"How do you know other girls don't feel the same way?"

[Devyn]

I hate telling people that I don't feel like a girl, and that I feel like a boy, only to get "How do you know other girls don't feel like that?"

I think that's the worst response I've gotten when explaining I'm trans to people. After having so many female friends over the years, having sleepovers and talking about our emotions and whatnot, I honestly believe girls don't feel the way I do. And I don't put "other" girls because I'm not a god damn girl. I'm a boy. ):<

I noticed that when I would start talking to my female friends about how much I hate my boobs and my downstairs, they would question that and ask me why and I wouldn't be able to explain why, only that it has always been that way. Even before I questioned my gender, I was dead set on getting surgery when I turned 18 to get my boobs chopped off.

So far, most of my female friends are cool with my gender dysphoria and desire to have a sex change and be a boy, even if they don't understand it. There's this one girl that hangs out with my female friends that they don't like and she thinks it's weird that I like girls, so saying to her that I'm a man, she kind of was all, "You're weird. That doesn't make sense." I think it makes sense. I want to be a man. What's so complicated about that?

Then, another girl that hangs out with my female friends that I don't like, when I said I'm a man, she said, "No, you're not. (insert a girl's name here) is a man." And I'm all, "No, she's a girl. I'm a guy. You've got it wrong." Note that the girl she was calling a man likes being a girl and is a girl as far as I'm aware, she just has short hair and masculine facial features. That doesn't make her a man, you know? I've known girls that are completely tomboy, short hair, muscular, etc. and like being a girl.


Has anyone else gotten that response? If so, how did you react?

[Lee]

That must stink, but it does sound like they are more genuinely confused than being mean.  Good luck explaining!

[Bluetraveler]

You know, this is actually an excellent topic in my opinion.

When I IDed as trans, I based it mainly on my body dysphoria that developed around my puberty, because I was a tomboy as a child and I reached puberty at 10, so, wayyy too early for my tastes. I saw other females around me who didn't have a problem with what happened to their bodies, they seemed really happy in fact and tried to accentuate their curves with the right clothes. Trans accounts I read, on the other hand...

As I got older and realized I am, after all, female, I must say there is pressure on both "tomboys" and "girly girls" to adjust their bodies to a certain image. "Girly girl" image is the one we see on all commercials, movies, etc. , it's the typical girl/young woman image people usually picture (lean but curvy, face makeup, heavy on fashion...) AND the image many MTFs try to recapture. Tomboys are much more elusive. Since many of us have hangups with our female puberty, we'll try wearing clothes which minimize it (sportswear, baggy clothes, etc.). I personally felt I would be wayyy happier if I hadn't had a female puberty but a male one. So sometimes I binded and walked with a slouch to hide my breasts (this, in turn, caused me some spine problems, which now by walking straight again I have somehow remedied, but don't do it! is my advice). I felt I could relate to no female because no one had the problems I had, and on the other hand I read of MTFs feeling euphorical about having estrogen in their bodies, which was the thing that caused all my problems, so I thought I must have been not female. BUT IT'S NOT TRUE! If you feel discomfort with your female form it doesn't mean you are necessarily a transsexual. I still dress as I have always dressed (it's not that the revelation of being female made me dress any differently, I'm still highly unconfortable around "cute, lacey things" and 100% female typical stuff, it's just not who I am), I am who I have always been on the inside (shy but very prideful, nerdy, sensitive but it's a secret, k?), just freed of the dysphoria. So listen to who you are, and don't be influenced by both the "mainstream straight culture" as well as "trans culture". That's the advice I have to give. 

[Aegir]

IDK, I always knew I didn't feel like the "other" girls because they wanted to look like girls and be called girls and be treated like girls, and when we played imagination games they would pretend to be different girls or girl characters; and none of them ever started crying because they felt like they were only pretending to be girls to keep other people from being horrible to them. Even the girls who were friends with mostly boys weren't like me in that regard, they liked being called girls and looking like girls, they never felt insulted when someone called them women (unless it was supposed to be insulting) and it didn't make them feel like ->-bleeped-<- when people told them they were 'pretty' or looked feminine; they were just girls with guy friends.

