Internalized transphobia

[Bacon]

Really? How about those of us identifying as non-binary or genderfluid?

I don't believe those identities are valid or have any basis in reality, unless it's a trans person's way of actually dealing with reality by acknowledging that he or she isn't/can't be a "man" or "woman" (i.e. if I decided to say I was nonbinary, it'd be because I'm acknowledging that I have some female features and some male since I've been taking T).

Now when I say I don't believe they're valid in no way means I treat nonbinary people badly. I respect their pronouns and treat them the same as everyone else. But it's the same as an atheist thinking Christianity is invalid and untrue, but still respecting others' right to practice it.

In any case, you should definitely read up on Judith Butler, she's worked those ideas out in a fantastic book called 'Gender Trouble'.

I might check it out, but just from reading the summary on Wiki...damn, it sounds like all the pseudo-intellectual, overly-esoteric SJW stuff I hate.

It sounds like you're trying to use your intellect to objectify an experience that is very subjective and unique to all those undergoing it. Perhaps you should watch out with that, and not generalize so much. "trans men" don't exist as a group, and nor do "trans women".

So I should ignore what my intellect is telling me? Isn't that dangerous? I feel like our entire society has become purely based on feelings and on ignoring reality, and I wish I could jump aboard the crazy train because maybe then I could be happy, but my intellect holds me back.

I was the same way early into realising I was trans. It took months of educating myself on trans people and the biological backing for me to think it being delusional thinking doesn't make much if any logical sense.

How does it not make logical sense?

If a cis man had a circumcision gone wrong so he was raised a girl (which has actually happened) and then starting assisting he was a boy; we wouldn't call that delusioning bcos the evidence backs him up. Or if a women was born without a uterus we wouldn't say she wasn't female.

Because they were still born with the other sex characteristics that make them male or female though, which is the opposite of trans people.

If a dog liked to poop in the kitty litter and eat cat food, would we call it a cat? No, because we can see from its physical appearance that it's a dog, just a dog that acts more like a cat.

You'll get there . You're a man born with a recognised health issue; simple as that.

Thanks. I want to get there, but at the same time, I'm afraid that if I do ever get to the point of really believing I'm a man and have the right to call myself one even though I have no evidence for it, that I'll be abandoning all sense and fully becoming delusional.

It seems like such a slippery slope. If a woman can say "I'm a man" and everyone is expected to accept it and humor her, then why no other "socially constructed" category? There was that huge controversy with Rachel Dolezal about being white and pretending to be black. Why can't she say "I feel black so I am"? How is it any different than saying "I feel like a man so I am"?

You'll might say that it's because white and black brains aren't structured differently while male and female brains are. But many studies have shown that male and female brains are more similar than different, and that there are always exceptions to every rule. So maybe all these trans men are just females with more traditionally masculinely-structured brains. That doesn't mean they are male.

So what makes them "male"? Can anyone answer this in a way that isn't purely based off feelings or subjective experience?

Then let's talk of what it means for a category to be "constructed."  The categories are constructed from the perceived physical differences of our bodies.  And yes, there are underlying biological processes involved for such differentiation, but they are not absolute; there is no "essence" to a category.

These physical differences are all it means to have a certain sex, except for intersex people. If you saw two pigs, and someone asked you to check if they're male or female (because they'd have to separate them if they were, no breeding wanted), you'd check their genitals and be done with the assignment. Or would you say "I can't complete this task, because even though one has a vagina and the other has a penis, we can't really know what gender they are"?

Humans are animals as much as any other. Just because we have evolved to develop language (and thus can pseudo-intellectualize our way into believing that gender and sex are not the same thing) doesn't mean that the basic essentials of biology are any different for us than any other species. (Yes, there are some species that are single-sex, or the males get pregnant, etc, but humans are not among those rare species.)

Go to medical school.  Get a new degree.  Yes, it takes time and work, and no, to rely on just a narrative isn't going to cut it in the real world.  But there's no reason you can't become a doctor just because you've been a lawyer.  They're not mutually exclusive.

But tons of trans people DO rely on a narrative alone. If a girl says she's a boy, we as a society are now expected to believe it and treat her accordingly. Yet that same girl can't just say she's a doctor. She would need training and a degree.

I would actually be more comfortable with transitioning if there were certain things I (and every other trans guy) HAD to do in order to be considered male. Ideally, IMO, to be considered male, one would have to be on T, have chest surgery, and bottom surgery. Then they could truly tick off all the appropriate checkboxes for what it means to be biologically male. But as it is, I can just say I am one, and everyone is expected to believe it, and that makes me uncomfortable.

Now, if you're practicing medicine without an actual degree, are you still a doctor?  Depends on whether you know your stuff, if you're actually good at it.  If you're good at it, no one will question you; everyone will agree you're a doctor.

But if this was me, I would know I'm living a lie and that even if people see me as a competent doctor, I'm really not because I got a fake degree.

It doesn't quite work when it comes to gender, does it?  Well, to some extent, yes -- but what "coming out" as a different gender than the one everyone (constantly, daily, automatically, subconsciously) is assigning you actually does is move you into the social category of "trans."  And for a lot of people, that's good enough!  Because at least being treated as "other" is different than being treated as being on previous the gender binary, and for a lot of transitioners this actually accurately captures their own interior experience.

Thanks for acknowledging this. I have less of an issue with people saying they're trans than with them saying they ARE the gender they want to be because trans at least implies the reality that they were born one sex but want to be the opposite.

If you, Bacon, want male gendering, from yourself and others, it starts by changing your body.  And then, funnily enough, actually accepting that gendering when everyone is giving it to you.

That's where I face so much trouble. I want a male body, a male voice, to be seen as male, etc. But I don't feel like I've earned the right to get those things, to say I'm male, or to have others see me as male. I'm scared that, when people really do start seeing me as male, I'll feel like a fraud.

[Bacon]

Also, I want to say this: I don't mean disrespect to any of you. I know you are trying to help me and I appreciate it. I'm just frustrated and want to voice all the thoughts that have been plaguing me lately (and for years and years before I decided to transition as well). I wish I could be like all of you and be able to say I'm a man and haters be damned and be confident in my identity and move forward with my transition, but more and more, I doubt my brain's ability to get over what I see to be physical realities and painful truths that can't be ignored.

[Elis]

Here's your physical prove https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan/amp/?client=ms-android-samsung. It's not as easy to see as sex to determine gender but you can still obviously see it with the right tools. It doesn't make logical sense for me to be delusional or other trans people bcos are ours brains are constructed to be a certain gender regardless of what sex parts we happen to have or not have. As far as I know masculine women wouldn't have brains similar to trans men otherwise they'd have GD. My theory is they were given more T in the womb to make them gay or masculine or both but not enough to change the brain structure to male.

