Hi, everyone! So I've been struggling with my gender for years now and am finally starting to accept that this isn't going away and that I'm some form of transgender. But what keeps tripping me up is that the only time I feel really certain about my gender is in relation to sex and relationships. Most of the time I can say I want to be a boy. I can say I feel like a boy or I think I'm a boy, but I'm not sure if I'm entirely a boy or if I'm a boy all the time. I also don't know if I can say that I'm really not a girl and I often wonder how much of that is insecurity or internalized transphobia. Like it's so hard to believe I'm not a girl because everyone is telling me I am one and I look so much like a stereotypical femme cis girl and I'm very feminine in a lot of ways so how can I really be a boy? But when it comes to sex/relationships I can absolutely say that I am not a girl and that I am definitely a boy, haha. I'm a boy in all of my sexual fantasies, unless I'm forcing myself to be a girl, which is miserable. But when I've slept with people/been in relationships I've tried to be a girl and that has absolutely not worked for me. I spent the whole time feeling like a boy, but trying to be a girl AND dealing with the dysphoria I have about my body, so I am very clear on that score that I am not a girl. I also tend to identify more with queer men than anyone else, which was part of what got me started thinking about my gender all the time (Hmmm, I don't think most girls run around thinking of themselves as queer men. What does this mean? Lol). I'm just wondering if anyone else has had that experience where their gender dysphoria seemed to manifest more around sex and relationships than anything else. I hear so many stories where people are certain about their gender all the time. Or they knew from a young age. Or they hated everything about the gender they were assigned at birth. And then I look at myself and just feel confused. Sigh.
While I can't tell you whether you are ftm or not, I can offer you some personal experience.
It might seem like it, but not everyone is 100% certain their entire life. For the longest time, I had no idea. I was just me, and didn't question anything. I accepted that I was a "girl". However, now that I look back, there were lots of "pointers" there, right from the beginning. Since I had no knowledge of what trans was, I figured I was just a "girl" who liked not so "girly" things. I suppose here's where your typical story begins; I used to hate dolls, liked car toys and all that, not going to type it all out. Either way, my point is, I didn't really know for a long time. And I couldn't possibly be the only person.
Moving on to a timeline closer to when I realized, I used to often go around filling in my "gender" on the internet as "choose not to state" or hide it from the profile. Eventually, I refused, whatsoever, to tell people what "gender" I was. Later on, a lot of times, I would play mind games with people and make them confused (I used to do this with a lot of other things too though), and eventually they would generally think I was a guy. That idea pleased me, and I really liked it when they would refer to me as he/him and all. (Might be a good idea to try that for yourself, excluding the mind games part. Just "try" being male on the internet for a while and see how you like it.) Later on, I started playing online games where I always had a male character. People assumed I was a (cis) male and treated me that way. I felt pleased with that as well, although sometimes I felt a little guilt for "not telling them". Apparently this happens a lot for trans people, so I guess it's normal.
At some point, I had come across the term "transgender". By then, I already knew what it meant, and I had some basic understanding, but for some reason, I suddenly took notice of the word, and even though I was afraid of it, I knew, in the back of my mind, that that was me. For a while, I ignored it. As I said, I was scared of it. Scared of what would happen if I started identifying as trans, as ftm. I would be different from other people, and due to some things that happened in the past, I was scared of being different. I didn't want to be different, so I ignored it. As time went on, I started realizing I shouldn't have. Nothing (in my opinion) particularly bad happened from ignoring it, but neither did anything good. Once I finally started accepting it, I first thought of myself as some form of genderfluid or something similar, leaning more towards female. Though as time went on, I started discarding that and shifting towards something more male. In the end, I ended up with ftm. I kept it to myself for a while, doubting myself (which i still do) and thinking that maybe I really just was cis after all, and that it was all a mistake or a phase.
Around the same time, I sat down and thought for a while. I looked back at my childhood, how I felt, how I acted, all of that, and realized that maybe I really wasn't cis. My entire life, I had felt more masculine, and didn't really like being feminine. It had gotten more intense the few years before I came out to myself. Looking back, I realized that in those few years before, I actually did have some sort of dysphoria. Other than certain designated moments (I'll get into this later), I didn't like being seen as feminine, and I avoided it. While mild, it was still sort of dysphoria.
