Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Alright, settle down. No stampedes over Nero, please.

But seriously, I keep reading stuff on this board from male-bodied unicorns that suggests they really feel like and/or want to be female. And the opposite from female-bodied unicorns.

Okay, so if you want to be treated like a girl, would rather have a girl body than a male body if you'd been given the choice, like the term 'woman' better than the term 'man' when it comes right down to it - what makes you androgyne?
How do you know you're not just a non-op transsexual?

Now some of you will say - but I like to have some masculine features - being furry, having sideburns or what have you. Well - there's plenty of manly females that'd like these things too.
And some of you will go on about this or that aspect of maleness you enjoy having - certain interests, being logical and scientific or what have you - well nothing I haven't heard from tons of ladies on this board.

In short - your love of your femininity far outweighs the few things you like about your masculinity.

So how can you be so sure you're not a woman?


Note - If you're not one of the ones parading your femininity all over this board, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking to the ones who flaunt their feminine selves and then wax poetic about the wonders of androgyny.  Androgyny implies neither male nor female, folks. Not a person with zero masculinity. Nero turns an accusatory look on a few friends of his.

Pleeeeease don't kick me out of the forest.  :eusa_shifty:

My body is male
my Hobies are a mix of Male (Game playing /graphics programing)
                          and Fem (Painting Acting )
I'd like my body to be a mix (Beard & Breasts)  Have beard thinking seriously about breasts would also like softer skin
would love to be a dad
Logic Math/science(male)
creativity (Fem)
I'm not neither man/woman I'm both

yeah, you sound authentically androgyne, sweetie.

Quote from: Kikly on May 12, 2008, 11:10:04 AM
My body is male
my Hobies are a mix of Male (Game playing /graphics programing)
                          and Fem (Painting Acting )
I'd like my body to be a mix (Beard & Breasts)  Have beard thinking seriously about breasts would also like softer skin
would love to be a dad

I'm in a place where I don't know what I am.

I've been thinking non op TS lately.

I don't have an issue with you asking tough questions or being challenging.

Quote from: Nero on May 12, 2008, 10:47:15 AM
Okay, so if you want to be treated like a girl, would rather have a girl body than a male body if you'd been given the choice, like the term 'woman' better than the term 'man' when it comes right down to it - what makes you androgyne?
How do you know you're not just a non-op transsexual?

In previous thread/s somewhere in the forums, it's been said in no uncertain terms that non-op TS doesn't exist, that if we don't want SRS, that we aren't really TS, we're something else, TG, CD, androgyne, etc.

At times I have considered myself non-op, non-hrt TS, however, I really don't need to call myself that for validation. Suffice to say that I feel gender dysphoria. But not intensely enough to go through the whole shebang. The costs, not just monetary, are high. I'm happy enough to consider myself something else. Maybe that makes me androgyne.

QuoteAndrogyny implies neither male nor female, folks. Not a person with zero masculinity.

An androgyne can be a mix of both genders, or neither of them. That's how I understand it.

Zythyra

nero
you asked the question are you going to answer it as well?

Oh, I'm not androgyne, hon.

Quote from: Nero on May 12, 2008, 11:52:11 AM
Oh, I'm not androgyne, hon.

Are you sure?  ;) You've been hanging around the forest with us for a while now  ;) :laugh:

Z

maybe you've drank our contaminated water.

I've asked myself the same question many times. As far as I can figure I want to have a female body, I need it. My very nerves seem to scream out for the right stimuli. I'm not all that interested in SRS but am considering whether transitioning is right for me (to the extent of hormone therapy and living as a girl - a very tomish girl anyway.)

I guess that would make me a pre-op transsexual by your definition Nero?

The thing that stops me knowing I am a woman is that I don't feel like I am. But to some extent I feel I have built up some internal barriers to protect myself and I am slowly eroding these. Perhaps I have hidden my true self from my conscious mind. I feel like I am getting somewhere in my self explorations. Perhaps there is a woman in there somewhere hiding, a flower in the attic. Looking back at how I felt as a child has helped a lot. Lately I have been saying to myself that "I am a woman" just to try out how it feels and it is starting to make more sense.

