Transgender

It seems a bit odd to me as well, not that I don't accept trans* people for who they are. However, you have to think about the whole thing from a different perspective. Someone who is not gay would find it a bit odd how I can like guys, and not girls. We live in an extremely heteronormative and gender-normative society. Anything that doesn't fit within those norms is seen as "odd" by the people who do fit the norms (you and I for gender, and straight people for sexuality)

I don't claim to understand what a trans* person goes through, just as a straight person can't possibly claim to understand what you or I go through on a daily basis. All I can do is be there and be supportive of them not knowing 100% what they go through.

Just as people are identifying as gay earlier and earlier these days, people are also identifying as transgender as early as 6. So there's a very innate aspect to it, much as there is with being gay.

 

There are a lot of people that come out as being gay or lesbian before they realize that they are transgender. (I came out as being gay before I accepted myself as transgender.)

I personally came to the conclusion that I am transgender because I felt way more male than I felt female. It's hard to explain really. I just feel that I should have been born male instead of female.

I remember growing up, I always thought that I was male. I thought that I would grow up and be more like my father than my mother. So, when I started to go through puberty, I was at a total loss. I eventually accepted that I was female, but I still was very masculine. I pushed those thoughts to the back of my head and eventually forgot about them.

In high school, they came back. I just thought that I was gay or bi. I decided that the only way to get rid of those feelings was to be a feminine as possible.. (yeah.. that didn't work too well..)

It was not until my senior year of high school that I came to terms with being bi. I had met some LGBT people in a class that I was in. One was a trans* guy and the other was a bisexual female. They both helped me realize that I was not straight.

It was not until college that I started to explore my gender again. I didn't care what people thought about me. During spring semester of my freshman year, I came to terms with being non-cisgender. I identified as pangender at that time.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I came to terms with being FtM. I was always on more of the male end of pangender, I never really was over on the female side. I realized that when I did feel female, that was just denial for me. I was mostly male. That was a weird feeling for me. It was scary, yet it released a ton of pressure off of me at the same time..

I hope that this helps explain it some. I'm not the best at explaining my feelings.

 

... With difficulty.

A science nerd in me compares sexuality to the theory of relativity, - yes, it's counter-intuitive sometimes, but the basic principles are simple and all those bizarre conclusions about cosmic speed limits and time dilation don't matter much unless you're working at CERN...

And gender is like quantum physics. All of a sudden you realize that the internal structure of a chair you're sitting on has more to do with Star Trek force fields than your intuitive idea of solid objects... And that this is the big part of the reason your computer, your gas stove and your body really work as they do.

Anyway, for me, the first sign was that I never could quite understand the way other treated gender. As long as I can remember it was always like everyone but me shared some gigantic in-joke that makes absolute no sense to me. "If ''be a man, punch him back!' is a good advice, why girls don't do it too?" "You really never wondered what being an opposite sex feels like?" "Call me a girl if you want, I still won't do this obviously stupid/mean/useless thing just to prove I'm 'a real man.'" And so on. I really never "got it" and while I learned by rote how I'm supposed to act in order to fit in with my "male" role, it never made sense to me. I really didn't have any good info on forms of transgender other than transsexualism before I learned fluent English and got an Internet connection (and not right away even then.) but I was always sort f "not a dude" in my private thoughts.

Now, I might or might not be actually female, I still can't 100% emotionally accept all the implications, but purely rationally it makes sense. When I'm alone with myself, and don't act that "normal dude" role, many things that I do (from the way I move and talk to the way I think about my body and relationships) are "typically feminine." It's not an act I painstakingly learned to avoid being harassed, it was just... Picked up along the way by seeing other women doing that, with no conscious thought from me. Idea of doing some stupid/mean/useless/uncomfortable things "just because I'm a girl" bothers me, but not to the point I categorically won't do most of them (like with male equivalent.)

 

Its the difference between the physical body and the person inside. Being male or female is not just about genitals, its about how you interact with the world, and how you feel and think. Realising that your body is at odds with your 'self' isn't really that hard, or at least it wouldn't be, if the child wasn't socialised to misunderstand gender and reject their masculinity or femininity. Transgender people generally realise their gender earlier that cis-gendered LGB people realise their sexuality, because gender (IMO) is more fundamental to the self than sexuality.

It isn't a perfect analogy, but its the best I can think of: imagine waking up one day to find that you've switched genders, but inside, you're still the same person. Then imagine knowing your body is of the wrong gender from a very young age, but being unable to understand it or make others understand. Its a hard thing to grow up with.

 

I never, ever explored the idea of being gay before I came to terms with my gender. I was with a closet lesbian for over ten years though, before we both came out. We actually helped each other come out and therapists basically agreed that we found each other because we fulfilled each other's needs without being "out about it".

As for being trans, I knew since I was pretty young. Can't really explain it, I just knew I was different and so did everyone else. But I wasn't gay at all. I have always been very attracted to women pretty much exclusively, although since transitioning I have found myself romantically attracted to a limited number of men (hence my ending up married to one).

