Hullo Folks,
(Sorry that this is somewhat long...)
I'm a 21-year-old FTM. I came to understand my identity relatively recently - it wasn't until I was about 18 that I began to examine the "otherness" (for lack of a better term) that I felt my whole life. I met an FTM person, and the concept of gender-body incongruity hit me like a ton of bricks. For about a year I struggled against coming to the conclusion that I was FTM. I was also somewhat harshly discouraged by my FTM friend once I decided to start presenting as male. He told me that he would never see me as anything other than female, and told me not to bind when I was around him, because it made him feel like a joke (he was more successful than I am at passing in public). For these and several other reasons, including having lived in a rather conservative town, it has taken me quite a while to get to the point where I can embrace the fact that I am transgender. For quite some time I felt like I needed to either hide or refrain from asserting myself until I could publicly pass as male. I've been afraid of the in-between state.
I decided to join this forum because, in the past three months that I have been living away from my parents for the first time (I transfered to a residential college campus) I have taken many steps which seem huge to me, but may really be only baby-steps, and there are some things I would really like advice about.
Sorry if that was too much info for an introduction...
Thanks for reading, and I hope all is well with everyone.
Cheers!
-andrew marten
