Living as a woman help

Dress as a woman? Make up? Go to the toilet in the woman's bathroom?

 

I don't know. This scares the hell out of me. You haven't used any hormones at all? I would really like to know if this really is still common. I don't think I could do this with my body the way it is now. If I couldn't pass I couldn't do it. I want to be a girl, but not a dude in a dress.

 

... My therapist didn't make me live as a man before letting me go on T, because he understood that to actually LIVE AS A MAN in the world, I'd have to have some hormonal help. It's hard to live as a man when everyone else sees a girl, right, well I assume it's the same way for (many) transwomen.

Pick a name, tell people online to use it and female pronouns. Get some discreet female clothes, such as feminine panties. Paint your toenails. Whatever. That's living as a woman well enough. After all, what is a woman supposed to live like? :/ Sexist fucking bullshit, IMO... but I think solidly identifying as a woman and informing people (even just online) that you are a woman is living like a woman.

 

I would imagine there's differing schools of thought on when to begin the real-life test. If I had practiced gender psychology, I would probably recommend you do the same and live as a woman for a brief time before taking on any kind of bodily changes. The reasoning is that your therapist probably gets a lot of people who aren't quite sure of their gender identity yet, and that anything like hormones would be too much of a jump early on.

There's much more to being a woman/man than stereotypes, obviously. I believe the recommendation here is to come out and direct people to address the OP as their real gender, as well as present to people in a way they feel appropriate. That's the baseline, anyway, obviously most transsexuals will want to go further and appear to the public as the opposite sex.

 

Having to go fulltime without hrt would be terrible. Not only wud passing be extremely difficult for many women, but it would also be extremely dangerous considering the history of violence and discrimination against transwomen.

Among the people i have told, i correct them on pronoun usage and enciurage them to call me by my girl name. Not because i need to appease some gatekeeper therapist but because it helps with my gender dysphoria in a therapuetic way. I am not about to pop on a skirt and heels and go out to the bar when my 5 oclock shadow still grows in at 3.

Pfft gatekeeping may be effective for patients who have a history of ocd or an active drug habit. Otherwise, sane and lucid women should be able to request hrt as a personal decision in their process of treatment.

 

I manage...

Okay, to officially begin RLT, you need to do the following things:

Change your name and inform all of the relevant people in your life to you is. For legal transition later on, this has to be done legally, but for the purposes of the real life test, just make sure people use it.
Insist upon correct use of pronouns.
Present your image in a way that is consistent with biological women. This means boobs, and hair styling/wig (you can have short hair, just styled in a more female way) for transwomen.
Use female rest rooms.

Its all very public, but you'd have to go public when you got hormones anyway. For clothes, obviously wear female clothes, but I would probably advice against dresses for the time being, as people would try and box you in with their idea of cross dressers and the like. I would say, wear eye liner and foundation - there should be tutorials on the correct application of make up online if you need them.

Good luck.

 

I'm not sure how common it is, but for what it's worth, I didn't have to go through a "real life experience." I just went through gender therapy for six months. By the time I sought the help of a therapist, I was already pretty sure about my gender, so I just did this to get hormones. Depending where the person is in the process (questioning, already presenting as the gender they identify with, etc) and on the therapist, I've heard of people who spent a lot less time in therapy than I did. For me, I had just come out to my parents a few months before, introduced myself as male online, and was trying to appear more masculine, but had trouble passing without hormones.

Pretty much this. Unless your therapist is incredibly old-fashioned, most likely all they'll expect is for you to come out to those who are important to you, ask them to address you with gender-appropriate pronouns, and for you to pick a more feminine/gender-neutral name to use with them. If you like and would feel comfortable wearing skirts or dresses, go ahead, but if you're not a particularly feminine girl, your therapist shouldn't expect you to conform to these outdated stereotypes.

OP: If you're wondering what your specific therapist means when she says she wants you to start living as a woman full time, just ask her. Different therapists have different requirements, so while the people in this thread may have provided good answers, only your therapist can tell you what her expectations for you are.

 

Regarding makeup: I wear it, but most of my female friends, including my straight female friends, don't, at least not every day. Obviously, a lot of things to do with gender expression are cultural, and can differ even regionally--we live in Oregon.

Anyway, makeup is not mandatory for femininity. However, it is distinctly feminine (in western culture), so it goes a long way in communicating the idea of femininity.

Personally, I think the real life test business can be really cruel, depending on where you are living. On the other hand, I suppose there is almost always going to be a period during transition where the person's appearance makes their trans status evident. The real life test would prepare a patient for that aspect of transitioning, in my opinion much more than for what it will actually be like once transition is complete.