Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Can anybody explain to me what is considered to be discomfort with the social aspects of the gender you were assigned at birth?

I notice that while I do feel some discomfort socially, I don't know if it's related to gender.

I never felt like I fit in in any group of men.  I never felt that I was masculine enough to suit the group.  I don't think I associated it with gender at the time, in spite of my 20/20 hindsight use of the word "masculine" now.  I just felt that there was something wrong with me, that I was a wimp or something.  I understand it better now.  It felt like they all knew "the rules" and I didn't.

I feel that way sometimes. I wonder if it could also be an Asperger's obsessive thing. I'm not trying to sweep your feelings under the rug, just being clear. But in my case I do have a diagnosis of Asperger's.

It's being forced into an uncomfortable situation where you feel obliged to be there and take part in conversations that just don't interest you and that you cannot relate to. You try and fit in, you try to do your best, but you never quite mesh with everyone else in the way you want to. And they worst thing is that they sense it too and so even though you try and integrate, you get rejected anyway.
Then there's the constant reference to yourself as "he" "him" etc. The constant "who's the manliest man" competition:
"How many women have you slept with." "What's your favourite football team." "What's your favourite car." "Oh? You like to sing? Are you gay?"
It's just another little series of small chips that slowly erode you.

Edit. Oh, and there's also all that fun about who has the most muscle. Someone, kill me now. I don't want to look as if I have half a dozen hamburgers stacked inside my arms.

I never had any problems faking being macho enough to fit in with any group.    The problem was that apart from a few close friends over the years I never felt any connection at all.  When the talk turned to sports, as it invariably did, my mind flatlined with  boredom so intense that I couldn't even fake being interested in that.  I laughed at all the homophobic and sexist jokes and innuendo all the while feeling highly uncomfortable and guilty.  And apart from those two things any gathering of men ends in silence.

I think that was all dysphoria.  If not then I'm just a weird introvert.  Actually, I'm probably that anyway, dysphoria or not.

Quote from: redhot1 on August 10, 2016, 04:53:12 PM
I feel that way sometimes. I wonder if it could also be an Asperger's obsessive thing. I'm not trying to sweep your feelings under the rug, just being clear. But in my case I do have a diagnosis of Asperger's.

Are you able to relate with one gender more than the other?

I always felt disgusting, like a creep. I knew deep down that I wanted to be a girl, but I never linked the two feelings. Other than, you know, feeling like a disgusting creep for wanting to be a girl.

The term "social discomfort" seems to be not quite right with me. While I did have friends as a male, there never was any real socializing. I guess everyone knew I was uncomfortable with whom I was, and so didn't get comfortable with inviting me to functions.

As a woman, things are much different.

Humiliating?

I was also diagnosed with Aspergers, but there are too many confounding variables for me to answer this question.

But I don't make friends with women easily. Not in person anyway. I'm probably psychologically incapable of getting a girlfriend in real life. I'm talking just friend girlfriend. Not the romantic kind. The women in my life have been terrible role models. 

I mean if your grandmother constantly spouts negativity throughout the day, if your mother cheats on your father and leaves your father and his six figure salary to go to the West Indies with no money, where they'd hit you for opening your eyes during school prayer where you're forced to stay with a crazy old man with ten numbered canes of increasing thickness specifically to beat children with, when you have to read bible with him every night, when you're little brother is forced to sit on newpaper on the floor next to him all day, when he to repeat how he'll get beaten, when you're not allowed any lunch, aka two  meals a day, when there's no running water and have to carry it in buckets, with half the house a giant sandpit full of lice and fleas, spiders bigger than your hand, a rat in the bed, having to move seven times in two years, five of those times leeching off other people.

And when you come back to England and your father buys you bikes, your mother doesn't let you ride it and sells it,  then your father dies of cancer, your mother steals your inheritance and send it to her "boyfriend" who's younger than me, and then your mother recently calls your dead father a violent, cheating homosexual publicly on facebook

So when people say being trans has anything to do with over identifying with the mother? That's not true. That's not true at all.

