This is really the only trans site I frequent. I've looked at some others but this one seemed to be better at just having less "drama" for lack of a better word.
There is one thing that I've noticed though. It feels like there's still an undertone of pressure that if you're trans, medical transition is where you eventually end up, sooner or later. While almost everyone will say things along the lines of "everyone is different", "transition isn't for everyone", "take your time to decide", etc., the unspoken thing still feels like, "transition is the answer".
When I was younger, I didn't know about transition. I didn't even know about what transsexual was until I was into my teens. I just had to deal with my issues like countless other people have over the years – really by not doing much of anything. I'd been to a therapist, who declared I had a disorder, and that kind of set me off on a bad path. And still, through my 20's I really didn't know transition was a thing. I'd read a couple random stories about MtF sex changes, but nothing for people going female to male. Loren Cameron was the first FTM I ever knew about. I remember the first time I saw a picture of him, I was jealous for sure. But I also felt like I could never do that. Not that I wasn't male, but that I couldn't have all these surgeries, removing things ... adding things ... taking hormones. For years, every night I went to sleep I would try to create a perfect life in my dreams where I had the body I always thought I should have had since birth. Meanwhile, my waking life was still moving forward, while I put gender on the back burner, or attempted coping mechanisms that didn't have do to with anything medical.
Warp up to the last 5 or so years. I kind of came out of hiding within myself and confronted the gender thing head on. There were points where it was pretty brutal. No one in my life knew, so confronting it in solitude was not the best. I secretly saw a therapist for a few sessions. Basically, they told me that if I wasn't willing to transition, then I was simply a "female" who was confused. This was similar to years ago when I was a teen. And this was a therapist who deals with LGBT issues. It was upsetting to say the least. I realize there's good therapists out there, but I've not come across them and I'm well past the point of wanting to talk to one. I started doing more research on the web, and seeking out sites like this one. However, like some elephant in every room I went into, I kept bumping into the, "if you're transsexual, then you want to transition" thing. Everywhere it seemed to be everyone's driving goal. Everyone rushing to get synthetic hormones into their bloodstream and never look back. I tried it, mostly because I needed to see it/experience it for myself. It didn't work for me. And I knew, once again, just like I had when I first looked at Loren Cameron, that I couldn't go there.
And now there's seems to be 31 Flavors of genders, at least from looking at the web. Yet western society is still decidedly binary. There are two options: male and female. If you fall somewhere in between, then it seems you pick one of those 31 flavors and become an outcast to most of society. This is why I'm not "out". Could be a bit cowardly on my part, but I don't need the extra drama and stress in my life of people dealing with me totally differently because of some announcement I've made. Perhaps one day, being trans or internex or anything that's not the typical female or male model will be more accepted. I've seen a lot of change in in the lesbian and gay community just in the last few years. Gay marriage is legal in more states that it was 2 years ago. I have hope that I won't always feel like the outcast.
But the thing is, I wonder how many people really are out there who are like me? Someone brought up in another thread in the non-op board that I started that there is no support network for non-transitioners. And recently I've seen on these boards more talk about things like "transtrenders", or "not trans enough". And then there's that underlying pressure I keep sensing – the feeling that, regardless of what people say or type on a message board, it's pretty clear cut that medical transition is the main "treatment" if you're trans. So what do you do if you're not transitioning?
Perhaps part of this feeling I get is because it seems relatively easy to obtain medical treatment for transitioning now. Even young people find boards like these and then they know the exact steps they need to take within a hour or two of surfing the web. I could go right out tomorrow and get on hormones. If I had about $6k laying around, I could schedule elective chest surgery. I think the main roadblocks now are not in finding treatment or information about it, it's affording treatment (although I've seen plenty of people say that T is "cheap"). Yet it seems thousands of people are well into the process.
Has there always been this many trans people silently suffering and I was just not aware of it because I did a lot of my growing up before the internet is what it is today? I'm genuinely curious what the statistics show. How many people out of how many births are actually trans? What if this is a bigger variant than people once thought – the brain of one gender, the body of another? That could be a game-changer. What if you could just say, "oh I'm trans" and people could go, "Oh okay, that's cool" then treat you how you wanted to be treated. I know, pipe dream.
A lot of times I feel caught between two things I'm not ("female" if I don't come out, and, depending on who's judging me, anywhere from "freak" to simply a trans person if I do come out) and it's sometimes difficult to tread a middle ground where I can just be myself without too much hassle. I still feel like an outcast if I have to deal with a group of females ... like they KNOW there's something "not right" with me ... like they have some kind of sixth sense, and I can feel them treating me differently. So much of how people deal with other people is based on gender. So I get why so many people want to transition, so they can feel comfortable in how they're treated by society (not to mention to help curb dysphoria). The people that do know in my life still treat me like me, but I still feel that wouldn't be the majority. I don't really want to be "out" just as much as I don't want to transition. As far as I can tell, I'm quite the oddball.
