Waiting to transition

There are dangers but they're not that dangerous, especially with a doctor involved. :dry: There is nothing you could take that can change your entire personality. You'd be the same person; What would change when your body changes is the person she thinks you are and that's what she's trying to avoid.

When she says there are "probably" many people, it sounds like she hasn't actually researched it and is just believing what she wants to believe. It's really rare that someone transitions and then changes their mind ten years later. There are some extremely loud people who did change their minds out there though that she could try to use that against you if she does. :eusa_doh: You could try to find her resources for parents so she doesn't just look for anti-trans ones.

Whether you'd want to have children is something to think about, but you're the only one whose opinion matters there. If you do think it would be an issue for you, you could freeze eggs before having any surgery, or consider adopting.

So she's okay with you presenting as male and having a male name when you start college? If she does mean it, it could be a good start at least.

These things are all extremely selfish things to say. :rolle: Wanting you to stay the same despite your feelings is utterly disregarding you and trying to guilt you into it is extreme hypocrisy. Turn it around on them. How do they care about you and your feelings if it's all about them?

This is your life and your body, whether or not you transition should be decided by you and not other people.

I don't know if your transition plan involved therapy, but if so I would start there. Tell your mother you want to start working the issues out with a specialist, that way you're closer to getting on hormones and also potentially gain an ally your family has to take more seriously.

 

Wow okay, so I guess I felt like I had a lot to say here. Sorry about the length.

Everyone of us goes through something similar. I'm really glad you made this thread because with the bold bullets you just hit every single one and phrased it really well.

What isn't going to work though is rationally replying to those. Rational replies are easy. I'll fire off a few real fast. None of the following perfectly reasonable, rational responses will work:

Hormone therapy is dangerous This is the one that has some truth to it. It is a life changing decision. Hormones can be life threatening. Just the same, if you are working with an endocrinologist, a therapist, and a health care provider, your risk is fairly low. They will have you do blood work frequently to keep tabs on your hormonal levels and how they are affecting things like your liver. They can change your dosage or take you off them if there are ever any problems. You will have some health side effects, such as a normal male increased risk of heart disease when you get older, and you'll probably lose the ability to get pregnant. HRT is something doctors prescribe to post-menopausal women who have hysterectomies.

I may regret it Which I'm sure you've considered a million times. You may also regret not using the clean slate opportunity college gives you. This isn't a good way to make decisions, because every choice you could possibly make carries this risk. It is a good thing to consider though. You should be aware that according to studies in several peer reviewed medical journals (sources 54 through 56) transition therapy has anywhere from a 92% to 100% success rate.

The best way to address this question is to look at the people that do regret transition, and why they regret it. Here's a good place for that.

I can be myself without transitioning This is "bargaining". Basically, calling you another name and you dressing and living as a boy wouldn't even be on the table to begin with if you weren't talking about full gender transition. They're a compromise, and if you do this too soon you'll regret it. Your compromises will turn into hard and fast promises, and they won't be enough; she'll try to get you to use your girl name and dress "sensibly" if you do give her that inch. If you had started out trying to get her to call you a different name, then she would argue against that.

She needs more time Your needs are important too. "Longer" doesn't have an expiration date. She can always need more time.

It's selfish Your mom is right. It is selfish. Your mother is being selfish as well. She doesn't have to put up with the pain of being trans. You do. But she is only considering her needs. You are going to college to learn how to be an independent functional adult who makes his own decisions and your mom is interfering with that. You've decided this was important to you, knowing the risks and hardships, and gender transition is a very difficult thing that people don't do without very good reasons already.

It's not just my decision It will affect your family, but transitioning is your decision to make. Your mom gets to decide how she reacts. It's that simple. What isn't your decision, or your mother's decision, is the fact that you are trans. That is something you have to live with every day for your entire life no matter what decisions you or your mother make. Your mother is being completely unfair by not taking that fact into consideration.

Now all that said, please don't reply directly to anything your mother says with anything I wrote just now. That's all for you.

From your mother's point of view, you're making a huge mistake, and she feels a sense of responsibility to put a stop to it because she loves you. She will do anything she can to avoid looking at the underlying problem, that you are trans. She has simply not accepted that fact yet. It's too much to deal with. And without that fact, gender transition is a big mistake. Gender transition for someone that isn't trans, would make them trans.

She is also going to have to adapt. She might lose friends. And any change for her is scary. She wants to tell her friends how proud of you she is, and because she hasn't accepted you as a son, she can only see you as a (I apologize here) daughter who wants to embarrass her.

What's going to get through to her, is you not hiding how you feel any more. If you are having a hard time being a girl, just let it show. Don't try to bottle it up. You don't have to any more, not now that you've come out. It will only hurt you and it will work against your goal anyway. You are simply going to have to let your masculine side out. Little things, like not shaving your legs and lifting weights, are going to make you feel better, and if you feel better, you will deal with your family better.

That's really it. I've found with people, eventually they realize that there really is something different about you, that's real, that it won't go away, and that making some changes will make your life more fulfilling and less painful. That it's worth it to you. And that really, it's not so bad having a son around and not worth getting bent out of shape about.

Basically, the attitude I take when I come up against that kind of resistance is, you know what, I don't have my hormones yet, but I've already started my transition. I'm getting pretty awesome with make-up. My legs are smooth and my voice is getting better. I'm not scared of buying cosmetics and pumps (or even trying them on to make sure they're wide enough) in the store.

And doing that, the people closest to me see me and how confident I am (even if between you and me I don't always feel it), and that's what changes their minds about me. I could argue with them until I was blue in the face and we'd just walk away angry with eachother nursing bruised egos. But seeing my face light up just by using my real name, people are going to understand that at a deeper level than any rational argument.