No surprise I ended up antisocial. With hate, and anger. That crap plus  gender identity issues which I always had, apparently equals Asperger Syndrome. Which is what I was diagnosed with in 2009. And that's because I was online all the time in the female role, drawing and writing female lead characters, where I thought if i could make it look real enough, or good enough, they'd come off the page and feel real enough that I could live through them. I dropped out of a science degree because I got obsessed with painting a female model.  Over that time, you think I had a social life? Of course not. I give people  the minimum socially. Unemotional, and holding back increasing dysphoria and hatred.  So I just make art. Because my heart feels cruel. Too cruel to smile and initiate a greeting while in the male role.

For me, it feels wrong. Broken. Ugly.

Like there are rules (many of which I have learned, and some that I haven't), which I break *all the time*.

I have good days when I can get along ok, and then I have days when everything in my mind screams "I am not one of those!".

On the bad days, I can dissociate really badly, and those days my words get positively messed up, like I am unable to speak.

Sno

Quote from: redhot1 on August 10, 2016, 04:36:54 PMCan anybody explain to me what is considered to be discomfort with the social aspects of the gender you were assigned at birth?

just my experience of course...

zero male friends, occasional male protector type relationships have arisen with those that perceive how useful and handy I am to have around.   very odd if you've never experienced it I think.   Some ancestral instinct of alphas collecting useful tools, or something.   But leaves you with a feeling that you're just an asset that would be easily discarded if performance slipped...

females, I can build some minimal social relationship with, but the discontinuity between my masculine, kinda thuggish appearance and a feminine perception and body language,  has always been a deal breaker to try and progress a relationship.

Interestingly enough, when there's the indirection of a computer interface, like in a multiplayer game, I can get accidentally picked up by other folks' normal friend making behavior; and sometimes I can even, not mess it up.

I do have male friends (in particular a group who I am still in touch with from school) but I have always preferred mixing with females.  I know there is an obvious inference to be drawn from this but, in my case, I have tended to form deep friendships with females (who are usually married or in a stable relationship) rather than superficial friendships with the hope of sex at the end of it.

Like some of the other respondents here, I do not enjoy trying to fit in to a macho/testosterone fuelled group and, as a result, have avoided this type of situation throughout my life.  I would far rather sit down with a lady for a coffee to discuss the softer issues in life such as relationships & children.  It is such a shame that social norms tend to preclude this sort of thing anywhere other than the workplace.

Amanda x

Quote from: T.K.G.W. on August 10, 2016, 06:46:58 PM
Humiliating?

That.

I have never been socialised female, I'm one of those transpeople who never learned the code of their assigned gender. My socialisation is entirely male, and this has lead to all sort of tricks and situations to hang out with the guys and stay away from the girly groups. Of course it was easer when I was way younger, after puberty I retired to specific social groups (online, martial arts...) where being biologically female was way less relevant. Then those things grew in popularity and become mixed gender, and I sailed away. Until I was fed up with utter loneliness and came out as a transguy.  ;D Something has to give.

But I really have dysphoria when I am expected to belong, women often try the card of sisterhood on me, and it's worse when they are in a group. This is really painful. Two days ago I really had to calm myself.

It's like looking for clothes in a mixed gender mall, feeling the refusal to recognise me and the expectations to be forced in the female gender, it gives my dysphoria: for me is a mix of a panic attack and an anger outburst. I compare it to being closed in a chest and thrown in the sea: you know, the moment when you realise you are stuck and sinking. That frantic panic/rage, that's my dysphoria.

I have three female friends, but one of them is really gender fluid, another is a diversity-aware feminist and another one is a very unconventional person for her social upbringing.
Everyone else, my closest friend and all my other friends are dudes.

Quote from: Heita on August 11, 2016, 04:28:49 AM
That.