[Sophia Sage]

Well, Bacon, for what it's worth, you certainly argue like a man.

So I should ignore what my intellect is telling me? Isn't that dangerous? I feel like our entire society has become purely based on feelings and on ignoring reality, and I wish I could jump aboard the crazy train because maybe then I could be happy, but my intellect holds me back.

Try reading Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio, who is a professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy at USC.  I think you're creating a false dichotomy between intellect and emotion. 

The other thing I'm noticing is that you place an awful lot of emphasis on one's conditions at birth, that this "is what you really are."  So let's take a look at the key parts of this, namely the notion of what "is" -- which is to say, what we actually mean by "being."  It's kind of an anomaly of Western thinking that a sentence like "What is the Essence of Being?" can actually make sense, as there are all kinds of unexamined assumptions laden into it, namely that there's such a thing as an "essence" (fiction, in my mind) and that we can actually make sense of "being" or even agree on an understanding of it.

To me, existence exists.  Tautological, circular.  So what do we mean by that?  We certainly understand material reality, and shouldn't ignore it, lest one fall off a cliff and plunge to your death.  Material reality is simplest to understand, from our personal experience.  Something with mass or energy qualifies as "existing" and something that lacks mass/energy (when you get into hard-core physics it becomes apparent that mass/energy is the same thing, yet it really doesn't convey quantum reality at all) doesn't exist.  Deities, for example, to the scientific mind, don't exist because there's mass or energy to measure.

But this then begs the question, in what sense does, say, a number exist? The number 5, for example, how much mass, how much energy?  It takes a "mind" to come up with a number.  Numbers, like all patterns, don't "exist" in the same sense that "light" or "planets" do.  Numbers are co-created (if not wholesale created) by conscious minds. 

It's the same for categories.  We identify patterns, emphasis on we.  But the patterns don't "exist" in a technical sense. It takes interiority for a pattern to have any kind of "existence." 

Thanks. I want to get there, but at the same time, I'm afraid that if I do ever get to the point of really believing I'm a man and have the right to call myself one even though I have no evidence for it, that I'll be abandoning all sense and fully becoming delusional.

You're already delusional.  You seem to think the model of reality created by your brain is reality. Of course, the map is not the territory.  This is a function of the limitation of our brains; no map of existence can possibly capture existence itself; it would take a complete duplicate of the territory to fully map it, and then we still don't have an account for the duplication itself, and suddenly it's turtles all the way down.  We can't help but be deluded, to some extent. 

Oh, and "rights" are fictions, you know that, right?  A "right" doesn't have mass or energy.  They are social conventions, nothing more, nothing inherent to them.

It seems like such a slippery slope. If a woman can say "I'm a man" and everyone is expected to accept it and humor her, then why no other "socially constructed" category? There was that huge controversy with Rachel Dolezal about being white and pretending to be black. Why can't she say "I feel black so I am"? How is it any different than saying "I feel like a man so I am"?

I've been thinking about this one for a while, actually.

Whiteness doesn't actually exist, of course, it's just a pattern, one defined by the absence of color when it comes to "race."  If you have color to your skin, you're a person of color.  If you don't, you're white.  And people will treat you differently in different social contexts depending on that. 

So let's think about it from the other direction.  We get the term "passing" from people of color, actually, who through mixed ancestry or certain skin-lightening techniques could "pass" as white.  Even today, a lot of Latinx people "pass" as white and have to rely on narrative to deny their whiteness, like George Zimmerman (who shot Trayvon Martin).  So there's already a lot of ambiguity when it comes to skin color.

Regardless, if Rachel Dolezal has permanently darkened her skin so that everyone treats her as black, well, everyone is treating her as black.  And that will absolutely change her social interactions.  Actually, everyone did treat her as black.  She was black.  The reason people don't want to treat her as black anymore is because of her narrative.  Funny, narrative can be so weak and yet so powerful at the same time.  Pre-transition, narrative is at best indulged.  Post-transition, it can be one's undoing. 

Why?  Because people believe in essences. 

Essences don't exist.  There's no mass, no energy to an essence.  But people seem to know what is "essential" regardless.  They believe in the fixity and permanence of people and of categories, because Time seems to move slow.  But the underlying physical reality of the Universe, through our most rigorous physics, is that everything changes, and everything is constantly changing.  Change, change, change, that's what's really real.  To ask if she's "really white" or "really black" is not the right question, because the underlying assumptions of that question are false. 

So let's examine the statement of "feeling like a man" or "feeling black," because these are not actually feelings.  Roughly, feelings are happy, sad, angry, scared, and disgusted.  (Thank you, Inside Out.)  And of course there are sensations of hunger, pain, pleasure, and so forth.  So a statement of "I feel like a man" is inaccurate -- it's shorthand for "My internal self-image is that of a man."

But how does one even comet to know or believe this in the first place, when it contradicts what everyone else sees, even what you objectively see in the mirror?

You'll might say that it's because white and black brains aren't structured differently while male and female brains are. But many studies have shown that male and female brains are more similar than different, and that there are always exceptions to every rule. So maybe all these trans men are just females with more traditionally masculinely-structured brains. That doesn't mean they are male.

So what makes them "male"? Can anyone answer this in a way that isn't purely based off feelings or subjective experience?

These physical differences are all it means to have a certain sex, except for intersex people. If you saw two pigs, and someone asked you to check if they're male or female (because they'd have to separate them if they were, no breeding wanted), you'd check their genitals and be done with the assignment. Or would you say "I can't complete this task, because even though one has a vagina and the other has a penis, we can't really know what gender they are"?

Where does the sense of contradiction actually come from?  It comes from the contradiction between perceived physical characteristics (from either a physical mirror or the mirror of social interaction) and the actual feelings generated thereon. "I feel dysphoric (angry/sad/scared/disgusted) when I'm gendered one way, and euphoric (bliss) when I'm gendered the other way." 

And that's all the "right" you need to change your gendering.

I mean, if we're going to talk about "rights" then surely the "right" to "pursue happiness" is on the table, right?

Of course, in practical terms, just saying what you want doesn't mean you're going to get it.  "I want money" isn't going to get me money, I have to give something in return.  Even panhandlers have to give people some kind of experience (generally pathos) to make their money.  The rest of us have to give work, service, products, what have you. 

It's the same with gendering.  If you really want male gendering, Bacon, you'll have to give people what they expect in order to receive it.  That starts with your embodiment, which you can change.  It continues with how you socially interact, which you yourself probably don't need to change at all, because dude you're coming off like a total bro right now. Anyways. It's not something you actually have to ask for.  Just do it, do it well, and people will give it to you, without even thinking of it.

