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I just celebrated 4 years on my natural self. :eusa_clap: :eusa_clap: :eusa_clap: :eusa_clap: and I feeling so truly female most of the time , but for some reason my brain won't let  male me to rest in peace. Just curious if others have found a peaceful coexistence with past and present or is it always war.

What do you mean by, won't let male me rest In peace? Can you elaborate? Gender Identity is a spectrum, so that might be why you're feeling that way.


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I'll give you an example, When I was in grade school I had a dream where I was lying along side a female classmate and just looking at the sky and feeling physically the exact same as her. Then my father came along and put a penis on me that wasn't there and I saw that I was male, like my brain was telling me I was male. I had this dream in about 8th grade

I have some elements of female, but I think a large part is male. Its a bit hard to tell whats habit and whats inbuilt. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I'm not really sure how there could be a war going on unless you can't accept yourself.

I find it interesting to contemplate, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm find just the way I am (internally).

The male me was never real.  Before the age of 20, when I was a child, I was not allowed to be the real me, and I spent my entire childhood casting about, trying on various identities -- geek, class clown, whatever, and discovering that they just did not fit.  I remember at 18 in college, being treated by girls as this friendly, genderless being, never being taken seriously as a male.  And the only reason I ever wanted to be a male was to have a girlfriend.  At around 20, I forged a male identity that worked -- a guy who was well liked and respected most of the time.  But that guy was not me.  Somewhere past 40 I convinced myself I was that guy, and then the panic attacks set in.

I miss that guy a lot sometimes.  If he was a separate person I would be in love with him, only because he was made up of everything I thought a man should be.  But at the end of the day, retiring him is a big part of loving myself.

sounds like me

I'm not really sure I understand, but perhaps its just a difference in the way we describe things.

I've some uncertainty of what parts of my personality are male and female, and where it came from - born with, socialization, or HRT. But I feel and act according to my feelings, and whether that's male or female is not important to me.

If wanted to act in a manner opposite to my current gender presentation I could see that causing some stress, but that due to other people, not me.

it's the male I struggled with justifying all my life . The residue of that self that just doesn't want to be forgotten.

The male me was me just as the female was.  One may have been largely an avatar and made me really unhappy much of the time, but it was still me


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

Quote from: Deborah on January 01, 2017, 07:27:10 PM
The male me was me just as the female was.  One may have been largely an avatar and made me really unhappy much of the time, but it was still me


It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
André Gide, Autumn Leaves

yea

I think the male in me is just a shadow of my whole being. It is me but with only a small piece showing to the world and a lot of an act. That's kind of how I see myself. I'm slowly getting over the immediate response of falling into the male guise as soon as men are around in public. I hope to someday be free entirely of that self induce response.

Generally if we got past puberty we were socialized male. What does it matter IAC? I know plenty of cis females who behave more characteristically masculine than I do. I'm first trying to be healthy human, second feminine.

No.  Male was attached to 35 years of my life.  I can leave a lot of it behind, but I had the male experience in my life, and it was a valuable experience.  It shaped me as a woman in a way most women will never understand, just as there are aspects of the cis-woman's experience I will never experience.  It's a part of me, now dormant but still very much there.

I am the sum of my life experiences and whereas once I said goodbye to the male, because everyone said it was part of the process of transitioning. Now, the prodigy son has returned and  has found its peaceful place in further defining who I am.

nice way to put it

I can only speak from my experience, but now after 13 years of living as my true self, I find it difficult to view myself as anything other than a girl.  While I have memories and photos of me before, my life and experiences since transition have influenced my memory and my self image.  I do not deny that I was a boy.  I am also not ashamed of it.  But my memories have been affected by my current experience and the image of who I am is more feminine than I think I really was.

Not sure if that makes sense, but it is how I feel and recall my past. There is another thread that asked what it feels like to have breasts.  Honestly, I cannot remember what it feels like not to have them.  So time influences memories and how we see ourselves.  At least it has for me.

-Sarah

the longer I'm on estrogen the more distant the male is but I can't erase the hardship

@CarlyMx LOL! That's cute!
I've often thought I'd love to meet a clone of me to either date for be best friends with!

I've always just been myself, not realizing for most of my life that part of me saw myself as male.

I began reading up on it, and found that physical gender is formed in the first trimester and gender hormones initialize prenatal brains in the second trimester. According to one study, even the girly girls and macho men have only 80% of their birth gender traits. Male hormones are usually deposited on the right hemisphere of the brain, and female on the left.

