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TransEra |ERA1| We're People, Okay?
- Thread starter SweetNicole
- Start date
- OT
Since you wanted some other opinions, yeah, as an AFAB person that kind of stuff really does make women feel shitty. To be honest, it's stuff like that that makes me question whether I can really identify as bigender because so many things about masculinity make me so uncomfortable, as well as having feelings of "am I betraying my sisterhood" etc. I guess I have some issues I need to work through as well, lol.
If it makes you feel better, I think anyone in their right mind (of any gender) would be upset and uncomfortable at the scenes you've described!
Hey Aubree :)
I have been in a relationship too before I came out. That didn't make it easier. And we are still working through things together step by step.
It's hard to guess how your partner might react to it.
If you're trans, no one is worth acting for the rest of your life.
My partner is still... Really close. She hated that I came out but after some time we stayed friends and went on dates again (this is our second holiday together since).
I can say though, that having someone like you for you is something you can't imagine.
She loved me and still does. But it was quite a shock to her. And we are taking one step at a time now with my transition to see if she can handle it when it comes to physical attraction.
We are closer now. We were close before but it's different now. I no longer have to wonder if she would still love me if she knew. If she asks me if something is wrong I can be honest.
I am glad she knows. There is still a chance it might not work out as a relationship in the long run but even as friends we plan to remain importsnt parts of each others life if it comes to that.
Shit, I forgot to share my story.
I got really luck with my gf, her reaction was basically "whatever, I still love you".
She already had to listen to the worries of another trans women and a trans man, so I got super lucky.
We are still happily together a year later and she has been amazingly supportive.
Not sure what I would do without her, since so far she is the only person that supports me.
I got really luck with my gf, her reaction was basically "whatever, I still love you".
She already had to listen to the worries of another trans women and a trans man, so I got super lucky.
We are still happily together a year later and she has been amazingly supportive.
Not sure what I would do without her, since so far she is the only person that supports me.
I'm gonna attempt to come out as non-binary to my extended family today. Here's hoping it doesn't backfire horribly.
I'm out to a few of them and to my parents. My parents... aren't supportive and refuse to use my pronouns, but they SAY they support me so I think they'll just chalk it up to a "bad decision" by me if it goes wrong?
Wish me luck... here's hoping I don't chicken out...
I'm out to a few of them and to my parents. My parents... aren't supportive and refuse to use my pronouns, but they SAY they support me so I think they'll just chalk it up to a "bad decision" by me if it goes wrong?
Wish me luck... here's hoping I don't chicken out...
Good luck and stay strong ...
So I got my name and gender legally changed a few weeks back..
Now I'm in the midst of getting everything i order, e.g. New ID, new Passport
At the end of January I have my consultation for SRS.
Best of luck! Hope today goes well for you. :)
I've been stressing about seeing a lot of family for the first time since coming out, but by now I think all of them have already heard through the grapevine (which I was fine with). Will probably be fine, but yeah.
Congratulations!
I chickened out, but on the bright side I was reminded that the family members I care about already know, and one of my cousins aggressively attempted to get my pronouns right. He kept screwing up and correcting himself, but it was super appreciated.
Coming out to extended family can be scary.
It's great that you got support from your cousin. Things like that help a lot.
It's great that you got support from your cousin. Things like that help a lot.
For months now I've been mulling over my own thoughts about how I perceive myself to be honest I don't really know where I stand so I'd like to explain some experiences I've had over the years and also list some of my like and dislikes to see if any of these things may resonate with others and it may help to put things into focus for myself or not who knows, at this point I'm writing this mostly just to get it off my chest more than anything, so please forgive me if anything I write here is uninformed or could be construed as offensive.
Now after all that TL;DR I approach my current predicament, there are signs that these things point out that I could be transgendered myself in some way, but I also worry that It all could just be a sexual kink and I just am attracted to the idea of a man becoming a woman in whatever form of media that takes and looking for some justification for it, I don't know.
Other things that stick out to me that is worth mentioning was that I distinctly remember jokingly telling my mother that puberty was one of the worst things I've gone through because of the hassles of male grooming and my general distaste of male body hair anywhere on myself. I don't know if this a a low tier sign of gender dysphoria because there are plenty of men out there that keep themselves clean shaven as well, right?
