Back when I was pretending to be a boy, I had just hit 9th grade and moved to a new school. I was always a late bloomer in terms of my first puberty but it hit me like a freight train when it did.
All of a sudden my legs, arms, belly, nipples (weirdly) got hairy and I was terribly self conscious about it. Not that I had an obscene amount of hair, but it really felt like I did. It felt gross and uncomfortable. Never wore shorts or short sleeve shirts because of it. Even in the dead of summer.
After a few months of this curse, I decided enough was enough - stole one of my mom's super cheap bic razors and hacked away at my entire body. Took me a few hours to get every inch. Many cuts and scraped, but I finally felt like I could be a bit more comfortable in my skin.
Felt great about my decision until everyone at school noticed and made fun of me because it was really "weird" and I didn't have a good enough reason for why I did it other than "I felt trapped under all of the hair, I just really don't like it"
Peer pressure took over and I eventually stopped after a few months. A decade later, my egg finally cracked.
Can you guess what the first thing I did was after realizing I am a woman?
electric razor noises
Oh my god, only now after reading this do I understand why as a trans guy I had the opposite experience; I shaved my arms on an impulse in elementary school and when I realized how long it was going to take to grow back I was SO EMBARRASSED about the thought that people might notice that I wore a jacket in the summer heat in the south until it grew back.
You're welcome to my remaining hair if you're interested but act fast! I'm starting laser tomorrow ✌🏻
Love that we both ended up choosing to give ourselves heat stroke for opposite but also similar reasons, lol 😅
I bid one billion dollars for all that hair!
In all seriousness, congrats on getting laser tomorrow. Hope all goes well.
Oiii the judgment over every hair! Shortly after I started shaving my everything, I broke a toe. Being an idiot, I asked BioMom to have a look at it and all she wanted to talk about was "You shaved your toes?!?" Like... what? My toe hair is the problem here?!
Turns out it was obviously broken, just some people care more about ensuring that others present 100% how they're "supposed to" than about even visible physical harm 🤷 It's ridiculous and awful, foreal!
Edit: typo fix D:
Never wore shorts or short sleeve shirts because of it. Even in the dead of summer.
Haven't even finished reading but SAME. I never understood why I felt more comfortable with my arms and legs covered, though, I just knew I didn't like not having them covered.
The first time I heard the phrase “do I want to be with her or do I want to be her” was a major holy shit moment for me. It made me realize that my relationship with the concept of “attraction” was way more complicated than I thought. At that moment, I had a realization that what I thought was attraction to women is actually a mix of both attraction and envy, and the reason I had always denied my attraction to men is that the idea of being in a mlm relationship made me unbearably dysphoric
the idea of being in a mlm relationship made me unbearably dysphoric
... huh. huh.
Currently I'd describe myself as questioning, but I've known I'm bi for a few years. I don't think I feel "unbearably dysphoric" over it but the idea of dating a guy hasn't quite jived with me (not in a "I'm not romantically attracted to guys" way, I know I am). It doesn't feel quite... right, but idk how to describe it really. I just thought it was internalized homophobia.
This sounds very similar to my experience! For context, I’m a binary trans woman, and I (now) identify as bisexual! Before questioning my gender, I knew I was attracted to men but the idea of dating a man didn’t feel right, so I kinda gaslit myself into believing I was straight. With the power of hindsight I know that what actually didn’t feel right was the idea of being a man dating a man. The idea of being a woman dating a man, on the other hand, does feel right to me!
I wish you the best of luck on your journey of self-discovery! It’s a long and arduous road but it’s so worth it!
Yeah .. back in highschool before I questioned my gender I tried identifying as bi. Because I really liked being treated as a feminine partner. And the only way I could get that was with a man (so I thought) but could never actually see my self BEING in a mlm relationship. At all. So I stopped questioning my identity and gaslit myself into thinking I was straight as well.
Wasn't until my egg cracked that I was like "ohhhh that makes a lot more sense now"
Yeah, honestly now that it's in words I can see it. Guys dating guys is awesome cus guys are hot but I can't really picture myself as one of them. Meanwhile I've felt weirdly jealous of lesbian relationships .-.
Thanks for the help. I was already leaning towards "probably trans" but that's defo another step in that direction.
Most of my pre egg cracking symptoms started at around eleven or twelve, but I was a pretty masculine child in personality.
I greatly exaggerated having voice cracks when I was going through first puberty. It made me feel masculine.
I always spoke in the lowest possible vocal register.
I refused to shave any body hair and never even entertained the idea despite significant outside pressure to.
I rarely showered because I wanted to stink like a teenage boy. I also dreaded any puberty pains or growth that was happening. It felt like body horror.