Well, there is still a problem of narrative.  Remember how I said that "coming out" is a ritual?  A narrative ritual, in particular, to get people to treat you differently.  Well, given how deluded people are about the fixity of human beings and categories and the Universe at large, despite the underlying reality of the Universe being one of constant incessant change, once you have the gendering you need you just have to follow the social convention of not telling people you're anything other than how they're treating you.  And if there are people in your life, who've known you from before, that still refuse to give you what you need after you've gone through such changes, then establish boundaries to minimize or cut off those interactions.  Harsh, yes, but it's very effective. 

Ultimately, this isn't a language game.  If you're dysphoric about female gendering and/or euphoric about male gendering, Bacon, you can't language this away.  Emotion precedes thought, and the subconscious can't be penetrated by reason.  The subconscious only responds to lived experience.  That is our evolutionary biology. 

Now, of course you can choose to live in misery -- that's your right, after all -- but it's just as much your right to pursue happiness. 

But tons of trans people DO rely on a narrative alone. If a girl says she's a boy, we as a society are now expected to believe it and treat her accordingly. Yet that same girl can't just say she's a doctor. She would need training and a degree.

So, a story.

I was at this party at a bar last summer, very progressive environment, and there were three cross-dressers there amidst a hundred people or so.  Well, two cross-dressers, and a transsexual, as it turned out.  The trans woman heavily relied on narrative -- other than the bright red hair, everything about her embodiment screamed male.  She's telling everyone in earshot how she's been on HRT for 6 years, yadda yadda yadda... and everyone is indulging her, because she also happened to be very, very nice (which includes the historical context of that particular word).

I certainly indulged her.  Because I know what gender dysphoria feels like.  And I'm not going to refuse someone the gendering she asks for out of a sense of what is "right" or not, because I don't want to be cruel.  For kindness has much greater moral weight than any kind of "map" I have about the territory of the world and how I think it should be organized.  Trying to impose that map at the expense of someone's lived experience would be immoral, brutal, dominating.  Remember that point for later.

This is the "why" of how narrative should be handled socially.  After all, this woman wasn't asking to perform surgery on anyone or anything.  (And now the metaphor of "doctors and lawyers" subsequently breaks down.) 

Of course, the Red-Haired Woman wouldn't need a narrative if her embodiment had changed sufficiently such that simply upon looking at her everyone would have seen a woman instead of a cross-dresser.  Doing what you need to do to get what you need is much more preferable to relying on the kindness of strangers, in my opinion.  Because I have no doubt that outside the context of this very progressive party at this very progressive bar, Red endures all kinds of ostracization and abuse from the rest of the world.  But that certainly doesn't mean the rest of the world is right.  Far from it.

I would actually be more comfortable with transitioning if there were certain things I (and every other trans guy) HAD to do in order to be considered male. Ideally, IMO, to be considered male, one would have to be on T, have chest surgery, and bottom surgery. Then they could truly tick off all the appropriate checkboxes for what it means to be biologically male. But as it is, I can just say I am one, and everyone is expected to believe it, and that makes me uncomfortable.

Then check off the boxes that make sense to you, and don't worry about what anyone else is doing.  Get on T and have your surgeries, top and bottom.  It's body modification, a bit more extensive than getting a tattoo, or a piercing, but it's not fundamentally any different.  (Well, except you generally need to provide a particular sort of narrative to a particular sort of medical professional that you generally don't need to provide to a piercer or tattoist.  What were we saying about rights?)

Here, I'll tell you what you'll really need to do to be considered male, and I'm talking about in every facet of your life.  First change your body -- get on enough T to lower your voice and grow facial hair.  Get your chest reconstructed.  Get phalloplasty (and all that other stuff removed, while you're at it).  Second, change all your documentation (such rude government intervention, but it is what it is.)  Third, move to a new city (minimum 300 miles away) and get a new job, a new social life, and when people gender you male don't disabuse them of the notion by saying otherwise.

That's it.  That's all it takes.  You don't have to tell anyone (other than a few doctors, and then they'll be gone from your life soon enough) anything to get male gendering. 

After getting to that point, don't be surprised if, should you ever try to disabuse someone of the notion that you really are male, they don't believe you.  They will think you're deluded.

So what's really holding you back?

I want a male body, a male voice, to be seen as male, etc. But I don't feel like I've earned the right to get those things, to say I'm male, or to have others see me as male. I'm scared that, when people really do start seeing me as male, I'll feel like a fraud.

You're scared. 

That's what's real.

And all your life, you've been implicitly told you're a fraud.  It's so familiar, you've come to expect it, even when you imagine a different future for yourself.  Remember how imposing some "map" at the expense of someone's lived experience would be immoral, brutal, and dominating?  Well, Bacon, they were in the wrong.  And worse, they've got you doing it to yourself.  It's become internalized.  No one needs to imprison you anymore, because now you imprison yourself. 

You've been doing it with logic, with language games, to repress the negative emotions.  This is natural and makes sense.  After all, we do what we need to do to get by.  But those emotions never go away.  In fact, they grow.  And they are still there, and now they're so very real you're on an internet forum devoted to transition talking to some complete strangers who are all going through (or who have already gone through) what you're going through, basically asking for permission to do what you want, and you're parroting back all the objections you ever heard back when you were a little boy and no one believed you.

Here's how you earn the right to get what you need.  Accept that your feelings of dysphoria/euphoria are real.  Enroll in the College of Transition -- which begins with gender therapy.  They'll make sure you're not deluded -- after all, they're professionals, they have their degrees, right?  Change your presentation, change your body, change your name.  This will take a good couple of years, and then Voila! you've graduated.  Then move, get out in the world, and practice your profession impeccably.

There never was a gate. It was always only ever you.

That'll be $50.

[Bacon]

Here's your physical prove https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan/amp/?client=ms-android-samsung. It's not as easy to see as sex to determine gender but you can still obviously see it with the right tools. It doesn't make logical sense for me to be delusional or other trans people bcos are ours brains are constructed to be a certain gender regardless of what sex parts we happen to have or not have. As far as I know masculine women wouldn't have brains similar to trans men otherwise they'd have GD. My theory is they were given more T in the womb to make them gay or masculine or both but not enough to change the brain structure to male.

Thanks, Elis. I've seen that before and it does help convince me a bit.

Well, Bacon, for what it's worth, you certainly argue like a man.

I dunno if you mean this as an insult, but I'll say thank you anyway, haha.