As an adult, none of them are doing any of the ->-bleeped-<-ed-up mental gymnastics I had to do in order to identify as female and don't experience conflict from trying to identify as females, they just *are* women. Even the ones who don't want to do any of the things society classes as "woman stuff" would be unhappy if they were seen as men, instead of surprised and pleased.

[niamh]

Hope I amn't invading the thread but when I came out to one of my aunts as a woman, said that I enjoy the company of girls more and said that I wished I had been born a woman she said: 'When I was your age I like the company of boys way more but that doesn't mean I wanted to be a boy. All you need to do is have sex with a woman and you'll realise you are  a man.'

I didn't really understand at the time, and I still don't understand now what she meant. Afterall, she admits that she didn't want to be a boy, so how the hell can she understand me? Her whole example backfires on itself. Plus, headbang to the sex part. I have since had sex with my female partner and, being the domineering tomboy that she is, she turns the table and makes me feel like the woman in sex, something which I really enjoy. Looks like that piece of advice backfired too.

Yah, I have had some pretty nasty and hurtful things said to me by members of my own family when I have come out to them.

[Darner]

Sadly, straight people are strange (uuuu, that saying this makes me feel so good  ) in their reactions and there is no way that one technique of responding will work on all of them. I got the opposite response when coming out to people as lesbian. Five different people (including my dad!) asked me - not right after coming out but weeks or months after - if I'm actually a transsexual/if I'm happy in a female's body. But I'm always too freeked out to admit. 

[Lee]

Haha, Darner, I had the same conversation with my dad last week.  I just kinda changed the subject.....

Niamh, I'm sad to hear about your aunt.  You can let her know that I'm sure having sex with a woman makes a lot of us feel like men (just not the people she would expect ).  Hopefully she will understand eventually.

[Aegir]

Haha, Darner, I had the same conversation with my dad last week.  I just kinda changed the subject.....

Niamh, I'm sad to hear about your aunt.  You can let her know that I'm sure having sex with a woman makes a lot of us feel like men (just not the people she would expect ).  Hopefully she will understand eventually.

Heh yeah when I had a girlfriend I really felt like a man <3

I don't miss the rest of the relationship but I definitely miss that part LOL

[Izumi]

I hate telling people that I don't feel like a girl, and that I feel like a boy, only to get "How do you know other girls don't feel like that?"

I think that's the worst response I've gotten when explaining I'm trans to people. After having so many female friends over the years, having sleepovers and talking about our emotions and whatnot, I honestly believe girls don't feel the way I do. And I don't put "other" girls because I'm not a god damn girl. I'm a boy. ):<

I noticed that when I would start talking to my female friends about how much I hate my boobs and my downstairs, they would question that and ask me why and I wouldn't be able to explain why, only that it has always been that way. Even before I questioned my gender, I was dead set on getting surgery when I turned 18 to get my boobs chopped off.

So far, most of my female friends are cool with my gender dysphoria and desire to have a sex change and be a boy, even if they don't understand it. There's this one girl that hangs out with my female friends that they don't like and she thinks it's weird that I like girls, so saying to her that I'm a man, she kind of was all, "You're weird. That doesn't make sense." I think it makes sense. I want to be a man. What's so complicated about that?

Then, another girl that hangs out with my female friends that I don't like, when I said I'm a man, she said, "No, you're not. (insert a girl's name here) is a man." And I'm all, "No, she's a girl. I'm a guy. You've got it wrong." Note that the girl she was calling a man likes being a girl and is a girl as far as I'm aware, she just has short hair and masculine facial features. That doesn't make her a man, you know? I've known girls that are completely tomboy, short hair, muscular, etc. and like being a girl.


Has anyone else gotten that response? If so, how did you react?

It is my experience that people that dont have GID dont know or cannot know what it feels like to have it, you have to explain the feelings to them in terms they can understand.  For example if your FTM and talking to women:  Imagine you got breast cancer and lost your breasts, imagine if you got uterine cancer and lost your uterus and everything else, the kemo made your hair fall out.  Would you still feel like a woman? (the answer would mostly be yes), Right you would wouldnt you, but you would feel less of a woman and depressed at to no end about how you had to live with most of your feminine features gone.  They would probably think about it and nod in agreement, well thats about 1/4 of what i am feeling right now living in this body, and i feel that way everyday since i was little, you can stop imagining at anytime, i cant... Now imagine if someone could give you all those things back that you had lost... wouldnt you take it?  Well, so am I.