So that's what I'd recommend. You are transitioning already. You have come out to your parents and that's the first step you took toward showing the world the boy inside. I think that's all being trans really is. You could never take any testosterone and deal with how you feel every time you get ready in the morning or hear your voice on the phone forever. You'd still have something inside you telling you you are a man, this isn't how things were supposed to be, none of this feels right. The world will try very very hard, and sometimes using people you love, to change your soul. But it can't. You can't change it either. People have tried to erase that part of their soul. Some MTF women self-medicated with testosterone instead of estrogen hoping it would fix them and the results are usually pretty scary. You can't. It's who you are.

And transition is just you taking what's inside you, and letting it show more and more until you can't hide it and the world can't deny it. About being who you know you are and not what everyone says you are.

It's just harder to do that with people you love is all. I know I talk a mean game but I mean I'm still figuring all this out as I go along too. Just keep being you.

 

The following is a response to your mother's concerns, I'm not treating them as if they're yours. But to avoid having to say 'your mother' 8000 times, I'm saying it here.

Hormones are not desperately dangerous. Yes, you must take the right amounts, and listen to your doctor's advice and stuff, but if you do what you're supposed to, there isn't much of a problem. You get regular blood tests to find out if there is. Also, your personality does not change. Yes, you mature emotionally, as you would through any other puberty, but you don't suddenly wake up a completely different person. You are who you are because of years of experiences, and the only way transitioning changes your personality is by becoming part of those experiences.

You may regret it, but its considerably more likely that you'll regret not transitioning. You know who you are, more time is not going to help anything. And anyway, this argument never means that she expects you to reach a point in life where you can be more certain - it means she wants you to wait for the rest of your life.

Changing your name is transitioning, as is presenting male. Regardless, life without medical transition is really difficult, and it doesn't solve gender dysphoria in the slightest. Whether or not you can be yourself depends on the definition of 'being yourself', but I think you'd agree that it involves being happy, and not transitioning is not the path to happiness.

I have never heard so much selfish crap in my life, except for what my mother told me. Your mother will never come to terms with 'losing her daughter', until she's lost her daughter. Waiting will only lengthen to period of loss. Its far better to see it as never having had a daughter. But regardless of that, she is putting her own prejudices ahead of your needs.

Your family and friends are not the only people with feelings. You have feelings of your very own, and I would argue here that they are more important that the feelings of your family and friends. This is not to say that you are more important, but that the need to transition, is more important. If you transition, your family and friends, may feel some loss (if they insist on viewing it as loss), and the loss will pass, but if you don't transition, you will never be happy.

No, transitioning only affects others if they choose to let it. Its your body, your life, and if you can't live it as you want, then theres no real point to it.

Oh yes, I have heard every single one of them from my mother. I don't think you'll ever convince your mother to support you taking the first steps of transition. As I said, she thinks she is losing you, and she won't come to terms with it while the process of losing you is ongoing. Once you transition, and she sees a happy man, then I think she'll support you.

Its worth noting that all of these arguments are incredibly cissexist. You have as much of a right to have a gender, and live that way as any cisgendered person, and making you jump through all these hoops simply to be who you are is just prejudice.

 

I understand what you're going through, I told my mom about wishing I was a guy and that I wanted to look like one and date women and she automatically started to harass me on it. She told me that my genitalia wouldn't work, then she got mad at me and said "I just bought all those nail polishes for nothing!" I understand and I wish I had the courage like you, I hope everything goes well for you and that you will happy with whatever you do. All I truly think is do what's going to make You happy, it's your life, not theirs.

 

As a college athlete, I have to hold off on transitioning until I graduate. It sucks, I feel you. Stay strong, your mum will come around and pretty soon you'll be 18 and have control.

 

All of this is false. Hormones are only really dangerous if you try to self-medicate. Also, your personality will NOT change. Granted testosterone will make you a little more aggressive at first, but it will not magically change you into another person. If that was the case then all post-menopausal women would radically change. Have her talk to a gender therapist sometime as they can help dis-spell this myth.

She's looking at things from a cisgender perspective. She simply can't comprehend why you would want to give up something that she's comfortable with. Outside of trying to educate her there's not much you can do to fix this problem.

Another cisgender blunder. Not having the misery of having the wrong hormones flowing through you is not fixed by simply changing your name or clothing.

Wrongo again. Moms' really striking out here. What is there to gain by having a miserable son? Nothing but regrets. She should talk to my parents to find out what happens when you demand a child stays the wrong gender. My Mom would tell her that it's not worth the therapy later on to fix her selfishness and beg her to let you transition as early as possible.

WTF. Now this is downright offensive. Living your life is theirs how again? If they really cared about you then they would adjust to who you really are rather than forcing you to live a lie.

The law begs to differ. Once you're 18 they have zero say in what you do with your body. A transition is only temporary; resent and anger towards your family can be permanent.

I went through a similar situation. My Mom would only pay for "corrective therapy" rather than transitioning. I was brain washed into thinking that I was too far gone after puberty and that college would help make things better. It didn't. Trust me, she's paying for every one of those decisions now. She now tells me that she deeply regrets the damage that her selfishness caused me. They could of kept that sweet daughter who craved pink and cute things; instead their refusal of letting me have girl things or doing anything feminine left them with a nightmare. I became a rebellious gothic "son" who always dressed in radical clothes and had a room full of skulls and death. Since I couldn't listen to "girly" music I blared offensive death metal. I made sure that the "son" they forced me to be was one that no parent would want.