Try reading Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio, who is a professor of Neuroscience, Psychology and Philosophy at USC.  I think you're creating a false dichotomy between intellect and emotion. 

The other thing I'm noticing is that you place an awful lot of emphasis on one's conditions at birth, that this "is what you really are."  So let's take a look at the key parts of this, namely the notion of what "is" -- which is to say, what we actually mean by "being."  It's kind of an anomaly of Western thinking that a sentence like "What is the Essence of Being?" can actually make sense, as there are all kinds of unexamined assumptions laden into it, namely that there's such a thing as an "essence" (fiction, in my mind) and that we can actually make sense of "being" or even agree on an understanding of it.

Okay, no offense, but the philosophical stuff just does not cut it for me. Most philosophy seems to be the result of humans evolving an excessive ability to ruminate and to create meaning where none actually exist. I think that my belief about humanity is also at odds with all this gender stuff because I truly believe that humans are just like any other animal, except we evolved perhaps TOO much and became too "intelligent", in the sense that we have developed language and "reasoning" skills far beyond any practical evolutionary purpose (perhaps at our expense rather than benefit) and have convinced ourselves that many things are justifiable when they are instead products of overthinking and over-analysis.

That's why all the esoteric explanations--"gender is something you just KNOW", "gender is fluid and on a spectrum"--etc don't do anything to convince me of trans validity.

I wish I didn't believe that there has to be a scientific, provable, physical reason for something for it to be true and valid, but alas, that's how I view things.

You're already delusional.  You seem to think the model of reality created by your brain is reality. Of course, the map is not the territory.  This is a function of the limitation of our brains; no map of existence can possibly capture existence itself; it would take a complete duplicate of the territory to fully map it, and then we still don't have an account for the duplication itself, and suddenly it's turtles all the way down.  We can't help but be deluded, to some extent. 

I agree that almost everyone is delusional to a certain extent, but this seems to take it to a whole other level. But when you say that I'm delusional because I think the model of reality created by my brain is reality...? No, none of us see things perfectly, and our memories are flawed. But there are still things we can understand to be true for most intents and purposes. Such as, right now, I'm at the library and I'm typing this to you. Should I doubt that this experience is real even though it's physically manifested right before my very eyes?

I'm sure you could give me some arcane reason for doubting it, but like I said before, I'm not really interested in philosophical mind>-bleeped-<ery.

Oh, and "rights" are fictions, you know that, right?  A "right" doesn't have mass or energy.  They are social conventions, nothing more, nothing inherent to them.

Something we agree on! I don't think fundamental "rights" exist in nature, and they are absolutely social constructs. Having said that, since we DO live in modern human society, rights are something that we can pursue just like social justice and fulfilling careers and romantic love and a host of other things that we've created as humans that now make up an enormous part of our everyday existence.

I mean, it's sometimes tempting to reject all social constructs and live like the animals we truly are, but for all its flaws, I think modern human society -may- be more enjoyable. Spending my entire life gathering food and having sex...that'd get boring pretty quickly. Even though I fully acknowledge that it's our only actual purpose on this Earth, and everything else is just fabricated in order to make our lives seem more interesting and fulfilling, and to pass the time.

We get the term "passing" from people of color, actually, who through mixed ancestry or certain skin-lightening techniques could "pass" as white.

But even if they pass as white, they're not actually white biologically speaking. Hence, even if a trans man passes as a man, he's not actually a man biologically speaking either.

And yet one is okay (transitioning) and the other is looked down upon. Why? What if a black purpose really WANTED to be white? What if he LOVED when people mistook him for being white and he could become white by dying his skin? Should he be able to? (Most people would say no.) But if so, does that mean he was actually white to begin with? (Again, almost everyone would say no.)

Why is gender different?

Actually, everyone did treat her as black.  She was black.  The reason people don't want to treat her as black anymore is because of her narrative.

People don't want to treat her as black anymore because they found out she wasn't born black and has no biological basis of blackness. So again, why is gender different?

If someone wants to "become" black because that's what they damn well want to do, then how is that different than a woman wanting to "become" a man?

Where does the sense of contradiction actually come from?  It comes from the contradiction between perceived physical characteristics (from either a physical mirror or the mirror of social interaction) and the actual feelings generated thereon. "I feel dysphoric (angry/sad/scared/disgusted) when I'm gendered one way, and euphoric (bliss) when I'm gendered the other way." 

And that's all the "right" you need to change your gendering.

I understand people transitioning to make themselves happy. That's why I began my transition as well. That still doesn't prove to me that saying they ARE whatever gender they want to be is actually a true and valid statement though, and that's the part I am obviously having difficulty with.

It'd make me happier to be taller. I can wear heeled boots to become so temporarily. Everyone around me might see me 5'5 if I do that. But that doesn't mean I'm actually 5'5. I'm still actually 5'2.

It's the same with gendering.  If you really want male gendering, Bacon, you'll have to give people what they expect in order to receive it.  That starts with your embodiment, which you can change.  It continues with how you socially interact, which you yourself probably don't need to change at all, because dude you're coming off like a total bro right now.

Probably meant as an insult again, but I actually find it flattering and it makes me happy to read.

Emotion precedes thought, and the subconscious can't be penetrated by reason.  The subconscious only responds to lived experience.  That is our evolutionary biology. 

I want to buy into this. I do. I want to be able to be one of those people that values emotions as much as if not more than logic. I don't know how or if I'll be able to become that way without completely changing who I am and how I view the world though.

If I did manage to do it, I think I'd be happier. No, I KNOW I'd be happier. Because there have been brief times where I genuinely thought and felt this way. I was okay with all the uncertainties of life, all the gray areas, all the icky and layered feelings of human experience. But it never lasts long before my Thinking Type personality comes kicking at my door.

I want to become a more emotional person and to value emotions more, but if I managed it, I'd also have turned my back on a core aspect of myself and I'd probably feel like what I was doing wasn't "right" or wasn't "me". So I'm conflicted.

Here, I'll tell you what you'll really need to do to be considered male, and I'm talking about in every facet of your life.  First change your body -- get on enough T to lower your voice and grow facial hair.  Get your chest reconstructed.  Get phalloplasty (and all that other stuff removed, while you're at it).  Second, change all your documentation (such rude government intervention, but it is what it is.)  Third, move to a new city (minimum 300 miles away) and get a new job, a new social life, and when people gender you male don't disabuse them of the notion by saying otherwise.

That's it.  That's all it takes.  You don't have to tell anyone (other than a few doctors, and then they'll be gone from your life soon enough) anything to get male gendering. 

