several questions regarding transitioning

[SoonCalledIrene]

so i should be getting a letter from my psychatrist within a week with which i can go to an endocrinologist and start hrt. but ive got some problems with that. (im mtf). also please excuse my english i havent been learning it for that of a long time.

1. right now i have some doubts regarding whether i should actually transition or not. if i got the choice of being a biological male or female i wouldve definitly went with female. but i cannot become a biological female anymore and this makes me worry a bit. after all my body will always be more masculine than those of cis females, i will probably never think the same way a cisfemale would because ive grown up as a boy, i will always by judged in some way about my past (and i cant hide this fact from my future partner) and i will never be able to have my own children if i chose to transition. is it normal to have these kinds of thoughts? and is there anything you can tell me about the aspects ive mentioned?

2. being able to have sex is very important to me personly. i know that surgeons are able to adapt genitals to the desired gender fairly well these days but just how well? ive searched for hours on the internet and couldnt really find anything as to how sensitive your new organ would be. ive heard things like that the cisfemale clitoris has about 8000 nerve endings whereas the males glans only has about half of them (and spread across a much bigger surface area). but in males the nerves are located further towards the surface of the skin so it balances it out a little bit. how would this end up if i chose to undergo surgery? i can imagine that some of the other nerves located in the penis might be connected with those at the glans and follow down one larger strand of nerves somewhere and if you undergo surgery youd cut off this whole strand and maybe end up with more nerves than in the glans of the penis before. does anyone know how sensitive the neoclitoris is in the end? i mean those who have watched one or another porn movie will probably have seen that women sometimes cant keep still when reaching orgasm and their whole body shakes. might a transfemale be just as sensitive as a cis one?

3. is it normal for mtf transsexuals to stare at girls before transitioning? theres this one girl in my class which i just constantly look at because shes just so beautiful and sometimes you can see parts of her bra but i dont look at sexorgans i just look at everything of her (legs, hips, shoulders, neck, midriff etc).

4. ive heard that for example the hip bones fuse at around age 23. right now im way younger than that. does that mean that my body will be able to mostly adapt to a female structure? also is it possible for bones to become smaller if they havent fused yet? by how much can i expect my proportions to change if im still in my teens? does exercising before starting hormone treatment affect the results? and does anyone know the circumference range in which shoulders look female? ive looked up many on the internet but either it shows this kind of backside measuring technique which seems to be completely odd for me and when i read about circumference i dont know where to measure. i think my shoulders are really small for a boy but it confuses me when suddenly my circumference is 15 centimeters above female average.

5. is there any way to know how far puberty has progressed without going to the hospital for an xray? or is there any other way to somewhat predict how good the results might be? i dont want to offend anyone here but whenever i see pictures of mtf transsexuals after like 2 or more years of hrt i can still very clearly see that theyve once been male.

[Dena]

1. The reason for transitioning is because you are far more uncomfortable in your birth gender than you are in the opposite gender. That can change as you get older and it's the reason many of our members are well out of their teens and twenties. In my case, it reach the point where my life was at risk if I had remained in my birth gender. This is a personal call and will require thinking very carefully about your decision. Do I pass all the time? No. Am I happy being female? Yes. Transitioning was far better than the alternative.

2. Not having had sex, I haven't had personal experience with this. Sex as a woman will be far different than as a man because you will develop feminine sexual responses. A woman has a more difficult time achieving a climax. A feminine climax is far different than what you now feel. I have seen many MTFs who far prefer the sexual feeling now over what they had before. Is it right for you? I don't know.  Lower testosterone levels will reduce your desire for sex but until you are on a blocker, it will be difficult to determine even your most basic feelings about this.

3. CIS women often check out other CIS women. They do this to learn about makeup and dress. They also will sometimes do this because their is sort of a pecking order where women try to out do each other in attractiveness. Most of the time they are careful about this so it's not noticed.

