Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I have been thinking that a lot of my shame about transgender thoughts in early years. I think I always felt guilty for 'wanting' to be female, 'wanting' to dress in female clothes, 'wanting' to have boobs and a vagina. I don't think I ever thought much about being driven by my body (my brain formation) to need to do these things. As I have come to terms with being trans, I feel my attitude has changed a lot. Specifically, I think all of my 'wants' were really 'needs.' My body, my brain needed to do everything trans related that I have done. It wasn't a 'want' at all. Or maybe I wanted feminine things because my body needed feminine things. I hope this makes sense. What do you think? Awe, my first poll!
Monica

I feel a need to transform to a man. My will has little to do with it. I've felt male since childhood.

My longings feel more like a want rather than a need right now, but I'm very early in my process of self-realization and transition. I've literally only been working on accepting this aspect of myself for less than a month, so I'm not real concerned; that being said, I feel like making a distinction for this may be quite divisive, as the words people use to describe their feelings change over time. If we put a qualifier on whether it's a want or need, that might be great at the surface level for diagnostics, but people vary too much and when they're already scared and uncertain, unnecessary qualifiers just make the process much more convoluted.

Just my two cents worth. :)

I feel like I was put on a slide 10 years ago when I found out I was trasgender. I wanted to go down the slide to meet the whole myself. I let go and went down the slide. I am now travelling too fast to break in the middle of the slide. I now feel a need to meet myself at the end of the slide. I can't stop and climb back up. I can't break an stop in the middle.

Will and need changes, just like you said.  This is me, how I feel. That is ok, your feelings are also ok. Nobody can take ones feelings away.

Years ago I thought it was a want, but it's so connected to my inner self (and always has been) that not doing it means repressing my true self, which is paralyzing socially. I need to be seen as female to be myself in public without drawing unwanted attention. If that statement is true, it's a need. If the attention is wanted as in a drag performance that's a want.
That isn't to say you can't both want and need to be female though. I need to be, and I also want to be (but I answered need)

Before I started to transition I thought it was a "want".  50 years of Wanting to be a girl.  I started to transition and stopped and had a mental breakdown. Apparently now it's a must have (need).

Both of those thought have given me great comfort now.  I don't have a choice in this I really must do this for my own sanity - thank God I want it too.  I'm sorry for the hurt I've caused my wife (it kills me every day) but we both realize I had not choice.

I have been asking myself the same question. Do I want this or do I need this? Or am I convincing myself that I need this because I want it so much? I was driving myself crazy. In the end I came to the conclusion that NO, I do not want this, and the only reason these thoughts exist in my head is because of a medical condition I have no control over. So now I am believing that is more of a need, the same way I need air. I have no control over it. If I was younger and single, I might also WANT this, but I don't, because like Denise, it kills me knowing that my need is causing hurt for my wife. Sometimes I find it difficult to distinguish between want and need, but I would have to settle on need.

Jessie

I thought much of this drive was 'want', but when I suppressed that 'want', it pretty rapidly turns corrosive, pushing my anxiety up, and threatening the return of depression.  This suggests rather strongly that it is actually a 'need'.

Simply being myself, and continuing HRT and my transition has been a massive relief.  For a mere 'want', addressing it has improved my life so much, to the point where I am now the happiest I have been in my adult life.  That's quite a change, and it suggests that measures that result in happiness and relief from severe depression and anxiety are more of a 'need' than a 'want' for me.

I am what I am, and I need to be true to myself.  Simply wanting to be myself and hiding myself away to ease the discomfort of others at the expense of my life and sanity is a poor choice, and one that I cannot make.

I really, finally know that I must be true to myself.

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I'm not sure if I could classify them as either a Want or a Need, what I do know is that a few weeks ago I had one of the most significant revelations in my life, suddenly everything clicked and I realised all along I had been female, all of the times in my life when I'd felt gender confusion went away, and I knew this was right

Mine is neither want nor need. It is simply and finally accepting what "is".

I am a woman I don't need or want to be anything

Liz

 I'm a transexual, I think like a transexual, I have the needs and wants of a transexual. And that's a perfectly normal way of being. I don't really know any different, It's how things have always been for me.

shy

I don't think it's either a need or a want.  It's simply what I am.  It is others who force the meaning of need or want by defining all this as a deviant mental choice.  It is not that at all.  It is simply a state of being which, while unusual, does not involve any choice at all.