But I'll always know. That's the problem. And unless I feel like I am actually male and that this is the right thing to do, I will never be happy, no matter how many people see me male. I have to see me that way first. I need to feel like transitioning is actually a legitimate choice and something that I can be happy doing, not something that makes me feel disgusted with myself for pursuing and something that makes me feel like any result (no matter how great looking) will be futile.

And they are still there, and now they're so very real you're on an internet forum devoted to transition talking to some complete strangers who are all going through (or who have already gone through) what you're going through, basically asking for permission to do what you want, and you're parroting back all the objections you ever heard back when you were a little boy and no one believed you.

I think there's a difference between believing what other people have told me and believing my own "moral compass" or sense of logic or whatever you want to call it, though. For example, a lot of people have always told me that I shouldn't be a teacher because the pay isn't good enough and it's not prestigious. I still carry with me that stigma, but I don't let it truly shape my beliefs about being a teacher, which is something that plan to pursue even though people have dissuaded me from it. If -I- really believed that being a teacher wasn't worth it, that'd be different.

What I'm saying is that, I rarely ever listen to other people's opinions about what I should or shouldn't do. I always go back to my own self and try to figure out if -I- think something is right or wrong, good or bad, etc. And lately, even though people have been supporting my transition, -I- feel that it's wrong, futile, and based in delusion.

Now, surely, what I think (and what you think and what everyone thinks) is influenced by how we grew up and what we hear as we develop and what we internalize, and so none of our opinions are 100% our own, but that doesn't change the fact that this is how I currently feel, and it's making me sick.

[Sophia Sage]

Bacon (or should I call you Francis?),

First of all, no insults intended at any point.  Your approach to this truly comes across as "male" to me, and I'm gratified you take delight in that observation.  I happen to find your approach delightfully invigorating, so thank you.    Even though some of the entailments of your line of thinking are admittedly problematic. 

Okay, no offense, but the philosophical stuff just does not cut it for me. Most philosophy seems to be the result of humans evolving an excessive ability to ruminate and to create meaning where none actually exist. I think that my belief about humanity is also at odds with all this gender stuff because I truly believe that humans are just like any other animal, except we evolved perhaps TOO much and became too "intelligent", in the sense that we have developed language and "reasoning" skills far beyond any practical evolutionary purpose (perhaps at our expense rather than benefit) and have convinced ourselves that many things are justifiable when they are instead products of overthinking and over-analysis.

I'm confused.  If there's no meaning in the world (and I completely agree) and we are the ones who are creating meaning where none exists, then how can you not challenge your own notions of "trans validity" or "trans invalidity" since both are attempts to create meaning where none exists? 

If you think language and reasoning skills are oversignified, why does the statement "I am a man" rankle you so much?  Speech isn't just about certain kinds of "truth statements" and yet you only consider it strictly as such.  Speech is also a form of signaling, of ritual; speaking is an act.  And you speak at great length against it -- surely you yourself are plagued with overthinking and over-analysis?  Or perhaps you're just rationalizing an emotional reaction?

The practice of science emerged from philosophical rumination, you know, and most scientific practice continues to have (unexamined) philosophical assumptions rooted underneath its worldview.  So I don't think you can so easily dismiss philosophical argumentation, not without a sound refutation to present. 

Again, what is a "category" and what kind of existence does it have?

I wish I didn't believe that there has to be a scientific, provable, physical reason for something for it to be true and valid, but alas, that's how I view things.

Emotions are true and valid.  They are a part of our evolutionary biology, the foundation of consciousness, and indeed necessary to the actual employment of reason itself.  Again, read Antonio Damasio, who isn't a philosopher, he's a neuroscientist, and he makes a very rigorous evidence-based scientific argument.  When the areas of the brain that process emotion are damaged, we become unable to reason as effectively, according to the scientific literature involving lots of tests and experiments. 

Our emotions that determine our intents and purposes, and if we can't identify our intents and purposes, we lose touch with why we're even employing reason in the first place.  Reason is subservient to emotion, it depends on emotion, without which there's no point to reasoning at all. 

We know emotions are generated by very real structures in the brain, that they are inextricably linked to our embodiment.  We also know that our brains contain maps of ourselves as well as other people, both visual maps and proprioceptive maps.  Well, being trans, one of your internal maps doesn't match up with the other maps of yourself that you've created, and for some awful reason that's the one that matters most.  Otherwise you wouldn't be here.

The speech act of "I am a man" refers to that internal map.  It's a true statement, insofar as you can reasonably infer the existence of an internal male-coded map of yourself based on your emotional reactions to being gendered one way or another.  Your very own actions today confirm the existence of this map. It's a part of you. It is you (ugh, the word "is" I find so problematic) at least in part. You can't escape this truth.  You're a man, no matter how much you resist, and no matter how much your body and mind betray you.

Now, if you also need to say "I am also a woman" to satisfy other maps in your brain, so be it.  But they are not mutually exclusive.  They can both be true.

I agree that almost everyone is delusional to a certain extent, but this seems to take it to a whole other level. But when you say that I'm delusional because I think the model of reality created by my brain is reality...? No, none of us see things perfectly, and our memories are flawed. But there are still things we can understand to be true for most intents and purposes. Such as, right now, I'm at the library and I'm typing this to you. Should I doubt that this experience is real even though it's physically manifested right before my very eyes?

Of course your experience of typing in a library is real.  That doesn't mean it is constant.

If they took all the books out of The Library and replaced them all with medical equipment and doctors and an operating theatre, it wouldn't be a library anymore.  There's a physical structure there and we call it a library because of how we use it.  It's our intents and purposes that determined there was ever a library built in the first place.  Its identity is socially constructed. And after the medical transition, we wouldn't call it The Library anymore.  We'd call it The Hospital.  No one would say it's not "really" a hospital just because it lacks an obstetrics department, and doesn't have any magnetic resonance imagining equipment on site.  And no one would say it's not "really" a Hospital, just because it used to be a Library.  It's how we experience it in the present that matters. 

You're changing yourself from a Library to a Hospital.  There's nothing wrong with that, as long as it suits your intents and purposes. 

Now, intents and purposes.  What's your purpose?  What's your intent?  You like being gendered male.  You dislike being gendered female.  You understand what it takes to receive male gendering, and are presumably taking steps to get it.  Concrete physical steps.  As concrete as the chair upon which you sit, a chair that could function as a table with a few physical modifications.  It's the concrete steps that will truly get you gendered male, not the narrative.

"Most intents and purposes" -- more stuff created in your brain.  If your intent is to elicit male gendering, for the purpose of your happiness, you seem to resist it quite a bit! 

