Womanhood - Expectations vs. Reality

[dyssonance]

Calliope,

I'm not so sure its a "build them up and tear them down" sort of thing, as just a good balance of differing individuals expressing sometimes contradictory viewpoints. The world would be pretty darn boring if everyone looked at everything the same way, imo.

In my own case, I had different expectations.  Not better, not worse, just different.  And I really do have those two complaints, lol.

Womanhood *is* a matter of social expectations -- try defining womanhood positively (that is, without referring to what women are not) without relying on how a woman is to others.  This is what is meant by the concept of a gender role -- its not how you see yourself, but how that plurality of others see you.

So being a woman is intrinsically tied to how others see you, and in particular, how others that interact with on a personal level see you.

That time when you cease to care?  It comes.  It's a hard journey, but always a worthwhile one.  You'll know you've reached it when another transperson calls you a man and you don't care.

For what its worth, I think your expectations are notable -- but don't be disappointed if they aren't met -- one of the ways that my expectations were different is that I had exceedingly few to start with -- I was strictly concerned with getting into my own skin instead of living outside it.

Be yourself -- and enjoy it.

[K8]

My original goal was to write down my expectations for how womanhood would feel internally, but it's difficult for me to separate the social aspects from my own internal feelings.  I base much of myself on my own assumptions of the expectations of others, so that's what I naturally gravitated toward while I was writing.  Transitioning for me is about the accurate expression of my soul and feeling at home in this body, rather than correcting a birth defect as other people have described it.

Calliope,
Some (many?) of us seem to concentrate on the external – HRT, surgery, voice, clothes, mannerisms, etc. – but for me it has become a way to find myself.  While the externals are important, and I couldn't have gotten to this point without them, they have become just the means to search for that creature I am and always have been and may become. 

It seems that hardly a day goes by that I am not delighted by being Kate.  That has nothing to do with wearing a bra or getting my nails done; it is because of how people react to me and how I am learning to fit into the world.  As Dyssonance said, part of who and what you are is defined by your daily interactions with others.

I've been going through some old things I've been hauling around for years.  I'm finding that those old objects that represent different aspects of me at different times in my life are starting to make sense.  I'm tossing some things out and keeping others, but perhaps for the first time in my life I can see who I am.  I don't think I'd ever have gotten here without attempting transition.

Good luck, sweetie.  The sun will rise tomorrow to a better day.  And it won't look anything like you think it will today. 

- Kate

[Hannah]

While the externals are important, and I couldn't have gotten to this point without them, they have become just the means to search for that creature I am and always have been

Thanks Kate, I've been trying to find the words for that sentiment. I'm sure we can agree that the focus on the physical is self perpetuating, the more you actually 'feel' like her, the more you want to look like her. It's hard to explain and I think difficult to really be prepared for. It's less of an idea of cosmetics and more of an idea of identity, and it seems really challenging to keep in perspective.

[lpfix2009]

I have been around other transpeople before and they couldn't tell I was born differently before in real life. My body language and all flows as it should.

[Miranda_N]

Caliope! Thanks for bringing this topic up. I've heard it said that it is the question that matters more than the answer.
But, first, hi! I'm not a 'regular' here but I like to stop by now and then. What compelled me to reply is #4. I'm beginning to get the impression that the gg lesbian community is a little more stand-offish than I expected. Perhaps more than a little. That, I find, is a bite of reality that isn't too easily swallowed. But, on the upside, I don't feel out of place in that 'field of endeavor'. I came across an interesting and somewhat relevant article titled
"Seven Great Myths Among Us (MTFs)"
http://articles.urnotalone.com/3991
one of which is "Myth #7: After surgery I can get involved with regular straight men.".
where she said (and I bring this up because I think it also applies to gg lesbians): "...once you tell them you've had a sex change, it's like telling them you still have a penis."
I hope I'm not stirring the pot too much here. Granted, MTF's are perceived differently and unfortunately that difference is not especially interesting to what is beginning to seem like a LOT of gg lesbians.
I haven't met enough bi-women to know if this (perceived) difference is appealing to them as a group. I'm inclined to think so but the jury's still out.
Anyway, good to hear how others are finding post-op life to be. It's only just a year for me.
All my best...
Miranda

[Sippin my tea]

I am pre but I already know a lot about what you expect and the truth; A lot but not all of T-Girls expect to get sexy womanly curves and to be blazin'--But the thing is, their diet and exercise is still that as of an man.

Once you "become" a "woman", you have to change your diet and exercise, because if you eat like most typical men do and watch TV all day like typical not all men, then you will be heavier quicker!

So a lot of T-Girls end up gaining a lot of weight...

