Transsexual?

Well, I'm a trans guy, but I'm not transexual. Maybe I can help you out. I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but you just kind of know. Looking back, there may be things you can pick out that affirm it, but they may not seem like indicators at the time.

 

Well for me, it's not about knowing I'm trans; it's knowing I'm a dude. I just know. It's something innate/part of my core.

I mean, to help you understand, do you just know you're a guy? Like knowing within yourself. Cause if you do, that's how it is for us too.

 

It's just like with sexuality: some know early on, as far as they can remember; others feel something off but don't come to terms with it until later in life; a few struggle with coming to terms with it for years, but I'd say most people who identify as transsexual probably are. A lot of transsexuals, specifically, identify as either "man" or "woman" first and foremost.

 

Well it varies from person to person but basically there is no set point. It's not like one day you wake up and go "Holy shit, I'm a woman!". So for me, it went something like this.

Birth to age 11:
Never thought about it in terms of gender. Never felt comfortable in my own skin (weight and things) but couldn't see the benefit of losing any. I now understand this to have been that I have never ever wanted to be a 'fit guy'. So I just let myself slob out.

11 to 15:
As most teenagers do, you wonder what it's like being the opposite gender. Never really thought much of it. Really liked 'cute' things. I could never understand why people were attracted to the girls they were, it was the cute ones that got me. I never thought much of this. I loved being cuddled although it never happened much. I noticed lots of girls with striped-overknee socks and desperately wanted them myself. Absolutely HATED myself both personally and physically. Grew my hair long. Tried to hide myself from the world. Decided to make my appearance more intimidating so I could avoid the rest of the world. Loved getting my nails painted when my (goth) friends went out. Again, never thought much of it.

16-21:
Started to pay for my own clothes so I had more choice in what I wore. Hated all forms of mens fashion. Continued to wear a simple t-shirt and trousers and trainers, no exceptions. I remember thinking how cool one of the girls at my sixth form looked. I was definitely attracted to her but there was something more than that I didn't understand. Made friends on the internet, almost exclusively girls I had no attraction to. Found it really easy to get on with them compared to almost every guy I know. Discovered anime. Specifically the show Azumanga Daioh. One character is tall and 'cool' but wishes she was cute. Never identified with someone more in my entire life. Another character was what is known as 'genki', basically happy and energetic. I have always been drawn to these characters but could never see myself as the male equivalent, in fact i'm not even sure there IS one, except for maybe children or the insane (in anime at least).

Age 18, got a tattoo of the 'genki' girl, Tomo from the aforementioned show. Told the guy who did it "She is everything I want to be..." by which I meant, not perfect, but happy. Able to express emotion. Stupid but fun. Friendly, if a bit over-enthusiastic. A Tom-boy with some real girly traits. It did not occur to me then, just how much I wished I was her. Throughout this time there was a lot of talk about sexuality and sex changes within my friends group. I have no idea why. My best friend is bi so it explains that one at least, but I thought about it occasionally, but nothing came of it.

I LOATHED myself in this period. I mean I never hated anything so much. I quit EVERYTHING. Sixth form, university. I did SOME work but did such a bad job my contract never got renewed. I was so depressed people thought I was permanently drunk. I pretty much ruined everything, and felt like the whole world was wrong. Was suicidal almost every day and on the rare occasion I actually smiled even my parents thought I was on drugs. Then I started to seek help. Got a lot of surface stuff out of the way but never got much better. I thought I was improving for a bit but then it got worse.

22 - the present:
This is much easier because it's more recent and it all floods towards the end.
Happened to be reading a visual novel, only to discover that it involved a trans-girl. I had not been expecting this but suddenly realised it was the hottest thing I think I'd ever seen at the time. Around this time, through an accident in the shower, I discovered slightly more of myself than I realised and it occurred to me that actually I was bisexual. I ought to have noticed this before, since I was always drawn to the male member in porn, but thought nothing of it and suppressed it.

Was feeling particularly lonely and happened to discover some male masturbators while browsing an anime website. There were many, but I was automatically drawn to the one that came with a pair of striped panties. It was much more expensive, but I wanted it so much for reasons that became clear later. I guess initially I thought having panties would be sexy or something? I don't know. Maybe it would be slightly more like a girl was doing things to me if I had them? The idea made me feel shameful and so I didn't buy it for months and months. During which time, my reasons for wanting it changed. For some reason a voice in my head started screaming at me "WEAR THEM DAMN IT!".

