How do you know what it's really like to be a man/woman to know that you are one

[metal angel]

To avoid a mess of "man/woman" and "he/she" kinda slash-fest, i'll address this to the F2Ms (cos i guess that's a bit more relevant to me), but i'm very interested to know what the M2Fs think as well.

This is a bit like that old kinda philosophical idea that goes something like: "How do i know that you perceive the colour green the way i perceive green? How do i know you don't perceive the colour green the way i perceive the colour red?" except it's more complicated, and with actual consequences.

If you weren't born a fully-formed natural male, how do you know what the internal experience of being male is like to know that you "are" one? How can you tell that how you feel inside is the feeling of being male? What do you have to measure it against? How can you really know what being male feels like?

[Chamillion]

I don't, really.  I just know that all my life I've only been comfortable presenting as either male or at least androgynous, and that I've always hated any feminine part of my body, and was envious of all my guy friends for going through the puberty that I wanted to go through.  I didn't know 100% to be honest, but I was pretty sure that transitioning was the right thing for me.  After being on T about 15 weeks, I feel better than I have in a long time, more confident, and more comfortable with my body.  That shows me that transition really was the right thing.  But yeah, I don't think there's any real way to know for sure, just an educated guess you could say

[Jeatyn]

This is a hard question to answer. I just....know

When I am passing perfectly well, and I'm being treated like one of the lads, it just feels right. When the opposite happens and I get treated like one of the girls, it feels horribly uncomfortable.

Being called she sounds funny to me, he sounds normal, as I imagine it would to any bio-male

[Eva Marie]

I'm a bio-male and i'd have a hard time telling you what being a man is supposed to be like. All I can share with you is what MY experience of growing up as a guy and living as a guy has been, and what society tells us we should be and do as men. I'm pretty sure that most people I know would consider me a man (as I sit here crossdressed at the moment  ).

Being female? I have some ideas but of course i've never lived that life so I really can't say.

I do believe that those here who say that they have a male/female component to them actually do.

[metal angel]

how about some of the M2Fs i'm kind of curious to know the other perspective as well?

[Shana]

Since you asked.. 
In my own experience it was comparing my feelings and attitudes with those "real" women around me.. and finding our that yes, I was right on par with the average girl/woman of my age.. contrary wise.. in trying to compare my feelings etc.. to the men around me, I found I didn't understand them at all. I could mimic them.. but I never could understand them.

As for physicality.. the best explanation I have come up with was that I had a mental map of what my body should be like and where things were supposed to be pretty much since birth.. what was actually there didn't jibe with the blueprint.  I have found that after HRT and especially after surgery.. things are boringly but finally in their proper place.    Also, and not to gross people out.. Growing up I used to have terrible nose bleeds. It was my mother who figured out that they were coming at fairly regular intervals.. 28 give or take? go figure..

And MetalAngel.. I am one who believes that my blue is just as easily your brown.. we just have learned to call it by the same name.. orange.. 

[Janet_Girl]

My girl and I were talking this one over, and I told her that one can not know how another feels,  So one can only base their feeling on what they have observed thru their life.  And sometimes "I just knew at a young age", just is the only answer.

Even bios could not answer that clearly.

Janet

[Dora]

I set up a blog to answer questions I have heard from family and friends about my transition. I was recently asked this question so here was my response:

    >Are you really a woman? How do you know? (Friend)

Are you a man? Are you a woman? How do you know? At what point in life did you decide you were a man, or a woman? My guess is you have never questioned your gender. It is not an issue. You can't explain it and you would consider it strange to even think about it. You instinctively know who you are. Thinking through and understanding this fundamental concept you will begin to understand why it is necessary for me to now transition from male to female.

Am I a woman?

Yes.

How do I know I am a woman?

I don't know.

[metal angel]

My guess is you have never questioned your gender. It is not an issue. You can't explain it and you would consider it strange to even think about it. You instinctively know who you are.

Actually i am kind of questioning at the moment... hence wanderring here. But i don't think i can possibly know what it feels like to be a man, and therefore i can know if the inner mindset i have is the feeling of being a man. Equally i can't tell what it's like for other women to "be" a woman.

So i was wonderring what that sense of "knowing" that a lot of you talk about could be. You have a feeling of unease, but how do you know that is the feeling of being in the wrong body? How do you know what body you would feel more at ease in if you have only ever been in your own?