In some ways I've made my diet worse in order to gain weight! I really want those hips. Granted, I still keep an eye on potassium intake and such...but I'm kind of a pig sometimes >_>;

[sarals]

Hi, Calliope...I'm a late comer, AND new here...but can I chime in?  I promise it won't be ALL negative.

Okay...here goes...

Calmer, less aggressive, less anxiety interacting with people

OMG, this one is loaded.  Yes and no, but in me I've become more thoughtful in interactions.  Less aggressive, too..yes.

Women will accept me as one of them - more girl talk, more fluid conversations(because I don't need to be concerned about revealing too much of my feminine personality)

That's an unrealistic expectation.  You have to BEHAVE like a woman before you're taken into the fold by ciswomen.  You have to be socialized, and sweetie, that doesn't happen over night.

People will not be weirded out by my fem mannerisms, speech patterns, or body language

If you're "over the top" with the actions, they will be....

Lesbians will consider me as a suitable partner(at least, alot more than do now!:P)

NOT so!!

Emotions will intensify - cry more, happy more, feel more

You'll have more depth to your emotions.  What emotions you have now that are dominant will remain so, but will get bigger.  That's a big deal, you have to learn to control that.

More concerned with my appearance

If you're like me and hated your appearance as a male, but really care about how you look in your proper role - yes, you will be. 

Straight men will be more attracted to me, men in general will expect less from me - more impressed when I exceed their expectations

What?  Men are men.  If you want to be an object, they'll oblige you.

Feel more vulnerable(physically and emotionally)

It depends on the time of the month...seriously.

Look in the mirror and be happy that I have this body and that I'm me

Maybe!

Feel sexier, more attractive

Again, maybe!

More difficult to orgasm, but more intense(waves, tinglies, multiple)

Thee is no sure fire answer to that one....trust me.

Become more communal oriented

Where did you arrive at that notion?

Feel a closer bond to my lovers(women)

See "more depth to your emotions"...

Expected to wear makeup, jewelry, accessories

Absolutely not so!!!

Expected not to work on my car or house, or eat a big plate of ribs, etc - to be "girly"

Not so, either.  You're a person, you'll do what you do and like what you like.  You can't switch that off.  It doesn't attract "negative" attention, either.

Be scroned by men as a "dyke", talked about behind my back by women

Why do you think that?

Smoother skin, less body hair, less shaving

Absolutely, yes...but FACE shaving will be the same.

Closer affiliation with my body, more self-confidence

Why would that change?  It didn't for me.

More jiggly - more hips, more chest, less tummy/shoulders

Oh, my!  Yes and no.  Structure is what is, bone, and that won't change.  Some people get hip widening (especially if you're young), but no one looses bone, as in chest width and shoulders.  You WILL loose muscle mass, a lot of it (I have about 50%, perhaps less, of the upper body strength I had as him).

I hope my experience(s) have been helpful!

Hugs~~~~Sara Lynn

[K8]

  You'll have more depth to your emotions.  What emotions you have now that are dominant will remain so, but will get bigger.  That's a big deal, you have to learn to control that.

More depth - I like that.  I think of it of as having far greater range.  Through my life I have usually been a fairly happy person.  Now I am often bordering on ecstatic.  I also get a greater range the other way that I didn't have before, but I recover more quickly from the low spots than I used to.  I'm more volatile.  But I don't know how much of all this is from really being a woman and how much is from finally being allowed to be the woman I always was.  (If that makes sense. )

And the hell with controlling it.  I've controlled my emotions far too long.  The world will just have to accept me as the emotional person I am.

- Kate

[placeholdername]

I'm skeptical about this 'more depth to emotions' things.  I went to a therapeutic boarding school where people dealt with a lot of really traumatic and emotional things (sexual assault, molestation, drug abuse, domestic violence, sketchy abortions, it goes on), both guys and girls, and I didn't find that one gender was more emotional or more in tune with emotions than the other.  The environment of the school was very insular and set up to be a safe place to deal with the kinds of emotions that come up when dealing with those kinds of things.  I think the world in general, or at least the US since thats my personal experience, enforces a societal norm that men should be more emotionally restrained than women, but when put in an environment that doesn't have that restriction (such as the boarding school) the norm falls away.

Now I realize most of us here on the forum live in 'the world in general', but I just wanted to say that I don't think that particular item is intrinsic to 'being a woman', based on the above experience.

[K8]

Ketsy, you are probably right. 

Perhaps I am far more volatile because the wraps are off.  When I lived in the cage, I had to control myself.  Now that I am free to be me - a woman - I am free to express my emotions.

And I love it.  There is no way I am going back into that cage.  And that is why I am not willing to constrain my emotions.  I see that as part of the caged me.