Other examples include that even as a kid of 8 or 9 years old I thought the concept of having a kid to take care of appealing to me, I remember distinctly having some "master plan" as an adult to one day adopt and care for a kid of my own.
I also have been a much more emotionally sensitive person, but isn't in spite of my parents but in part because of them, I remember distinctly as a kid my dad setting me aside and telling me that it was fine to cry and feel sad because it took a real man to show their emotions to others.
I generally avoid looking at myself in the mirror unless I have to get rid of my facial hair or brush my teeth or whatnot, and I haven't willingly let someone take my photo since I was 15, but this again could be attributed to other things such as dissatisfaction with my current weight and not necessarily anything to do with any dissatisfaction with having a male body.
Before I wrote this novel of a post, I wanted to confirm a lot of my feeling about what I wanted to convey, and had hoped others may have done that work for me already (sadly not the case because I was looking for specific experiences, and a lot of articles are very broad) and one thing that popped up multiple times was the thought experiment of "if you were to wake up and see that you were the opposite gender and everyone treated it as normal how would you react" my answer would be that I'd probably have an initial freak out over the cosmic implications of my situation, lol, but I would most likely eventually be fine with the change.
When it is all said and done I don't know really where I stand, I like the idea of a man becoming a woman and I wouldn't be too bothered if it some how magically happened to me but I don't have a burning desire to become a woman or to present as one.
When it comes to my body I don't love it or hate it, I'm neutral about it, its just there and always has been.
I don't really know what I hope to get out of this post, perhaps I just want to fit myself into some predefined box to label myself with because my feelings aren't strong enough to say "I want to be this" or "this is how I truly feel about myself" I certainly have a lot to say but it is a lot of rambling I feel and its just a bunch of wish washy half thoughts that I need to express in some way because they've been tumbling through my head for a few years now and I just had to get them out and let them be real in one way or another.
To start off with my first experience with anything TG related was an episode of Farscape funnily enough, I remember watching this show as a kid and at this point most of it is a blur, but what stuck out to me and has stayed in my memories was an episode where some of the main cast were somehow bodyswapped, at the time I didn't really question why the idea of bodyswapping was fascinating to me and I just moved on with my life and put it behind me.
Fast forward a few years when I start to enter puberty (I'll put this in a spoiler tag so you can skip it if you wish, its awkward for me to write so I'm sure its awkward to read)
As a teen I rediscovered gender bender as a genre when I stumbled upon some Ranma 1/2 manga at my local library and I had an immediate interest in reading everything available to me. At this point I just continue on as usual not really thinking about why I was so drawn to gender bender fiction as a concept except anytime I encountered it moving forwards I would hoover it up immediately from other manga I found online to eroge visual novels, because honestly as a teen and even into my early 20's I wasn't really introspective, I just spent most of my time escaping reality through video games, books and television since I was either bullied or generally ignored in high school, of course I did have friend groups so it wasn't all bad but overall I was usually unhappy with my situation and I just didn't really care to think about myself all that much.
My world was very insular when it came to the idea of sexual orientation or the concept of gender, I knew what being straight was and had of course heard that people could be gay or bi in high school but any thoughts that there may be other orientations aside from those 3 basic things never occurred to me and the idea of gender identity wasn't even a concept to me.
To be honest I can't really pinpoint when exactly I discovered that even the idea of a transgender individual exisitng until some point in my mid 20's and even then it was just a word to me, something that I didn't really think about and when I heard more murmurings about it and had the vague concept of what it was I just frivolously attributed the idea that it was just people liking to crossdress (I'm sorry about this, I have learned that this thinking was and is offensive to others and am continuing to educate myself from my bone headed ignorance about those around me)
Moving into 2016, at this point I still had a love for the gender bender genre and would consume it in any form for general media consumption to it being straight up my favorite form of pornography. The concept of being transgendered was now a thing I was more educated about, but it was still a thing other people were, I still thought of myself as a person with, at most, a fetish for men becoming women and the situations they found themselves in.
