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).
Well at first I never really thought I was, I like all manners of masculine things like shooter games, sports, fixing cars, getting dirty. Things that are largely considered manly. However I did like to hang out with girls more often, like I felt more comfortable around them. I never really questioned that much it felt normal. But I met someone a few months back who was very much like me, we shared a lot of interests and even had a similar style and when I learned she’s transfem it made me seriously start questioning. So I decided to have a little experiment and I asked her to call me by she/her pronouns to see how it felt, and I loved it. It felt so right, so true. A bit later I started to realize that I felt incomplete, my flat and empty chest made me feel discomfort and sadness.
That’s how I knew without a doubt that I was transfem, and every piece of trans literature I read including Gender Dysphoria Bible just cemented that in further.