So perhaps it is based on freedom rather than gender.  (And, you are right, in US society women have more permission - freedom - to express their emotions.)

- Kate

[sarals]

Kate and Ketsy, hi!

"Depth to emotions".  What that means, to me at least, is not just that I am no longer restrained emotionally.  It is that there is "more there to what is there" emotionally.  My emotions are bigger and more powerful, amplified, over what they were when I was a male.  The problem with that is that the emotions that were big in me as a guy are even bigger as a female.  Impulsiveness.  Exuberance.  Vulnerability.  I say they needed to be controlled because they became so powerful that they could be overwhelming.  I had a difficult time with them, and early on in my transition they got me into trouble more than once.  I've finally learned how to deal with them, not to dampen them, just to be aware what they can do to me and act accordingly.

I really like having the shackles off.  It's not just that being a woman allows me more leeway socially in so far as emotional displays, it's that they are easier to reach.

Of course, YMMV....

Always a caveat!

~~~~Sara Lynn

[Cadence Jean]

Hey, Sara.  I'm glad you posted your comments, even if they do give me a bit of that old sinking(read: reality setting in) feeling.  The responses to my original post really have been all over the board.  I wasn't really requesting specific feedback to my own expectations, but kind of fishing for others to post their own expectations and if they found them to be met, not met, or fulfilled beyond their wildest dreams!:)  It comes back to the original philosophical question that I posed: until you do something, can you really know if it feels the way you expect it to feel?

I wanted to clarify a couple things from my post, since you did ask some questions, and comment on some of your responses.

You're probably on to something with the socialization.  I may still find myself as an outsider due to the masculinity in my personality and my sexual orientation.  Some of the women that I work with though are definitely head strong individuals, so it makes me wonder if it's a matter of finding the right crowd to jive with.  As it stands now, I am most definitely an outsider presenting as a male to them.

I have to believe that more lesbians would be interested in me if my body were female.  Of course, not all, but my chances increase significantly the more feminized I am.

My understanding is that women tend to have a communal-oriented mentality, where as men are competition oriented.  For example, a group of women would strive together to create an environment of peace to raise their children in, whereas men would compete with one another until they arrived at a "pecking order" with the alpha male dishing out instructions on how the clan will survive.  Kind of extreme, generalized examples, but that's the best that I can come up with right now.  I've heard about this before, but the point was pressed home for me when I read "The Chalice and the Blade".  Excellent book.

I could use some more emotional depth, hopefully some emotional breadth will come for me as well.  It seems like there's few emotions that I can actually identify.  Emotions feel so muted for me, and half the time, it's like I feel nothing at all.  Numb to it.  Watching the world move by me and I'm another set piece in it.  Another cog in the machine.  It would be great to feel like I'm involved in it and have some sort of emotional response to events, beyond anxious, excited, and sad.

I believe the average male would find a dyke(like me) to be off-putting.  Myself, I've always admired them and been jealous of them.  I'm not so certain about the average woman's response to a lesbian - assuming that she isn't extreme in her presentation, would any of you girls relate differently to her?  I know I've had a few gay guy friends over the years, and I don't think I treated them any differently.  I guess I wrote that women would talk about me behind my back, because that's what many women tend to do about people they don't like.  Good friends when you're with them, stab you when your back is turned.  I say that not only because it has happened to me, but because I've seen different women act that way to other gals.

I'm hoping that after I transitioned, I would actually enjoy having my body.  I would feel connected to it more than I do now.  Care about it more.  As it is now, I see it as...material that I can use to build a female body.  Seriously.  The only way I can care about it is looking at it that way.  It's like I don't have respect for it as a male body.

My "less shoulders" comment really needs some clarification.  I had read one book by a gal who found that when her upper body muscle decreased, her shoulders dramatically decreased as well.  I suppose that's a major YMMV thing, but I'm hoping for some of that.  My shoulders are garishly broad as they are now.  It creeped me out when my mom or wife would point that out to me.  Uck.

Anyway, probably more than you ever wanted to know about my situation, but thanks for posting, Sara!  It's great to here each person's experience.  The breadth of the responses is more proof for me that our experiences truly are unique to each of us.

[Naturally Blonde]

The realty is.....HRT didn't work for me. I tried almost everything and I look physically the same as I did pre HRT. Sorry to be so downbeat but I have been very disappointed after 12 years of transition.

[sarals]