The purpose of your happiness is sufficient.  It doesn't matter why it is that this makes you happy, though it undoubtedly (since we don't believe in souls or spirits) has something to do with your brain, which likely can't be directly altered short of a lobotomy.  The intent should be crystal clear -- it's not about "being" a man (such a mushy, fuzzy word, "being," not to mention its variants "am" "is" and "was"), it's about getting male gendering.  That's all you need to know.  It's completely authentic.  And, I mean, whether you intellectually resist or not, that's what you're going to do anyways, so you might as well let go and embrace it.

For you, it may take getting it from others before you're willing or capable of fully giving it to yourself.  It may take changing your body to sufficient extent before you can accept it.  "Gendering" happens automatically, subconsciously, the brain makes a snap judgment in the face of evidence, just like when you behold a chair or a tree.  Your subconscious responds to experience, not to logic or reason, not to conscious thought.  If it did, it wouldn't be the subconscious, would it.

But even if they pass as white, they're not actually white biologically speaking. Hence, even if a trans man passes as a man, he's not actually a man biologically speaking either.

And yet one is okay (transitioning) and the other is looked down upon. Why? What if a black purpose really WANTED to be white? What if he LOVED when people mistook him for being white and he could become white by dying his skin? Should he be able to? (Most people would say no.) But if so, does that mean he was actually white to begin with? (Again, almost everyone would say no.)

Why is gender different?

Most people would say it's different, but I wouldn't.  If that's what you need to be happy, you have to go for it.  And frankly, if you pass, you pretty much "are" what you pass as.  There are no essences.  It's our experiences that matter.

If because of some genetic anomaly you have different colored skin than your parents and family, you're going to have a different experience in our society and likewise if by some exogenous chemical reaction you end up with different colored skin.  The underlying biological processes don't matter, internal or external.  People will react to how you look. You will react to how you look.

The narrative can matter, though.  Obviously, narratives can change people's minds.  Not because they're more "true" but because of the weight that people give to narratives.  Which actually varies.  Some people don't care about narrative at all -- the story of who your parents were doesn't matter at all, just how you appear and behave and act.  Others are quite the opposite -- no matter what you do or say, it's the history (the past doesn't exist, by the way, only the present exists) that matters most. 

And some will profess adherence to and indeed consciously believe in a particular narrative, only to respond subconsciously to the experience before them.  My good friend, we'll call her V, she transitioned back in the 70s and one of the doctors at Big Medical where she had her therapy did not believe that someone could really change gender; he believed transition was a delusion, and wrote papers to that effect.  But one of the transitioners betrayed that conscious thought -- for she was so compelling in her physical presentation that the doctor couldn't help but gender her female, couldn't help but call her "her" despite trying to misgender everyone else in transition.  How instructive.  Despite narrative, despite thought, despite belief... deep down inside, he still saw her as a woman.

Talk about a reality check!

That's how "gender assignment" actually works.  Someone looks at you, sees your beard and hears your low voice, and boom you're a man in their head.  And so they behave differently towards you than if they saw a woman.  You can usually tell how you've been gendered, given enough experience with both.  Now, if you go and say, "Hey, I'm actually X instead of Y," you'll get different responses -- some people will stop gendering you male, while others will persist.  All you're doing is getting less of what you want. 

And, of course, this applies not just to how other people look at you, but how you look at yourself.  To overcome memory, it takes practice.  A golfer with a bad swing, for example, needs to practice with a good swing to become good at golf.  It doesn't happen overnight.  It doesn't happen simply by "thinking" of it. It takes physical work, it takes commitment, and it takes accepting that mistakes happen and will continue to happen.  Even professional golfers take bad swings -- the occasional manifestation of a bad swing doesn't mean you're not a good golfer.  Hell, you might believe you're not a good golfer, even if you're making money at it, just because you're hung up on those bad swings.

How people categorize you isn't a scientific process, it's an automatic neurological process that's socially mediated.  And of course, how you categorize yourself is also in part a neurological/social process.  How did you learn to gender yourself in the first place, if not for the feedback you got from other people?  From the feedback you got from your body?  Change your body, change your social milieu, and your consciousness will change.  Well, your subconscious will -- it can't help but take lived experience as truth.  Your conscious mind might continue to resist, but at that point it will be severely hampered by your own inner happiness.

And again, this is also a moral argument, because consciousness is the most important truth.  And consciousness is inextricable from experience, and it's all inevitably tied to subconscious processes driven by emotion.

I want to buy into this. I do. I want to be able to be one of those people that values emotions as much as if not more than logic. I don't know how or if I'll be able to become that way without completely changing who I am and how I view the world though.

If I did manage to do it, I think I'd be happier. No, I KNOW I'd be happier. Because there have been brief times where I genuinely thought and felt this way. I was okay with all the uncertainties of life, all the gray areas, all the icky and layered feelings of human experience. But it never lasts long before my Thinking Type personality comes kicking at my door.

I want to become a more emotional person and to value emotions more, but if I managed it, I'd also have turned my back on a core aspect of myself and I'd probably feel like what I was doing wasn't "right" or wasn't "me". So I'm conflicted.

Denying yourself your bliss is irrational.

Yes, you're conflicted.  And who knows, you might be conflicted for the rest of your life.  There's no magic pill for this. And it will be especially difficult for you, because I think (could be wrong) that your Thinking Type personality is part and parcel of your male identity.  Socially contructed, of course -- not all men are "Thinking Types" and many women are, natch, but that's Western society for you.

Anyways, I've been at this transition/transsexing stuff for close to two decades now.  And I tell you, yes, you do it long enough and there will be times when you turn back on some aspects of self.  It's going to happen, because they end up not being in service to your bliss.  But then you realize that who you thought you were was an illusion.  Who you think you are is also an illusion.  Or, perhaps, a fiction.  What you're really doing is reprogramming your subconscious mind (via transition, a blatant attempt to receive male gendering from yourself and others), but you can't access that subconscious directly with your conscious mind, so you have to approach it sideways.  And once your subconscious mind is satisfied, perhaps it will direct your conscious mind not to question what you're doing, but to figure out how this was right all along.

Back in the throes of transition, when I saw the wrong image in the mirrors of glass and the mirrors of other people's eyes, I struggled to accept my womanhood despite my philosophy. Of course. Because visceral experience trumps philosophy.  But when my body was corrected, and then reflected in glass and eyes, that self-doubt changed.  I had to accept the visceral lived experience of the present and the absolute bliss it conferred.  It took a few years, but it happened.

And unless I feel like I am actually male and that this is the right thing to do, I will never be happy, no matter how many people see me male. I have to see me that way first. I need to feel like transitioning is actually a legitimate choice and something that I can be happy doing, not something that makes me feel disgusted with myself for pursuing and something that makes me feel like any result (no matter how great looking) will be futile.

