How do you explain to Cis what it feels like to be trans?

[Antonia J]

If that wasn't bad enough you couldn't tell anyone, You were utterly alone, And you knew every day it would get a little worse. You'd fight however you could resisting it trying to compromise in your mind but it was hopeless.

I think the loneliness of being trans - especially before coming out - is something that doesn't get enough discussion. You feel like you are living in a bubble while the world goes on around you.

Btw, Pebbles - I like your avatar. You are really pretty

[Tristan]

I think the loneliness of being trans - especially before coming out - is something that doesn't get enough discussion. You feel like you are living in a bubble while the world goes on around you.

Btw, Pebbles - I like your avatar. You are really pretty

Your so right on this. I know it had to be hard to pretend to be like a man or a woman if your not.

[Naomi]

I think the loneliness of being trans - especially before coming out - is something that doesn't get enough discussion. You feel like you are living in a bubble while the world goes on around you.

Btw, Pebbles - I like your avatar. You are really pretty

On that note I grew up in two organisations which put an emphasis on honesty. So I feel like I'm lying when ever I talk to people who I'm not out to and the best way that I can describe the feeling I get when that happens is that I feel like I'm being ripped apart from the inside.

[CynthiaAnn]

Realized when I found this post, that have not had to try and explain these topics to anyone for some time. The only place where I might share some of what it felt like to be in-congruent is with my soul mate in very specific scenarios, where she was aware of what we were going through at the time, I can relate the GD aspect to her and she gets it (mostly). But gladly these topics do not come up with cis - people I know or run into. They don't ask and I don't have to tell, it's best that way 

When I did try and explain what it felt like (like when coming out to close family), I would focus mostly on the deprivation experienced, and how out of place I really was before transition, and how aligning my body to fit my mind was the correct course of action medically and socially.

C -

[KristySims]

Thanks for finding this one... it was good and was before I was a member here, but now that I am in active-tell-the-world-mode and coming out,  I have had to explain that in a few different ways, depending on the person I am trying to talk to... I copied and pasted this from my Friends and Family letter and my Co-Worker letter

1.  I've just lived my entire life as if I am in the wrong body and forced to take on a gender role that was never me, just to fit into society. This is not the same as someone being unhappy with their body image, size, shape, weight etc... this is a complete disconnect between my brain and body.

2. It is very much like the movie Avatar. I feel as if I have had to pilot a body that does not match who I am for as long as I have been alive all the while trying to act the part.

3. Also tried to correlate with "Phantom Pain" the experience where you know what something is supposed to feel like, even though it is not physically there.

4. The kids if Avatar does not work, then I use Robot.... 

5. With other women,  I can say imagine waking up inside a man's body.  That does not seem to work so well for the few guys I have told and suggested waking up in a Woman's body <<Eyes Rolling>>

[Ryuichi13]

*snip*

5. With other women,  I can say imagine waking up inside a man's body.  That does not seem to work so well for the few guys I have told and suggested waking up in a Woman's body <<Eyes Rolling>>

I can describe it like this: 

Imagine waking up one day and you are the opposite gender.  Everyone sees you as this gender, and treats you like you are that gender.  They call you by a name that feels like it belongs to someone else, call you by the gender you look like instead of the gender you know you are, and your family acts like you've always been that gender.  The misgendering and deadnaming from friends, family and strangers hurt. 

You know its wrong.  All of it.  Inside, you are the proper gender.  One that most people can't see.

And you feel like you are forever acting a part in a play.  One that you can't quit, can't leave, can't stop acting in.

Now, take all those feelings and multiply them by a million. 

That's only a tiny bit of how it feels to many of us.

Ryuichi

[Allie Jayne]

My wife asked me this, and I tried to put it in a way she would understand. She was working at the time as a delivery driver, so I told her it felt like driving through an unfamiliar area and constantly being stopped by lights and traffic, it's raining and you just want to get home. Living as your true identity is like being home.

She said she understood.

