Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I was wondering if anyone ever felt as if they were a GID or transsexual fraud before finally accepting that their feelings were real?  When you first were finding information on what transgender was and never came across a story similar to your own.  Did you ever feel like maybe the feelings were not real, but you couldn't get rid of them and felt like a fraud? 

Well, I never came across any stories very similar to mine. Seemed like most guys did things differently to me. I suppose if there's a such thing as a typical ftm story, I'm not it. Never seemed to matter. We're as diverse as cisfolk. Maybe we can help if you explain more.

Hi Lauren  :)

I have sort of had the experience your'e describing. I went through most of my life up until now feeling like a fraud, like nobody knew me or could know me, and that I would never be anything more than a angry depressed little sub-human.

Every once in a while I look at myself and think "what the hell are you doing", usually after having something cut or shocked or burned out of me. Lets face it, most of the things we do to transition hurt, a lot. I'll look at myself and say things to myself like your'e describing. My big fear was that I was a closet homosexual, and was identifying as transexual out of some deep seated shame in an effort to reconcile with myself and make myself "normal". (I'm over that fear, now I'm just afraid of blood clots) A good therapist can help you sort through things like that, just be completely honest with them or you'll be right back in the doubt circle.

I think most of us probably have had doubts and fears, it's only natural after all, and to my mind a good way to help process is to try some reversible things. For me this was painting my nails. Painting my nails always makes me feel better. Maybe get some hair removed, electrolysis separates the girls from the boys like nothing else. Hormone therapy, for me, was the bellringer. When I started supressing my testosterone production, and replacing it with Estrogen and liked it, the doubts vanished.

Any way I hope for the best for you sweety, your'e not alone.

Lauren,

Yes. On some level I *think* I know what your talking about.

I was about a year into my transition (fulltime and hormones) when I started feeling "fake". It was one of the most scary feelings I'd ever felt. I was more uncomfortable than NOT transitioning. The fakeness that I was feeling wasn't because I'm not trans... it was because I was being overly femme. Which isn't me. I'm certianly not Rosie O'Donnell butch, but I'm ABSOLUTELY not Barbie. I was trying to be Barbie.

It took a while to figure out that, first off, I'm Kelli. It took a little longer to figure out just who "Kelli" was. I'm still learning, to be honest.

Does that answer your question?

Well not so much fraud, but definitely avoidance and denial.

It is a pastime of most of us that we look for validation of our own feelings in the stories and life history of others. Although we are all different, I know for one I did exactly that read, analyse, decide my feelings where similar and then deny that this could possibly be my fate.

I think a lot of the issues are that you stare in the mirror and cannot possibly see what the end propuct will be like or have a clue about where to start or how you will ever survive, so the best thing is to keep denying and try and cope with the pain.

I was never a fraud just a coward, taking that first step is the hardest.

Buffy

Yes I guess it does.  I guess I figured I tried to narrow myself down to a category in order for being a TS to make more sense to me and for when I explain things to others.  I felt bad because I want others to believe me when I tell them and I didn't think that would happen if I didn't fit into a category.  I felt that if I didn't match up anywhere close to the other stories, then that must mean I am fraud.  I also was afraid of the way I felt my dysphoria would make me seem fake since I only have strong desires to "be" a girl and I don't know if I really "identify" with other women.  I know that there is "something" in me that is real and that this isn't some kind of false perception of some sort since I don't believe I have "feelings" closer to women.  I look at people as people, sure some of my feelings could be shared with women, but that doesn't mean that I won't have the same feelings as men.  This is very awkward to explain. 

Lauren, there is no right or wrong awnser here, the gender whirll pool has a very large specturum and you can fit into it where ever you wish. What I am saying is be your self, try not to worry about being FAKE because there is no such thing. You are You.

lucy

and yes we all felt that way at some time, am I or not. but I am me..