Both sides of people's brains are initialized with some hormones, because everyone is a gender spectrum, but usually the majority of the gender hormones match the birth genders.

As the gender hormone sliding scale moves toward the middle, people can be born with increasingly strong opposite gender traits, yet still identify with their birth gender.

Nobody knows the tipping point where people see themselves as the gender opposite their physical gender. It might not even have to do with the percentage of gender traits, since my sisters have far more male traits than I do, yet identify as female.

So, really, all of us are both genders, in a way. Some of us identify with only one gender, some identify as both genders, as in my case.
I mostly identify as male, but I have a weak female side, so I'm not "all" one gender, either way.

For me, the male self was an act she had to put on, the classic having to live a lie. I wasn't very good at acting or role playing, glad I don't have to anymore

Interesting the male has gone from every day thought but in dreams I am often a mixture of male and female.

That might sound odd but then again the female me in my dreams is gorgeous so dreams may not tell the truth!

Brains are weird!!!

I'm glad that this topic has arisen because in some ways it show that the spectrum of gender identity is vast. I have never had any gender identity problems (mentally that is), because I have always considered myself internally to be without gender.  I'm just me! Always have been and always will be. I may have a desire to change to look female on the outside, but I doubt that will alter who I am on the inside at all.

We are exacly who we are. Let both halves meet and they'll get along rather well in my experience. To deny yourself your past because of "body issues" is unhealthy in my opinion.  Embrace your past, but don't let it dictate your future.  The future is whatever you wish it to be.  You decided to transition and you are making the changes you wish to see in your life... that's about as positive as you can get.

Quote from: DaniMack45 on January 02, 2017, 04:48:45 AM
I'm glad that this topic has arisen because in some ways it show that the spectrum of gender identity is vast. I have never had any gender identity problems (mentally that is), because I have always considered myself internally to be without gender.  I'm just me! Always have been and always will be. I may have a desire to change to look female on the outside, but I doubt that will alter who I am on the inside at all.

Changing my clothes never materially changed my thinking, 15 years of working on my socialization has and yet those changes are now being overwritten by hrt.

As much as I've been uncomfortable with masculine behaviors, testosterone really does enable many of them. Am I like a cis female? No idea, however the thing I think I will never fully understand is the masculine brain. Yes, testosterone biased my decidedly feminine brain towards more masculine expression and I've spent plenty of time around cis males and accordingly have some empathy for them but I never felt comfortable there.

So personally I think that's effectively gone. Memories as others have said are fading, they'll remain but already don't much influence my thinking in the here and now.

I really don't think I ever was male to begin with, I never made the cut, I was always different and could not hide it enough to pass as male.  I've fallen flat on my face so many times, I've missed the mark to such an extent, that I don't think there is very much to miss.

I have always been this weirdo, and that is how I will probably remain till the end of my days.

I guess sort of like Cindy said, I can't really differentiate between the "Male" me and "Female" me, aside from skirts or slacks.  OK hair or no hair. 99% of the time I am just Me now. Which is a universe away from how things were before I took ownership of being trans where I desperately tried to separate the two parts of me... actually bury one and parade the other around

The thing is that voice I hear in my head while I constantly talk to myself is the same voice I've heard all my life. I can't imagine any differentiation between male and female as I talk in my brain.

I was never a man, so the male "me" never really existed.. The moment I realised this, I was so much better off. i might have lived amongst men, but I was clearly never one of them.

Quote from: stephaniec on January 02, 2017, 08:38:03 PM
The thing is that voice I hear in my head while I constantly talk to myself is the same voice I've heard all my life. I can't imagine any differentiation between male and female as I talk in my brain.

This is actually something I always found fascinating, to the extent that I researched how deaf people think to themselves, or how blind people conceptualized their environment.  The voice that I sub-vocalized has evolved through time, right now I imaging a scholar running through my head, trying to sound intelligent.  Later on, it will be some party person, in a thread I made earlier, it was some deeply depressed person. 

Not to say these are disembodied voices with their own will, thankfully.   I'm in complete control.. I think!   >:-)

The only male voice in my head, is that which was grown from my environment, telling me how lousy of a person I am, that I need to "man" up, I need to put these "dreams" behind me, and fill a role I don't want to.  It is a voice that I have relied upon in the past, to keep me in check, to protect me from harm, and hide me from others.  It rears it's ugly head from time to time, and I like to kick it straight in the balls, and tell it to go to hell :)  Y'know, it sounds strangely like the voice of my father. 