After awhile Japanese gender bender stories (including GB online fiction) became tiresome since they were usually formulaic and hit upon the same tropes over and over again ,I finally had the realization that there must of course be transgender fiction that would approach the idea of these changes in a persons fundamental makeup would have drastically different reactions to their new situations, I did a bit of googling to find a good starting point and after that real TG fiction (mainly the sci-fi or fantasy based stuff to be fair) basically consumed my entire media world for about 4 months solid during the summer of 2016, initially when I first began to read these stories I was so affected by them that I would have nightly dreams centered around the concept of these stories, something that regular gender bender stories had never done to me, they had never effected me as deeply as actual TG fiction.
Fast forward a few years when I start to enter puberty (I'll put this in a spoiler tag so you can skip it if you wish, its awkward for me to write so I'm sure its awkward to read)
At this point I did the normal stuff ( I suppose) at that age but at some point I remember some of my first sexual fantasies involved the body transformation ability from the animorphs books, I would imagine scenarios where I would have this ability and picture myself turning into girls I found attractive in school and in these fantasies I would find sexual release as a woman.
As a teen I rediscovered gender bender as a genre when I stumbled upon some Ranma 1/2 manga at my local library and I had an immediate interest in reading everything available to me. At this point I just continue on as usual not really thinking about why I was so drawn to gender bender fiction as a concept except anytime I encountered it moving forwards I would hoover it up immediately from other manga I found online to eroge visual novels, because honestly as a teen and even into my early 20's I wasn't really introspective, I just spent most of my time escaping reality through video games, books and television since I was either bullied or generally ignored in high school, of course I did have friend groups so it wasn't all bad but overall I was usually unhappy with my situation and I just didn't really care to think about myself all that much.
My world was very insular when it came to the idea of sexual orientation or the concept of gender, I knew what being straight was and had of course heard that people could be gay or bi in high school but any thoughts that there may be other orientations aside from those 3 basic things never occurred to me and the idea of gender identity wasn't even a concept to me.
To be honest I can't really pinpoint when exactly I discovered that even the idea of a transgender individual exisitng until some point in my mid 20's and even then it was just a word to me, something that I didn't really think about and when I heard more murmurings about it and had the vague concept of what it was I just frivolously attributed the idea that it was just people liking to crossdress (I'm sorry about this, I have learned that this thinking was and is offensive to others and am continuing to educate myself from my bone headed ignorance about those around me)
Moving into 2016, at this point I still had a love for the gender bender genre and would consume it in any form for general media consumption to it being straight up my favorite form of pornography. The concept of being transgendered was now a thing I was more educated about, but it was still a thing other people were, I still thought of myself as a person with, at most, a fetish for men becoming women and the situations they found themselves in.
After awhile Japanese gender bender stories (including GB online fiction) became tiresome since they were usually formulaic and hit upon the same tropes over and over again ,I finally had the realization that there must of course be transgender fiction that would approach the idea of these changes in a persons fundamental makeup would have drastically different reactions to their new situations, I did a bit of googling to find a good starting point and after that real TG fiction (mainly the sci-fi or fantasy based stuff to be fair) basically consumed my entire media world for about 4 months solid during the summer of 2016, initially when I first began to read these stories I was so affected by them that I would have nightly dreams centered around the concept of these stories, something that regular gender bender stories had never done to me, they had never effected me as deeply as actual TG fiction.
Now after all that TL;DR I approach my current predicament, there are signs that these things point out that I could be transgendered myself in some way, but I also worry that It all could just be a sexual kink and I just am attracted to the idea of a man becoming a woman in whatever form of media that takes and looking for some justification for it, I don't know.
Other things that stick out to me that is worth mentioning was that I distinctly remember jokingly telling my mother that puberty was one of the worst things I've gone through because of the hassles of male grooming and my general distaste of male body hair anywhere on myself. I don't know if this a a low tier sign of gender dysphoria because there are plenty of men out there that keep themselves clean shaven as well, right?
Other examples include that even as a kid of 8 or 9 years old I thought the concept of having a kid to take care of appealing to me, I remember distinctly having some "master plan" as an adult to one day adopt and care for a kid of my own.
I also have been a much more emotionally sensitive person, but isn't in spite of my parents but in part because of them, I remember distinctly as a kid my dad setting me aside and telling me that it was fine to cry and feel sad because it took a real man to show their emotions to others.
