"I'm female! Right...?"

[Alessandro]

I kind of get where you are coming from.   I functioned fine as female up until the time I really thought deeply about gender and realised that I was not happy as a female.  I think it's all a matter of getting over the fear, the social conditioning and the internalised transphobia of what it all means to actually change gender.  I say I functioned as female but it was only functioning, it wasn't a feeling of being comfortable as I was.  I think that's the difference.  The choice to transition fully has certainly changed my mindset.  I used to get no discomfort at all from wrong pronoun use for example, but now I am exhausted with it.  It's all about letting your physical form catch up to where your mind is.  Presenting as male for some time will probably help you think this stuff out. 

[Arch]

I just didn't fit in anymore but then sometimes I have fantasies about being Canada's first transman midwife.

Maybe you can help out Jeatyn...isn't he expecting?

There we go, you can be the first trans man midwife...midhusband...middle man...and specialize in pregnant trans men. There are more and more of them in the public eye.

Seriously, though, can you stomach being a pioneer, the first male midwife in your area? If you've found your calling, it's terrible to give it up.

Oops, I think I'm hijacking again.

[Radar]

She went on about how 'men are dogs', 'men are pigs', and 'men are only out to use you'. Her views were nothing short of gynocentric and misandric.

THANK YOU! I am so tired of listening to women carry on about it. What's sad is they don't see anything wrong with that mindset but once a man says something stereotyping women they are all over him.

[elvistears]

Me and my flatmate were just chatting and I happened to bring up pantyhose and how I didn't want to wear them in high school. Then he said, now that you're a boy you won't be wearing your cool pantyhose (I had a lot of different colours) with gingham skirts.. I didn't know what to say. I didn't wear it that often.  But it always makes me feel weird, because although I like those clothes I know I don't want to wear them again.  I was just good at being an indie girl.  I like coloured tights, but I want to see them on girls, not me.

Sometimes it sucks that I dressed so well when I was trying to be a girl.  It makes people think I must have been into it. 

[kyril]

Um...I tried to be a girl, I really did. Adolescence was a terrible turning point for me after a childhood spent as a tomboy. My life was so compartmentalized from the age of about fifteen to twenty-six that I wasn't fully aware that most of my extreme unhappiness was gender-related. I didn't see any way out, so assimilation seemed like the only way to go. But I was terribly self-conscious.

I didn't have a very clear idea of how to live as a female, so I often went overboard in that direction. Sometimes dressed provocatively, but didn't really know how to do it; in college, I alternated between dressing like a guy and dressing like a tramp with no fashion sense. Was something of an exhibitionist. Tried to be bisexual. Went to straight swing parties.

Then I spent another twenty years knowing what I could do about my problem and not doing anything about it. To be fair, when I started doing serious research on transition, the available literature indicated that I wasn't eligible. But the times were definitely changing--very soon, I could see that--and I didn't have the guts to investigate my options and find out if local programs were less dogmatic than the programs I had been reading about.

Before I found out about FTMs, I was uncomfortable living as a girl. After I found out, I was uncomfortable in a different way.

All of this, every word, and I don't really think I have anything to add as far as my personal experience.

I wouldn't say that you couldn't be FTM and be capable of functioning just fine in a female role, as obviously there are other guys here with a different experience. But if you're having trouble thinking of yourself as male and you find presenting as female easier, then that could be a red flag that you might want to examine further. Remember that transition is something that should only be undergone if it's necessary in order for you to be yourself - if you feel like you're putting on some sort of difficult act that requires conscious effort and you have to constantly remind yourself of the role you're playing, you may not be going down the right path. Maybe consider reasons why you might want to feel male?

[DamienR]

All of this, every word, and I don't really think I have anything to add as far as my personal experience.

I wouldn't say that you couldn't be FTM and be capable of functioning just fine in a female role, as obviously there are other guys here with a different experience. But if you're having trouble thinking of yourself as male and you find presenting as female easier, then that could be a red flag that you might want to examine further. Remember that transition is something that should only be undergone if it's necessary in order for you to be yourself - if you feel like you're putting on some sort of difficult act that requires conscious effort and you have to constantly remind yourself of the role you're playing, you may not be going down the right path. Maybe consider reasons why you might want to feel male?

