compostgoblin

Created using QGIS and publicly available data in 2023.

Thank you to everyone who replied to my post last week! This past week has been a whirlwind. I’m pretty sure my egg is cracked wide open.

I devoured the Gender Dysphoria Bible, and I found myself (maybe not surprisingly) relating to not all, but a lot, of the feelings and experiences described.

As I read more about how trans women describe their experiences, the more I realize that I’ve had similar feelings for a long time. Who knew that not every man secretly wishes he was a lesbian woman? I kind of thought that everyone had these feelings, and just settled for the disappointing reality of being male.

And I’m better able to put words to the positive feelings I get from growing my hair out, painting my nails, shaving my chest and legs - it’s gender euphoria!

I feel so excited, like I finally know who I am! And I’m so eager to learn makeup, get girl clothes, etc. And I really want to go on hormones. I guess any remaining potential doubt would be erased then - if I go on hormones and start to have a really bad time, then I guess I know I’m not trans.

I did talk to my therapist, and she was so encouraging! She was completely affirming, and at the end of our session she said that she could see me as a woman, and that felt so good to hear! I get butterflies in my stomach and keep smiling when I think about it.

She did encourage me to take my time though. I’m really excited, but I am also extremely nervous and scared about how people might react, especially my wife. She’s bisexual, and she’s been really supportive of my gender exploration so far, so those are both good things. But she’s also autistic and sometimes has a hard time adapting to rapid changes.

So I feel like I need to make sure I know what I want, and that I’m able to answer any questions she might have about what my transition process is going to look like - and there are still a lot of questions I don’t have the answer to.

And I worry a lot of how my family, friends, and work might react to my coming out. I’ve spent a lot of time getting educated, getting a good job, and building a nice little life, and I don’t want to mess it all up. And unfortunately, my immediate family are all devout Catholics, so I don’t anticipate a great reaction from them…

I get my hair cut at an LGBTQ salon, and I think at least one of the stylists there is a trans woman. Would it be appropriate/inappropriate for me to ask her if I could talk to her about her experience?

I don’t know any other trans women in real life, and I think it would really help me to have someone to talk to. But I also don’t want to just dump all my burdens on someone either.

Any other advice on what I should do, or things to consider, would be really welcome - I’m just trying to figure out how I want to navigate this.

I’ve been questioning and curious, and I wanted to talk to some people about my experience, who know more about being trans than I do.

I am almost 30, I’m bisexual, and I was assigned male at birth. I was raised in a very Catholic household (and went to Catholic school from elementary through high school), so it wasn’t exactly an environment that was going to give me the language to understand who I was, or encouraged to explore my sexuality and gender identity.

I was always more emotional than my peers - my parents put me in wrestling and karate during elementary and middle school to “toughen me up”. Although that may have had to do with my RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) from my ADHD.

I never really enjoyed sports like wrestling or football - I ended up liking volleyball and distance running. I preferred hobbies that are more traditionally feminine, like baking and sewing. Don’t get me wrong, I also liked camping and stuff with Boy Scouts (not that camping and hiking are inherently masculine) but I definitely never felt like a super masculine as a kid.

I would get in trouble for growing my hair out as long as I was allowed to, and then some, and I got in trouble for wearing more jewelry than a Catholic school was appropriate for boys too (too many rings and necklaces). I was made fun of in middle and high school for wearing pink, or liking things that were too girly.

About 5 years ago, I started to identify as nonbinary, as I learned more about queerness and started to find the language to describe what I was feeling. When my wife came out to me as bi, I finally felt comfortable coming out as nonbinary to her. And since then, I’ve started to feel more confident expressing my gender differently, mostly in small ways, like growing my hair longer and painting my nails. I’ve still only come out as NB to a small handful of people, and day-to-day I probably present more as “eccentric guy” than anything else.

The thing that I’ve noticed, though, is that the less masculine I look, act, and present, the more I feel like myself. I feel like men’s clothing is so limiting, and I always feel out of place when I’m in a group of otherwise all guys.

I feel like If I had been born as a woman, I would prefer that to having been born male. And if I could flip a switch and instantly be a woman, I would. But I don’t experience the sort of revulsion at my genitals that I hear some trans people describe (although I do hate being so hairy).

All of that said, I don’t know what exactly it feels like to be trans, or be a woman, so I don’t know how to compare my experience to how I “should” or “shouldn’t” feel.

And obviously right now is a scary time in the US to be queer of any kind, so there’s a part of me that’s very scared about what if I am trans - what that would entail in terms of how people/my friends and family would react and treat me.

Anyway, I’m not trying to presume anything about the trans experience, and I apologize if anything I said seemed ignorant. I guess I’m just confused and looking for some insight and support, since there aren’t many people in real life that I can talk to about these things (wife and therapist aside).