I generally avoid looking at myself in the mirror unless I have to get rid of my facial hair or brush my teeth or whatnot, and I haven't willingly let someone take my photo since I was 15, but this again could be attributed to other things such as dissatisfaction with my current weight and not necessarily anything to do with any dissatisfaction with having a male body.
Before I wrote this novel of a post, I wanted to confirm a lot of my feeling about what I wanted to convey, and had hoped others may have done that work for me already (sadly not the case because I was looking for specific experiences, and a lot of articles are very broad) and one thing that popped up multiple times was the thought experiment of "if you were to wake up and see that you were the opposite gender and everyone treated it as normal how would you react" my answer would be that I'd probably have an initial freak out over the cosmic implications of my situation, lol, but I would most likely eventually be fine with the change.
When it is all said and done I don't know really where I stand, I like the idea of a man becoming a woman and I wouldn't be too bothered if it some how magically happened to me but I don't have a burning desire to become a woman or to present as one.
When it comes to my body I don't love it or hate it, I'm neutral about it, its just there and always has been.
I don't really know what I hope to get out of this post, perhaps I just want to fit myself into some predefined box to label myself with because my feelings aren't strong enough to say "I want to be this" or "this is how I truly feel about myself" I certainly have a lot to say but it is a lot of rambling I feel and its just a bunch of wish washy half thoughts that I need to express in some way because they've been tumbling through my head for a few years now and I just had to get them out and let them be real in one way or another.
If you are not sure then you can explore this some more outside of reading fiction. And you can start small. Like how do you want us to think of you here? A man, woman, both, neither?
Another thing is you don't need magic or stuff like that to live as a woman if that's what you want.
I've been sitting here for an hour thinking about your response and your question to me and I've written and rewritten my response several times going over pros and cons, and whether or not I meet self imposed prerequisites for thinking like a man or woman.
Right now I'm kind of fed up with myself being so wishy washy, so lets experiment, I won't know how I feel about something unless I actually experience it, so just for now think of me as a woman and lets see how things go.
Now we are 3!
Also, I started HRT on Saturday, although I'm already talking blockers for 2 more weeks.
I spent years brushing off all my thoughts of wanting to be a woman for this reason. As you may be aware, it's a fairly common anti-trans talking point. Thing is, though, most people's sexual fantasies at least sometimes involve themselves in some scenario they find arousing. Cis people usually imagine themselves in the bodies they have; maybe with a different body type or more well-endowed, but still basically the same. Gender-swapping fantasies aren't that rare, of course, but if it's the primary or only kind of fantasy you have it may be indicative of something deeper. When trans people imagine themselves in some scenario, it can involve having a body that better matches their gender identity. That's not a fetish, it's just the disconnect between brain and body. Furthermore, sexual fantasies provides a semi-plausible excuse for how it's not really about who you are on a fundamental level--more than you have if you spend a lot of time imagining yourself as a different gender in mundane everyday situations--so focusing on them provides an easier mental escape for someone not yet consciously questioning their gender identity.
Of course, everyone's journey is different and not all trans people have sexual fantasies of that sort before coming out. It's hard to make any sweeping generalizations at all, really. For example, what you describe about grooming isn't uncommon, but there are also people like me who let my facial and body hair hair grow out because any time spent taking care of my appearance was a reminder of how my body would "never" look the way I wanted it to--even though I wasn't entirely sure why I hated my appearance--and for a long time it was easier to just try to ignore things.
Always good to have another brave woman join us here. :)
Thats the thing though, I'll pretty much wait the maximum amount of time I can before taking care of it, I usually only shave once a week and the rest of the time I just put it off and ignore it until it becomes an irritant that I can't ignore any further.
Also thanks for the welcome and response to both you and Amevila, at the moment its just nice to have finally been able to have my thoughts actually out there and not constantly internalized.
That's what I'm doing right now. I hate my apperance anyway,s o why bother?
However, I have no problem waking up 1 hour earlier and shave everyday if I know I can go out in girl mode.
In general many of your problems (like the whole hating mirrors thing) reminds me of my experience with dysphoria.
Sadly, there is a good chance that these feelings get worse once you know what's causing it.