I have never been socialised female, I'm one of those transpeople who never learned the code of their assigned gender. My socialisation is entirely male, and this has lead to all sort of tricks and situations to hang out with the guys and stay away from the girly groups. Of course it was easer when I was way younger, after puberty I retired to specific social groups (online, martial arts...) where being biologically female was way less relevant. Then those things grew in popularity and become mixed gender, and I sailed away. Until I was fed up with utter loneliness and came out as a transguy.  ;D Something has to give.

But I really have dysphoria when I am expected to belong, women often try the card of sisterhood on me, and it's worse when they are in a group. This is really painful. Two days ago I really had to calm myself.

It's like looking for clothes in a mixed gender mall, feeling the refusal to recognise me and the expectations to be forced in the female gender, it gives my dysphoria: for me is a mix of a panic attack and an anger outburst. I compare it to being closed in a chest and thrown in the sea: you know, the moment when you realise you are stuck and sinking. That frantic panic/rage, that's my dysphoria.

I have three female friends, but one of them is really gender fluid, another is a diversity-aware feminist and another one is a very unconventional person for her social upbringing.
Everyone else, my closest friend and all my other friends are dudes.

This is one of the reasons I noticed I tend only to bond with individuals and avoid groups. I can typically talk to anyone about anything, I'm quite a laid back individual at heart and treat all people on much the same individual level; but once a group mentality or identity emerges, I leave. Especially if it was a girl's group with the intention of being a girl's group, or an LGB type clique such as gays and lesbians and so on. I don't find it difficult to make friends - individually. I made many great friends over the years, but in a group setting I am much less comfortable and tend to refuse to state my intentions or whatever inside of them. As a result I'm very much geared toward spending time with one person at a time, and putting store in individual loyalties, and that can find itself exhausting and sometimes a wasted endeavor. When people expected me to belong, I walked away in favor of pretending to be something I'm not. I also was not socialized female. At all.

On the plus side, even though it means not really enjoying groups and group identities, it does mean that the less people around the more powerful I feel. I've known people who really kind of wilt under situations where they leave their friends behind and have to go one-on-one with someone else, like job interviews, and in those kinds of situations I feel completely comfortable just bringing myself. I'm not intimidated when it's me and somebody else. Even more comfortable when it's just me on my own and I don't have to think about the concerns of a friend or someone like that. I'm really not intimidated by the thought of hitch-hiking, camping out by myself, or even being completely lost, defending myself alone or anything like that. It's much more comfortable doing that when there is only me on side than when there's a bunch of others involved.

To a small degree I do kind of miss the idea of being part of a male group, but I'll always be looking to ensure first and foremost that I can function on my own without one. That's just the way my personality has gone, possibly as a result of the isolation of this condition, possibly just a natural pattern of the brain, I don't know. It's not a bad thing, really. It takes time to come around to knowing what is and isn't comfortable for you, and sometimes you feel like you should belong or really would belong but realize in the end where you just don't and that's it's for the best. Some people really want to belong, and that's fine.... they should probably seek it out; I just found eventually that it wasn't really all it was cracked up to be and that people and groups are tiring for me.

Quote from: KathyLauren on August 10, 2016, 04:42:26 PM
I never felt like I fit in in any group of men.  I never felt that I was masculine enough to suit the group.  I don't think I associated it with gender at the time, in spite of my 20/20 hindsight use of the word "masculine" now.  I just felt that there was something wrong with me, that I was a wimp or something.  I understand it better now.  It felt like they all knew "the rules" and I didn't.

+1

I learned to mimic what other men did, except for putting down others. I started mimicking after an older man asked me why I behaved like a woman, rather than a man...I told him I wasn't aware of acting like a woman, I was just being myself. I didn't know how to "act like a man", and his suggestion was to observe other men and do what they do.