Conform and be dull. —James Frank Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote

I am not sure that I can distinguish wants and needs in this case, and I am not sure the distinction has meaning.  In earlier years I believed it was "just" a want, and that I could set it aside.  But my inner self insisted on existing.

Now I do not feel that I am acquiring anything, so it is neither a want nor a need.  I am shedding superfluous layers.  I no longer need the prison walls that I built around myself.  I no longer need the grey drab disguise that I wore for so many years.

I am not becoming anything; I am not getting anything; there is nothing to need or want.  I am, and I will be.

Back in my early 20's before and during my 2 utter failed transition experiments I would have leaned a lot more towards "A Need". Obviously not an all consuming need, but a heck of a lot more then simply wanting to. In the late 70's early 80's being 6ft tall and big everything, as an MTF you will stand out as "One of those". Not a good thing back then. Stealth in any way shape or form was a total fantasy.

Also, just as today, I had a very good percentage of my life working up other coping strategies. Fair enough, in my later years some were not so healthy for me both physically and emotionally. Never the less, I dealt with being trans the best I knew how which was mostly "Stuffing" with some begrudging acceptance/denial mantra of "Just a CD (with a long lost dream)"

All those coping mechanisms blew up BIG Time 8 years ago. After much self reflection it was clear how I was NOT Handling being trans was the root cause of much of the dysfunction in my life and a percentage of the disasters. I may not have wanted to take on the Trans-Beast, but I need to if I wanted to have anything close to a life worth living.

Today I know there are plenty of "Need To's" I must take care of. Taking Care of Myself, my needs, my wants, is still a bit of a foreign concept. A holdover of my active denial days for dealing with GD. Ignore it and it will go away. Slacking off on HRT comes with dire, depressive disastrous consequences. The same I am learning with not presenting more often as Joanne like I used to. (Gone for now are the days of part-time living as Joanne) Both are Needs not just wants. How many other "Wants" will morph into Needs as time goes on? They'll get addressed as I walk down this path just as the ones before them were. What I needed long forgotten yesterdays ago are no more. Much of what I need today was not even a dreamed of. Tomorrow will be no different.

It's hard to draw a line between the 2.  When I was a kid, I thought there was something wrong with me, so it certainly wasn't a want then.  Over the years, I have come to the conclusion being trans is part of me.  So, while there may be some wants to this, over all, it's needs.

Tbh I don't 'want' to be a dude. There's no "wouldn't it be cooler if I were a man" thoughts, from what I've seen men have it worse in lots of ways so it feels like a step down. There's no affinity for what I was born with either.

There's just the fact I am uncomfortable with my body, I am uncomfortable having or using female anatomy, I don't get along with people easily in this skin who see me as forceful and intimidating, and I isolate and deny myself most of life's fun experiences because none of it works right from this position, I don't even want to think about the sum of the mental toll and what it's done to me and how much it's screwed up my life.

It's a want to be more comfortable. It's a need to do so before I lose my ****.

I voted "need" because the alternative is not very nice.

I think its more of a need it may be a bit hard to describe.
I hate that i was born male and i get very depressed becaus of it.
I see myself as a woman and want to live that way.
So i feel that i need to be a woman to be happy with myself and live my life.
But i still might say that i want to be a woman but thats more just the way i talk.

I've thought about this a lot lately. I'm not far into my transition at the moment and every time I think about my transition, I think in terms of "I want this...I want that".  When I actually get the the thing I wanted (like dressing permanently male, and testosterone) the thought of having to back track or detransition gives me extreme anxiety and I know I would be suicidal if that ever happened which makes think that these things were actually needs after all.

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Quote from: Kylo on March 05, 2017, 09:23:25 AM
Tbh I don't 'want' to be a dude. There's no "wouldn't it be cooler if I were a man" thoughts, from what I've seen men have it worse in lots of ways so it feels like a step down. There's no affinity for what I was born with either.

There's just the fact I am uncomfortable with my body, I am uncomfortable having or using female anatomy, I don't get along with people easily in this skin who see me as forceful and intimidating, and I isolate and deny myself most of life's fun experiences because none of it works right from this position, I don't even want to think about the sum of the mental toll and what it's done to me and how much it's screwed up my life.

It's a want to be more comfortable. It's a need to do so before I lose my ****.

That is pretty much exactly how I feel, except in reverse.

Jessie

Quote from: Kylo on March 05, 2017, 09:23:25 AM
Tbh I don't 'want' to be a dude. There's no "wouldn't it be cooler if I were a man" thoughts, from what I've seen men have it worse in lots of ways so it feels like a step down. There's no affinity for what I was born with either.