Allie

[Vethrvolnir]

I feel a bit confused by the strenght of the feelings you are expressing. It makes me wonder about myself. Am I really all that trans? I know I often wanted to and posed as a boy and played boy or man in roleplay. I have had stretches of time when I dressed masculinish and stretches when I dressed femininish. I've never enjoyed friendships with females. I never had female pasttimes. My upbringing was pretty gender neutral. O'm a seventies kid. I used to hang out with punks and squatters and hippies.
I prefer to be male. But I don't look very obviously bulgy busty mushy female. And I'm gay. So I like guys mostly.
It does feel like coming home though. Like a weight has lifted I never realised was there. Like being able to breathe freely.

[Bea1968]

I heard a transwoman once say that the best method she found was to have the person use their off hand for an entire day.  It's awkward.  It's clumsy.   It feels unnatural.  In an odd way you can force yourself to do most things with the off hand but it just does not feel right.   Being transgender is like always being forced to use our off hand.  We get by, mostly, but it never feels right.


It's a challenge.  How does one explain colors of a rainbow to a blind person?  The hand thing is probably the best thing in my tool box right now. 

[Allie Jayne]

I feel a bit confused by the strenght of the feelings you are expressing. It makes me wonder about myself. Am I really all that trans? I know I often wanted to and posed as a boy and played boy or man in roleplay. I have had stretches of time when I dressed masculinish and stretches when I dressed femininish. I've never enjoyed friendships with females. I never had female pasttimes. My upbringing was pretty gender neutral. O'm a seventies kid. I used to hang out with punks and squatters and hippies.
I prefer to be male. But I don't look very obviously bulgy busty mushy female. And I'm gay. So I like guys mostly.
It does feel like coming home though. Like a weight has lifted I never realised was there. Like being able to breathe freely.

I suppose what I was saying is that as a male, I am really uncomfortable. I can function ok, but stress builds. When I feel female, the stress goes. I feel like I am where I belong. This has changed throughout my life, but the feeling got stronger as I got older. The stress is dysphoria, and trans is home. Everybody feels this differently, and it changes with time, age, and situation, so what I feel is for me now. You will have your own feelings.

Allie

[TonyaW]

One thing I'd heard and used is that people try to imagine wanting to be the opposite gender but that doesn't work. They need to think of it as being the gender that they are with the opposite body. Not a total explanation but it helps them think differently. 

When talking about it with my grandson (11 at the time) I asked him how he'd feel if he had a girls body. He said he'd hate it. I'm sure he doesn't totally get it at that age, but it helped him.

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[JanePlain]

I'm not sure how important it is to explain to everyone else (Seems pretty personal) but maybe for people considering calling a therapist or talking to an endo it would be a good thing to explain for yourself?

Having the physical parts feel wrong and want them gone.  I imagine explaining that to a male with those parts would (I hope) give them an indication how strong the issue is.  Because I think there are so many people who think its just some sort of clothing or sex fetish.  Or that being gay is a different thing.  I know a couple of people who calculated that not feeling attracted to women sexually must = gay male and one that actually tried living as a gay male.  This helped inform them that it wasn't being attracted to a male.  The problem was being male was the problem.  *And I know this gets confusing for m2f who just don't see men attractive to them sexually.  HRT changes that for some I guess.  Others spent their whole life being pretty grossed out with their own male parts so maybe they can't achieve a traditional attraction to men.

One thing in particular for a m2f to explain to a cis male is actually working on getting your nads removed because I think that has to show how serious your intent is.  You could talk about interests or lack of interest in things like football.  Which might not be as useful but feeling more comfortable with a group of women then men. Being the one different from the boy group in grade school. 

If your on HRT explaining how things change and how that seems much more normal to you.  Men seem to deal well with on off anger strongly felt being their normal.  Dealing with all sorts of emotions or just being in a state where its possible getting weepy.  How many men would feel "normal" or desire being in that state?  Sexually being in a male state of nearly 24 / 7 being horny versus that being put into a little more complex needs to be in the mood?  The difference from being stinky and not even noticing it (Or caring) and smelling all sorts of foul stuff from another room and loosing the "stink" and feeling right that way. 