Quote from: lauren3332 on May 27, 2009, 01:18:16 AM
since I only have strong desires to "be" a girl and I don't know if I really "identify" with other women

This is most likely a social construction that you can work through over time. Of course you don't identify with them, and they won't with you right away, they have had a completely different life experience than you have. I liked Lucy's comments, they came close to poetry. You are You  :)

Lauren, my experience was much different from yours. I did find stories of transsexuals very similar to my own, and I didn't want to be like them. So I was in denial for a long time.

Briefly.  At one point I thought I didn't need to transition, & looked at it is some sort of phase.  That wasn't even that long ago, but I think being in a relationship w/ a male who wouldn't be able to deal w/ it was the problem. 

That's who he was: a gay male.  Trying to be that myself was the only fraud.  I'm a bisexual female, not a bisexual male.  It didn't take me that long to realize it.  Being unsustainable, that relationship ended.

OMG


Yes I know exactly what you are talking about. Maybe I've had drugs too many times and have read and studied so much on this mess I know how to fake myself out :P

I sometimes think that, or at least in the early days.  Did I do to much research?  Did I talk myself into it?  Could it just be a phase?

After a year on HRT and 10 months full time, I can say that No to all of the above.  I am a Transsexual.  And I am looking forward to SRS.

Janet

I wondered that myself.  Do I want the reasearch that I have done to apply to me, or is it actuallity.  Then I wonder if it is actually fake why would it bother me for 6-7 years straight off and on.  It's funny sometimes I find reasons I am not a TS, but then other times I try to prove my TSism so hard.   

I think a lot of the issues are that you stare in the mirror and cannot possibly see what the end product will be like or have a clue about where to start or how you will ever survive, so the best thing is to keep denying and try and cope with the pain.

I was never a fraud just a coward, taking that first step is the hardest.

Buffy



OMG

That is totally me you just make me realise it. I never taught of it that way, i think dealing with my wife is one of my bigger fears. She knows about my situation but she thinks it can be fix with therapy

Quote from: Lori on May 27, 2009, 08:33:02 PM
Maybe I've had drugs too many times and have read and studied so much

yes probobly.... mmmm did I....

Quote from: Janet Lynn on May 27, 2009, 08:58:39 PM
Did I do to much research?  Did I talk myself into it?  Could it just be a phase?

arrr yes that must be it.....

Quote from: gata123pr on May 27, 2009, 10:28:46 PM
I think a lot of the issues are that you stare in the mirror and cannot possibly see what the end product will be like or have a clue about where to start or how you will ever survive

yes yes yes....


But I came here to find the awnsers becauce I knew there was something wrong so that thery doesnt work....

I used to think I was a transsexual before I fully understood what it meant and back then fraud was in the ballpark of what I was feeling. It just didn't fit. I had the same feelings to a far greater degree for ->-bleeped-<- (both fetishistic and non). But now I feel most comfortable using the term Transgender except that for many people unfamiliar with Trans stuff they think it is synonymous with Transsexual.

Quote from: Buffy on May 27, 2009, 12:22:26 AM
I think a lot of the issues are that you stare in the mirror and cannot possibly see what the end product will be like or have a clue about where to start or how you will ever survive. So the best thing is to keep denying and try and cope with the pain.

I was never a fraud, just a coward. Taking that first step is the hardest.

Buffy

That should seriously be in a book.

I'm with Janet on this, i literally spent maybe hundreds of hours online doing research, but finally after a few sessions with my therapist and reliving some of my past experiences i was finally able to accept that I'm transsexual, if this was a phase it lasted 56 years

Hormones for me was like putting high octane gasoline in a high performance  sports car, it makes me run so much better.

Paula

I think the term and true meaning of what a transsexual is has been exploted by ->-bleeped-<-s to a certain extent.

Do you care to specify. I think I know what you're talking about, but I'd rather be sure before I voice agreement.

After I discovered what the word transsexual was and that there was something one could to about it, and many did. To me it was like I was drowning at sea and someone had just thrown me a life preserver. That word of salvation was *transition*. I didn't now anything about any of the other shades in the gender spectrum back then, just the word transsexual.

