Susan's Place Transgender Resources

There were a lot of sociological reasons that helped, but primarily what kept me from acknowledging my whole self; was, "Silence of the Lambs"  The way that movie depicted transgender's made me not want to be associated with that...  It really set me back.  I think that I would have come out much earlier had I not seen that movie when I was about nine...  It's a love/hate relationship though...

Religous fear at first.
Then the belief that I somehow owed being a man to my family and friends.
Fear of rejection weighs in heavy on this also.

Yeah at first it was lack of knowledge that it was even possible to do anything about it. I mean why say anything if nothing will change? I wasn't internet savvy until after school and even then it took awhile to realise it really was a possibility. Then I had to dwell on that and figure out what to do. My so called friends at the time thought I was gay and would direct gay jokes in my direction, even though I didn't come across like that other than not being blokey and being the one that would do the cleaning and complain when anyone didn't wash up etc. Everyone I lived with were gross slobs and it just highlighted how different I was, not to say all girls are clean freaks per se. >_<
I wanted to be in a position where I could actually do something about it financially and to be independent enough to get by on my own. That took 2-3 years and then the frustration of trying to build the confidence.. I instead thought well I should just end it and not have to stress over it any more... and one day when I was really upset my partner who I was living with at the time talked to me and she knew what I was going through and didn't like it and wanted to move home so that was the final straw in my decision. I was so upset that I broke down and told her what I was going to do ( as in end it all) and she called my mum. I don't really remember driving to my mums but I told her everything through tears and I felt better for doing so. She accepted me, then the following weeks she took a step back to digest but then was ok with everything once the dust settled.
I guess I worried too much what other people thought and worried everyone would abandon me, I lost most of my "friends" and a few family members but it wasn't as bad as I first thought it would be. In a way it was a fresh start... leaving the crap behind and in a way starting over was liberating. In hindsight I wasn't living life not being true to myself, so much better now!!

Lack of knowledge. I simply had no idea. I had heard about guys like Brandon Teena who lived as male without medical intervention, but I could not pass this way. I had absolutely no knowledge about HRT or that my appearance could ever change. I did the best I could, dressing like a guy and using a male name but my appearance was such that I could never hope to live as a man. It wasn't until I was struggling to get clean that I finally messed around the internet enough to discover that there was treatment available at age 27. I can't really say what I would have done if I had known earlier. Would I have transitioned at 17 if I had known that was an option? I don't know.
But I took steps to transition the second I knew it was an option, so I can only say with any certainty that what held back my self-acceptance was lack of knowledge. And to some extent health issues, as it was some time before I was well enough to start HRT and surgery.

Ever since I was a kid, I've wondered about my sanity...I mean, when I was really little, preteen, I mostly had this vague unease and a fascination with movies set in mental hospitals, and I knew not to tell anyone about my inner boy life.

At 26, I found my first book about FTM transsexuals. The author claimed to have all of this experience with people like me...and he basically considered us pathological. Mentally ill. In need of therapy.

So I was afraid I was crazy.

Years later, I read that you couldn't transition if you'd been molested (I had). I read that you couldn't transition if you didn't want a penis (I wanted one, but the surgical results looked terrible). I figured I could work around those, but I couldn't hide the fact that I was gay-identified. I had read that there was no such thing as a gay trans man.

I kept wondering why not. Why couldn't there be gay trans men? This just made me think I was even more of a freak.

Once I found out that there were other gay guys like me, I still had obstacles. I was afraid of the unknown and afraid of being a freak and afraid that I would lose my partner. Mostly the last one, in the end. If he'd been supportive, I probably would have transitioned ten years earlier.

I actually still struggle with self-acceptance. My partner broke up with me, and that rejection still hurts. My brother seems hostile, and I'm not sure why. I still haven't come out to my father, and I can't decide whether I should. Being rejected by him would just about kill me. I hate my bottom parts and I know that most gay men would hate them as much as I do. I worry that people will find out about me, and I'm not confident enough yet to stop worrying about that. I frequently still wonder if I really am mentally ill, and I often think of myself as a freak. Some days, because of these factors and others, I still go through the "I don't want to be trans!" cycle.

But I'm getting better.

