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.
Nothing to add, really, other than that I felt the same starting out. That changed pretty quickly though as I stopped feeling like I was illegitimately appropriating womanhood.
i don’t have any connection to womanhood though, it simply feels like a concept i can’t obtain and not because society tells me or because i reject it within myself, but because i don’t know what it means to be a woman in the same sense i don’t know what it means to be a man. i reject “man” as a label for myself because it is prescribed to and demanded of me thanks to my birth sex, but “woman” isn’t so it doesn’t upset me to be thought of as one. however, i don’t know what feeling like a woman is if i wouldn’t want the body of one, the roles of one, or the social standing of one. i don’t think of myself as having breasts or a vagina; just more feminized and less masculinized in the right areas. i don’t want to be expected to adhere to female standards because i view them as restrictive and they don’t feel fulfilling or affirming; however, i like the idea of being a stay-at-home partner who cooks and cleans, but that is hardly reserved for women. i don’t want the social status of a woman either because i want to be seen as “one of the boys,” but girly… almost tomboyish? kinda something in the middle there.
i don’t feel like i’m appropriating womanhood, i feel no connection or pull towards it. i want to be a femininely-shaped, feminine-appearing male-bodied person. but… i know you can be that as a transwoman too. you don’t have to give up anything or do anything to be a transwoman. but i would be very happy, i think, if my body were more “womanly” and i had femininizing features. idk lol everything sucks.
What you describe is really familiar! I felt pretty much the same way starting out.
To begin with, my transition goals were “I want a more feminine body (specifically breasts)”; that was it. If it turned out I passed as a woman and people called me “she/her” that would be fine, but I’d probably stick with my old name and social role. Probably wasn’t going to get bottom surgery or anything. I’d just be a dude who looks like a lady, to coin a phrase. Whatever nebulous essence of femininity cis women had, I didn’t understand, and I didn’t have it. I was just me.
What happened next though is I got on HRT, the body issues started to get resolved, and I realized that I wasn’t actually OK with being seen or referred to as a man. So I changed my name, with a kind of “yeah, I know it’s weird to have a girl’s name, but that’s what the documents say, so if you wouldn’t mind…” approach. And I started presenting more and more traditionally feminine so that other people (and myself) would see me as a woman without prompting. I still felt that I was kind of faking it; I wasn’t a “real” woman, just pretending to be one. (Oh, and I realized I really did want bottom surgery after all)
But now I’ve accepted that everyone is “just me”, and I have just as much right to call myself a woman as anybody else. I choose to believe that deciding to be a woman is exactly what it means to be one! That’s not to say that other viewpoints are necessarily wrong, but it’s the only interpretation that makes sense to me now.
So I think what I wanted to say is: I think how you are feeling is pretty normal actually, and it’s possible your feelings will change as you get more comfortable with yourself. But it’s cool if they don’t.
i see what you’re saying, definitely, and i have taken several steps myself at affirming my identity. i also legally changed my name a while ago to a more androgynous spelling of my already-chosen name. i dress femininely in private and around my boyfriend and friends and stores nearby lol. i try to be me in little pieces. i don’t know how far i think this is going to go… i don’t know if i’m a transwoman or this is just how it’s going to be for me; a transfem non-binary person who views himself as male but womanly. it’s not like that isn’t possible.