But you already feel happiness at being gendered male, despite your intellectual reservations. Every time I gendered you male in my previous missive, even though you thought I might have been trying to insult you (probably picking up my arrogance, ack!) you practically copped to squealing with giddiness. 

You can't "feel" like you're "actually male" or not; you can't "feel" that this is the right or wrong thing to do.  Those aren't feelings.  Those are thoughts, dressed up as feelings so as to make them unchallengeable. 

Feelings are happy, sad, scared, angry, disgusted. 

Now, you say you feel "disgusted" with yourself in your pursuit of male gendering.  That's legitimate, that's valid.  That's a competing feeling with the happiness you get from male gendering.  It doesn't say anything about "who you actually are," unfortunately.  As with your happiness, your disgust is a physiological reaction -- but disgust exists to protect your body from sickness and infection; that is the underlying evolutionary biology of disgust.  Well, changing your body is going to elicit disgust.  Especially when those changes are slow and incomplete, as so much of transition entails.  Especially because simply by paying attention to your body, your dysphoria will be triggered because your subconscious mind will still be coding so much of your body as "female" instead of "male."

One of the most difficult things that those of us on the other side of the fence have to do is change our voices.  Our voices don't rise in pitch when we take estrogen -- our larynxes don't change size, unlike when you take testosterone over time.  So we have to practice speaking differently, and to do that most effectively requires recording our voices as we train and then listening to the results.  Goodness gracious, that is just the worst.  Talk about disgusting, having to confront that wrong voice over and over again.  Electrolysis is disgusting.  Surgery is disgusting.  Injections can be disgusting (or just a pain in the ass).  But being gendered wrongly always felt worse, at least for me.

For I could never deny that my joy was at being gendered female.  That was my bliss.  My ecstasy.  Even today, it makes me smile.  And that's what you should focus on.  If you feel joy at being gendered male, then you have to go for it, or you will be miserable no matter what your Thinker says.  And if not miserable, then empty.  Which might be worse, and probably false; the appearance of emptiness when what's really happening is repression.  Now you might not be entirely happy when all is said and done, true, but most people are rarely entirely happy about anything.  Most men are not entirely happy with being men, and most women are not entirely happy with being women, if either of them ever think about it at all (women think about it more than men do, I think). 

Emotion precedes thought.  This is a scientific fact, empirically tested and verified.  You very well might have to fully transition and see what that experience is like before your conscious thought comes into alignment as well. 

Think of it as a scientific experiment.

[LiliFee]

I don't believe those identities are valid or have any basis in reality, unless it's a trans person's way of actually dealing with reality by acknowledging that he or she isn't/can't be a "man" or "woman" (i.e. if I decided to say I was nonbinary, it'd be because I'm acknowledging that I have some female features and some male since I've been taking T).

Now when I say I don't believe they're valid in no way means I treat nonbinary people badly. I respect their pronouns and treat them the same as everyone else. But it's the same as an atheist thinking Christianity is invalid and untrue, but still respecting others' right to practice it.

[...]

That's where I face so much trouble. I want a male body, a male voice, to be seen as male, etc. But I don't feel like I've earned the right to get those things, to say I'm male, or to have others see me as male. I'm scared that, when people really do start seeing me as male, I'll feel like a fraud.

By your argumentation, you seem like an 17 year old who has just discovered Nietszche

As others tried to point out to you already: Your reality is valid for you and you alone. I find your comments about non-binary and genderfuild people painful and, to be honest, outright discriminatory.

There is a difference between what people believe and who people are in reality. Others have also pointed this out to you. You seem to transpose your broken view of what it is to be transgender onto NB people, fitting them in your mold and judging them by your standards.

Well guess what: they have their own realities, which are just as valid as your own. The moment you realize that, will you accept your own place in life and will your issues with being a man vanish. It's not about them, it's about yourself, and the measure you take.

And, should you want to have another take on the whole thing: you were born a man. Or, at least your brain was. Here's the scientific evidence:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25217469

Excerpt from the full text PDF (freely downloadable on the website above):

Here, we investigated the structural connections of female-to-male and male-to-female transsexuals before hormonal treatment using graph theory.

[...]

Specifically, the biological effect or lack of testosterone during 6–12 weeks of pregnancy leads to the formation of male or female sexual organs, respectively. In contrast, sexual differentiation of the brain occurs in the second half of pregnancy by organizing effects of sexual hormones. Hence, these developmental processes are independent and chronologically separated, so that masculinization of the genitals may not necessarily reflect that of the brain.

Accordingly, various studies report closer resemblance between transgender people and control subjects with the same gender identity than to those sharing their biological sex. This includes local differences in the number of neurons and volume of subcortical nuclei, functional alterations of regional cerebral blood blow and neuronal activation as well as structural differences of gray and white matter microstructure. Although transsexual people exhibit similar hormonal levels in adulthood as control subjects of the same biological sex, these studies indicate a transition of specific characteristics of their brains to the actual gender identity (i.e., feminization or masculinization).

[...]

The notion that gender identity is an innate characteristic, which emerges from a particular brain structure, is further substantiated by the current study, where most structural network metrics represented unique differences as compared with healthy controls. Taken together, these observations suggest that most local physiological aspects indeed undergo a biological transition to the gender identity.

So, if nothing else will convince you: the lens through which you view the universe is male. Your reality therefore is influenced in such a way, that you PERCEIVE it in a masculine way. That means the only question left to ask is this:

When do I deserve the predicate 'man'?

When do I allow myself the pleasure of calling myself who I really am? On the basis of what criteria do I judge? You seem to want to judge on biological criteria, such as being endowed with male reproductive organs. If that were true, you would neglect the seat of your consciousness, your brain.

Where do you draw the line?

[WolfNightV4X1]

Woah Woah, this thread got chaotic fast.

Reading the beginning pretense it seems that OP is saying all transmen are delusional, and you know thats a very hard feeling to swallow...however, our perceptions of gender even though they are limited to the visual physical aspects go deeper than that.

Someone is the sex they are based on genitals, hormonal balance, and neurological mapping. Its natural for people to have a wide range of these things. Many times some people fall into the range of masculine female or feminine male based on body types, this doesnt automatically mean they could be trans, others are trans because they are hardwired with some traits that are definably male but not others.

All humans, regardless of who they are, have traits of both males and females. At and before birth we each had the chance of developing one way or another, even with an X or Y chromosome (normally these X's or Y's come with the designated traits, but oftentimes are offset by hormones). This means each and every one of us has or had the potential to, chromosomally speaking, being the exact same person down to each and every fiber of our DNA excluding the X or the Y, which, had it been switched we would be the exact same person regardless of gender. Despite these X or Y's however men or woman develop a spectrum of traits that dont often match whats given.