When I was still a child, what held me back were my family's dynamics. My older sister especially, but also my older brother, were making serious play for supremacy and any individuality would have caused open warfare in the family unit as a whole. My sister would have seen it as some sort of attempt to be her equal.

As I got older, I lacked the confidence to meet others. The only regular contacts I had were from my family. These were, in retrospect especially, incredably damaging, demeaning and completely unfulfilling, they were all I had at the time.

I made one brief attempt to change, at 18. But sadly, while it was very successful in the short term, my self confidence meant that I was unable to maintain a relationship. When it ended, as it had to, I had nothing to go back to. I did try to establish more relationships but being the type of person I was at the time, became entangled with psychopaths who saw me as a joke which they could abuse at will.

If I had been able, I believe that I would have be completely successful, had I had some social contacts. But even now, the statement, I needed a friend, just sounds so pathetic. It is really sad when such a basic human need, for friends, the ability to make freinds, is treated as pathetic.

Lack of knowledge, for one.  I was aware that transsexuals existed, but knew so little about them, and saw that the reaction most people had to them was one of disgust and confusion.

Lack of understanding, thinking that I had to be a girl because of my personality and some of the things I like being "feminine," and not being able to reconcile that with my feelings of wanting to be male.  Eventually I started to understand and accept that there are feminine cis men and masculine cis women, and if they can exist then there's nothing wrong with being a feminine trans man.

It's a matter of fact I didn't know much about transsexuality, in that time there was no internet.
There was just some little information in magazines, but very little.
I didn't had selfacceptance as a boy, it was just something it didn't belong to me. I wasn't happy.
The day I find out what was the matter with me and I decided to do something about it, I had selfacceptance.
That was a good thing coz people around me didn't accept me anymore for being TG.

I didn't care to much about it, for the first time I had selfacceptance and dignity.
Nobody should take that away, no way.

Life has only became better since than.

it was mostly just the idea that i would be associated as a sex offender, someone who has no class or moral character, someone who is a bad example of a human being. eventually, i started seeing that it was not transsexuals who were the enemy, but the victims rather. i got to start seeing there was nothing wrong with my femininity, and then it turned into just identifying as female. it's all about this good/bad thinking that society pressures, which made me feel pretty lost and depressed. i withdrew myself in that period.

I'm agreeing with lack of knowledge at first.  I knew that transgendered people existed, but my impression was that there were some gay men who grew up insisting they were women and became crossdressers.  I didn't see that as a negative or anything, but it didn't fit me in any way.  I didn't know that anyone could live full time or that hormones and legal transition were possible.

Currently I'm more accepting of myself, but a number of fears are holding me from coming out to the people around me.  I have a wonderful life, and I'm afraid of losing it.

What kept me from accepting myself as female was mainly the values that my family expected me live up to.

My parents are very traditional and closed minded individuals and due to that, I was/am very afraid of what they would think of/ do to me if they ever found out.

Other factors are the reactions that other people had when I attempted to behave as I would like to be able to, and the rejection by others wich I would very much like to develop personal relationships with.

TW: brief mention of suicide, depression

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home, and questioning gender and sexuality was strictly taboo. I thought I was a sinner and a pervert, and I hated myself for it. I tried to change who I was when I was in junior high and early high school, but all it did was lead me into depression and suicide attempts. I also didn't know what being transgender meant: I was aware of transwomen, but only in the context of Christian condemnation, invalidation and cultural stigma. I didn't even know transmen existed until this year...that may sound strange, but I was indoctrinated since I was born: home schooled until 5th grade, then attended Christian private schools, forced to attend my father's church multiple times a week, bombarded with my father's theology lectures around the house, library materials censored, and my internet usage was censored and monitored. Not to say I didn't learn from any outside perspectives when I got older, I did, but I had to be stealthy.

So I guess ignorance and self-hatred got in my way the most. Once I denounced Christianity, I started to accept myself slowly but surely. Learning about trans issues, identities and physical transition REALLY helped me out, too.

I grew up in the mid-west, the bible belt, a little under priveleged, and lived out in the sticks so to speak. I graduated from a very small High School and even by college the first time around, in the 90's, I still hadn't heard of transgender only gay and it was starting to cause me to question that. (My male alter ego, my genetics, is not. However I believe I am bi as Lana)

For me, fear. Fear that everyone wold know and that I would loose everything.