I sound like a complete nutter now, sorry :)

The 'male me' was just a persona, an act I perfected over the decades to protect myself.  I've been dismantling it with the help of a good gender therapist.   Now, I know it was an act, and something I don't do any more, but the old, old habits from hiding over half a century are hard to eradicate.  That's the only reminder.

These take the form of the behavioral checks I would make.  "Is this act too feminine?  Am I looking male enough doing this?"  That's about all that is left, the old habits to try and stay hidden.  I work against those rather deliberately, and the relief I feel from defeating these old habits daily is palpable, a real feeling of letting go and relaxing within myself.

It's hard to worry about looking male enough when wearing a pencil skirt and a bodycon top, with a 36/28/37 figure.  :) ;)  (Yeah, Michelle haz a happy today...  wheeee!)


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I am finally getting to the point in my HRT where being male is less and less important. Some old hangups die hard but for the most part I am satisfied with the progress I am witness to. I could not have done it without the support I have found here. I went to the electrologist yesterday and she said my face is looking really good and healthy. My hair has grown out and is almost ready to be styled. I like the me I see, just wish I was 30-40 years younger. But on with the things I have control over. If all continues to go well I plan to venture out into the world in May at the Esprit Conference. Most my male is gone. Balls from walnuts to hazelnuts. I no longer sport wood. I will never be able to reverse my size 14 feet and 6'3' frame. But luckily Maria Sharapova is 6'2" and Taylor Swift and Elle Macpherson give me inspiration.  Now if I could just so something about those feet and my shoe fetish.  ::) 

That's an interesting question.

Personally I think some tendencies/aspects are hormonal-based, so without the requisite control over your own hormones, some things may be impossible to let go even if you want to. Although whether those things have a specific link to gender in your mind will be an individual thing.

I'm going to say yes, you can shape who you want to be and what you want to feel, although it is a long process that can take many years and a certain degree of willpower. But I know it can be done, because I left an old self behind a long time ago that I never even think about anymore, and am so different from. Not anything to do with transition, just another necessity. I'm sure the same will be true of transition if you want it to be that way.

So that "inner voice", mine has never changed, it has always sounded like me, and that has always been feminine.  The problem is when I open my mouth and the voice that comes out, is much different.  I still hear it and I cringe, even though it is much better than it was.  I hope that once I have VFS, my external voice will better align with my internal voice.

34 days...not that I am counting  ;)

I'm approaching the finish line to where I can be cis so here's how I look at it: I was never male, I had a debilitating physical deformity that was a form of intersex (transsexuality).

Quote from: katiebbw1 on January 02, 2017, 04:29:48 AM
For me, the male self was an act she had to put on, the classic having to live a lie. I wasn't very good at acting or role playing, glad I don't have to anymore

katiebbw,

Thanks for sharing and joining in. It can be intimidating. I have lived too long to easily shift. However, I am slowly making progress to move beyond the guilt, shame and denial. I hope to get to a point where it doesn't come up in every day life. Guess that doesn't fully answer the question, but there it is.

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With warmth,

Joanna

Every one has a male part and a female part. Call it M/F, dom/sub yin/yang or whatever. Sometimes one part gets subsumed and starts to fight for dominance. Sometimes the parts play nicely together.
For the last few years my girl part was running all over my boy part and they were always bickering. Then I reconnected with my first girlfriend and found that she is my girl part too! She is a Reiki Master and worked me over to get the balance back. Now the two parts are resting quietly, holding hands and making cooing/mewing sounds.

I can only speak for me, but whichever part is driving on a given day, depends a lot upon what clothes I have on. And we switch around a lot so nobody gets feeling left out.

I'm just me. I never felt male even though I was born male. But I'm aware it's still a part of me I guess.


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No. And nor do I want it to.

The male is that scared, confused kid. That lost, lonely soul who didn't understand who they were. Didn't understand why they hurt so much. Wished only to be invisible and hide. The male is sat in a room crying. Hugging a pillow, telling himself over and over that he's sorry for whatever he did wrong. He's sorry for who he is. He's sorry for being alive. The male is the person who existed in that dark void before I found myself.

Now he's safe. Now he doesn't have to be afraid. He is the part of my mind who reminds me to never, ever make someone else feel the way people made him feel. He's the part of my mind that adds weight to the empathy I feel for others. The part that adds to my drive to help those around me reach the place he never could. He is part of my memory, and part of the reason I am who I am.

Now he's at peace, and his tears are gone. But he never will be. And I'm thankful for that.