Thinking of being "seen" as feminine, this brings me to physical looks. With long hair, I look extremely feminine. When I see older pictures of myself, I can't help thinking the girl I see is very feminine and cute. Narcissistic in a way, I suppose, but I don't really see myself in those pictures. I see a girl that is not me (one I would probably consider way out of my league, to be honest). But when I think back at how I felt at that time, I felt masculine, very much so. Yet because everyone saw a petite, feminine me, they treated me like that too, and I was forced to, in a way, think of myself that way too. A bit contradicting is the fact that I, at the same time, thought of myself as very masculine. I remember one time giving advice to a friend who was at the time crossdressing, "You probably shouldn't stand with your legs so wide apart, it's something men do and you'll probably pass better if you don't do it" (Might sound harsh, but he didn't take it that way.) I was met with a response, "But you're doing the same thing yourself!" I suppose it's slightly unrelated, but it reminded me of that.
Now, back to the "designated moments" I said I'd get into later, specifically, this would be dressing feminine, with the intention to look like a female. I'm not entirely sure whether you would call this crossdressing since I identify as male, or not crossdressing, since my body is physically female, but that's not important here. I have a sort of thing for it, always have. At first, I thought this meant I was cis, or at least some sort of female being, but I later on realized that I only see it as a hobby, not something I identify with. In other words, even if you like feminine things, or even dressing up as a woman, it does not necessarily mean you are one.
Either way, this got horribly long and I'm so sorry about that, but I hope you'll read it and find at least some information that will help you.
Oh, oops, I completely forgot to mention anything related to your actual question. Sorry!
I understand the relationships and sex part. Before I came out to myself, I really did not like the girl "role" in the relationship and always saw myself as a guy. I've been the "girl" in the relationship before as well, didn't work out for me either. I think dysphoria around relationships was actually one of the first things I noticed way before coming out to myself (I had other dysphoria too, but didn't really pay attention to it until later).
About identifying better with queer men, read my other post (although it may be long) for reference, I mentioned something similar in there.
Yes. It manifested way more for me in the business of sex, although admittedly I was never in doubt about myself being trans.
I think because it is easier to ignore, skirt, disregard, flout all the social gender BS when the closest it gets to you is a pronoun or a toilet sign or a letter on a passport. It's very difficult to ignore the huge differences/inequalities of biological sex and male and female bodies when you're 'getting down to it' and partaking in it.
As a consequence I always felt that gay/lesbian relationships seemed "fairer" to me, both partners have equal abilities and anatomies. I felt far more partial to that than to male-female relations. And it usually felt better if I was taking part in sexual activities males also can, than in the ones only females can (i.e. those involving a vagina).
I knew from a young age that I was masculine. I don't think I ever used the words that I should've been a boy. I hung out with boys, did stereotypical boy activities, etc. When I got into junior high (12-13), it was much the same, except I also realized that I had feelings for women. So in my mind, which lacked any kind of knowledge about gender, I assumed that this was what it felt like to be a "butch" lesbian.
When I learned that being transgender was an actual thing, I was 17 and a close friend I had grown up with was transitioning. In conversations we would have, a lot of the things he felt mirrored the way I had felt at the time.
Before that, I suppose it was easiest to figure out my identity in the context of relationships. In the relationships I was in, I was free to be as masculine as I wanted, I was never the passive player when it came to sex, etc.
Not everyone figures it out when they're young. But cis people don't question their gender, so you're at least somewhere under the trans umbrella. Take some steps and see if being more masculine feels right to you, or if being genderqueer is maybe a better term.
Thanks, guys :) I'm glad to hear that you all found more certainty over time. I definitely did think of myself as a boy when I was a kid but it wasn't an all the time thing. So that can be confusing. When I thought of myself as a girl was I wrong? Was my gender just really fluid? Haha. I'm still trying to figure that out, but like Kanzaki, I seem to have moved from genderfluid to feeling more masculine more consistently.
Quote from: T.K.G.W. on January 10, 2016, 08:12:44 AM
I think because it is easier to ignore, skirt, disregard, flout all the social gender BS when the closest it gets to you is a pronoun or a toilet sign or a letter on a passport. It's very difficult to ignore the huge differences/inequalities of biological sex and male and female bodies when you're 'getting down to it' and partaking in it.
Yes, I think this is it exactly. It is just so much harder to ignore the dysphoria when it comes to that kind of intimacy.