I had so much trouble understanding pubescent girls in the media, how they were so excited to have their first period or wear their first bra. I thought everyone experienced the absolute dread that came with puberty and they were all just pretending. I was fully expecting to get a huge growth spurt one day and grow to be 6ft tall and look like Jim Morrison. It felt like someone had made a mistake and it would correct itself naturally.
I remember getting on my knees and praying to God (i didn't even believe in god, that's how desperate i felt) not to let my chest to develop at all. I remember one time I read in a news article about moms in indonesia or something would put hot rocks on their daughter's chests to prevent any breasts from growing and it was being touted as a gross human rights violation. I tried to put burning hot rocks on my chest when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen. Didn't work, unfortunately :'(
I always wanted to go shirtless all the time. My mom had to practically wrangle me into a bra. At the same time, my newly developing chest seemed wholly foreign to me. It felt like a completely separate entity that was latched onto my real body.
I never really related to any girls my age when I was growing up. Always felt like an outsider in large groups of girls. Felt like they spoke a language I couldn't understand. Of course, I always had extremely codependent intense "friendships" with one girl at time. Took me a while to realize that was me liking girls.
I watched a lot of anime around that age, and for about a week after finishing one I'd adopt the personality and mannerisms of any male character that I thought was cool. One time I barely talked for a week so I could be just like jotaro from JoJo's bizarre adventure 🤦🏼♂️
Despite all of this, it would take me a while to figure out that I'm trans. That was never an option for the longest time.
I had so much trouble understanding pubescent girls in the media, how they were so excited to have their first period or wear their first bra. I thought everyone experienced the absolute dread that came with puberty and they were all just pretending. I was fully expecting to get a huge growth spurt one day and grow to be 6ft tall and look like Jim Morrison. It felt like someone had made a mistake and it would correct itself naturally.
God this is relatable AF. First puberty was honestly traumatic for me.
I hope you feel better on T now :)
Egg went splat and things made a bit more sense.
complete lack of care about my own appearance (recently realized that while becoming a big buff muscley man doesn't appeal at all, becoming a visibly fit woman sounds pretty alright to me)
always been uncomfortable within my own body/skin (too big in the wrong places, too hairy)
a lot of longing for transformation/shape-shifting abilities (Christopher Paolinis Inheritance series goes hard about magic enabling elves to be exactly as their heart desires)
upon learning FtM transitioning was a thing, absolutely confused about why anyone would ever WANT to be male/masculine
started speaking a lot less after my voice literally changed overnight, no periods of cracking voice just immediately deep (it is irredeemably masculine and i hate it)
Edit: Oh and can't forget
And (edit2)
That's really funny, I thought the exact same thing when I learned about MTFs existing.
Also, just because your voice is low doesn't mean that it's irredeemably masculine. I am a trans man, and way before my transition I had a voice that was comfortably in a male range. It's not unheard of. My voice would still get read as female on the phone until I worked on my innotation and worked on speaking in a chest voice, then I passed quite well. Point is, you can get read as a woman with a low voice, you just have to alter specific things which is very doable.
It's bad. Like, deep enough that I've had other dudes saying they're jealous how deep my voice is, I worked service desk in IT and the number one compliment was the deep voice.
I have serious doubts about how effective vocal training could be in my case. Typing this up reeeeaaally makes me realize how much my voice bothers me.
I recommend trying to figure out what your vocal range is. Aka how high your voice can go and how low. If you know that, you can see what you've got to work with. I highly recommend just trying vocal training. Record your voice before and after it and see if you like it better. Something's better than nothing in a lot of cases. There's a lot of resources for transfems on YouTube.
Also, I'm pretty sure there's a vocal chord surgery for MTFs. They'll shorten your vocal chords so you get higher pitches (think about a guitar, the tighter and shorter the string the higher the pitch). You could look into that as well.
complete lack of care about my own appearance
Same. I felt nothing for the characteristics that I was taught a boy should feel confident with, and I dismissed the idea of being more feminine because "I'm not trans, I just wish I were." I never developed a sense of style, and instead picked my clothes based on what obscured the most of my body. Always long pants and long sleeves.
Same story with my voice, too. My insanely deep voice for my age was funny at first, but after a while there was a sense of "oh god, this is how I'll sound for the rest of my life." One time when I was ~12 some guy on Counter-Strike told me he'd have sold me a pack of cigarettes if I hadn't told him my age lol.
I was largely in online school for middle/high school (actual teacher led classes, full classrooms, just online. Adobe Connect.) and I was a regular request for the classroom for any character roles to read aloud, which was uncomfortable to me in ways i wasn't really able to express. It also earned me a nickname for my voice depth.
