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Can coming out as gay/lesbian lead to realisation of being transgender??

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by anonym, May 3, 2013.

  1. anonym

    anonym Guest

    I know that no one can tell me whether or not I'm trans and it's something only I can work out but I would really appreciate some feedback based on your own experiences and if you can relate to how I'm feeling - or not!
    So...just over a year ago I was in counselling for depression and decided I needed to come to terms with my sexuality. It was eating away at my self esteem and I realised that if I wanted to overcome depression, I needed to feel better about myself. I thought I knew what I was dealing with - that I needed to come to terms with being a lesbian and accept myself for who I was, but as I tried to get my head around the idea, something just wasn't right, which then led me to realise that I might actually be transgender. I know this sounds stupid but before I started to come out to myself, I never entertained the idea of me being with a woman in any way shape or form. I just blocked it off because where I lived, where I went to school, it just wasn't acceptable. As a child I never doubted my gender and was fine with all the usual stereotypical girly things. Although one thing I can look back on which makes me question my gender identity is that I have never dreamed of having a family of my own etc like most girls do. I never have been at all maternal. Even through adolescence though, although I would never say I was entirely comfortable with my body, I never put this down to gender issues. And into my early 20's I have continued to present as a feminine female. But once I started to come out to myself all this seemed wrong and I began to feel more and more uncomfortable with my female appearance and gender role within society. For example, I used to dress typically feminine (skirts, dresses, tights, blouses) but quickly began to feel almost like I was a boy dressing as a girl whenever I wore these clothes. Now, it varies from day to day how I feel about the way I dress. Some days I don't feel so bad looking a little girly, others I am in complete turmoil agonizing over my female appearance and trying to find a baggy top for example that will relieve some of the distress. I just do not feel that I am in the right body or gender role to be with a woman in that way. If I imagine myself in the shoes of the male so to speak, that seems to appeal to me. But at the same time, I wouldn't say I have ever behaved in a masculine way or shown an interest stereotypical male hobbies etc. I guess what I am trying to figure out is am I actually male, but through suppressing my sexuality for all these years and conditioning by society and my upbringing as a girl, I have only just realized it at the age of 24/25??? Is this possible? If anyone has any similar experiences, please share. I am still seeing a counselor so I am receiving professional support, but not specifically for gender issues. But the idea that I have lived my life so far as a female and now I am a male is hard to take in and I'm struggling to see a way out right now. I frequently think about suicide as I think it takes a stronger braver person than me to go through this but there's still a part of me that wants to live, that's here now asking for advice. Please comment if you have any insight on this. Thanks for reading xx
     
  2. Exoskeleton

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    I see two prominent options here.

    You may still be internalizing some of the negative messages you've gotten from society over the years. It's told you that women can't be with women-- women are reserved for men. So, now that you've accepted your attraction for women, you're still holding on to that idea that only men can be with women, and so you don't want to let yourself be feminine because that would be somehow "wrong" or "unnatural."

    The other option I see is that opening up to yourself and accepting your sexuality has led to you opening up to yourself and unveiling your gender. That's what happened to me when I came out as bi. In the soul searching I went through to see myself as bi and to accept that it's okay, I uncovered all of my transgender feelings that I had shoved into the same box as my lesbian feelings.

    Or it could be something else. I'm not you, and I can't see into your soul (though I know it would be helpful).

    I'm a depressed wreck, myself. But even as weak as I feel, I know that I can get through this. Every person, including you, is strong enough to get through their struggles, and I hope you can find something, somebody, or somewhere to draw that strength from.
     
  3. anonym

    anonym Guest

    Thanks for the reply Exoskeleton :slight_smile: That's pretty much what I thought, either I can't accept the idea of being a gay woman or I'm in the process of discovering something else entirely:icon_sad: I know it's different for everyone but do you think you could give me some insight into how you knew? For me, it feels like I am physically in the wrong body and gender role to be with a woman that way. Being biologically female is almost a barrier between how I feel about women and any inclination I might have to act on those feelings. As though being a woman myself 'blocks' the attraction to a certain extent. If I imagine myself in a relationship with another woman, I imagine it would feel more like close friends than lovers. And I don't think that I would want to be intimate with a woman in my female body any more any more than I would to be with a man. It would just feel unnatural to me...However, if I imagine myself as the man, then that seems to resolve the discomfort I feel about being a lesbian. And I have been reading other posts and can relate to this http://emptyclosets.com/forum/sexual-orientation-gender-identity-support/92892-sex-man.html So now I'm wondering am I male? This started off just in relation to my sexuality but as I try to accept and integrate that aspect of myself,the feeling of being transgender seems to be spreading into other areas of my life.
    What's going on???:tears:
     