If you define gender right down to what genitals someone once had, some of us even still exist in an in between state (intersex). As I've posted before, genitals are homologous http://www.ohjoysextoy.com/genitals/ That means despite our differences our parts are still very much the same structure.


This isnt a matter of "Can a dog become a cat?" its a matter of can a human possess the same traits of another kind of human, and the answer based on studied scientific factors is a heavily resounding yes.


Transmen or women may not be "true" by genital or chromosome standards, but they exist as a separation from both, something of a third gender (as Ive said before) that chooses to present as male or female, and if they look and act the part and nobody else knows the wiser, then what was under their clothes never really mattered to begin with besides the fact that they are a person.

[LiliFee]

Transmen or women may not be "true" by genital or chromosome standards, but they exist as a separation from both, something of a third gender (as Ive said before) that chooses to present as male or female, and if they look and act the part and nobody else knows the wiser, then what was under their clothes never really mattered to begin with besides the fact that they are a person.

That's also in the research I've posted above. As a general rule, men have less inter-hemispheric connections and women have more.

When you look at the image below however, you see that transgender people follow their brain patterns: transmen tend to have less connections, as do cis men. And: transwomen have more connections, as do cis women.

But the transgenders groups also differed to the male and female controls in many ways, providing unique brain patterns no control had.



Cool or what?? 

[WolfNightV4X1]

Very much so :] Thanks for that bit of research lill, I might need to save those for future reference

[WolfNightV4X1]

By your argumentation, you seem like an 17 year old who has just discovered Nietszche

As others tried to point out to you already: Your reality is valid for you and you alone. I find your comments about non-binary and genderfuild people painful and, to be honest, outright discriminatory.

There is a difference between what people believe and who people are in reality. Others have also pointed this out to you. You seem to transpose your broken view of what it is to be transgender onto NB people, fitting them in your mold and judging them by your standards.

Well guess what: they have their own realities, which are just as valid as your own. The moment you realize that, will you accept your own place in life and will your issues with being a man vanish. It's not about them, it's about yourself, and the measure you take.

And, should you want to have another take on the whole thing: you were born a man. Or, at least your brain was. Here's the scientific evidence:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25217469

Excerpt from the full text PDF (freely downloadable on the website above):

So, if nothing else will convince you: the lens through which you view the universe is male. Your reality therefore is influenced in such a way, that you PERCEIVE it in a masculine way. That means the only question left to ask is this:

When do I deserve the predicate 'man'?

When do I allow myself the pleasure of calling myself who I really am? On the basis of what criteria do I judge? You seem to want to judge on biological criteria, such as being endowed with male reproductive organs. If that were true, you would neglect the seat of your consciousness, your brain.

Where do you draw the line?

Sorry to necro an old topic, but to lilifree (if you are still around to hear it) that research article is incredibly useful and I'm using it in an essay I'm still writing on transgender people. And I just wanted to thank you so, so much on your contribution to these forums.

[Moomin]

Thank you for the necro Wolf, as I found this thread a really interesting read! If way beyond my intellect at parts lol. Good luck with your essay X

[SailorMars1994]

So I've been on T for almost 5 months now, the first couple months were great and I was happy and comfortable with myself and excited for my transition, but lately I've been slipping back into the depression and over-analytical nature that I had before starting it.

I've been feeling once again like I'll never be satisfied with my transition. I feel like I'll never view myself as a real man and that I'll always be inadequate. That there's nothing I can do to escape the fact that I was born female and that this fact will always be in the back of my mind and will not allow me to truly feel or live my life as a man. I sometimes can imagine myself looking totally masculine and letting my male self shine, but I fear that my female self will "check" that self and make sure she limits his happiness.

I feel disgusted by transmen in general, including myself. When I look at pictures of top surgery results, for example, I think they almost always look bad. I'll sometimes watch videos of trans guys that have been on T for 5 years and they look good to most people, but I'll notice how they still have feminine hips or other things that "give them away", and I'll be critical of them. I feel like they, and I, don't have the right to say we're men.

I keep thinking that no matter what, instead of feeling like a real man, I'll feel like a woman that took hormones, got my boobs cut off, etc. Less than a woman and less than a man, and therefore stuck in a horrible "in between" existence.

I don't want to feel this way. It's making me feel so depressed all over again. It's even making me go back to the thoughts of "maybe I should try to live as a woman and be happy in the body I was given". My female body is extremely nice (for a female) and I'm scared that I'll ruin it for no reason, that no matter what I do, I'll never be happy with my results and that I'll always view myself as lesser for being trans.

At the same time, it probably goes without saying that I tried for so many years to be happy as a woman and I couldn't do that either. When I think about truly going back to living as a female, I know I can't, but I also feel like I can't fully live as a man. I feel so stuck.

I guess this is probably internalized transphobia (and possibly internalized misogyny?) or something but I don't know how to shake it. Anyone else deal with this?

Ok, for one I am an MtF so I have little idea why I am here. However what you said Bacon has struck something with me. i in a few ways feel like you in the other direction. I am happier as a woman how ever my old ''male'' self comes in (doubts, guilts, shames, ect) and feels like ''he'' is trying to kill her. I have no disgust for other transwomen or transmen in the way you discribe to my knowlege anyway. I mean, I used to be very transphobic to avoid thinking about all this, and when I tried to make an attempt at a  de-transition I threw almost all my trans-friends away, though that was due to jealousy and my own cowardice then any hate or anger towards them directly.  I have been told I have a good deal of interlazied transphobia and it sucks because I try to be a good person, make myself a good person, but my brain plays on all the stuff and tries to find its way to old places. I suppose we are kinda in the same place. PM me sometime if you want !!

[November Fox]

I don´t think that internalized hate (or loathing, or something in that direction) equals transphobia. Transphobia means that you loathe transgender people because they are transgender. There´s a difference there.

A lot of transgender people say they have internalized transphobia and I have to wonder if that´s really true. Maybe some of them loathe being transgender and this causes them to loathe other transgender people too - I do get this from time to time. But IMHO it still does not qualify as transphobia, because it originates from your anxiety about being trans. Imagine if you were CIS - would you still feel transphobic? If no, then you probably aren´t transphobic.

I hate the "woman" that I see in my body, because I´ve been constricted by that body for too long. I thought that it was internalized misogeny, but it isn´t - because I don´t hate women. To me, it makes sense to hate something that makes you feel suffocated - but physical dysphoria tends to come in waves - some times you hate it more and other times you hate it less.