I have asked myself many times how does transsexuality and GID happen and why. Fear? but of course, I don't think there is a soul who doesn't feel fear at the thoughts of transitioning, but that never held me back. I was 55 years old and no one to hold me back, or no one for me to hold back for.

After my first day full time I no longer had any doubt and the fear deminished each day I went out presenting as myself and within a couple of weeks I felt like I had always been who I was. I never felt fake, I knew who the inner self was before I even started transitioning, I had no doubt of that, I only just needed to let her emerge outwards to the surface.

I integrated easily on the job and with the town people. I have always been an outgoing upbeat person and still am and I beleive it was that kind of attitude and personality that helped me to be accepted.

Cindy   

Quote from: cindybc on June 01, 2009, 03:48:21 AM
After I discovered what the word transsexual was and that there was something one could to about it, and many did. To me it was like I was drowning at sea and someone had just thrown me a life preserver. That word of salvation was *transition*. I didn't now anything about any of the other shades in the gender spectrum back then, just the word transsexual.

I have asked myself many times how does transsexuality and GID happen and why. Fear? but of course, I don't think there is a soul who doesn't feel fear at the thoughts of transitioning, but that never held me back. I was 55 years old and no one to hold me back, or no one for me to hold back for.

After my first day full time I no longer had any doubt and the fear deminished each day I went out presenting as myself and within a couple of weeks I felt like I had always been who I was. I never felt fake, I knew who the inner self was before I even started transitioning, I had no doubt of that, I only just needed to let her emerge outwards to the surface.

I integrated easily on the job and with the town people. I have always been an outgoing upbeat person and still am and I beleive it was that kind of attitude and personality that helped me to be accepted.

Cindy   

Me too.  Once begun, my only doubts were whether I could do this, never whether I should.  Like Janet, I did lots of research.  I finally took the first steps but refused to look too far down the path.  I only knew I had to begin.

I didn't know how good a woman I would be but I was sure I would be happier pretending to be a woman than I ever was pretending to be a man.  So far, that has been true for me.

I have consistently applied the word transgendered to myself, since it can be all-inclusive.  Now I am beginning to accept the word transsexual.

But words don't matter.  Categories don't matter.  Being yourself matters.  And finding yourself can be a confusing and wondrous journey.

- Kate

Oh yes, I spent a lot of years hiding who I was, pretending I was something else, hoping I was something else, begging to be something else, mostly to convince myself, but also to provide for my family and all of that.  There are times I think I am a fraud, and realize that the only time this is true is when I am being disingenuous with who I am.  In other words, if I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi

Quote from: Kristi on June 01, 2009, 09:30:08 AMIn other words, if I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi

WOW. So much truth to that.

But remember -- society sanctions against non-normalcy.  There is a price to be paid for being who you really are if who you really are is not just like the established order says it is.

I can't find it now, but there was an essay at Huffington Post that summed up the gay experience with being outside the accepted norms.  A man who was gay found himself seated next to a nosy, grandmotherly woman.  He knew the type and dreaded the conversation.  She kept asking him about himself, and if he had a wife and kids.  He tried to dodge the question as best he could...  She kept at it.  He said that he just wasn't the marrying type.  She said he was so handsome, he should have girls chasing him, etc.  And now she really started asking him why he wasn't married.

He capitulated.  "I'm gay," he said. "How dare you shove your disgusting lifestyle down our throats!" she retorted.  He pointed out that he'd been trying to avoid the topic with her for the past half hour, but it was she who persisted.

Then he asked her if she expected him to lie to her.

"Yes" she said.

"Is truth and honesty a virtue?" he asked.  She agreed.

"But when it makes you uncomfortable, you expect me to lie?"

That shut her up

We transgenders have a double-bind.  Those of us who pass well are expected to go deep stealth and never tell, because if we are found out, they will dogpile on us for being deceivers -- the longer the period in stealth, the larger the punishment.