 

It is a bit complicated and hard to understand. The best way I can describe it from my point of view is its like being born in the wrong body and having that nagging feeling that it is not "right" as who I am. That is the best way I have found i can compare my experience, sorry...:icon_sad:

 

For me, realizing I was trans* was putting a name to the feelings that had plagued me my whole life- that I was different, that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't be a normal girl, and I simply wasn't the person I'd spent years pretending to be in order to make everyone else happy.

It varies from person to person. Some people are aware of this disconnect from a young age. Others, like me, don't know the nature of these feelings until they're older.

It's all about discovering yourself and how you'd like to present to the world.

 

I identify as trans* sort of (it's massively complicated), and for me it followed my sexuality. It was (and is) a real journey for me, and I guess the best way I can describe it is to back up a few years in my narrative. Just a quick note, I came out to myself and everyone else (about my sexuality) in the beginning of my senior year of high school (almost a year ago).

Some time in the middle of high school I discovered clothes. That is to say, I discovered that amazingly awesome feeling of confidence that a great outfit can give you. There's that slipping out of your skin and into it at the same time, the ability to say "I look sexy, and y'all want me, I feel hawt!" Suddenly you're talking to people you never did before and you're inhibitions are gone because you have confidence!

This discovery took the form of pencil skirts that turned heads and dresses that other girls sighed after. I lost count of how many compliments I got from complete strangers when I went out. I was that girl, and I loved it. I had acne, and dull, boring hair, and no boobs, but I was the best dressed person in the room.

Last January (so a few months after I realized I was gay), I started to lose that feeling. I would put on an outfit and expect it to make me into my confident version of myself, and occasionally it wouldn't. Instead, I felt more uncomfortable in it than I could ever remember feeling in my life. I would feel like I wanted to turn my skin inside out to escape the clothes I was wearing. I was so confused. Eventually, I linked that feeling to some of the days I was dressing my most femme, and slowly cut back on them. I had to learn to listen to whether my body felt like it wanted a dress or not on any given day. I cut my hair into a "pixie cut." It helped for a while, but then things changed again.

I actually had a (closeted) trans guy friend in one of my classes, and his haircut changed my perspective. He came in one day with his once-long hair chopped slightly longer than mine. The difference was that with his basketball shorts and big t-shirts, he was completely passing until he opened his mouth. And I was jealous. And that took me by surprise. Really that was the moment I realized "yeah, something's definitely going on with my gender."

For me, it's really all about appearances (at this point in time). I don't have an issue with the fact that my boobs exist (usually), but I don't want the world to see them. I'd love to pass for a guy most days, and that's really how I know. Cisgender people don't want to pass as a different gender than their assigned ones. The joy I get from looking at myself in the mirror when I'm binding with a button up and tie does not belong to cisgender people. At the same time, if I do put on a dress, most days one look in a mirror and I cringe. It just looks wrong to me right now.

 

I've just felt wrong in my body forever. It wasn't until a few years ago I started trying to place it. To be honest, I didn't know that there were even transguys, so I just always felt like I was walking this tightrope between "The Genders", but not connecting with either for whatever reason.

 

It's pretty crazy to come to terms with - I like to think of it as fragments you put together. I had a lot of hints during my life but it all came as a bang last year. Just imagine you were putting together a puzzle but you couldn't see the picture until the last piece fell into place.

 

for me its even worse, i found that some days i'am more guy and some days i'am more girls. being pan gender i think is worse than trans. trans would be more easier then being in my case.

being one day waking up and feeling more girl and than trying to figure out how i feel and what to wear that day is a hard one, then the next day being on the other direction sucks somedays.

Now aday i find that just being who i am that day is best, but i wish my body would be more like a girl somedays and a guy other days, somedays are very hard to deal with though

 

You know I think there is some common ground that will make it click. Not all of us will have this experience of course. But the very first time I tried to make love to a woman, was when I knew I wasn't cis and straight.

Now with me it turned out that the problem wasn't her. Although that thought crossed my mind, and I did have a brief bi curious period that is a lot easier for me to talk about now than it used to be. I know I'm only attracted to women. The problem was just with me. I need to be a woman. There are some things a straight woman needs out of a partner, that mother nature just was not going to let me do.

There were tons of other clues of course. And as much as I'd like to say otherwise, that didn't stop me from trying to get further into my cis straight life. But there is something about not being able to be a man to a woman that really drives the point home like nothing else can, and that started me down the road that eventually forced me to accept that I'm trans.

I really think a lot of us just have some things about us that are just part of our hardware, so to speak. And we reach a point where we decide to stop fighting ourselves all the time so we can live more effective lives. The reason we fight ourselves is the same for both of us. Other people taught us the wrong lessons. They taught you that liking men was wrong. They taught me that everything feminine about me was wrong.

But experiencing it, it's just as automatic as finding someone else attractive. When I'm being a woman, I just don't have to think or keep track of so much. I don't have to act.

It might be easier if you've ever struggled with being gay, and tried to act straight, to understand what it's like. If you accepted yourself early on, I think it's harder, but if you've got a decent imagination it'll make sense. Just the same fear you get when you want to kiss your guy in public. That's how I feel whenever I'm afraid I'm going to let some of the inner girl out where everyone can see her.

Or at least how I used to feel. It's still there sometimes. But as I accept myself and come closer to living a more honest life that makes sense every day, and putting the lie behind me, just not thinking and acting, that fear goes away. I'm trans. So what.