I am definitely not male. You're right, I am not sure I am not a woman. I identify as androgyne because I am not male and not really comfortable identifying as female. I don't know what I am supposed to feel - what does it feel like to be female? Hopefully I have not been dishonest about this, any deception on my part comes from self deception. Can't blame a girl for that can we?

It's odd but talking about this makes me feel like a failure. I've fought in the past against people that think androgynes are just fence sitters yet the irony is I seem to be case and point - an androgyne while in transit.  :-\

Oh Nero, I feel fit to burst right now.

Quote from: NickSister on May 12, 2008, 03:39:09 PM
I've asked myself the same question many times. As far as I can figure I want to have a female body, I need it. My very nerves seem to scream out for the right stimuli. I'm not all that interested in SRS but am considering whether transitioning is right for me (to the extent of hormone therapy and living as a girl - a very tomish girl anyway.)

I guess that would make me a pre-op transsexual by your definition Nero?

The thing that stops me knowing I am a woman is that I don't feel like I am. But to some extent I feel I have built up some internal barriers to protect myself and I am slowly eroding these. Perhaps I have hidden my true self from my conscious mind. I feel like I am getting somewhere in my self explorations. Perhaps there is a woman in there somewhere hiding, a flower in the attic. Looking back at how I felt as a child has helped a lot. Lately I have been saying to myself that "I am a woman" just to try out how it feels and it is starting to make more sense.

I am definitely not male. You're right, I am not sure I am not a woman. I identify as androgyne because I am not male and not really comfortable identifying as female. I don't know what I am supposed to feel - what does it feel like to be female? Hopefully I have not been dishonest about this, any deception on my part comes from self deception. Can't blame a girl for that can we?

It's odd but talking about this makes me feel like a failure. I've fought in the past against people that think androgynes are just fence sitters yet the irony is I seem to be case and point - an androgyne while in transit.  :-\

Nicksister,

I struggle with similar issues, what am I, androgyne, non op ts, tg, in denial? and that's even after having transitioned for a year. I know I'm not-male, that much is sure, but I don't feel 100% female either. I'm really just me, Z, whatever that might be...

I've also had the discussions regarding androgynes being fence sitters. One question, not just to you, I'm asking aloud for my own benefit, do we really need to be all the way one or the other? Is it really all or nothing? I don't think it needs to be that way. At least not for me. There are many shades of gender in between. Androgynes do exist.

Quote from: Rebis on May 12, 2008, 02:58:01 PM
maybe you've drank our contaminated water.

Nero drank the water!!?? Welcome to club then... hehe  :laugh: Nnyone have an extra manual for Nero??

Zythyra

Quote from: Nero on May 12, 2008, 10:47:15 AM
Okay, so if you want to be treated like a girl, would rather have a girl body than a male body if you'd been given the choice, like the term 'woman' better than the term 'man' when it comes right down to it - what makes you androgyne?
How do you know you're not just a non-op transsexual?

My daughter took the same set of observations and told my wife that she is afraid I am gay. My wife told me. I laughed. My wife said it is no laughing matter.

My daughter also said that if I transitioned, she would require years of therapy (at our expense). I am not TS, because, for me, this body works and I am not willing to pay the costs of any major changes to it (including her therapy).

Why would we kick you out of the forest? We thrive on your attentions.

Your servant,
S

Quote from: Simone Louise on May 12, 2008, 04:19:48 PM
My daughter also said that if I transitioned, she would require years of therapy (at our expense).

Your daughter loves the emotional blackmail eh?

I know I'm not a woman because I don't feel like a woman, I don't look in the mirror and see a woman, I don't feel much pain in not being a woman - though sometimes I do want to feel pretty and I think only a woman can be pretty.