Being "assigned" the wrong gender never sounded right to me.  Maybe its the word assigned?  Finding out there was a way to be the other gender (hormones / therapy / surgery) and wishing for that all your life might be a more understandable explanation.  A cis person might be curious but it wouldn't be an everyday battle. 

Am I even close to explaining this?

[F_P_M]

like wearing an ill fitting suit.
Sure, it looks rather nice, it's a decent suit, perhaps it's even an attractive suit, but it pinches in the arms and constricts in the chest. it's uncomfortable to wear and the longer you wear it, the more you can't wait to take it off.

transition is like making alterations to that suit, taking it out here, taking it in there, fixing it to fit you more comfortably.

See Cis people, they don't even feel the suit they're wearing. It doesn't pinch, it doesn't pull, it's not too tight in places or too loose in others. It fits them fine and so they never think about it.
for someone who's trans though, there are days where all you can think about is how much discomfort you're in. The suit consumes your thoughts.

Being trans and pretransition is like wearing a suit that doesn't quite fit.

the level of discomfort of course differs from person to person and indeed for some of us when we look in a mirror we can say "well it IS a nice suit..." but it isn't comfortable and ultimately, what use is a nice suit that hurts to wear?

[Kylo]

It's very difficult to describe, not to mention there are degrees. Some people manage to lead mostly regular lives and others, like me did not.

But talking about it a lot recently with certain political group members on facebook who routinely base their understanding of the trans phenomenon on Ben Shapiro's (rather obsessive) take on us is a daily challenge. They still equate it with having schizophrenia or other such nonsense.

My own personal take, which I rarely share, on the experience is this: if I likened the experience of life to walking or running a distance, being trans is like having two numb or partially numb legs. You can't feel certain things when you move them, but you know you should be feeling things, and you know that to walk or run optimally you require to feel them. Try walking on a dead leg after sitting on it - it's impossible, it doesn't know what to do without stimuli and the means to feel that stimuli. To get the feeling back it requires full circulation, and in my experience to get the full feeling back into mind and body required the HRT. Otherwise I was stumbling along with two dead legs knowing my experience of this race was very different and very lacking from most people's, plus I was unable to ever win it with such a handicap. Just like with dead legs you can't feel the floor to orient yourself properly. I was effectively walking a race without an ounce of feeling in my legs, running on nothing but the will to keep going and somehow imagining I might be running the same race as everyone else at some point, but clearly wasn't.

And that's just the intrinsic experience of being mentally "cut off" from both being able to have the "full female experience" or the "full male experience". Living with being trans is living with dissociation in so many aspects of life, from yourself, from experiences, from cultural norms you feel like you can't properly participate in. It is the feeling of having your feeling of self and common life experience throttled at the neck. You know something is stepping on that jugular, or restraining you from some natural state if you know nothing else, like I did, for a very long time. People can argue till the cows come home on just what our "natural state" is, but the inarguable truth is, we feel its lack. We know when we are being stymied. 

I can't say much about how it feels to look at one's body and feel it is wrong because I still am apparently mostly dissociated from it and from looking at it with any real scrutiny or affection. I suppose I would liken it to "piloting" a body rather than living in it and feeling at one with it.

[warmbody28]

when they ask I tell them free, empowered and sure of who I am.    they are still confused but know that im serous about being myself.

[Chrissy1]

I tell them it is like being trapped. Like someone put a (in my case) boy body over my real one and it gave me the voice and parts for a boy and no matter how much i said I was a girl no one believed me. everyone laughed. No one listened they all saw a boy not a girl but that is who I really was. I tell them that no matter what I did no one would listen. They just dismissed me as having a mental health issue.

[CallMeV]

It's very difficult to describe, not to mention there are degrees. Some people manage to lead mostly regular lives and others, like me did not.

But talking about it a lot recently with certain political group members on facebook who routinely base their understanding of the trans phenomenon on Ben Shapiro's (rather obsessive) take on us is a daily challenge. They still equate it with having schizophrenia or other such nonsense.