It took me about a week of looking at the site to order them, because it felt wrong and i told myself it was bad. Then when I got them it felt right. There was nothing sexual about it, it just felt right.

Then I went through the motions of telling myself I was wrong and weird. Eventually I bought a skirt and a top. It took me well over 3 months to wear them, they just sat under my bed while I told myself off for being fucked in the head.

When I did get round to wearing them, it felt normal. After that it went incredibly fast. I started realising things I'd never understood. I could finally BE cute if I wanted. I could wear the clothes I liked instead of just a t-shirt and trousers. I could have long hair and painted fingernails. I could have little ribbons on my underwear and socks, and surround myself in purple and pink and pastel colours all the time. I could wear swishy skirts I'd secretly been interested in for a long while. I found I was able to express emotion for the first time in my life. I felt a connection to other people. I didn't hate myself as much, because for once I could see something other than just a blob with some personality. Now I could be a reasonable looking girl instead of just that thing that I was before. I got a bra and breast forms and a wig. I had my friends and people online call me Holly for a while to see how it felt.

Sometimes I look back and I think about all the things I said happened before this year and I feel sad. If I had been able to recognize them years ago, maybe my teen years might have been better? But I wasn't in a place to recognize it or do anything about it. It's probably always been there, it was certainly a route cause of my depression and anxiety, but I didn't know about it until this year. Then it hit me like a train, and after trying to pretend it wasn't a thing I eventually accepted it. So that's how I knew. I hope that helps a bit.

 

Transgender is preferred. And I'm going to guess that your friend is actually a woman, sorry if I'm wrong.

Answer to your question is rather simple for me. I've always known I was a man/boy. I didn't used to know about transgender people, didn't know how any of it was possible, but I knew anyway. Probably, in the same way that you know you're a man.

 

Hey, so, I saw your response on another topic in this part of the forum, and decided to start there.

If someone is transsexual or transgender, they are trans all of the time. It's simple as that! Also, I figure it might help clear some things up if I defined some terms.

Transsexual - a person that physically transitions from one sex to the other sex. Some people find this term outdated.

Transgender - a person that identifies as a gender other than their birth sex. Such an individual could be mtf (male to female), ftm (female to male), genderqueer, genderfluid, pre-op (planning on surgery), post-op (already had surgery), no-op (not planning on surgery), etc. Some transgender people are transsexuals, but not all transgender people that have had surgery are comfortable with the term transsexual.

I myself am a pre-op ftm transgender individual (I prefer the term "transmasculine", but for simplicity's sake, ftm is fine). Being transgender, I feel like I'm not a girl all the time even though I'm physically female - the feeling isn't limited only to when I bind my chest down to look more like a guy, or when I'm wearing guy's clothes. If I were to pull on a dress and put barettes in my hair, I would still be a pre-op transdude, just a pre-op transdude dressed like a girl! That said, I like being called "he", and if I had a guy's name to go by, I'd like to use it all the time, no matter how I'm dressed. I don't expect strangers to do it if I'm wearing girl's clothes, but I expect the people I'm out to to have the courtesy to do it, and your friend probably does too.

As for the question in this thread, how we know is both simple and complex. Most people don't really think about gender, so explaining it is hard. Earlier today I was talking with a friend of mine, a cisguy, who is still working to try and understand what it is that I experience. For him, and probably the majority of cisgendered individuals, seeing how gender works beyond the ways people romance and dress is complicated and difficult, and while he's starting to understand it on an intellectual level, he doesn't experience it on an instinctive level the way I do. I suspect a simple "how do you know you feel like a man?" won't suffice with most people for this reason, definitely my friend and maybe yourself included.

Which makes it incredibly difficult to give you a not-vague answer.

I could say that I know because I've always liked videogames, played rough with the other boys at recess as a kid, and collect swords. But those are just things, not really relevent to how I identify. I also like vegan baking, let little girls put makeup on me as a kid, and sometimes sew, and I still identify as a guy.