I do tend to flaunt my more feminine elements on here, because i can and because I get enough chance to flaunt my male elements in my three dimensional life.

they're the presentation bits mainly, the medium.

Quote from: NickSister on May 12, 2008, 06:26:00 PM

Quote from: Simone Louise on May 12, 2008, 04:19:48 PM
My daughter also said that if I transitioned, she would require years of therapy (at our expense).

Your daughter loves the emotional blackmail eh?

Mostly, I think she finds me so messed up that she feels obliged to take over my life, which is emotionally taxing to her. At her age, one knows everything.

S

Androgyne/3rd gender (I prefer the latter) seems like the best fit for me.  I'm miserable as a woman, but I'm not a man either.  I'd like a manlier body, true, but then I'd probably stick a dress on it.

I'm kind of undecided between TS and androgyne.

I know that I that I do strongly prefer to live as a woman if given a binary choice and living as a male-bodied genderqueer person caused lots of dysphoria.

But I don't feel like I have a gender identity. Self-identifying with a gender just seems like a very foreign concept to me. What is a woman?

HRT makes me very happy. SRS will make things simpler. So from a practical standpoint I am just a TS that is thinking things in a nonconventional way and does not have a binary gender-identity.

QuoteHow do you know you're not a woman?

Because every time I look at my vagina, it's sticking it's tongue out at me.

Seems like if I were a woman then when I imagine what it would be like to be and live as a woman it would feel "right" and it does not.

However, I will allow that I have discovered that this process of learning who I am is filled with surprises, and in the future who knows where the journey will lead me.

Quote from: riven_one on May 13, 2008, 06:30:34 PM
Seems like if I were a woman then when I imagine what it would be like to be and live as a woman it would feel "right" and it does not.

That makes sense to me.  TBH this seems like a bit of a funny (though interesting) question--sort of like running up to random MI people and saying "hey, dude, how do you know you're not a woman?"

I think male-assigned androgynes might go for "feminine" signifiers simply because in our culture, male is kind of the default.  Unless you're flagging otherwise, you are assumed to be male.  Even with things as simple as a cartoon character, the female version has something added--like Minnie Mouse or Ms. Pac-Man with their bows and eyelashes.  People wearing clothes that could be described as androgynous will often get read as male IRL--happens to 3rd-gendered female-bodied friends of mine all the time (although admittedly not to a bloated oestragen catastrophe like me).

I also think that if you're androgynous it's natural to want to "play against type" genderwise, to offset your assigned gender with the signifiers of another gender.  Hence dresses on male-assigned and suits on female-assigned 3rdies.

Quote from: Nero on May 12, 2008, 10:47:15 AM
Alright, settle down. No stampedes over Nero, please.

Not even a small one? :'(

Quote
How do you know you're not just a non-op transsexual?

I don't -- and if you look at my profile, I'm listed as both. So there.  :P

The thing is, for me being a transsexual (in remission) is about sex: I want a female body (and have wanted one for about a third of a century, even if I'm pretty sure I can live without making too many modifications to what I have). Being androgyne, on the other hand, is about gender: I still haven't understood why men and women should be segregated for things not immediately related to anatomical sex. I don't want to be treated as 'a man' or as 'a woman', I just want to be me.

In some -- quite real -- sense I consider myself a genderqueer woman who happens to have been born with a male body.

Quote
Pleeeeease don't kick me out of the forest.  :eusa_shifty:

No, we'll do something much worse: let you stay.  >:D

  Nfr

hmm...well, as a female bodied person, i know i'm not a man.  i'm not sure how i know.  i just know.  but i'm not a woman either.  i think i learned what i am by basically learning what i am not mostly from the way people treat me.  men don't see a woman and women don't see a woman, so I can't be a woman.  but even more than not seeing me as a woman, they certainly don't see me as a man.  i'm just something else entirely.

i feel like a boy. not a man, not a woman, a boy.  i think that has a lot to do with the pre-gendered thing.  life before puberty was better than life afterwards.  there was less difference between the two binary genders then.  we were just kids playing together and your bits didn't matter.

i didn't know there was a difference other than the bits until i was an adult.  i think most people just see me as some sort of alien.  i'm weird, interesting, someone to be studied from a safe distance, not to be close to, for fear of exposure to my weirdness or something. 