Hey, Sara.  I'm glad you posted your comments, even if they do give me a bit of that old sinking(read: reality setting in) feeling.  The responses to my original post really have been all over the board.  I wasn't really requesting specific feedback to my own expectations, but kind of fishing for others to post their own expectations and if they found them to be met, not met, or fulfilled beyond their wildest dreams!:)  It comes back to the original philosophical question that I posed: until you do something, can you really know if it feels the way you expect it to feel?

Hi, Calliope!  Thank you.  I most assuredly wasn't intending to rain on your parade.  As you postulated, how can you really know if something feels the way you expect it to until you try it.  Well...exactly.  YMMV!!  We're individuals, and you can't box up something so huge as transition in a tidy way and pronounce 'this is what will happen'.   Not in a million years.

You have good perspective.  That counts for so much.

One quibble....I really don't think you'll loose shoulders (I know NO ONE who has), BUT the loss of upper body mass does make your shoulders look smaller.  That goes a loooooong way!!

Hugs, girlfriend! ~~~~ Sara Lynn

[K8]

I've known some women with pretty broad shoulders - mostly women who swam competitively at one time.

I don't know about the insider/outsider thing.  That probably depends a lot on you.  I had been accepted by women as a kind of strange guy; now I have been admitted to the club and absolutely love it.  But then I'm not lesbian.  I'm still heterosexual, even though now I'm looking at from the other side (which I think is really weird ).

YMMV

Each of us is such an odd mix of gendered and un-gendered attributes.  I think just the experience of transitioning will change you regardless of the gender issues.  It's really hard to know what to expect. 

Expect the best.  Be ready for the worst.  Be happy with the result.

- Kate

[sweetstars]

Reality:
If you begin transition older (35+) you more than likely will always be seen as trans.
If you transition younger (under 35) you have a real chance of being seen as female, and going stealth.
I am brutally honest about this.  I would not recommend transition for anybody over 35 who wants to be seen as female.

[Naturally Blonde]

Reality:
If you begin transition older (35+) you more than likely will always be seen as trans.
If you transition younger (under 35) you have a real chance of being seen as female, and going stealth.
I am brutally honest about this.  I would not recommend transition for anybody over 35 who wants to be seen as female.

I think on the whole that's very true. But you do get odd exceptions where a 50 year old looks amazing and a 24 year old looks like a bloke. I don't think it's always such a fine line. Obviously the best age to transition is about 12 but even with my best efforts it was a difficult thing for me to implement in 1972. 

[Hannah]

Reality. I would not recommend transition for anybody over 35 who wants to be seen as female.

And that's why I keep coming here, to be told it's pointless, consistently reminded that I am less, and not to bother hoping for a better life.

I started hrt a while ago at 33 and it's becoming clear there will be no blending in for me. When you people get in these long drawn out arguments about this, in your effort to be "right" do you consider where your correctness leaves those of us who have to choose between transition and death? I don't mean to be melodramatic, but come on, who is it hurting if we have to fool ourselves a tiny bit to get through the day? Is it really that important to be right? Do you really think we can't see the lines on our face, our shoulders, our bone structure? I don't need brutal honesty, I'm no moron. I need whatever lie gets me through the day to keep from opening my wrists. Maybe this just isn't the place for that anymore.

[Miniar]

Reality:
If you begin transition older (35+) you more than likely will always be seen as trans.
If you transition younger (under 35) you have a real chance of being seen as female, and going stealth.
I am brutally honest about this.  I would not recommend transition for anybody over 35 who wants to be seen as female.

That isn't "reality", that's your own opinion.
That's not "brutal honesty", that's your own opinion.

And honey, to be brutally honest, you obviously don't know what you're talking about and should avoid making such misinformed, sweeping generalizations.

I've seen gorgeous women that pass 100% who transitioned in their forties and fifties. And I've seen unfortunate women, who have a hard time passing, who transitioned earlier in their lives.
It's not so cut and dry as pre-35-transitioners pass, others don't.

Oh and just so you know, they're all seen as female by everyone they care about, even the ones that don't pass all that well amongst strangers. So no, you don't even have to pass to be seen as a woman.

[sarals]

Reality:
If you begin transition older (35+) you more than likely will always be seen as trans.
If you transition younger (under 35) you have a real chance of being seen as female, and going stealth.
I am brutally honest about this.  I would not recommend transition for anybody over 35 who wants to be seen as female.

Really?  That may be true for some.  I'm 57.  I started HRT 20 months ago.  I do panel speaking with an LGBT speakers group, and I have to convince people that I am trans.  I've had no surgeries, just HRT.  Yes, YMMV of course, but for me, I look like the gender I (should have been born to) am.  I should give my stats to go with my avatar, I guess.  I'm 5'4", 128 pounds.  Size 4.  Some of us "older trans people" DO have a chance of passing.  I'm one of them, and I know there are others.