I am from Germany too.
So to me you are and always have been a woman. Just one who felt she had to pretend to be a guy for whatever reason.
It took me ages to come out. I rationalized that among other things by thinking i am fine as both a man or woman. But in truth I just lied to myself to make the status quo bearable. I was mainly afraid me trying to live as a woman would never work out.
And then I tried and everything was better. But it can be scary to get started.
I also spent less time taking care of my appearance in guy mode back then because why bother?
I absolutely know how you feel. I avoided mirrors and having my pictures taken for years. Grooming became a chore, because I could never ever make myself look good in my eyes. People would tell, you're a good looking guy, why don't you take care of yourself.
I always had a bit of a weight issue, but whenever ever I lost it, worked out and started gaining muscle mass, becoming more masculine I would stop.
For years I would crossdress whenever I had the chance. Convincing myself that's a fetish and you can get rid of it.
But dressing up was never sexual, it was a relief. I was like I could breathe normal, it was as if a huge weight was taken of my shoulders.
Eventhough deep down I knew that I was Trans, I was convincing myself that I'm not. Or at least I tried.
Welcome to the thread. I know talking really helps.
After all this now I'm just sitting here wanting to berate my younger self for for not being more curious or questioning about my own sense of self, but I can't really since it just so happened that I grew up with just the right coincidences to keep myself satisfied enough with the status quo that when I started to notice I was generally unhappy I could just rationalize the sources of that unhappiness to be something else.
But I really don't like being a constant downer with my posts, so I'll say that while I regret not having the self awareness earlier in my life, at least now I'm taking steps to talk about it and acknowledge my situation.
But I really don't like being a constant downer with my posts, so I'll say that while I regret not having the self awareness earlier in my life, at least now I'm taking steps to talk about it and acknowledge my situation.
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I would kick my younger self into gear sooner too if I could. I probably wasted another 2 years thinking it was too late to transition before I started after all.
After starting the regret of not doing this when I was younger diminished. It's never too late.
And I just saw your profile here lists you as male. If you are comfortable with it you absolutely have the right to change that to female.
Welcome! Don't beat yourself up, I've been pretty aware of transgender as a concept for many years and yet I didn't realize I *am* trans until late last year. There are a lot of powerful mental blockers to having such a realization about who you are at your core, and a lot of sociological programming that encourages binary, hetero-normative thinking.
I'll tell you a time-saving (and maybe life-saving!) tip a trans friend told me when I was questioning: try some female clothes or a wig, look at yourself in a mirror, and see how you feel about it. Or try a phone app with makeup filters (these can be pretty dysphoria-inducing as they're not very realistic, so tread with caution).
And of course, you don't HAVE to be a man or a woman. You can be non-binary, bigender, agender, etc. Gender is a whole spectrum. There's no arbitrary barrier of Essential Femininity you have to possess in order to be who you are. I'm not especially high femme but I'm transfeminine.
As for the "fetish" thing, that's very normal when you're just coming out. This video (and channel) may be enlightening.
Noray I can understand what your getting at, the more I learn about it the more it seems that gender seems to be the baskin robin's of the human psyche.
Funny story concerning the makeup apps you mentioned, earlier this year I accidentally ended up using one on myself when I was showing off my new galaxy S9 to my mom, it's apparently one of the functions of the default phone app, I don't think I noped out of something quicker in my life when I realized that it was applying the filter to the both of us lol.
Funny story concerning the makeup apps you mentioned, earlier this year I accidentally ended up using one on myself when I was showing off my new galaxy S9 to my mom, it's apparently one of the functions of the default phone app, I don't think I noped out of something quicker in my life when I realized that it was applying the filter to the both of us lol.
I knew a lot about trans people (at least compared to most people), but it still took me forever to figure it out.
In any case, what's done is done, focus on the future instead.
The road is long, but it's worth it
I agree dwelling on what I could have done in the past doesnt help matters much, for now at least speaking about these things is enough.
(Most versions of the button test add the caveat that it's irreversible, to help better assess the seriousness of one's feelings.)
(Most versions of the button test add the caveat that it's irreversible, to help better assess the seriousness of one's feelings.)
