When I first starting feeling I was trans, I didn't think my personality was at all like a man so I started to imagine that once I started to transition, I would feel different and would become more like a man. I started to imagine myself as someone else, a man with a personality different to my own so that I would feel more like a man basically. And it felt right. Over the past two years I imagined myself as all kinds of man I could be and it felt like I was becoming a new person. I didn't want to think about the person I used to be and wanted to start again with a new identity. My personality started fragmenting and I felt like different versions of me all the time. The problem is I can't erase my past as I thought I could and now that I am trying to integrate the new me and the old me together I realised two things. Firstly, now that I look back on my life I feel like the boy was always there but I hid him away. Essentially I was and I am the same person and this is a painful truth. I think I live in my head a lot and think about how life could be rather than the reality which is far less appealing. So now I'm stuck because I feel that I am trans but I have quite a feminine personality and I don't actually know if I feel like a man should. I felt that by becoming a man I would be more interested in working out, I wasn't sure that I would still maintain a vegetarian diet because during the past year I have had weird urges to eat meat and not care about animals as I used to, I turned my back on my innate abilities because they seemed to girly and gave me dysphoria. Basically, I have been trying to erase my personality and forge a new one but now I am realising this is not possible. So this integration of the old me and the new me is proving difficult because it makes me feel less of a man and confused about my gender. Could I be a feminine man in a woman's body? Will this change as I transition if I take hormones? I feel uncomfortable with my personality as a man. It's too feminine :icon_sad:
For feminine or masculine there is no right or wrong way of being a man, woman, transman, transwoman or anywhere on the non-binary scale. You are who you are and the same with how you present.
I think it's very difficult coming to terms with the fact that you're trans, and on top of that folks who are trans have more pressure to conform to society's standard of men or women. Don't worry yourself over what other people think until you have figured everything out for yourself. When I start to feel like I'm running in circles in my head, or fine combing every single thought, I force myself to stop thinking and do something else. You might try that when you start questioning how trans you are or whether your personality is "man" enough. As for your personality. I am a loud, over bearing, stubborn, obnoxious, attention hog. I know quite a bit on how to be a girl and be fashionable, I just don't bother because I don't really like my body. I work with kids, I love to read and write, and I find football detestable. The only sport I love is swimming, and I think it's stupid when guys do their whole "I'm manly look at me" routine at the gym (though I do love the muscles that get shown off during these times). I want to have fashionable clothing as a man, and I want to look nice and get my confidence back and unfortunately with my rather girly personality, EVERYONE ELSE will think I'm a girl. When others doubt your identity based on the way you act you need to ignore them. I was thinking about this last night and I figured it out. For me, it doesn't matter if I'm seen as the most girly guy in the world, so long as I am a GUY. Just remember that when you start felling like this, and remember there are plenty of other feminine guys on the planet, so it's no biggie Hugs!!!
You have to let go of the stereotypes and understand that not all men (or women) behave in the same ways or have the same values. You may very well be fooling yourself into thinking you have to change more than you actually do. If you are in fact trans, then there is very little you have to change from this point, other than the physical transition. For example, I wish that I was female, and I feel like I want to change to become one, but only so I can express feelings and behaviors that I already have and feel I have to hide as I am right now. But if I did transition to become a girl, I would still not wear makeup (expect for special occasion maybe) and I would not pierce my ears. Those are things that just don't have anything to do with who I am. Dig a little deeper and think hard about which of these feelings of change are something you really want, and which are something you're in a way forcing yourself to consider. Also, remember not to let society's image of gender confuse you.