???  not sure that makes any sense.

Things were a little quiet here recently, so I was roaming Susan's other forums. I came across a discussion in which people were writing that they should not be lumped with androgynes. Transsexuals and those no longer transsexuals, but now simply women, accepted the binary nature of gender, and merely to be themselves, which required being on the other side of the boundary. Androgynes, on the other hand, choose to a lifestyle that violates the culturally accepted gender norms.

Jaimey, your comments on feeling pre-gendered, and on the times when we were "just kids playing together" struck a chord with me. That is who we are. We didn't choose to be aliens any more than transsexuals choose to change their sex. Gender stereotypes are beside the point; we just want to be who we are, to stop faking. We want to mix with friends, irrespective of our "bits".

One of the transsexuals wrote of relating to a spouse as a best friend--me, too. This person continued: " I'd look at girls and think 'I want to BE her' not 'I want her.'" Again, me too. I've told my wife I want to be just like her. But as soon as I say that, I know I am not her. I still just want to play without the bits mattering (too bad TS people don't want to play with me). How I know is a question for an epistemologist.

Oh my, look at the time,
S

Quote from: Jaimey on May 16, 2008, 10:24:31 PM
I think most people just see me as some sort of alien.  i'm weird, interesting, someone to be studied from a safe distance, not to be close to, for fear of exposure to my weirdness or something. 

???  not sure that makes any sense.

This makes perfect sense for a plutonein like me, when all the marshins are doing there thing and all the Venisions are doing theres.
I think most people believe I'm from Mars but I'm from Pluto Damit

But whose planet is it anyway?  Don't see why we shouldn't be Earthlings too... part of the human condition, just a different intersection on the Venn diagram...

Everything is better with Venn diagrams.  'Strue.

QuoteHow do you know you're not a woman?

After going a fair way towards medically and socially transitioning towards female I can conclusively say that's not me.  Obviously, shoehorning myself into the male box never worked either.  Discovering a third option and being very comfortable there, there's no way in hell I'm either of the binary options.

Binary is a drink that doesn't satisfy.

Quote from: Rebis on May 19, 2008, 12:46:46 PM
Binary is a drink that doesn't satisfy.

It's made out of 99% Kool-Aid isn't it?

Quote from: Andra on May 19, 2008, 01:40:42 PM

Quote from: Rebis on May 19, 2008, 12:46:46 PM
Binary is a drink that doesn't satisfy.

It's made out of 99% Kool-Aid isn't it?

110% kool-aid and artificial sweeteners... none for me thanks  :laugh:

Z

QuoteIt's made out of 99% Kool-Aid isn't it?

I was going to make a Jonestown joke, but the punch line was too long.

Quote from: Andra on May 19, 2008, 01:40:42 PM

Quote from: Rebis on May 19, 2008, 12:46:46 PM
Binary is a drink that doesn't satisfy.

It's made out of 99% Kool-Aid isn't it?

Yuck.

I hear they had a killer Kool-Aid at Jonestown.  I would prefer the electric Kool-Aid.

Quote from: Rebis on May 19, 2008, 07:47:53 PM
I hear they had a killer Kool-Aid at Jonestown.  I would prefer the electric Kool-Aid.

The electric kool aid (acid test) was pretty potent too...  ;)

Great book

Z

I wish I was electrified right now.

110 or 220?

Or perhaps solar powered might be best  ;D

Z

Quote from: Rebis on May 19, 2008, 12:46:46 PM
Binary is a drink that doesn't satisfy.

I'll drink to that ;D
but i'll mix my own ;D
no kool-aid ::) thnX

we don't drink the kool aid.  we're too awesome for kool aid.