I mean if we're talking purely fantasy scenarios, I would definitely press such a button (although tbh I would rather have a button that would let me restart my life from the beginning but as a girl). IRL though I don't think I'd really want to transition given the limitations of current technology.
I guess I'll copy what I posted in the LGBT community thread to provide a bit more clarity regarding my situation.
I guess the big issue I have is that these feelings didn't really start until adolescence. I can think of a few vague instances when I was a young kid where I wanted to be a girl, but it didn't become a major obsession until like age 13 or 14. Hence why I've always believed my feelings to just be a bizarre kink in my sexuality.
I half expected the highlighted link to be to Ranma 1/2. I must be getting old if that's not even the go-to anymore.
Everyone whose trans wishes there was a perfect solution. Yet most of us end up settling for what IS available (HRT/voice training/relevant surgeries) because they still make us feel better than just "dealing with it." And you never really "deal with it" as it is, unfortunately. Yeah, the idea that I couldn't do it "perfectly" was a way I rationalized it away, but it just won't cut it forever, and better to transition now while I have some youth than kick myself for waiting longer only to come to the same conclusion anyway.
Well, only you can say if you find the label of transgender to be relevant and useful in making sense of your own experiences, but I'd encourage you not to think of it as an exclusive club that only people who fit all sorts of specialized requirements can be in. For example, this...
...is not exactly an uncommon experience for trans people. I spent a lot of time worrying that I couldn't be trans because I didn't know when I was five and had never told people I was a girl when I was little or done much else that fits the popular conception of a trans childhood. Certainly, many trans people go through that--it was not terribly surprising when my sister came out, for instance, in light of things she'd said and done while growing up--but it's not a requirement. I wasted a lot of time mentally comparing myself to my sister and thinking that if I were to describe myself as trans it would be trivializing her experience and those of other "real" trans people. When I finally worked up the nerve to talk about my feelings, though, the first thing she told me was "there's no one way to be trans" and she's been nothing but supportive. That's a consistent message I've received from every trans person I've talked about my experiences with. To be sure, there are people who engage in gatekeeping, but I think they're a minority.
TL;DR You can still be trans even if you didn't start questioning or feeling conflicted about your gender until your teens or even adulthood, but it's your decision one way or another how you want to identify.
...is not exactly an uncommon experience for trans people. I spent a lot of time worrying that I couldn't be trans because I didn't know when I was five and had never told people I was a girl when I was little or done much else that fits the popular conception of a trans childhood. Certainly, many trans people go through that--it was not terribly surprising when my sister came out, for instance, in light of things she'd said and done while growing up--but it's not a requirement. I wasted a lot of time mentally comparing myself to my sister and thinking that if I were to describe myself as trans it would be trivializing her experience and those of other "real" trans people. When I finally worked up the nerve to talk about my feelings, though, the first thing she told me was "there's no one way to be trans" and she's been nothing but supportive. That's a consistent message I've received from every trans person I've talked about my experiences with. To be sure, there are people who engage in gatekeeping, but I think they're a minority.
TL;DR You can still be trans even if you didn't start questioning or feeling conflicted about your gender until your teens or even adulthood, but it's your decision one way or another how you want to identify.
If we're talking about what started the whole obsession, I can't quite remember. I think it may have been steins;gate (which if you've seen it you know the character I'm talking about), but that manga was the most "holy shit I wish that were me" thing I've ever read, especially the ending where the mc realized that their feelings for their crush were admiration and not attraction.
I think that's part of it for me too. If I were 10 years younger but with the same awareness I have now (I didn't really know about actual trans ppl back then) it would be something I would consider, but I feel that even if I was trans its way too late now to really do anything about it anyways.
Ushiromiya your post has a few parallels to my own post in this thread just a few messages above yours, I understand the thought of questioning whether or not my attraction to the idea of gender bending or body swapping to just be a fetish or something that I would actually want to happen, that very thought process is why it took nearly 2 years after delving into TG fiction ( and the previous 11 years obsession with the gender bender genre) to finally get my thoughts in order and ask for other peoples opinions online.
Hell for a long time I tried to rationalize it to myself that of course I want to visualize what its like to be a woman in a sexual scenario, there's always talk that a womans orgasm is much more powerful than a mans so I'm just getting off to the idea of reaching a higher level of sexual pleasure than I can feel at the moment.