And so began a life-long effort to copy how a man "should" behave...because I simply had no clue. The tragic part of this (for me) was that I internalized this mimicking behavior, because I thought it was "normal" (i.e., most men probably did it), so I didn't mention it until several months into therapy for depression and anxiety.

Social discomfort due to dysphoria can be very subtle.  As a child I never had the intense interest in football and basketball that the boys in the schools I went to had.  To this day I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials.  From college on I had an interest in Angels Baseball, mainly because our dorms used to have a minibus that went to all the Angels games and free tickets.  But I got into it mainly because I liked the guys and girls I went to the games with.  Other than that, I only follow golf, because the personal stories of the players are always interesting.  You might say that I am interested in sports more the way a woman is than the way a man would be.

I have always had an interest in cars, and could talk to guys about cars, but I always enjoyed the way they were customized, the colors, shapes and creativity, more than the performance.  Any time things got competitive, either in terms of sports, or whose car was the fastest or whatever, I got turned off real fast and learned to make a quiet exit from the scene.

I think a huge clue to who I was inside came in college and in law school when just about every girl I met wanted to be best friends with me rather than go out with me, (or wanted to go out as friends).  In law school one girl said, "You are the kind of guy every woman wants to have for a brother."

But if your interest in "guy things" is based more on forming meaningful relationships with people than on being competitive, that is a pretty good indication that you are transgender.

Quote from: Deborah on August 10, 2016, 04:59:31 PM
I never had any problems faking being macho enough to fit in with any group.    The problem was that apart from a few close friends over the years I never felt any connection at all.  When the talk turned to sports, as it invariably did, my mind flatlined with  boredom so intense that I couldn't even fake being interested in that.  I laughed at all the homophobic and sexist jokes and innuendo all the while feeling highly uncomfortable and guilty.  And apart from those two things any gathering of men ends in silence.

I think that was all dysphoria.  If not then I'm just a weird introvert.  Actually, I'm probably that anyway, dysphoria or not.

This sounds just like I was and nothing worse than sexist jokes to get on my nerves, that always used to drive me crazy especially when it was my dad.
I gave up trying to macho a long time ago though it just hurt to much to fake it.

I think I'm pretty fortunate to just be perceived as weird.  It keeps me a little more comfortable in social situations.  But, it also underlines certain situations in which I'm very dysphoric socially.  Here's what I mean.  People usually don't try to get me into conversations about sports-ball or the whole "I don't understand women" bit.  It's usually more like "(Amanda) knows everything about Superman!" or "lol (Amanda)'s so weird/funny!".  Then every once in a while I have to hear "You know what that's like, because you're a man"  No.  I don't.  for a quick second I have no clue why they would say that to me.  I remember the way I look and sound and I've got to try to respond like I'm not having a panic attack now.  Then, I can't help disengaging from the conversation.  It's just so random, because most people have no idea that it affects me that way.  Anyway, that's the way I feel social dysphoria.

Quote from: aaajjj55 on August 11, 2016, 02:06:54 AM
Like some of the other respondents here, I do not enjoy trying to fit in to a macho/testosterone fuelled group and, as a result, have avoided this type of situation throughout my life.  I would far rather sit down with a lady for a coffee to discuss the softer issues in life such as relationships & children.  It is such a shame that social norms tend to preclude this sort of thing anywhere other than the workplace.

I agree about not fitting into the "macho/testosterone" group, but I certainly don't prefer sitting down and talking about relationships and children either.  I typically prefer talking about academia (especially science-related stuff) or interesting problems, whether they be world problems or personal ones.

Also, I just often prefer to comport myself in ways that are more aligned with American women.  Things like gestures, facial expressions, and body language.  The "male-box" just seems too restrictive for me :)

The times I've had real problems dealing with the social aspects of gender are relatively rare. Mostly it just feels like I'm in a permanent role-playing game: there's always a disconnect between the core 'me' and the social role I'm playing. That happens with both mainstream genders, which is why I consider myself non-binary, although I can feel much more natural with a female presentation than with a male one.