My own personal take, which I rarely share, on the experience is this: if I likened the experience of life to walking or running a distance, being trans is like having two numb or partially numb legs. You can't feel certain things when you move them, but you know you should be feeling things, and you know that to walk or run optimally you require to feel them. Try walking on a dead leg after sitting on it - it's impossible, it doesn't know what to do without stimuli and the means to feel that stimuli. To get the feeling back it requires full circulation, and in my experience to get the full feeling back into mind and body required the HRT. Otherwise I was stumbling along with two dead legs knowing my experience of this race was very different and very lacking from most people's, plus I was unable to ever win it with such a handicap. Just like with dead legs you can't feel the floor to orient yourself properly. I was effectively walking a race without an ounce of feeling in my legs, running on nothing but the will to keep going and somehow imagining I might be running the same race as everyone else at some point, but clearly wasn't.

And that's just the intrinsic experience of being mentally "cut off" from both being able to have the "full female experience" or the "full male experience". Living with being trans is living with dissociation in so many aspects of life, from yourself, from experiences, from cultural norms you feel like you can't properly participate in. It is the feeling of having your feeling of self and common life experience throttled at the neck. You know something is stepping on that jugular, or restraining you from some natural state if you know nothing else, like I did, for a very long time. People can argue till the cows come home on just what our "natural state" is, but the inarguable truth is, we feel its lack. We know when we are being stymied. 

I can't say much about how it feels to look at one's body and feel it is wrong because I still am apparently mostly dissociated from it and from looking at it with any real scrutiny or affection. I suppose I would liken it to "piloting" a body rather than living in it and feeling at one with it.

This is such a great description. This is exactly it

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[Megan.]

"Piloting" certainly rings true for me, I felt like a puppet master playing with a marionette, people didn't see me, just the puppet, that played the role they expected or wanted me to play.

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[Naomii]

The best way I haven been able to describe it to my SO is that it feels like driving someone elses car or being in a home that isn't yours. It feels like being a stranger to myself.
Piloting certainly feels spot on.

On the flip side of that now I smile and get all excited knowing it's not forever.

[Susan]

This was my attempt...

My understanding of the Trans Experience:

Please note: Other people's experiences of their gender identity may be different, I am speaking only for myself.

Being transgender is not a choice a transgender person makes, but it is an inherent part of one's identity from birth. This narrative explores the challenges, emotions, and resilience of the trans experience, shedding light on the often-misunderstood journey of self-discovery and acceptance.

For me, my trans experience began early in life. I first recognized my true identity around the age of 3-5, and finally learned what it was called and that something could be done about it when I was around 7 years old. This feeling has never left me, not even once.

As a transgender person, navigating through life presents a unique set of challenges. One of the primary obstacles faced by the trans community is social exclusion. Growing up, we often experience bullying and exclusion from both the peer groups associated with our sex assigned at birth and our self-identified gender, leading to difficulties with socialization.

Puberty is particularly harrowing for trans individuals, as our physical bodies begin to diverge significantly from our true identities. This stage of life can feel like being trapped inside a foreign body, accompanied by a growing sense of alienation from one's own reflection and voice.

Misconceptions and stereotypes about transgender people contribute to further marginalization, affecting areas such as healthcare, employment, and legal rights. Despite these challenges, the trans community demonstrates remarkable resilience. Many trans people learn to wear a mask of their assigned gender in order to navigate societal expectations. They often engage in activities that align with their assigned gender roles or seek solace in religion, hoping to find answers and a sense of belonging.

However, true healing and acceptance can only come from embracing one's true identity. This journey may sometimes, but not always, involve hormone therapy, surgery, or other steps to align the physical body with the soul. Ultimately, this transformative process allows transgender individuals to finally live authentically and embrace their unique experiences.

The trans experience is not one of mental illness or aberration, but a journey of self-discovery and courage. As a transgender person, I am not "changing" or "fixing" myself; instead, I embrace my true self, living an authentic life despite societal pressures and expectations to conform to my assigned sex at birth. By fostering understanding and empathy, we can celebrate the resilience and strength of the trans community, recognizing our right to acceptance, dignity, and equal opportunities in life.