  4. curlycats

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    ....just a thought.

    it is possible that in opening yourself to new options sexually you have also inadvertently opened yourself to new possibilities that you had never previously thought possible gender-wise as well.

    my question to you is this: why is it that you seem to have not considered other genders besides male as a possibility?

    i cannot shed any light on whether or not you are trans*, but i'm puzzled as to why you seem to have only considered male as an option given that you feel that it doesn't fit you. there are other options, you know, like genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, genderless, agender, androgyne, neutrois, etc. i highly recommend that you look further into the various gender identities that exist before you come to any conclusion regarding your gender.

    as for suicide.... seriously, you can get through this just fine. you've already take big steps in the right direction, just hang in there. i wish you the best on your journey.
     
  5. earthlvr510

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  6. Exoskeleton

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    I knew because, historically, I've always wanted to be "one of the guys," so to speak. I felt most similar to males, in behavior as well as thoughts and feelings, and as a kid all I really wanted was for my peers to see me as a boy and not as a tomboy.

    Also as a kid, I told my mom that I wanted to be a boy. She came down hard on me for it, and told me to never be ashamed of being a woman, because women are wonderful, etc etc.

    Puberty was traumatic. Sprouting mountains from my chest was one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. I never wanted them, and their growth marked me distinctly as female and ruined any chances I had of being seen as a fellow male by my peers. Once I grew boobs, it was straight into the female life for me, and I hated it. But because my mother told me so soundly that it was not okay to want to be male, I shoved down all of my dysphoric feelings, chalked my body hate up to being fat and ugly, and never looked in a mirror again.

    And so when I started looking at my life, trying to figure out how I've felt and who I've been attracted to, all of those feelings of hating being female came back up. All of those memories came to the forefront of my mind. And because I was realizing that it was okay to not be straight, I realized it was okay to not be cisgender, to hell with what my mom says.

    And so goes the story of how I realized I was trans!

    For me, it had nothing to do with how I relate to women. I feel like I can be friends or lovers with whoever I damn well please, regardless of sex or gender. I think this is largely because I accepted all sexualities in other people long before I came to accept my own. By the time I came out to myself as bi, I had already established that there was no fundamental problem with it. I had just been holding on to my familial expectations of me.
     
  7. anonym

    anonym Guest

    Thanks again for the replies :slight_smile: it helps to know there are people out there who can relate and by actually sharing thoughts, I feel like I'm actually figuring things out as I'm writing. Curlycats I have considered maybe I could be somewhere between male and female. When I began trying to come to terms with being attracted to women, I wondered if maybe I would be more comfortable in a more masculine appearance and gender role, but the problem with that is I would still physically be a woman. If I try to picture my future in 5 years time, for some reason I cannot picture myself being female bodied, and at the moment neither male bodied either. What I can imagine is me as a person in the male gender role in a relationship with a woman. And if I was to ever have children -own/adopted or whatever-I would feel really uncomfortable in the role of a mother. I have always thought I'm not someone who would want kids. But now I am questioning my gender, I wonder if it was me being a woman that was blocking that because I feel slightly more comfortable with the idea of being a parent but not as a woman. I don't know, I'm just rambling putting my thoughts out there. I will definitely have a look at the other various gender identities though. I guess I do envy men for the ease with which they are able to attract women and their role as the more dominant in a relationship.

    "Its not that I dont find the person atractive, its like being female myself makes it feel so uncomfertable" This is exactly how I feel! Like it just gets in the way. I am still unsure as to how I feel about men exactly. I can trace my attraction to women back throughout my whole life but in the past couple of years, I have occasionally started to notice how good looking some men are. I'm not sure if what I feel for them is envy or some kind of attraction. But again, being female makes it feel uncomfortable. So maybe I am a slightly bisexual male leaning mainly towards women???
    Exoskeleton, thanks for sharing your story. I definitely did not have those feelings of being trans in my childhood or adolescence. But now I can kind of relate to wanting to be one of the guys - as in I look at groups of guys laughing and joking together and kind of feel envious that that could have been me?? I don't know, I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here and I'm sorry for those reading if it's difficult to follow. I'm just expressing my thoughts.

    Anyway, I have decided I definitely need to get to the bottom of this as it causes me to feel recurrently suicidal - the discomfort with my gender in relation to my attraction to women (and possibly men), the fact I may not be the person I thought and my whole life has been a lie, and that even if I do figure this thing out and have to transition, the fact I will never be what I could have been if I was born into a male body, not to mention all the abuse I expect to come my way.So I'm going to dig deep and bring all of this up with my therapist :-( Please keep the comments coming, it is really insightful to get other views. Thanks for reading :slight_smile: