I had a moment based on the "there are some mtf's that are lesbian".

Fits.  I wonder.  Also for the OP- is there also a male interaction in sex?  I personally have none.  I am all female physcially except non srs .  Hence- hormones.

If there is male type sex relations, then I am really confused now.

Enough from me better to hear from the others.

QuoteAlso for the OP- is there also a male interaction in sex

Not sure what do you mean by this.

it doesn't matter.  Personally I have no function with the wife anymore and when I did it was lesbian in my head.

Your thread wound up helping me understand some things about myself.  I thank you for it, and the other posts.

Create another level of comfort for me.

I too learned alot from this thread. What confused me about it is I've always thought female, and known my core identity has always been female. Basically mentally I'm female and in many ways even before hrt I was physically female with thexception of what little hair I had on my face, my voice, and of course whats between my legs, which I'm now on the road to correcting. What I've learned here is there are many ways one can be trans. I always thought most were like me, fully female on the inside but with varying levels of male characteristics on the outside. Now I know that I should feel lucky, real lucky I know who I am and where I'm going with my transformation. Because  not all of my sisters are as sure as I. I wish the best of luck to the OP with whatever her desires are.

Ally

Quote from: Allyda on February 19, 2014, 07:37:44 PM
I too learned alot from this thread. What confused me about it is I've always thought female, and known my core identity has always been female. Basically mentally I'm female and in many ways even before hrt I was physically female with thexception of what little hair I had on my face, my voice, and of course whats between my legs, which I'm now on the road to correcting. What I've learned here is there are many ways one can be trans. I always thought most were like me, fully female on the inside but with varying levels of male characteristics on the outside. Now I know that I should feel lucky, real lucky I know who I am and where I'm going with my transformation. Because  not all of my sisters are as sure as I. I wish the best of luck to the OP with whatever her desires are.

Ally

yes to find happiness is of upmost importance

Like the OP, my core self doesn't seem to have changed much. And that caused me some confusion for a while - until I realised that my male self and female self were one and the same. I had always been my female self. There never really was a male me.

Another thing I've learnt as time has passed, I wear the label woman because it more closely matches my presentation and who I am.. Am I entirely woman? I don't know. I've also realised I don't much care. I am free to be me.

Quote from: kelly_aus on February 19, 2014, 08:20:02 PM
Like the OP, my core self doesn't seem to have changed much. And that caused me some confusion for a while - until I realised that my male self and female self were one and the same. I had always been my female self. There never really was a male me.

Another thing I've learnt as time has passed, I wear the label woman because it more closely matches my presentation and who I am.. Am I entirely woman? I don't know. I've also realised I don't much care. I am free to be me.

that's really how it's been for me ,I've always felt I've had a female psyche

Quote from: Catherine Sarah on February 15, 2014, 10:31:58 AM
Hi

With an attitude like that, you're heading for a disaster. Exerting an inner maleness to the outside will see you being perceived as a man in a dress.

Albeit HT will attempt to rewire your brain, if you fight it you'll be sending mixed signals with your communications. Men and women think and express their respective ideas completely differently to each other.

Maintaining this attitude will only increase your social isolation as neither gender will be able to relate to you. I strongly suggest you take this matter up with your therapist, before it gets out of hand.

Huggs
Catherine

The flip side of the coin is that most high-achieving professional women tend to be mentally males yet nobody confuse them with cis males.

The threads have solidified my position to remain stealth.  If I get called out for the boobs I'm blaming my DES influenced endocrine and nervous system.  I don't have the psychological female core and thought patterns.  However I assure you I am totally female in physical sensation and self perception.  That's why the lesbian reference got my attention- I can strongly identify with that.

I am also unlikely to go for SRS at this point- too many complications, scared of losing my wife.   But hormones are essential for me, and the dysphoria is physically accute.  I can't even cut my nails.  I'm serious- I can't bring myself to do it.

I sure as heck am not male.  I just like doing male stuff, like race, ride, but not the heavier things.  But when I see a guy, I feel nothing in common with them, although there is a physical attraction that I ignore, and it's not the emotional and physical one I have with my wife. It's all physical.  Not clothes either, although I love them,  it's about getting the right body.

I think my wiring stopped short of some of the cognitive things, and the heavy male conditioning did the rest.  And a girl got to me first so that left a deep attachment.  Could have been different if 1969 knew what to do with folks like us to help us.  I have no regrets, at all, though.  And I love being full transition when it is acceptable to loved ones.  My wife and one kid can't handle it but my other 2 kids can.  I'm lucky she can handle what she does see and feel. 

I'd probably get read out there real quick.  Strange thing is that full transitioned feels incredibly normal and looks so normal to others with me.

But I am HAPPY and I was never truly happy before, just driven.

Enjoy girls.  Powerful stuff here.

