Will your brain realy ever fully let the male go

[stephaniec]

I just celebrated 4 years on my natural self. and I feeling so truly female most of the time , but for some reason my brain won't let  male me to rest in peace. Just curious if others have found a peaceful coexistence with past and present or is it always war.

[Jill E]

What do you mean by, won't let male me rest In peace? Can you elaborate? Gender Identity is a spectrum, so that might be why you're feeling that way.


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[stephaniec]

I'll give you an example, When I was in grade school I had a dream where I was lying along side a female classmate and just looking at the sky and feeling physically the exact same as her. Then my father came along and put a penis on me that wasn't there and I saw that I was male, like my brain was telling me I was male. I had this dream in about 8th grade

[AnonyMs]

I have some elements of female, but I think a large part is male. Its a bit hard to tell whats habit and whats inbuilt. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I'm not really sure how there could be a war going on unless you can't accept yourself.

I find it interesting to contemplate, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm find just the way I am (internally).

[CarlyMcx]

The male me was never real.  Before the age of 20, when I was a child, I was not allowed to be the real me, and I spent my entire childhood casting about, trying on various identities -- geek, class clown, whatever, and discovering that they just did not fit.  I remember at 18 in college, being treated by girls as this friendly, genderless being, never being taken seriously as a male.  And the only reason I ever wanted to be a male was to have a girlfriend.  At around 20, I forged a male identity that worked -- a guy who was well liked and respected most of the time.  But that guy was not me.  Somewhere past 40 I convinced myself I was that guy, and then the panic attacks set in.

I miss that guy a lot sometimes.  If he was a separate person I would be in love with him, only because he was made up of everything I thought a man should be.  But at the end of the day, retiring him is a big part of loving myself.

[stephaniec]

sounds like me

[AnonyMs]

I'm not really sure I understand, but perhaps its just a difference in the way we describe things.

I've some uncertainty of what parts of my personality are male and female, and where it came from - born with, socialization, or HRT. But I feel and act according to my feelings, and whether that's male or female is not important to me.

If wanted to act in a manner opposite to my current gender presentation I could see that causing some stress, but that due to other people, not me.

[stephaniec]

it's the male I struggled with justifying all my life . The residue of that self that just doesn't want to be forgotten.

[Deborah]

The male me was me just as the female was.  One may have been largely an avatar and made me really unhappy much of the time, but it was still me


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

[stephaniec]

The male me was me just as the female was.  One may have been largely an avatar and made me really unhappy much of the time, but it was still me


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

yea

[josie76]

I think the male in me is just a shadow of my whole being. It is me but with only a small piece showing to the world and a lot of an act. That's kind of how I see myself. I'm slowly getting over the immediate response of falling into the male guise as soon as men are around in public. I hope to someday be free entirely of that self induce response.

[SadieBlake]

Generally if we got past puberty we were socialized male. What does it matter IAC? I know plenty of cis females who behave more characteristically masculine than I do. I'm first trying to be healthy human, second feminine.

[Black13]

No.  Male was attached to 35 years of my life.  I can leave a lot of it behind, but I had the male experience in my life, and it was a valuable experience.  It shaped me as a woman in a way most women will never understand, just as there are aspects of the cis-woman's experience I will never experience.  It's a part of me, now dormant but still very much there.

[warlockmaker]

I am the sum of my life experiences and whereas once I said goodbye to the male, because everyone said it was part of the process of transitioning. Now, the prodigy son has returned and  has found its peaceful place in further defining who I am.

[stephaniec]

nice way to put it

[Inarasarah]

I can only speak from my experience, but now after 13 years of living as my true self, I find it difficult to view myself as anything other than a girl.  While I have memories and photos of me before, my life and experiences since transition have influenced my memory and my self image.  I do not deny that I was a boy.  I am also not ashamed of it.  But my memories have been affected by my current experience and the image of who I am is more feminine than I think I really was.

Not sure if that makes sense, but it is how I feel and recall my past. There is another thread that asked what it feels like to have breasts.  Honestly, I cannot remember what it feels like not to have them.  So time influences memories and how we see ourselves.  At least it has for me.

-Sarah

[stephaniec]

the longer I'm on estrogen the more distant the male is but I can't erase the hardship

[Raell]

@CarlyMx LOL! That's cute!
I've often thought I'd love to meet a clone of me to either date for be best friends with!

I've always just been myself, not realizing for most of my life that part of me saw myself as male.

I began reading up on it, and found that physical gender is formed in the first trimester and gender hormones initialize prenatal brains in the second trimester. According to one study, even the girly girls and macho men have only 80% of their birth gender traits. Male hormones are usually deposited on the right hemisphere of the brain, and female on the left.

Both sides of people's brains are initialized with some hormones, because everyone is a gender spectrum, but usually the majority of the gender hormones match the birth genders.

As the gender hormone sliding scale moves toward the middle, people can be born with increasingly strong opposite gender traits, yet still identify with their birth gender.

Nobody knows the tipping point where people see themselves as the gender opposite their physical gender. It might not even have to do with the percentage of gender traits, since my sisters have far more male traits than I do, yet identify as female.

So, really, all of us are both genders, in a way. Some of us identify with only one gender, some identify as both genders, as in my case.
I mostly identify as male, but I have a weak female side, so I'm not "all" one gender, either way.

[katiebbw1]

For me, the male self was an act she had to put on, the classic having to live a lie. I wasn't very good at acting or role playing, glad I don't have to anymore

[Cindy]

Interesting the male has gone from every day thought but in dreams I am often a mixture of male and female.

That might sound odd but then again the female me in my dreams is gorgeous so dreams may not tell the truth!

Brains are weird!!!