In the end I realized that when the pain and fear of staying the same becomes greater then pain and fear of change, change will happen.

Quote from: The Original Cami on June 08, 2011, 11:51:31 AM
In the end I realized that when the pain and fear of staying the same becomes greater then pain and fear of change, change will happen.

Nicely put.

1.  Fear of losing my family.

2.  Fear that it was against my religion.

3.  Fear of losing my job and not finding another.

I think that one of the main issues for me in my early life was that I had such a bad and incorrect view of women, mainly due to my mother's craziness and fundamentalist church teaching.  Fear of going to Hell was probably next in line.  Lack of knowledge and an abusive father did not help.

Fear of being wrong, followed by fear of being right.

Definitely fear.  Fear of losing my job, my family, and some close friends.  Fear of not passing.  Fear that I am deluding myself and suicide will still be in my future in spite of everything.

Full-time is a little over 3 weeks away and I am still dealing with my fears in some respects.  It certainly doesn't help that certain individuals (my parents) are doing their best to thwart my every move by going behind my back and trying to turn relatives against me.

20 plus years ago, pure homophobia of my father's part.  In the intervening years, fear for others and their reaction.  Then it was the lose of home, hearth and family.

Now I am me and getting happier every day.

I fooled myself for many years believing that every person in the entire world wanted to change their sex, and only abnormal people couldn't control it and had surgeries.  In fact, I pushed the subject out of my mind so efficiently that I didn't learn otherwise until I was 31, after which point I learned what it really meant to be transsexual.  It took a few more months to decide that transition was what I wanted and I never looked back. :)

In middle school one of the PE coaches taught the boys' Health section while another taught the girls.  He went on about TGs being mentally ill and mutilating their genitals, and that they could never be anything but their birth sex.  It has always kind of made me feel like I'm crazy, like he is right.

Now?  I've accepted what I am for a long time, crazy or not.  I don't know that I have the desperation or courage necessary to do anything about it.  Nothing has been sufficient thus far, anyway...

1.  Lack of confidence to tell my parents
2.  Parental pressure to be more of a man
3.  Lack of knowledge on the subject
4.  Losing wife/family/freinds/job

1: Jerry springer and his representation of transsexuals made me think. "No I'm not that I'm somthing very different"
2: I wasn't the perfect idealization of the trans story ie hyper girly kid.
3: Fear that I'd left it too late I'd never pass never be accepted by anyone and die alone.
4: Absent father who I dispised at the time. I thought I might just have these feelings to differentiate myself from him.
5: That I was just shy, I was using transition as an excuse rather than facing my problems.
6: I hated myself in general and thus lacked confidence that I could get out of my situation it was eaiser to just hurt myself.

For me I would have to change this to two categories.  I don't think I had much of a problem accepting myself.  I've left the thoughts of guilt, shame and that there was something wrong with me a long time ago.  Now for the second part.  I haven't had the courage to do anything about it.  That is mostly due to fear.  Fear of losing people that are important to me.  It's a bit of a paradox...I don't think there should anything wrong with living my life as a woman but I'm still afraid to present it to the rest of the world.  I don't know if I'll ever get past this. 

Quote from: Sephirah on June 08, 2011, 10:24:29 PM
Fear of being wrong, followed by fear of being right.

This totally hits where I am at now.

I'd like to add that I redirected my frustration into other things so that I never really had to confront what was so obvious.  I kept chasing after bigger and bigger dreams, keeping myself running forward without a chance to really stop and look and listen. But whenever I did stop, this feeling was always there, though I couldn't really define it or express it.

Now, I am afraid that I know exactly what I want... that I have always known.

Quote from: gandaberunda on June 11, 2011, 12:09:54 AM
This totally hits where I am at now.

I'm going to second that.

Quote from: gandaberunda on June 11, 2011, 12:09:54 AM
This totally hits where I am at now.

Me, too. I'm deeply in the closet. Part of that is not being completely sure who I am yet (or maybe it's that fear of being right that's stopping me). And there are the other fears, around job and family and friends and everything else.

Right now, I'm scared that I'll never find a way to be ME that feels worth the cost. And my timing is completely lousy for my wife and I. Sigh.