What it comes down to is that we really do just know. Not everyone has always known forever, even though gender-variancy in children is a pretty big topic right now, and for a lot of us, we don't really piece it all together until later in life - after all, girls and guys aren't really too different until after puberty, so we can't really start to experience things like phantom breasts or too-wide hips until then. I've always fancied the idea of being a boy since I was small, but it's not until about four or five years ago, when I started to realize that my discomfort with my physical appearance was definitely dysphoric and not common for ladies my age, that I really started to think about my own gender identity.

I think one thing that trans people tend to go through that cis people don't is dysphoria. Dysphoria can be a pretty terrible thing, and is a lot worse than just not liking how we look. it's a very persistent feeling that we're somehow built wrong, and it happens differently for everyone. A transwoman might feel dysphoria because she doesn't have breasts to fill out her cute bras, or because she has a penis. For me, I experience dysphoria because I have breasts, but feel like I should have a flat chest. I experience the worst dysphoria over my voice, because it's high and feminine. These sorts of feelings just don't happen to cis-people.

If you have any more specific questions, feel free to ask me! I hope that little walk-through helped to clear up some of the basics, and maybe helped you get a vague idea of what your friend might be going through.

 

I really like all this, it's really helping me figure things out as well.

I just had sort of a revelation about 2.5 weeks ago while talking with some friends. They were talking about trans people they knew and just about the subject in general, but it wasn't until they brought up how their friends looked and how they felt after hrt and srs that I noticed something. First, I noticed that I was happy for them, and that was all normal I mean who wouldn't be pleased for them? But there was something else there too. A familiar feeling, something I had never categorized. But what was it? When had I felt this feeling last?

It was jealousy. I was jealous.

.....wait, what?

Those people my friends were talking about got to become who they wanted to be and I was jealous? Why would I be jealous? And then it hit me: Oh my god, am I supposed to be a woman?
This came as an enormous shock to me and I was really scared at first (and even now a little) but as the moments passed I realized indicators from my past that I never connected before: I love being cuddled and protected, I would look at something cute a girl in school was wearing and get mad that boys didn't have nice-looking clothes like that, I would be mad that girls could dance however they wanted and guys mostly just stood there and swayed back and forth, I would grab and squeeze what loose fat there was on my chest and close my eyes and pretend SO HARD that they were breasts.

I felt like a fool. Why hadn't this occurred to me before? And was all this true, or was I losing my mind?

I'm still struggling with this and trying to figure out what I actually want, but the more and more I think about it, the more I really like the idea of becoming a woman. I am out to my girlfriend, and two friends of mine, most of whom are very supportive. I guess I'm a late bloomer; I'm 24 years old, 6'0" tall and I just found out that I'm a transgender lesbian woman.

 

Hello Notecards, and welcome to EC! Good luck figuring everything out. And don't worry about being a "late bloomer" if you realize you do really want to be a woman - like I said, it doesn't dawn on a lot of us until we're adults, myself included. I'm always here to talk to if you ever feel like chatting.

 

Thanks Clockworkfox! Yeah, I'm really glad I found this place. I was just lost around the Internet for a while there. This looks like a place where I could actually figure out some things. And I am VERY appreciative of that

 

I wish the admins had a way to sticky a post in a definitions section, Clockwork. And, I'll expand, and say that for me, the biggest issues are the choice of either shaving at least once a day or growing facial hair, neither is really a good thing for me, but I go with the former as the later is much worse, and not having anything up top to poke out a little. Doesn't even have to be much there, just enough to be noticable would be nice.

 

It's a cliche, but being trans is something I always felt. I felt disconnected from what society painted me to be. I was always a boy, even with my somewhat girly quirks. I'd be envious of all the guys I was around when I was in school because they had everything I was robbed of and so on and so forth.

 

Ha, for me, choosing between growing facial hair or shaving isn't an issue. As I am now, I never shave. Even when I was trying to present as female, I'd almost never shave. I just also never wore shorts. If I get the chance to go through hrt, I'll be shaving at least daily - facial hair is probably not a good look for me. *sigh* But it'll be worth it if my voice drops!

As for boobs, take mine. They're free. I don't want them.

 

For me it was a combination of feeling uncomfortable when people treat me like a man, and feeling happy when people treat me like a women. It's just the reaction I get in my head that tells me I'm at least in part the opposite gender inside.

 

I knew I was a boy/ know young man when I first learned their was a difference between males a females that's something that has been their and has only gotten stronger over the years

 

Why hasn't the op posted again? Boring thread without a response.

 

OP, cOME back! We miss you!