But if we admit up front of our transgender-ness, we're punished for being disgusting.

Still, what Kristi said is right:

Quoteif I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

Through the fire is our eventual freedom.

Karen

Well I look at it this way, I am 63 years old, I already lived as my true self for nearly a decade, 6 years of that decade people knew who I was and accepted me as who I presented.

For the last part of that decade I have moved, people don't know anything about my past except for when I am a facilitator at the local TS support group once a week. And so now I have a balance, I work with TS and I also work at a Woman's Shelter, (As a bonafide woman). I never had to lie to any of my cisgendered friends about my past.

I have many friends because I also run a local meetup group.  I only just switch the gender roles in my stories of my past life when talking about such things as child rearing, I helped raise 8 children through the years, including my own three. That made for A lot of diaper changing and a lot of small talk sitting around the table drinking coffee with other women. So I fit in the roll quite well when it comes to telling stories of the past.

Now I have maybe thirty more years to go, if I'm long lived, and I intend to enjoy every moment to the fullest like there were no tomorrow. Worrying about being outed is to much of a waste of energy. "Why worry?" Because you never know about tomorrow, I could walk out of the house and get run over by a ->-bleeped-<- hating city bus driver or die of a heart attack. Whats the diff, I'm just as dead either way.

So if one is in for the deal then you better belly up to the card table.

Cindy 

I know that when I was very young, I just plain did not know what was going on. Why did I like to dress as a girl, why did I like to play with dolls, why did I like to bake and sew and not play football, why did I find boys attractive?

I don't think I ever faced denial. When I was young I did not know what it meant to be gay, and especially to be transgendered or transsexual. Even as I grew older I still did not fully know what was going on.

So for me, it was never denial about who I was. I just learned more and more about myself along the way to find how transgendered I am.

Quote from: Becca on May 27, 2009, 12:09:56 AMHormone therapy, for me, was the bellringer. When I started supressing my testosterone production, and replacing it with Estrogen and liked it, the doubts vanished.

^^^
This!

My Mom and my sisters-- far away in other parts of the country, without ever seeing me or knowing my current life at all-- have judged me as a fraud and keep telling me I'm not who I know myself to be. If they could see how I'm living now, post-transition, and how much happier I am, they wouldn't be able to say that. But for years now they have exiled me and refused to see me, so that sight unseen they can judge me.  ::) All they did was add to the burden I had to lift to get out from under it, as they tried to plant doubts that I'm for real, and I had to devote more mental energy to refuting them.

By now, though, their denial is so obviously wrong I can't be bothered any more. I know who I am, I'm secure in who I am, and I'm finally living that knowledge. Nobody can put me back in denial any more-- once you've seen the truth, you can't go back to lying to yourself. Nobody can take that inner security away from me. You're so right, the hormones definitively clinched it.

Alan Turing was a gay man, he was arrested and convicted of homosexuality when it was illegal, and they forced him to take estrogen as punishment. But he was a man. He could not deal with the effect of estrogen on his body and mind, so he killed himself. They effectively murdered him. One of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, whose discoveries have shaped all of our lives, who saved his country from the Nazis, and this is the gratitude they showed him.

He basically died from sudden gender dysphoria. We have gotten more or less used to it, having dealt with it all our lives, and usually manage to tough it out until we can get it fixed. But for it to suddenly hit someone who'd never had it before must be shattering.

But now I'm thriving on E like I never could have before. :) I'm a fish born on dry land who finally made it into the water.

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Post Merge: June 04, 2009, 02:02:22 PM

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Quote from: Lori on June 01, 2009, 02:24:07 PM

Quote from: Kristi on June 01, 2009, 09:30:08 AMif I cannot be who I truly am, every relationship I have had is fraudulent.  Every conversation is misleading.  Every memory a lie.  Every hope delusion.

WOW. So much truth to that.

+1