I find it fascinating that the majority of responders in this thread are female (correct me if I'm wrong about that) and many are making statements like, "Eventually, gender dysphoria will make you reach your breaking point." That's a scary thought. And yes, some statements are being tempered a bit with the "If I waited so long and did it, you can too" type of encouragement but I'm wondering if the scare tactics are painting the most accurate picture? Or perhaps I've got a different perspective because I'm coming it at through my own personal experiences of course, but also from the perspective of a male who's been awkwardly living in society as female for 40 years. I know there's plenty of people who identify as FTM who will say that they couldn't live another day as female (and having been under the influence of estrogen at times in my life myself I can tell you how crazy emotional that hormone will make you and I honestly can't fathom why anyone would want that!) but there's still a spectrum of gender and of gender dysphoria. Some people have severe dysphoria, some people do not. Some people will be way more concerned with how society sees them than their own bodies. Perhaps it seems like a large percentage of trans people fall into the "transition or die" category because they're often more vocal about it (like the, "Don't make the same mistake I did!")? Whereas there's people like me who survived their own personal crisis and wrestling internally with it and have come out the other side more okay with themselves.
And there there's the age differences. When I look at the FTM forum, there's a lot less older people over there. It seems to be a average age of 20-something and they're either in transition, working towards getting a letter for HRT, or contemplating it. Whereas if I drift over to the MTF forum there seem to be many more people 40+ who are just now contemplating or actually starting to transition. Perhaps it's because it's "easier" (I'm using that word very loosely here) to go from female to male than the other way around? At least from a physical standpoint, fat redistribution and facial/body hair from taking testosterone can make one appear to be male under society's lens (with some exceptions) quicker than it takes to transform a body who has been under the influence of testosterone for years with estrogen. I know that's a broad statement and individual genetics really do come into play (hence the exceptions) but why the seemingly vast age differences? Is it more of a society thing? We're to the point in western society where females can pretty much do anything they want ... have a family or not ... have a career or not ... participate in more traditional "male" roles or not. But males are still expected to, "be men" and even the slightest feminine trait is cause for uproar. Of course this is all just my perspective so I'm an outside observer of it all but I'm curious nonetheless of the personal experience of folks on the other side of the fence, so to speak – having to grow up male, when in reality you're female and how that differs from the other way around.