I often got asked to read things out loud in school because of my deep voice, too. Didn't know that was a thing 😅
Absolutely a thing. Part of it was also teachers noticing I could competently read Shakespeare with the correct pacing (reading a lot and escapism have their perks!) 😅 but yeah, a lot of girls saying "omg they should do this character!!"
Now there's something I can relate to, I've often been told I have a good voice for reading or narrating.
Which isn't wrong, and I can appreciate the compliment, but... yeahhhh.
(Quick side note: Why is narrating something so strongly associated with masc voices in the first place? At least it seems so from my experience with the people around me.)
I've been practicing the girl voice™ every now and then since realizing, and wow, is it hard. I can do everything from Darth Vader to Stitch, I can gurgle like a fresh zombie or gulugulu like a turkey in heat, but an everyday womans voice is apparently too difficult.
Still though, I try to appreciate everything my voice can do, and while I do wish to learn the girl voice™ as quickly as possible, I am at least a little less uncomfortable with how it is now.
Lots, but the biggest for me was how I could never feel comfortable with the type of man I would become. I knew I didn't want to be like some of the unkind men I knew, but I also hated the idea of growing up into even the kindest and most fun men in my life.
I spent so many years trying to figure out how to do manhood, always feeling like it was wrong. Sure, I wanted to be a woman. Sure I wished I could live and present as myself, but that's not manly. (Lived like this for years without being able to acknowledge I was trans btw, crazy looking back)
Finally accepting that I could be who I wanted to be is so freeing, and makes me see the years of dysphoria for what they were.
I really feel that. Especially about never being comfortable with the type of man I would become.
This became even more difficult when I became a "father"
"Fuck, I don't even know how to be a man and now I have to figure out how to be a dad?!"
But having my son and realizing I viewed myself internally as a mother and not father, I quickly ran down the rabbit hole that ended up being my eggwakening
The moment my egg cracked was when I felt my child kick in my partner's belly. I realized that all the jokes I made about wanting to seahorse a pregnancy was just making light of that being a deep desire of mine.
After that a number of things just started to click that I was not someone that fell into a gender binary: -Feelings of euphoria when I got when wait staff would call me miss/mam. -How I would buy clothing I thought was unisex sized, but I would end up walking away with women's cloths that did not fit my normal size. -Being happy when my group of friends called me the den mother of the group. -Realizing that I felt the most in common with relatives that broke gender norms. My mom who wore men's shirts/pants her whole life, only wore a dress for a funeral or wedding, and was the bread winner of my family. An aunt who was a kick ass drummer. A friend that was exploring her gender, and just doing her best to see where things landed. -Thinking that it was interesting that women that presented with 'masculine' behaviors were so wonderful, and that there was an absence of men displaying 'feminine' behaviors when I was going through my rural home town. -Having thoughts about how I wished I was born a woman, but that I would want to grow my body hair and that I'd hope I could be as tall as I am now. -That most people probably don't look into the mirror and think that something doesn't look quite right or that some of the features that they saw would be beautiful on the opposite sex.
Ultimately I'm happy with how I present, and I'm not sure if I'll ever go the route of HRT. It isn't off the table, but I'm not sure if it is going to be a part of my journey.
That said if there was a realistic option for me to become a birthing parent I would pursue that doggedly. I also know that when we try for our second kid that I am expecting to have to go through another long and hard period of dysphoria. It'll be worth it, but I need to remember to be kinder and more patient with myself.
Yup. Having to rethink my past in the newly discovered lens of "Wait this is who I've always been?" was an eye-opening experience for me.
Like suddenly remembering a previously suppressed memory of being 10 years old and fantasizing about growing up and being able to get surgery to "be a woman" (I've always been a woman) and then being sad after then realizing that the only way to do that would be if my whole family died. (I wasn't being murderous, don't worry lol.)
Remembering that event and how painful a realization it was was a real "holy shit I've always known I was a woman but didn't make the connection until now" kind of moment.
It was always obvious to me that what I felt was dysphoria, but somehow I never made the connection between that and what it meant to be trans. The biggest moment I had was once when my aunt was talking about somebody's cat and used a cutesy voice, and I felt a pit in my stomach as if my heart had sunk straight into it. I thought "I will never be able to do that with my voice", yet somehow didn't come to the conclusion that I wasn't cis.
For me it was "gender euphoria" that I realized after the fact. During the pandemic we had to wear masks and people constantly addressed me as a girl until I spoke, since my beard and masculine facial features were obscured. It gave me a lot of confidence, and suddenly I realized that the only way I've ever felt confident in my appearance is through feminine expression. Then I told someone I was playing with in Overwatch about all of that, and they said something like "I don't know any cis people that do or think like this" and I had a moment like this.
(edit): Some more moments...
Those all make a lot more sense in retrospect lol. I've also had similar experiences with dysphoria but not as much.