4. Bone development is difficult to determine in advance. The good thing is with careful fashion selection it tends not to be an issue. CIS women often have many of the appearance difficulties that we have so it's not that noticeable. I have been nude in a female shower and been inspected as well as wearing a bikini with my body passing inspection in both cases. As long as your weight is within reason, you body tends to be the least of your worries.

5. At two year, HRT may not have had sufficing time to work all of it's magic. Women may develop for between 5-10 years after the start of puberty. I know that it took over 8 year before I noticed how much the shape of my legs had changed. Yes my dosage was pretty low so you might see results sooner but don't expect to change overnight.

[SoonCalledIrene]

1. The reason for transitioning is because you are far more uncomfortable in your birth gender than you are in the opposite gender. That can change as you get older and it's the reason many of our members are well out of their teens and twenties. In my case, it reach the point where my life was at risk if I had remained in my birth gender. This is a personal call and will require thinking very carefully about your decision. Do I pass all the time? No. Am I happy being female? Yes. Transitioning was far better than the alternative.

2. Not having had sex, I haven't had personal experience with this. Sex as a woman will be far different than as a man because you will develop feminine sexual responses. A woman has a more difficult time achieving a climax. A feminine climax is far different than what you now feel. I have seen many MTFs who far prefer the sexual feeling now over what they had before. Is it right for you? I don't know.  Lower testosterone levels will reduce your desire for sex but until you are on a blocker, it will be difficult to determine even your most basic feelings about this.

3. CIS women often check out other CIS women. They do this to learn about makeup and dress. They also will sometimes do this because their is sort of a pecking order where women try to out do each other in attractiveness. Most of the time they are careful about this so it's not noticed.

4. Bone development is difficult to determine in advance. The good thing is with careful fashion selection it tends not to be an issue. CIS women often have many of the appearance difficulties that we have so it's not that noticeable. I have been nude in a female shower and been inspected as well as wearing a bikini with my body passing inspection in both cases. As long as your weight is within reason, you body tends to be the least of your worries.

5. At two year, HRT may not have had sufficing time to work all of it's magic. Women may develop for between 5-10 years after the start of puberty. I know that it took over 8 year before I noticed how much the shape of my legs had changed. Yes my dosage was pretty low so you might see results sooner but don't expect to change overnight.

alright thank you very much for answering (and for reading this whole block of text ^^). with 60 kilos at a heigt of 1.76 meters i think i should be fine in terms of weight :3

[Harley Quinn]

every question is quite valid...

1.  You'll never be cis, and your brain is very individual.  You will always think as you think.  Transition is merely an aid to make you feel more like you... if that makes sense.  There is always sperm banking and seregate pregnancies later in life.  I dont see it as 2 seperate lives, but merely as your personal life experience that has made you the person you are.  I wouldn't be the woman I am today if it wasn't for my life experiences.

2.  I can't speak for sexual reassignment surgery.  I'd imagine that "if it feels good, it feels good"  What's a few hundred nerve endings?  If you enjoy the feeling of having sex, then what's the difference?

3.  I stare at girls all the time.  I happen to still be attracted to women... Sounds perfectly normal.

4.  You have a good chance of  getting wider set hips being younger.  The magic of shoulders shrinking and chest measurements is that you lose muscle bulk to give you the appearance of a slimmer torso.  I wouldn't worry too much about what an average woman looks like.  I have cis friends with bigger shoulders than me... who are just as tall and that have had children and still have the same size hips as I do.  We are all individuals... and come in many sizes.

5.  There's no real way to know how far Hormone Therapy will take your appearance.  Its very individual and genetically bias.  Some people get more out of it physically than others.  Being younger is a huge bonus for you, but its merely a guess.  Medical science cannot predict our physical outcomes.  As Dena said, it takes YEARS to see how things will turn out.  There are a lot of Trans Women in the world... Not everyone of them choose to post and advertise.  There are quite a few out there that you would never suspect as not being cis.  Some Trans Women don't take transition as far as others... Its not necessarily an all inclusive picture of how well or how poorly hormone therapy works.

In the end, if transition makes you happy that's all that should really matter.