Who knows where the future goes.

Would love to hear if the OP got anything out of the comprehensive posting.

It has done the opposite for me. It has solidified my course toward SRS after the hormones have had time to do their thing. It has reinforced what I've known all my life and helped me realize I'm doing the right thing to make myself whole mind, body, and soul as the girl I've always been. Believe me, I make a poor excuse for a guy anyway. Nothing about my body shape has ever been masculine (and I very much thank God for this) My continuing hrt and eventuall SRS will make me blossom. Might need Rhinoplasty though. Others don't think so but I think my nose is my worse feature, lol!

I'm happy to share more background. This is what happened to me. The following may contains words that may off putting or triggering to some people.

Basically, I have two major sexuality, the normal heterosexual attraction and the sexual attraction to feminine self. My form of the second sexuality is vary but mainly involve cross dressing, imagining being a sexy attractive woman, fantasizing having sex as male, etc.

All along I never have thought about having any gender issue. I can relate with other male just fine, I have masculine interest, etc. In fact up until high school I believe I'm just as average as other male except that I'm having this sexual quirk. Then I moved to usa for college where I introduced with a wonderful thing called broadband internet. I began to explorer the internet. Some of the first thing I found is the collection of TG erotica, transformation story, caption, comics, etc. I got hooked with these things. Mostly got the sexual release in the form of masturbation. It gradually increase in intensity. Next, I found about transgender-ism. I started making connection with my condition. It seems to be appealing although it doesn't really make sense. I'm not feminine. I never want to be a woman. I'm not really interested to socially be a woman or perceived as a woman. The only thing that really appeal me is the physical transition part. At that time its so confusing.

I've had few relationship in my life but the problem is although I have strong attraction to my girlfriend, I can't seem to bring my self to perform sexually with her. I had a thought that I might not really a man or something like that.

After I graduated, found a job and become financially stable I started to think more seriously about my condition. I'm contemplating that I might be transgender. I have few therapy but left unsatisfied. I decided to take things in my hand and explore it little by little. After few years, without really seriously intended, I basically transitioned. Here I am now.

I realized now that the reason I can't perform sexually with my girlfriend is because I have been associating my second sexuality with pleasure from masturbation since childhood. No wonder the normal sexuality has very little chance to compete.





 

bingunginter after I thought I was beginning to understand where you were coming from, you have again thrown me for a loop. It now sounds like your whole ordeal has been some sort of experiment to see if, well, I don't know what if. When it comes to myself even as a child my core identity has been female, my thoughts female, how I percieve things, female, my emotions, female, in fact, with the exception of what I like to call a few birth defects I was then, and through the years up until now always female. I only pretended to be male (and not doing a very good job of it - hence why I was always a miseable wreck) in an attempt to please family members. Which I know now I was terrible at because I never fit in, anywhere. My depression and misery became so bad on two separate instances it came very close to costing me my life. After the last and most recent I decided enough is enough, and began living as who I truly am, a Native American Woman. Once I let go of the fake male persona, and I emphasize the word "fake," guess what? I no longer had any trouble fitting in. This was a little over 5 years ago long before starting hrt. The only times I get a little depressed now is when I think about all of those years I lost trying to pretend I was something I'm not to misery and despair that I could have been living happily as the woman I am today. And these are normal depressions like everyone gets when they think of bad experiences in their lives -they aren'y life threatning. In fact since starting hrt I haven't had one. I'm looking forward to each day and the day I'm working toward when I have my SRS to become complete physically and mentally, mind body and soul as the woman I've always been. Therefore, when you mention the experiences your having such as the statement below, I just don't have a clue for what your trying to accomplish:

Quote from: bingunginter on February 19, 2014, 10:39:49 PM
All along I never have thought about having any gender issue. I can relate with other male just fine, I have masculine interest, etc. In fact up until high school I believe I'm just as average as other male except that I'm having this sexual quirk. Then I moved to usa for college where I introduced with a wonderful thing called broadband internet. I began to explorer the internet. Some of the first thing I found is the collection of TG erotica, transformation story, caption, comics, etc. I got hooked with these things. Mostly got the sexual release in the form of masturbation. It gradually increase in intensity. Next, I found about transgender-ism. I started making connection with my condition. It seems to be appealing although it doesn't really make sense. I'm not feminine. I never want to be a woman. I'm not really interested to socially be a woman or perceived as a woman. The only thing that really appeal me is the physical transition part. At that time its so confusing.

After reading this to me it seems being transgender for you is some sort of experiment, one that could have very serious consequences for you if you do not seek help. I apologize to you and my brothers and sisters here for seeing your situation this way. I just don't understand what it is your trying to achieve.

First, I admire the OP's honesty, that took guts.