And I've said this already but before I posted in this thread, I did a last ditch hail mary trying to google any articles about "can you be attracted to the idea of being a woman without being trans" or " are there men who have fetishes for male to female transformation erotica" and other such things and every time I hit the search bar I kept getting how I came out as trans articles.
For me, I've found in the past few days that, the very fact that I was even considering the notion of being trans or gender questioning, meant that I was at the very least not cisgender, since as far as i know a cisgender person never questions their position, it never comes up and the idea of being the opposite gender or mixed is alien to them, which is the whole point of "The Button" scenario, because it is a thought experiment that when someone who is comfortable with their gender identity would not press it since they would see no need to.
Hell for a long time I tried to rationalize it to myself that of course I want to visualize what its like to be a woman in a sexual scenario, there's always talk that a womans orgasm is much more powerful than a mans so I'm just getting off to the idea of reaching a higher level of sexual pleasure than I can feel at the moment.
And I've said this already but before I posted in this thread, I did a last ditch hail mary trying to google any articles about "can you be attracted to the idea of being a woman without being trans" or " are there men who have fetishes for male to female transformation erotica" and other such things and every time I hit the search bar I kept getting how I came out as trans articles.
For me, I've found in the past few days that, the very fact that I was even considering the notion of being trans or gender questioning, meant that I was at the very least not cisgender, since as far as i know a cisgender person never questions their position, it never comes up and the idea of being the opposite gender or mixed is alien to them, which is the whole point of "The Button" scenario, because it is a thought experiment that when someone who is comfortable with their gender identity would not press it since they would see no need to.
There are people that started transtioning that were over 80 at the time, so I don't think you are too old.
Starting early makes things easier, but it's never too late, espically because the negative feelings only get worse over time if you don't do anything.
I'm 27 and just started taking hormones, one of my friends started with 25(she is now 27) and she looks beautiful.
Its not so much physical as it is social. Even though I'd rather be a woman, I don't think of myself as one, because I was raised and have lived my whole life as a man.
Like going back to the hypothetical button test, yeah I'd press it, but even if I became a woman physically, I'd still feel like a fake or an imposter on account of not growing up as a girl.
Well, when I say "some youth" I mean I'm in my 30s. I'm GUESSING you're at least a decade younger, and I'm also guessing in a decade if you don't do anything you'll look back and go "why didn't I just transition then?" Or at least think about that "what if."
Well, when you get down to it, if people can teach children how to "grow up as a girl" why can''t you as an adult learn those same lessons, what is it that a girl is taught that is now out of your reach?
If your curious, try something out if you don't like it don't do it again.
That's how I felt in my 20s. I thought it was too late since I went through the wrong puberty and so on.
Now I am in my 30s and transitioning and it's the first time I in my life that I feel alright with myself. Procedures are not perfect and the earlier you start the better. But I don't think it's ever too late.
Just think every day you wait now might be another day you could have had living as who you really are.
Other, older people have done it before you and it really isn't that hard anyway
Thought I'd pop in and introduce myself. I'm agender. I've kinda always known but mostly assumed it was trauma rather than me not really identifying as any gender. It wasn't until I read Stone Butch Blues that I got an idea of how I wanted to express my gender. At 25 or so I finally came out as a nb and a lesbian. Now I'm trying to find my place and thinking through what I'd like to do to transition. I'm really lucky in that part of my family is very accepting, even my grandma (after talking with her about it and answering questions.) Other part...I don't talk to them anymore, lol. I've been very lucky compared to a lot of people. Still, I find it hard to correct people on my name and pronouns because it's a pain to try and explain to people what my gender is, especially cishet people. People just need to accept some things without having to know every little detail!
I have to agree with what the previous posters said.
It was a similar set of mind. Thinking it's way too late to start transitioning. That I
Was too old, too fat, too tall. All of that sent me on a downward spiral. Life got worse. The first counselor I went to set back also about three years. He said I don't believe you are transgender, you are way too masculine, you have a beard and shaved your head.......Now also in my thirties and am the happiest I have ever been.
I'm at a stage I never thought would be possible to achieve