I know this is true, but do you think it's true for socially transitioning too, if you are not altering your body? I'm not on T or thinking of surgery, for lots of reasons.
I have been socially transitioning, in a really natural, fluid way.  Every day I get scared and think I am making a mistake because of discrimination, etc. And it just making my life harder. Should I go back before it's too late?

[kyril]

Alex, this doesn't sound too unexpected.  As Bones says, you have years of social conditioning to undo.  Our self image is developed, in a large part, by how other people treat us and, if you have been treated as female, it will be a push to convince yourself fully that you are not.  Combine that with a female body and that is a hell of a lot to unlearn.

And the male role is another learned construct.  Biological males aren't born knowing how to be male in their culture.  They have to learn it.  And they do this from the minute they are born.  By adulthood, they have had a lot of practice.  We, however, have to run to catch up.  And we don't have the usual socialising influences of parents and peers implicitly telling us how we should behave.  We have to learn it by artificial means, by observing and copying.

I think it is easy to belittle the amount of work that has to go into resocialising from one gender to another.  Just because we feel that we are male, under it all, we tend to believe that the male social role just ought to come naturally to us.  There is no reason why that should be the case.

I really don't think that's at all accurate. It's the common wisdom among trans people, but that doesn't make it true. We don't live in a heavily sex-segregated culture. All children are exposed to the implicit gendered socialization cues and expectations for both genders, and self-select which ones to attend to based on their own gender. I know I certainly picked up on the boys' cues far more than the girls - I have to make a conscious effort to figure out how a woman is supposed to behave when I'm presenting female, and I'm usually subtly wrong in a way that tends to put women on edge around me.
Post Merge: June 22, 2010, 06:50:27 PM

I know this is true, but do you think it's true for socially transitioning too, if you are not altering your body? I'm not on T or thinking of surgery, for lots of reasons.
I have been socially transitioning, in a really natural, fluid way.  Every day I get scared and think I am making a mistake because of discrimination, etc. And it just making my life harder. Should I go back before it's too late?

No, since social transition doesn't involve anything irrevocable, I think it's something you can do as an experiment. I do sort of assume that one wouldn't want to socially transition unless one found it easier and more natural to live in a male role. (It might make some things harder as a byproduct, but I have to assume it's making some important parts of your life easier/better aligned with your sense of self, or else I'd think you wouldn't want to do it.)

[Papillon]

I really don't think that's at all accurate. It's the common wisdom among trans people, but that doesn't make it true. We don't live in a heavily sex-segregated culture. All children are exposed to the implicit gendered socialization cues and expectations for both genders, and self-select which ones to attend to based on their own gender. I know I certainly picked up on the boys' cues far more than the girls - I have to make a conscious effort to figure out how a woman is supposed to behave when I'm presenting female, and I'm usually subtly wrong in a way that tends to put women on edge around me.

Hm.  Well, I'm going to have to disagree.  Boys and girls are treated differently from a very early age and that difference in treatment affects how we respond to the world.  For example, a study (quite old now, granted) gave people various babies to play with.  When they were told the baby was a boy (which it might not necessarrily have actually been) they engaged "him" in exciting, risky play (tossing him the air etc).  When they were told the baby was a girl, they treated her gently and engaged her in careful peek-a-boo type games.  Now, the ways in which the babies were treated will affect how they view the world and their relationship to it.  So, I have to say that the way we are treated, based on gender expectations, does affect how we develop and view ourselves.

I am not saying that there might not be some ideal community in which biological males and females are treated exactly the same, but I have yet to see one.  That certainly wasn't my experience as a child, and the pressures to conform continue, as the words and actions of transphobic people demonstrate.

[Silver]

THANK YOU! I am so tired of listening to women carry on about it. What's sad is they don't see anything wrong with that mindset but once a man says something stereotyping women they are all over him.

Oh yeah, seconded. I used to get the "men are pigs" speech all the time from my mom and it bothered me. Even more so when I realized I was trans. She hasn't done it for awhile though.