Someone in their blog listed some of the things that let her "know", but quite a few of them seem to be side effects of living as a woman, and being treated as a woman. I couldn't see how they could be some part of the internal experience of being a woman... whatever that is...

[FairyGirl]

Even bios could not answer that clearly.

That is very true. How do I know I'm a woman? I just know. In general I like girl things. I live as a female and I think like other females think. After 6 months hrt I am hormonally identical according to my doctor. I don't over think it.

Nothing is truly separate from anything else, and questions like this are based on the faulty root assumption that we are all little islands unconnected from the rest of the world, or that colors are unconnected from the only frequencies our eyes are tuned to perceive, etc. etc. Everything Is Connected, and by this and only this can we ascertain our places in the world.

I understand that these questions are meant to imply how we can know our individual perceptions are the same in our little juicy neurons, but those kinds of questions by definition are unanswerable from a practical standpoint and therefore meaningless. It's like asking can God make a rock so heavy she can't pick it up? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... well, that's the best we can answer.

[metal angel]

Are you a man? Are you a woman? How do you know? At what point in life did you decide you were a man, or a woman?

How do i know? Actually that's not such a bad question, maybe i'll have a stab at answerring my own question. I guess if forced to admit my gender i would say i was female. I'm not sure i like it sometimes, and i'd usually rather keep it private, but it seems to be what i am. I know because my body looks like the pictures in my anatomy text book labeled "female" and because it does the things that my physiology textbook says female bodies do. Well obviously before i had anatomy and physiology text books i had other sources. I guess i was called "she" as a child and people told me i was a little girl, kids will believe anything. But the only way i have to "know" is anatomical, before my university textbooks there was "The Family Doctor" book, and other sources of information. I think that's the only way i can identify with "being a woman", so i don't know what the "being a woman" feeling you are talking about could be?
Post Merge: August 23, 2009, 03:16:26 AM

Nothing is truly separate from anything else, and questions like this are based on the faulty root assumption that we are all little islands unconnected from the rest of the world...

hrmmm... i do often feel like an island though... some people call it Asperger's syndrome... some people call it "wrong planet syndrome" as a bit of a joke.

maybe i am at a particular disadvantage on this quest...

[Cindy]

How do you know if you are alive? You could be part of someones dream. Proving reality is difficult. It's a bit like proving gods. Doesn't work. (Descartes? "I think, therefore I am.") Doesn't really do it. I think I'm female therefore I am. I think I'm male therefore I am. I think I don't know what I am. I'm not too sure I think so what am I.
I am, am I?

Sorry
Cindy

[metal angel]

Mann ist was er isst?

hrmmm... proably not relevant to this discussion on identity.

hrmmm... this is stretching my theory of mind way past it's limmits... maybe i need to sleep on this one.

[Jamie-o]

I have no idea if I feel the same as other guys.  But AI do know that when I look in a mirror and I see a girl, it just feels wrong.  I know that from a very young age I had no use for girl's toys, I didn't understand the way most girls thought or acted, and I couldn't for a moment picture myself upholding the values women are judged on. 

On the other hand, nothing has felt more right than the day I first cut my hair short, or the day I started wearing binders.  I always identified more with my dad than I did my mom, despite the fact that my mom and I have more interests in common.  I share more of his values.

I suppose it could be argued that, in my case anyway, it's not so much, "I know I am a boy," as "I know I'm not a girl."

[Miniar]

The truth is, I don't know.
I don't have any basis of comparison between how I feel and how I don't feel because I can not know what it is to feel something I don't feel. It's impossible to compare something we don't know with something we know.
I don't know what it's like to be anything but me.

What I do know is that my body and my mind aren't congruent and no amount of trying to "get over it" has done anything to help the issue. I've accepted my body as well as I can. I've learned to live with constant physical pain. But I just can't get over the feeling that certain aspects of my body are simply wrong.
I know that I can't go on living without doing something to correct that, and I believe (I can't say I know because there's no way to prove it without doing it) that correcting my body's sex to make it more congruent with how I perceive my mind to be will correct that impossibility of living.
As things are now, I feel like I'm going from surviving, hiding, and trying to just make it through to tomorrow, to having a chance at living. If I'm right, which I feel I probably am, then...

[Dora]

How do i know?

You instinctively know who you are.

Trust your instincts. Then have faith in what you decide.

In may not be the correct answer for anyone else, but for myself, it is the bottom line. Otherwise I would be stuck and unable to move forward with my transition. That said, it did take me a few decades to figure it all out.   