Second, I admire Ally's posts - in general too - since it is so transparent and a great window into what used to be called a "true transexual".  I like everyone's posts its a great exploration of the truth about each of us.

I'm sitting in the study full transition.  Female psyche in full play right now, it will flip based on social circumstances - survival instincts when I go out into the construction world in an hour, and to a redneck bar to sing later tonight in deep stealth mode.

Parallels with the OP:  the trans reading site, which I still get a thrill out ofbut tend to avoid.  And the sex part there turns me off its the psych part of the stories I find facinating.  The temptation of watching graphic displays of.... preops..., is part of my story, and the reason for me?  It was loneliness, I felt like a freak, and here are other girls that look like me.  I powerfully identified with them, but hated most of what I saw.  Not romantic at all.  Yuck.   I don't do that any more but instead of going to the boards, that was my original introduction to transexuality.  I was afraid of the boards.  I was afraid of you all.  How foolish.  How sad.

The parallel to the srewed up theory of autogynephelia sounds apparent here - I reject this theory although it can be a diagnostic tool in a hormone letter for someone not a "true transexual" to get us hormones.  I don't even really know fully what it is, I was so disgusted by the assumptions and the stuff that does not apply to me that I stopped reading it.  I do not self identify with that diagnosis.

With the sexual attraction to self - yes I have this but it has radically changed, was heavy for about 30 years and dropped now dramatically - which came about in a short circuit identity crisis when I looked in the mirror very young and saw a girl looking back at me, physically and to a great extent emotionally.   I am still sorting that out, I was bullied into the male self very young. The more I look at true transexual posts the more I identify with them.  As to my soul or core - at this moment I am all girl here in my study.  It is far more than visuals with me its a state of being from the inside out, sifted through extreme psychological abuse from the past.  And some from the present.  Oh well I forgive them they are truly clueless.

Hormones, for me, reduced the libido enough to start feeling things truly without the interference of testosterone.  It seems to have fundamentally altered the sexual perception of self - bringing that way down, and dropped the fetishistic element way down.  Hormones are psychologically and medically needed for me.   Hormones are handled by my very understanding endo guy who helped keep me from cracking up with referal to shrink and with an explanation that I am physically different from "normies".

I am physically and psychologically incompatible with testosterone.  I cannot function as a traditional male anyway - I don't identify with them.  I can look the part - I am a union actor in the legit stage making stealth even more imperative - I can draw on life experience to act it from the inside out - but my center, my core, is ultimately something I am beginning to think is similar to lesbian.  I'll take that to the shrink.

No matter what, dysphoria hurts and fighting yourself is futile.  I will agree however - with no criticism intended - that taking this on your own is like playing with dynamite.  I was lucky to get a shrink that gave up on labeling me and figured out that it was hormones or insanity and gave me hormones, and we both know I am transexual.  A transwoman.  Best description of me, hanging out at a cis girls party and kvetching or competing with them has no attraction for me, I don't identify as a true cis woman.  I identify with other transwoman, of all transexually based walks.  (I don't indentify with male cross dressers at all.)

For the OP I have no suggestions or recommendations... I can only tell my story.

For you girls that were born without conflict or forced into male roles through abuse - I'm jealous, and I am so glad you are there for all of us that are in need, like me that got bullied into a survival game and bought into it until it crushed me.

Boy does it feel good to be in full transition at the moment.  Its not sexual.  It's ME.  And I FINALLY can say in the mirror "I love you" and mean it.  Wow is that a gift.  I look just like Evie in the Mummy.  I'm pretty!

I would be wise to NONE of this if I didn't have expert psychotherapy.  My feelings on SRS may change..and probably will in time...but I don't think I could handle the public bathrooms and I think it would end stealth and threaten my marrage and my careers- both of them, as a performing artist and with my day job so I can eat.   SRS is a not now thing, never ruled out.

Blessings to all you girls, you have helped me more than you could possibly imagine.

You too Allie you help me a lot.  There is a lot of you in me but you walked a different path with better results. 

You all help me a lot. 

Self deception kills.

Hugs to all.

Thanks SatinJoy for those kind words. My only regret is I should have transitioned years ago.  Wish you the best!
Ally