What. Fun.

Lack of knowledge, lack of money, lack of confidence.

Today, all of this is different. The knowledge came (thanks in large part to Chaz), the money for top surgery showed up unexpectedly, confidence is boosted (especially by the hard things we have to do on this road), and I have finally got to a place in life where the only thing that makes sense is to be true to myself and trust my Creator.

In the end like of all you, never been more inner and outer comfortable, happy, fullfilled. But before that a different story than posted here. I've learned that I'm real good at compartmentalization, so over the years since teenage with a very active traveling life, times I was he and times she hidden from the he world, didn't really think about it or stress about it at least top of mind. Surley was an underlying biggie. Long story short went through some PTSD issues which brought up some deeper and long standing genetic disorders which ended up in a protracted breakdown. Lost most all, got myself help as no one else would and got restarted with professional help. Then one day, outside of therapy, real clearly I remember date and time, realized who I am. Now I can look back and see what I couldn't before. Nothing holds Tara back now!

1. fear of losing my parents and thus I'd be alone in life
2. fear of being an outcast of society
3. sexist thoughts against women promoted by my ego and my mom
4. My ego's grandoise desires and to use masculine personas as a tool
5. Disappointment in the lack of support in the TG community (in Los Angeles)
6. "How can I be female if I feel very masculine occassionally?"
7. Fear of not being able to be accepted by genetic women in general (given not only my ability to pass, but that I don't like/date guys and I don't think about having a family.)

My first reason probably seems incredibly silly, but it set me back to months of horrific shame when I heard some virulent things from friends about how "Only fake FTMs like anime". Learning about my potential mental oddity also set me back because I thought that I was just a freak who couldn't think for himself. Then came the "if I transitioned, I might not make it in a guy's world because I'm too (insert personality trait here)".

The main one now is about how my family would handle it if I transitioned, since they never wanted a son but absolutely wanted a daughter. Plus, job fears and such.

...yeah, I worry a lot.

For me lack of knowledge played a part for many years. I didn't know the LGBT community existed until I was in highschool, I was extremely sheltered by my parents. I don't even think the LGBT community was ever even mentioned in any type of serious manner until after I had joined my college's GSA. So all the many times I wished I was a boy I would just put it off as my being weird. Or when despite what I did something about the person looking back at me in the mirror felt wrong, I buried the thoughts. By the time I had the light bulb turn on and I figured out who I truly am, I was at the point where I was ready to accept something.

For years I never thought I'd see my 20th birthday. I knew something was wrong, but with my extremely limited knowledge of anything outside of the small town I grew up in, I just couldn't figure out what it was. And then I knew, turns out theres nothing wrong with me, so I embraced the knowledge with all of me. I waivered for the first few months, because it was stepping into the unknown, but by the time I had my first therapy appointment I was ready. The hardest part was telling all of this to a stranger.

A part of me does fear when the time comes to step away from my family and I fear not finding a person who can accept and love me for who I am and even not being able to find work/keep it, but it doesn't stop my acceptance of myself.

I can't wait to turn 20 this October  :)

QuoteI think it was also partly that I had absolutely convinced myself that I could learn to live as female and that I would get over all my issues with my body and sex and how I felt.

Yeah, that  too. Convinced myself I had to learn to live with it. Was taught to accept the things I cannot change, and that seemed to be one of them.

Definitely lack of knowledge.  It's not like it wasn't all out there.  I just didn't have the right words to search for it.  On National Coming Out Day last year, I finally found all the right search terms, and boom! Here I am.

But yeah, I still have strong fears of being rejected by my wife(she's already said that she cannot be in a lesbian relationship).  Strong fears of losing my family.  They are religious.  It's kind of funny because my sis is a lesbian, and to my knowledge, she hasn't yet discussed it with my parents.

Strong fears of not having a strong source of income, fears of becoming homeless.  I guess it's a lot of fear of life.  Which sucks.

But I have accepted my trans status.  I just don't know what I am going to do about it.

