Hi!
I've been searching for a while to find a good support forum, and was delighted to see that this one is so active. I'm also glad to have found through a little lurking that it seems to be okay to be uncertain about one's gender identity here; this forum appears to be inclusive also to the non-binary and genderqueer.
I'm in my late twenties. My legal and biological sex is male, but I've experienced some level of gender dysphoria for as long as I can remember. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I need to do to feel better about myself, though.
As a child a had a strong preference to girly clothes, toys and haircuts, and was frequently mistaken for a girl. At that point this "misgendering" of me as a girl bothered me, and this is one of the things that I struggle to understand today. In the stories I hear from binary transsexuals a recurring theme is feeling from an early age that they did in fact belong to the other sex. I did not. I effectively crossdressed all through my childhood, my friends were almost exclusively girls, my manners and behaviour were much closer to girly than boyish, but I did not self-identify as a girl. Maybe I should not let this bother me, and simply think about what I am and what I want today, but I have a hard time letting go of the fact that as a child I actively identified as male. As I write this, though, I strongly remember the feeling of loneliness when I spent time with my female friends, but never quite could become a member of the exclusive club that was girls.
In my late teens I feel ill with a rather severe depression and an eating disorder. I believe it was during my illness that I started to consider that I might be transgender. I experimented a bit with crossdressing and makeup. For a while I identified as a binary transsexual, and spent a significant amount of time on support boards much like this one, but I never chose to take the step into transition, largely out of fear of having to come out to friends and family. I also feared having to spend time en femme in the early stages of transition, without being able to pass for a woman.
Ultimately I decided that while I did not feel comfortable as a male, changing my body was not the way to go for me. I toyed with the idea of a gender neutral identity, but ultimately ended up living another ten years or so as a male, pushing my discomfort to the back of my mind.
Lately however, these thoughts are resurfacing, and while a part of me wants to repress them and lead a largely happy existence as a male, I do believe that I need to keep exploring my gender identity.
I do not keep it a secret that I am displeased with the limitations of binary gender roles, and I have mentioned to some of my closer friends that I do not quite identify as male. From time to time I am mistaken for a woman (although gay man is a far more common misconception) and I rather enjoy those short moments in the land of female pronouns. I find that I feel certain about one thing: I am not male. Every time I am referred to with a masculine pronoun I cringe a little inside. What I'm not so sure about is if I identify as female or if I fall somewhere on the nonbinary spectrum. Nor am I certain regarding how I feel about my body. If I could magically trade it in for a fully functional, passable female body I would do so in a heartbeat, but I feel a lot more hesitant about HRT and surgery. Also, a female body feels important to me mainly in relation to others; alone in front of the mirror I feel relative neutral about my body. It's there. It's functional. It's not the body that I would ideally like to have, but who has their ideal body, really?
I guess it sort of boils down to this:
I do not identify as male, but while I would rather like to be a woman, the idea of the actual transition scares me, not least the idea that the result might not be satisfactory. This makes me think that if I were "truly" transsexual I would not feel fear or doubt, I would jump at any chance to become the woman I was born to be. Does this make sense?
Thank you for reading. I kind of only intended to write a brief hello, but one paragraph lead to another, and now here we are...
/Takotsubo