There's just the fact I am uncomfortable with my body, I am uncomfortable having or using female anatomy, I don't get along with people easily in this skin who see me as forceful and intimidating, and I isolate and deny myself most of life's fun experiences because none of it works right from this position, I don't even want to think about the sum of the mental toll and what it's done to me and how much it's screwed up my life.

It's a want to be more comfortable. It's a need to do so before I lose my ****.

A wonderful way to frame this "gift" of being transgender. I never wanted this. I chose to transition because I was so tired of the pain and frustration that anything seemed like an improvement.  I risked losing my friends, my family, and my career.  I managed to keep my career and most of my friends. But I may have finally found a path to being at peace with myself.

With kindness,

Terri

  Throughout my time growing up and to this date I have "wanted" to be a woman. Not always consciously mind you. Sometime I was satisfied being a boy/man. But as I look back on things I think about how I have always returned to my crossdressing. Sometimes with a vengeance. I am coming to the realizations that my "wants" may in fact have been "needs" I neither recognized nor wanted to acknowledge. So my answer of "wants" may well be wrong tomorrow when I fully accept myself as a woman. That is still a work in progress.

  Hugs,
   Jeanette

I often find areas of my person that do not line up with any gender role, so there is a third category.  Overall?  Definitely Yin in most things, but there is that bit of Yang that I will always have and honestly do not mind.  Looking at it from a binary perspective, I WANT to be female and I NEED to transition.

I was running out of time at 64. Knowing I was different since childhood and covering up. For the first time in my life I am totally at ease. No regrets about taking the little green pills. Just wish they could make me walk in heels.

I can't really say that it was a want or a need, I lived in denial for far too many years until I realized that it's just how it is

In the case of gender, wants and needs can't really be separated IMO. It's not as simple as a want for the newest Xbox gaming machine but knowing you can't afford it, and you really don't need it. I both want and need to be who I am. Maslow figured this out in the 1940s that self --- who you are --- is number one.

The reason the distinction is not useless but perhaps not real helpful either is that there is a vast continuum between needs and wants and where do you draw the line?

I need oxygen in the next few minutes to keep living is one extreme.
I want to change my nail polish color for the week tomorrow is a want to the other extreme.

But in between are a whole lot of other ones with various levels of needs vs wants. Its actually fairly complex.

What a coincidence seeing this topic, I'm struggling right now with feeling that I "want" to "need" it.  I am definitely coming down from the worst of mulling over all of this, I don't know if that's just a normal calming phase, or trying to rebuild my walls, or whatever, but it's making me feel like a fraud and question whether I really only "wanted" to be transgender due to other issues, and don't need to be.  Life is persnickety.

I put mine on 50/50. While I have had this deep want to be female for as long as I can recall, it wasn't until recently I felt the need to do something about it. I have yet to speak with a professional about this, I have yet to make drastic changes in my life to setup for this; but I have sought out advice from my wife, and have been accepted by her as this is the path we both feel is the way I need to go. I don't want to change my entire life from what it has been for 35 years, but I need to acknowledge my needs too. There is the old saying, "I'm just a lesbian in a man's body", and wouldn't you know that's exactly how I've always felt (well not 100%, I'm more of a pan when it comes to guys).
I feel that we all have this want, this desire, to find ourselves, and the only way to be sure is we need to take steps in the direction we are all needing to go to do it.

I answered neither, and here's why.  I am a woman, period.  There is no want or need, it's just the matter of who I am. As a result I feel I need to have a female body to match my gender and set me free from this prison.  I suppose maybe that was the intent of the question but it wasn't how the answers were worded so, being very literal in nature, that's how I answered.

Even with a gob like this the brain tells me I am in the wrong body , not just thoughts but needs physical change as well. As in some off the above posts, if I don't do it now the change may never happen, 61 years in this meat suit is telling so NEEDS is what it is, this is after a long time of wants.

I have a hard time describing my experience in these terms.  I am the way I am and have pretty much always been this way (well, with some warping in childhood due to the utter unacceptability of who and what I was.)

It doesn't feel like my acceding to wants or needs.  It feels more like me trying stuff out and sticking with the things that make me feel better and more like me.  That is, I'm not aware of a need/want until I do something and realize that it "hits the spot."

To go with a popular analogy, it's like only discovering that the size and shape of shoe you normally wear are why your legs and feet hurt by putting on ones that fit better.  And when your feet stop hurting after a lifetime of foot pain, you can't make yourself go back to shoes that hurt.