I learned early in life to ignore my feelings for the most part and focus on surviving. I focused on others' feelings and expectations and as someone else said "compartmentalized' like crazy. I accepted my gender assignment without question and followed the male path laid out. My experience was different than many other assigned males though. My father was not overly macho. So I had a doll and played many imaginary role-play games including playing house with my sisters and other girls, without it ever being an issue. I was the oldest of 10, and my mother drafted me into taking care of the house and my siblings. At one time she threatened to change a "dowry" for me when I got married. I was a good junior homemaker. I always had a girlfriend all the way through school starting in kindergarten. When I got married - twice - I did not want to be the head of the household in stereotypical male fashion. I cleaned house equally, cooked, sewed, and worked I thought equally. Both relationships ended for multiple reasons, but in part, I think my wives wanted a husband and I wanted to be a co-wife or even a wife to a husband. But during the marriages I could not have identified any of this - I was focused on trying to make it work on the outside. Denial does not just exist in addictions.

That is it: DENIAL held up my self-awareness until I was 59.

Now I look back on my life and I see hints that existed all along but I did not think about. Being friends with girls when no other boys were. Never really being "one of the guys" (I thought I was just a nerd). Sewing a dress for my wife. Reading every Georgette Heyer Regency Romance written. Finding a nurturing, compassionate job. No one thing was something no man ever did so I did not think about it until later.

I also think that I was able superficially to be "male" enough no one ever questioned my gender - including me until recently. (and I am not giving up good spacial relationships and decent math ability).

Eventually I did start putting things together and actually start listening to my inner self. That has been confusing and exciting and scary. All my life I did have the feeling that I could not afford to be fully truly my authentic self. So I tried not to know what I thought I could not afford to be.

Now I know.

Now fear is slowing down my fully expressing my new self knowledge everywhere in my life. When others talk about fear, I get it.

And the fear of dying still unborn will not let me not express my self. So now I am in-between and transitioning to ?

Part of my self-acceptance is accepting not knowing where I will end up; accepting only that I have to get out of the cocoon.

Kendall

I thought my desire would go away with age. In my twenties it became more of a need to accepy myself. Self acceptance is better and easier than living in misery.

Hello :)

To be honest I never had a problem with acceptance.
I always knew I was a girl.
It was others acceptance of me that held me up.


Sorry I couldn't give a better answer
~Kalie~

For me, looking back there was something else going on which might have appeared to be lack of self-acceptance, but was actually self-protection.

I first consciously realised I wanted to transition when I was 23, in the mid-80's. But then I carefully decided it was a sexuality issue that needed addressing instead, and set it aside (over and over for the next couple of decades).

The thing is, I wasn't wrong - I did have a sexuality issue that needed dealing with, but what lay beneath that was the consequences of childhood sexual abuse. So I needed to sort all that out, and as I did, my sexuality healed itself - and only then was I able to wake up one day and find it was safe to want my body female. And only then did I realise I'd wanted that since I was old enough to know the difference between male and female. Growing up in an abusive environment, I seem to have made a decision to protect my female self from harm by putting her to sleep until it was safe to wake up again.

To me, that was an act of love, not of lack of self-acceptance. I'm very grateful to my younger self for doing this, and for stopping me from transitioning in my 20's, when I would have ended up in a terrible self-destructive mess emotionally. Of course, I'd like none of the bad stuff to have happened, and for me to have been ready to transition when I was young (and had little grey hair!) but I'm content with the way it's finally worked out.

I think for me, it was that I had just given up on life in general. I didn't have the easiest childhood, I never got to talk about the feelings I had with my parents or family, and every few months for many years things would happen that just made it seem like my world was falling apart. I guess, giving up, was sort of a coping strategy, I just sort of accepted that things were going to be terrible and then I was going to die.

Of Course, that never happened, eventually after being abandoned by my mother again (I have been abandoned by my parents many times in the course of my childhood), setting alone in a house with no water or power, just waiting, my brother came and gave me a place to stay. It took me many years since that point to finally realize that I do have some measure of control over my life.

I suppose I knew what I was even as a child, but since I felt I had no future there was no point in pursuing it, after I took a bit of control over my life, fear and guilt held me back. Fear of failure and guilt that I had deceived everyone up until this point. Fear of failure gradually faded, and with the situation with my wife, I hardly feel guilty anymore, her deceptions were far greater and malicious than my own. My friends support me, and I haven't spoken much to my family, I sincerely don't care what they think, they are terrible people for the most part.