Makes a lot more sense in retrospect...
Well shit.
I knew I was somewhere under the trans umbrella. I knew something on me was queer. But this whole thread, and your post specifically, is just digging me deeper and deeper.
Thanks, and slightly goddamnit.
Thanks, and slightly goddamnit.
Haha, I feel this. When I finally figured myself out it wasn't like "yay, I'm trans!" it was like "oh shit. I am trans..."
I guess I figured it'd be easier and come more naturally, the way I perceived trans people before. I'm learning that it can actually be a lot of work, especially if you're like me who never developed a sense of fashion, isn't motivated to train my voice, too scared to get on hormones... I'm still working on a lot of things and it's been a few years.
I'm also thinking I'm more-so non-binary than full-on transfem. There's a lot of aspects about myself that are traditionally labeled masculine and I don't want to get rid of those aspects. Took me a while to sort that out and come to terms with it.
Whatever your story is and whatever's ahead of you, good luck to you :3
it wasn’t like “yay, I’m trans!” it was like “oh shit. I am trans…”
ahaha this is too real 😅
I started quoting parts of your comment to answer to, and then I noticed I had basically added all of it so >.<
Yeah, all of that is basically how I feel, maybe except being excited about filling in the gap in my missing fashion sense, and the voice training itself. As soon as I get out of where I live right now.
Being amab, honestly, having masc euphoria still confuses the fuck out of me. It kept me thinking "I couldn't be trans" for so long.
But recently, I've started perceiving enby-ness as the option that it is, and it's liberating.
And there's something funny about not realising sooner, and staying locked into thinking binary cis-trans are my only choices.
I mean, my whole life, when I see some stranger on the street and I can't tell their gender on the first glance, I've been instantly attracted to them.
Also, 2 out of my 3 relationships were with (closeted) non-binary people. How did I not get the hint 😅
It goes to show, I think, how these things are all emotional realisations, so they happen at their own time, when we get the right experiences. I still feel like my default sense of self is powerlessness, and that really informs how possible, I feel, acting on my options is.
But I try to remind myself that those options are there. Life is not built on predetermined tracks.
Whatever your story is and whatever's ahead of you, good luck to you :3
Same to you ^^ Hope you have fun on your journey as well :D
My god so often.
Probably more I can't think of at the moment.
All of this and I still have doubts and imposter syndrome. Sometimes I want to grab myself by the shoulders and scream.
All of this and I still have doubts and imposter syndrome
Same. Idk how to get over it but when I do I'll let you know ;p
I'm glad lots of people here have similar experiences as me, though. That helps. The relentless hoodie-wearing, discomfort picking male characters in games, gender euphoria from small gender affirming things...
I’m glad lots of people here have similar experiences as me, though. That helps. The relentless hoodie-wearing, discomfort picking male characters in games, gender euphoria from small gender affirming things…
Honestly yeah, this helps a ton. Shared experiences put me at ease.
An inability to refer to myself as a man, and being uncomfortable having to refer to myself as a boy.
This one in particular is so familiar :O I was so baffled, like... "is it an age thing? Do I have to do something that'll make me feel like a man? Maybe it's a peer recognition thing? Aaahhh why don't I feel like I'll ever be a real man?!" ........ Tee hee turns out there's a simple explanation 😅
That time a friend called me our mutal friend’s waifu and our mutual friend played along which gave me (unbeknownst to me at the time) gender euphoria
Actually this one too. Getting "misgendered" and loving it should've been a big clue to me at the time 😅 Now it's just one of those things I see as a big crack in my eggness :D Really helped me hatch, eventually.
Also that's a nice name you've got there, Good Girl ;3
Wishing to have a fem cybernetic body from Ghost in the Shell! I did that too. I was so envious of Motoko.
I could probably hunt down a few more signs, but they weren't obvious at the time, even if I felt guilty about them
- wearing a jacket even in 80°F weather
- obsessing over female D&D characters
Same and same. I still do both lol.
I never could put into words why I always made female characters in RPGs. I didn't have the right words, so as a kid I went with the "I'd rather stare at a woman than a man" excuse.
When I say obsessed, I mean obsessed. I spent way too much time thinking about their lives and their history especially when compared to how much thought I put into myself. It played into my daydreams and fantasies.
Oh yeah haha. More than one moment.
Why did I hate shopping for clothes? So much that I only did so 2-3 times over a decade.
Why did getting dressed feel so wrong? Why couldn't I ever picture myself with a clothing style?
Never wanted to talk? Never wanted to be seen? Never wanted to dance? Never wanted to be touched?
And then I realized I was trans, literally all that stuff changed. I'm sure there is so much more too. It's pretty wild how little I lived before, and pretty exciting how much I can live now!