First off, I'm a 19 year old cisgender male who just fully came out in January 2014 (told my first person in November 2013). I knew I was gay for a long, long time, I just denied it to the best of my abilities, then decided to accept it and hide it, and eventually fully came out and here I am now. My attitude has changed in a way I never thought it would: I'm thrilled about being gay. I guess after the years of repression, the ability to openly express that part of my identity (even if people have a bad reaction) is a liberating feeling. I get pleasure when people say "But ThisIsntProof, you don't act gay!" and I can respond by saying "No, you're just ignorant, let me explain things to you." I would tell people that one of the best perks of being gay was the ability to bounce between masculinity and femininity and having it be socially acceptable. Then April came. I was sitting in my International Politics class and a woman was on the screen and out of nowhere I thought "what if you end up being transgender?" It was the first time the thought ever crossed my mind and it produced instant anxiety that was at times, debilitating. There have been times where I wished I was a girl, imagined myself as a girl, been jealous of girl's clothing (I mean seriously, so much more effort is put into girl's clothes haha), but never have I actually ever considered becoming a girl. I'm uncomfortable with my body, but that has more to do with my weight and whenever I imagine the perfect body I strive for, it has no feminine features whatsoever. I have no problems calling myself a male. I've never worn women's clothing. My anxiety does not come from feeling trapped or depressed, I feel like life would be easier as a girl, but that doesn't mean I want to be one. My fear comes from the possibility of one day becoming transgender. I know this could be super offensive, and I'm not trying to be, so please forgive me. I know a lot of this could just stem from my ignorance of the trans* identity, but I'm here to try and find other people who have/are going through similar thoughts. TL;DR: Is it normal for a gay, cisgender male to have anxiety over the possibility of one day becoming transgender?
Deep breath and a hug (*hug*) One thing I think is that you don't become one gender or another, not like a person becomes pregnant or bald, at least to my understanding. I can't answer if it's 'normal' for a cis male to have anxiety about becoming transgender, but I've met others on various forums that after questioning their gender understood themselves to be the same/similar gender as their assigned sex. But what is normal? I wouldn't worry about 'normal' because it's so subjective and typically refers more to stereotypes than actual researched trends and statistics. In most cases where 'normal' is used the sentence would make as much or more sense by plugging in 'stereotypical' instead. What I would like to impress on you is that it is fine to question and explore your gender, and if you are, fear and anxiety are very understandable responses. As you can see from under my avatar, I'm trying to understand my own gender at the moment, and for me that is a very large source of anxiety. Anyway, I hope something in here was helpful!
Let me put it this way, have you ever gotten caught up in a hypothetical situation that you knew was highly unlikely yet still felt really anxious about it? Let's face it, your human, and humans worry about pretty much anything and everything from whether they left the stove on, to america being invaded by carebears. So in that sense, yes, it's normal to have anxiety over such things. And if the carebear joke didn't calm down the anxiety, consider this. How many straight people have had anxiety about being gay? Food for thought.
