I don't know about you guys, but prior to transition and throughout, I love watching those one year montages and fantasizing myself in the position one day. But now I wonder why I did and if maybe that was a misleading benchmark to set for myself. Many guys disappear off youtube after a year, as if something drastic happens at this point. In this vid, I talk about some of this stuff. I posted it on my personal FB casually and received and influx of private messages from my nontrans and trans friends.

Interested in your guy's take.

Lots of people have a lot of stuff going on in their lives and lots of people drift away from habits that weren't fully formed. I know I've tried keeping journals and I taper off and eventually stop writing after a year. Why? Because I felt like I was writing the same stuff!

For me, I don't have any real benchmarks/goals. I'm a pessimistic personality so I keep my expectations ultra realistic and super low. After starting T I'll get my old sex drive back before birth control fudged it up. That will happen within a few months. In a few months my voice will start to change. Those are the only things I expect to happen because they will happen and there's nothing I can do about it.

In a year? No idea. I'll probably still be really chubby, I'll probably still have gigantic chest tumors, and I'll probably still be socially awkward. I do hope that my chest will shrink enough with the diet and exercise I've adopted to be able to bind but I don't expect it to happen.

After a year, most guys are passing completely. Some go stealth, some don't, but almost all start moving on with their lives. In the early stages of transition, our lives tend to revolve around our trans status. Therapy, finding an endo, starting hormones, finding surgeons, legal name and gender change, etc. For most of us that kind of pushes regular stuff out of the way. once we get the majority of the transition stuff out of the way, we can go back to living our normal lives.

I guess I see it in an opposite way. I've always felt that people drop off around the one year mark because, even though they don't always have all the changes they had anticipated, they're finally at a point in their lives where they're not hanging on every little change so they sort of forget and go about their lives.

I'm pre-T and try to be extremely realistic about what changes might happen once I start transitioning because I don't want to get my hopes up and be disappointed. I already know all of the things my dysphoria will move to once I transition to certain points too. Right now it's my voice and being treated like a female. Once that's solved, it'll be my chest. After I have top surgery, it'll be my height. And so on. The best thing I can do is at least transition to the point where I'm able to live happily being seen as and treated as male which is what people in their One Year on T videos seem to have achieved and that's why I like to watch them.

Transition becomes almost an obsessive goal for a lot of transguys. After a year of hormones most major changes have happened, it's easy to blend into the cis world, and there's really nothing left for most except a surgery or two. Most who disappear do so to become stealth and then there's those who leave their videos and stuff up but rarely make any new ones because there is nothing to really talk about.

I miss seeing some of the videos by people who were on YT years ago (really liked dominoayejae's videos back in the day) but then again it's nice to know that they are happy and moved on. I think in a way it gives trans people hope when you see that. Transition is just that...transitioning to a different life. People shouldn't get caught in the feeling that transition is a permanent state of being for us. For most it's an important but relatively short time in someone's life.

I dont really agree on transition being short period but maybe thats because I see transition in diffrent levels of states.
from just being accepted male/female, or living in a role who more masculine/femenine to look up information, comming out, saving up money, having all kinds of questions to be answered, and for some, homones,surgery changing paper stuff and so on.

why people disapear? IDK,
as already mention alot probably go stealth when they have the chance. and alot of people move on with other things who arnt transrelevated. I know from myself now that I focus alot more on "normal problems" such as education and work, than I did before because transition have ment so much in my life, and now when I pass I feel I get more time for those things.

I guess also some people could need a break from the whole transscene once in a while, and if they had a long break maybe they feel less needed for comming back.

Some deal with bullying because of who they are,some finally feel they have reached their goal and along the way helped others but can now live on with their life.there are still devoted transman who continue to post things,not exactly their transition but make good friends and their way of including those friends.new jobs,new tats and just general life.but at some point in transition,we feel we have become strong enough that we can stand on our own,finally feeling whole so its not *fake* or anything like this.just like a baby,we learn to walk and after that point,we dont want help walking and we dont seek to lean on anything.we love it and we take advantage of it.this is a good thing.

I agree there's stages of transitioning that people go through. One of the last ones is assimilation. People just get absorbed back into their own worlds. I am looking forward to this stage for myself.

I'm guessing nothing drastic usually happens. If the person is passing as male, then that could have been the whole goal of making videos. It also would be less new. I am making weekly ones, but I would probably go to monthly after a time. I could see myself losing interest, I hope not, but I could.

--Jay

Quote from: Natkat on April 18, 2013, 01:38:24 PM
I dont really agree on transition being short period but maybe thats because I see transition in diffrent levels of states.
from just being accepted male/female, or living in a role who more masculine/femenine to look up information, comming out, saving up money, having all kinds of questions to be answered, and for some, homones,surgery changing paper stuff and so on.

I agree that there are different challenges that arise with transition. What I was saying is eventually transition is finished. The length of transition depends on the goals and resources of an individual. When a lot of people are first starting the process they become consumed with it. Other things go on the back burner. Then as goals are met transition eventually becomes less and less of someone's life.

Five to ten years from now most of us will have gotten to a point where we are either completely finished with transition or at a comfortable point. Transition is moving from A (where we are) to B (where we want to be). It's not the destination.