[metal angel]

This still doesn't quite make sense... but for some reason the F2Ms are making more sense to me than the M2Fs... Not saying the course of action taken by the M2Fs isn't right for them, i just can't relate to it at all. I have sympathy but not empathy (is that the right words)?

I don't know if it's that i can better relate to the direction of transition of the F2Ms, or if it's that i slightly resent the idea that the M2Fs know what it is to be a woman. Rightly or wrongly i can't shake the idea that starting out life as a female (in a female body, treated as a female) gives me a bit of a monopoly on understanding the concept of being a woman.

Maybe it could be a spiritual kind of disconnect in why i don't understand the logic of a lot of the M2Fs. If it is at all possible for the term not to be an oxymoron i am a devout atheist. I can't relate to faith, or "knowing" without some sort of evidence.

Generally the F2Ms seem to have a more logical and deductive approach here? (not necessarilly better, but makes more sense to me.)They know their current body isn't right, they think they would be more comfortable in a male body, and they feel more at home in male social roles. But - generally - they seem to have less of an idea of a kind of spiritually male inner self?
Post Merge: August 23, 2009, 11:32:01 PM
Maybe that means the M2Fs are right, and we do have an inner gender?

Men (including the F2Ms? and maybe me...) are known for being logical, whereas women (including the M2Fs?) are known for being more instinctive and emotional?

But i tend to think the lines between male and female minds are pretty blurry? only the bodies have a definative gender, and even for the bodies there are masculine women and feminine men, and people who are blatantly intersex.
Post Merge: August 24, 2009, 05:29:43 AM
hrmmm... i guess (sinking deeper into introspection) one of the reasons i may be unhappy with my gender is that i am comparring a real and imperfect experience of being a female to an imagined and idealised experience of being a male?

[Miniar]

I have to say, I've seen people's "instincts" lead them astray a thousand times and more.
I don't consider "instincts" a reliable source of anything really.

[Deanna_Renee]

This is an interesting question. As for me, being born bio-male and living (outwardly) that role for 47 years, I honestly couldn't tell you what it feels like to be a male. I think I have passed in that role pretty well for all these years, but looking at men and their actions, the way I perceive their thinking process (too many of them need to think out loud) and the way they act has always been foreign to me. I know that I don't act/think/behave like the typical male standard.

How do I know I'm really a woman? Well, that answer will still take some years to formulate (still need to go through transition). I know that in the same terms of defining myself as a man, I can see in myself more of the qualities of a woman (internally). I have always desired to be a woman and have always identified more closely to the thoughts, actions, and behaviors of a woman than a man.

I don't think I am really either one, yet. I hope that at the end of the transition road that I will look and feel and act and think more like the woman that has been locked behind this Andro Curtain for far too long.

Deanna

[K8]

Maybe it could be a spiritual kind of disconnect in why i don't understand the logic of a lot of the M2Fs. If it is at all possible for the term not to be an oxymoron i am a devout atheist. I can't relate to faith, or "knowing" without some sort of evidence.

I tend to be somewhere between an atheist and a pantheist, but I have faith the sun will come up tomorrow, that my friends will stay my friends, that I will get through this, that my family loves me, etc.  This is all based on past experience and continuing evidence, but it is still faith.

When I am passing perfectly well, and I'm being treated like one of the lads, it just feels right. When the opposite happens and I get treated like one of the girls, it feels horribly uncomfortable.

Being called she sounds funny to me, he sounds normal, as I imagine it would to any bio-male

Ditto, only with reversed genders.

When I was little I could see I was male but knew something was wrong – that I should be a girl.  I didn't think I was – I just knew I would be happier as a girl because I was more suited to being a girl.  How did I know?  I could see how the girls interacted with each other and the world and how the boys interacted with each other and the world.

I've never considered myself a man and never managed to be a "guy", although I tried.  I'd often been included with the women when presenting male, engaging in woman-talk, until one of them would notice me as a male.

I've never thought I was a "woman" (however you want to define that), but as I've been working my way through transition I am finding that I am, indeed, more comfortable in the world pretending to be a woman than I ever was pretending to be a man.  It just feels right somehow.  I still don't know how much I will feel I am a woman, but at four months into transition I am getting signs that I am and can be and will be a woman.  I'm certainly more woman than man, despite what my anatomy proclaims.

How do you know?  Sometimes you don't until you do.

- Kate