prevent that atrophy, you can absolutely have estrogen dominance while still maintaining a fully-functioning penis (though your mileage may vary). I was actually upset with how little penile atrophy I had, and how my libido seemed to strengthen rather than diminish. Both of those I was looking forward to - having a smaller, soft penis that didn’t get erect at some point was something I desired, as well as reduced horniness.
Just know, you don’t have to think of yourself as a woman for you to be a woman. When you experience dysphoria about being a man, and feel like your body should be feminine like a woman’s - the absence of an intact certainty that you are a woman is not an invalidation that you are a woman. This is exactly how many women feel - I think only a minority of binary trans women were certain they were women and had an intact sense of being a woman. Most of us have to figure it out the hard way, and struggle with that. I certainly do, I don’t think I’m a woman, and yet I can’t deny that my dysphoria points me in one direction - I can’t deny that being a woman feels good and right, that having a woman’s body is affirming and positive to me.
I didn’t even know I wanted a vagina before I had a vaginoplasty - I couldn’t connect with those desires at all. But now, having a vagina is wonderful and a huge relief. I really had little awareness of how much male genitals had bothered me before, I was fully adapted to living as a man and that meant learning to ignore a lot of my feelings. It wasn’t until after the surgery that I even started to catch myself feeling shame about having a penis when I would lie down - like a habit of feeling shame when a bulge might be visible … then I realized there is no bulge anymore and felt massive relief.
Anyway - I don’t know that there is any way I could have figured out I would feel this way before, but because I had gender dysphoria and read between the lines, every step I took towards being a woman ended up being very positive for me.
Usually the non-binary folks I know have significant attachment to not being seen as a woman and preferring to have a mix of traits, like having a big beard as well as breasts and so on. Even though I’ve lived longer with a “non-binary” label, I now realize I’m probably not non-binary, at least not in that way. It was just a way for me to avoid transitioning when I wasn’t educated and didn’t understand what dysphoria looked like.
EDIT: I also didn’t know if I wanted breasts before I took estrogen, I was worried I would hate them or feel regret. Not everything was like that, I knew I didn’t want body hair, or thick dark hair on my legs and arms, etc. Some things were easy for me to feel and be honest about, other things were much harder to be clear on and were confusing. I think everyone has different experiences around this, nobody can tell you for sure what you will want or not want.
so… firstly, no, i haven’t seen a gender affirming therapist. it is something i plan on doing. but secondly, i have been more open to the idea of being a transwoman as i’ve gotten happier recently and i still don’t see it within myself. perhaps i have it stuffed down because i actively repressed it. trying HRT even temporarily is too scary to consider tbh. i don’t want to.
yeah, the whole notion of transition is pretty terrifying tbh, I was extremely resistant to it (most of us are, esp. those who transition later as adults, and have adapted to some extent with living as boys and then men).
I’m not suggesting you push yourself when you’re uncomfortable, but now is a good time to see a therapist and educate yourself. If you wanted to learn more about HRT (besides what is covered in the Gender Dysphoria Bible), this introduction to hormone therapy for transfeminine people might be worth reading (it has a lot of very specific and technical information about the hormones and drugs and what they do and how they work, etc.).
Luckily HRT seems scarier than it actually is, but it’s still a big step, and one that not everyone takes.
Either way, if you ever have questions or are curious about my experiences, feel free to DM me or hit me up on Matrix or in the comments here on Lemmy / PieFed 😊
I like the pronoun hän, or hen. Hän applies to everyone, so it’s not awkward, and doesn’t specify gender. Hen is an addition to han for he and hon for she, but is still relatively widely understood, and does not conflict with de for they. English is just annoying like that. Maybe we should adopt hen.
“They” can be applied as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun - but it can be awkward, esp. if you know the “they” referent well. Using singular “they” usually implies not knowing them closely, like “oh, the garbage worker took out the trash? Yeah, they came this morning” - it implies we don’t know them well or their gender, or something.
I never liked “they” even though when I was still in denial, I hated gender and wanted to not be gendered through pronouns. Asking to be called “they” was like the ultimate way to bring attention to my gender, and I didn’t want that - I wanted to not think about it, I wanted other people to stop thinking about my gender.
This is one of my favorite things I’ve experienced about being in Japan so far. Everyone is just “name-honorific” and it’s made me really happy to not deal people gendering me at all in most cases.
It’s a (somewhat) double-edged sword, though. It sucked when I just started transition and was not getting any feedback as to how people were perceiving me. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been “ma’am”-ed (I almost never go to predominantly English-speaking places).
Yeah, I definitely understand that feeling too. The only indicator I’ve had at work was when we were chatting with some female techs and they were teasing one of the girls about how she’s got “a bunch of boyfriends” and then one of the techs asked me if I had a boyfriend, which was pretty cool.