Also your right normal guys dont think they want to be girls and normal girls dont want to be guys.  I asked a few guy friends before and after my transition if they every thought of being woman, they said nope, they were being honest, its not something thats on their minds.... however, women are on their minds in other ways heh....

[Farm Boy]

How do I know "other girls" don't feel this way?  I wondered this very question myself for years.  For a long time there I just assumed that all female bodied people hated being female and wished they were male, but that it was understood that it was impossible so nobody talked about it.  Yeah.  Then I learned that "other girls" didn't want to bind their chests to flatten it, or to have the horrid lumps cut off.  They also didn't secretly wish for PCOS or uterine cancer so the doctors would remove that too.

And that's how I know.

[sneakersjay]

When I first thought about transitioning, I thought this same thing. So I asked a bunch of them, LOL.  The consensus was that while they might time to time wonder what it's like to be male, or think they might want to try to be male for a day, just to see, most were very  happy with being female, were horrified at the thought of permanently losing their boobs or uterus, and disgusted at the thought of a dangling thing and balls (gee, sounds like the ladies around here! LOL) between their legs.

So no, actual women don't think the same things.  I actually thought I was a boy until I realized that I was missing that key anatomical part.


Jay

[Sharky]

I never assumed other people shared my feelings. Especially female to male. I only knew about drag queens, never thought people who did drag really felt like they were supposed to be the other gender. I didn't know untill I was 13 that there were people who transistioned. If so many "other girls" felt this way they shure do a good job of hiding it. Normal people don't feel the need to have painful, expensive surgerys, loose family, spend years in therapy, and take harmones, just to be comfortable with themselves.

[Flam]

Uh... So... The "normal" girls don't hate their boobs? That's what i thought.
Since i was a kid, i wished to be a boy, to be born as a boy... I used to tell it to people around me, and they just laugh, saying that it's "kid stuff" and soon i would be begging to grow up quickly. I never did. I never had the wish to grow up, because i knew i wouldn't grow up with the body i wanted. I really felt bad when i started to wear a bra, i said to my mom that i didn't want to wear those things, that i wanted to keep my chest the way it was, flat! Again, she laugh. I still envy the body i had when i was 10 years old... *sighs* ... I want that flat chest again.
About the... "Things" between the legs... I never felt the need to have them, also, i just ignored the female genitalia. It wasn't important in my life. I had no disphoria about it because i was completely assexual. Never had the sexual feelings of being female neither male. But it's something that changed now. Now i really wish i could've been born as a REAL, biological man, with all the parts that every male have. I miss them now  .__.

Do other cisgirls feels like that, Bluetraveler?  o..o
It's a sincere question. I never had female friends, so, it's something i really don't know  ^..^;

Heh yeah when I had a girlfriend I really felt like a man <3

Heh, and i have a boyfriend who make me feel like a man ¦3
(Hey, Flam, you should stop talking about him all the time!)

[jmaxley]

I know girls don't feel like that because I've asked them.  For most of my life I thought they did, I thought it was normal to hate being female, to hate the chest appendages.  I was surprised when women were horrified that I wanted a hysterectomy (let alone top surgery).  Since I've been out, it's sunk in even more that what I'm feeling isn't normal for girls...and in the last few months I've asked several of them.

[Bluetraveler]

Do other cisgirls feels like that, Bluetraveler?  o..o
It's a sincere question. I never had female friends, so, it's something i really don't know  ^..^;

Well I did feel that way, and have explained it better in my introductory post. About other girls, I don't know any in real life who I know felt that way, but I've met some on the Internet and I think I'll be posting a link to one of these girls' blog (I don't know if I can so I'm waiting for approval. It's strictly connected to transsexuality and I'm not publicizing any product or something). So please if someone gave me the green light...

[GnomeKid]

I've never had someone say that to me. If I did though I would respond with something along the lines of "I'm sure some girls do feel the same way as I do, but if they do they're not really girls either then are they?"

[Bluetraveler]

That's what I'm fighting for, Gnomekid: if a girl is ashamed of her female body, it doesn't mean she's necessarily transsexual. There are many reasons she might feel that way, and that blog explains some.