Quote from: Allyda on February 20, 2014, 01:43:36 AM
bingunginter after I thought I was beginning to understand where you were coming from, you have again thrown me for a loop. It now sounds like your whole ordeal has been some sort of experiment to see if, well, I don't know what if. When it comes to myself even as a child my core identity has been female, my thoughts female, how I percieve things, female, my emotions, female, in fact, with the exception of what I like to call a few birth defects I was then, and through the years up until now always female. I only pretended to be male (and not doing a very good job of it - hence why I was always a miseable wreck) in an attempt to please family members. Which I know now I was terrible at because I never fit in, anywhere. My depression and misery became so bad on two separate instances it came very close to costing me my life. After the last and most recent I decided enough is enough, and began living as who I truly am, a Native American Woman. Once I let go of the fake male persona, and I emphasize the word "fake," guess what? I no longer had any trouble fitting in. This was a little over 5 years ago long before starting hrt. The only times I get a little depressed now is when I think about all of those years I lost trying to pretend I was something I'm not to misery and despair that I could have been living happily as the woman I am today. And these are normal depressions like everyone gets when they think of bad experiences in their lives -they aren'y life threatning. In fact since starting hrt I haven't had one. I'm looking forward to each day and the day I'm working toward when I have my SRS to become complete physically and mentally, mind body and soul as the woman I've always been. Therefore, when you mention the experiences your having such as the statement below, I just don't have a clue for what your trying to accomplish:

After reading this to me it seems being transgender for you is some sort of experiment, one that could have very serious consequences for you if you do not seek help. I apologize to you and my brothers and sisters here for seeing your situation this way. I just don't understand what it is your trying to achieve.

Allyda's situation is more similar to mine if not the same. I must admit I'm stumped by this situation. It's almost like your saying your and my situation are totally reversed . I lived with this male appearance      that I'd prefer not to have and in the process of changing whereas you want the female appearance that's like my false male self only you want to keep it for you outward appearance and have your core male self kept intact. I don't know if I'm being clear though.

Quote from: stephaniec on February 20, 2014, 06:56:10 PM
Allyda's situation is more similar to mine if not the same. I must admit I'm stumped by this situation. It's almost like your saying your and my situation are totally reversed . I lived with this male appearance      that I'd prefer not to have and in the process of changing whereas you want the female appearance that's like my false male self only you want to keep it for you outward appearance and have your core male self kept intact. I don't know if I'm being clear though.

Stephanie I've read alot of your posts and it does seem our situations have more than just a few things in comon. Picture this though: Looking more like a girl than a guy all your life, but being forced to pretend to be the guy. Yes I have the discusting thing between my legs and a nose I feel is too big for my small face but my general body shape has always been female. Lets just say I avoided men's locker rooms like taboo, lol!

I very much understand your confusion with the OP's statements. I'm right there with ya girl! However I am trying to keep an open mind. Close mindedness on the part of many is the reason being transgender is often misunderstood and looked down upon by some. So for that reason I'm trying to remain open minded. However, trying to remain open minded doesn't mean I'm having any luck understanding the OP's delimma.

Yea, I try to be open minded some things are hard to get a grasp on then others tough, all you can do is keep trying to understand things.

Quote from: bingunginter on February 19, 2014, 10:39:49 PMI have few therapy but left unsatisfied.

I am trying to understand you, really. This has peaked my curiosity.

Why were you unsatisfied? did they tell you something you didn't like? Did they not agree with your assessment of the situation? Did you just dislike them because of their personalities? Was it a financial drain? I only ask because you spend a lot of time discounting any type of mental health assistance to do things how you want to do them. I give you the point of not every trans person uses a therapist and can be successful at it. On the other side of the coin there are a lot who regret their transition later because they were not prepared for the challenges ahead. From what I read most of us who have therapy support seem to have more smooth and controlled emergence into the world without a lot of confusion you are posting about. I want to understand you, but it seems you want your cake and eat it to. Transition means to cross to another level, yet you want to cross, but be on the same side as well. Please understand I am debating, not judging. Being a Paramedic I know how crucial support is to a patient whether they suffered a heart attack, stroke, burns, etc. Therapy and counseling are designed to allow an outside unbiased opinion to improve patient comfort and recovery. 

Quote from: Jessica Merriman on February 20, 2014, 08:58:17 PM
I am trying to understand you, really. This has peaked my curiosity.

Why were you unsatisfied? did they tell you something you didn't like? Did they not agree with your assessment of the situation? Did you just dislike them because of their personalities? Was it a financial drain? I only ask because you spend a lot of time discounting any type of mental health assistance to do things how you want to do them. I give you the point of not every trans person uses a therapist and can be successful at it. On the other side of the coin there are a lot who regret their transition later because they were not prepared for the challenges ahead. From what I read most of us who have therapy support seem to have more smooth and controlled emergence into the world without a lot of confusion you are posting about. I want to understand you, but it seems you want your cake and eat it to. Transition means to cross to another level, yet you want to cross, but be on the same side as well. Please understand I am debating, not judging. Being a Paramedic I know how crucial support is to a patient whether they suffered a heart attack, stroke, burns, etc. Therapy and counseling are designed to allow an outside unbiased opinion to improve patient comfort and recovery. 

good perspective

QuoteWhy were you unsatisfied?

Because there is very little value I can derive from therapist. Its not like going to medical doctor where I explain them my problem then they can provide me the best solution to fix it. Therapist can't possibly know me better than myself.  If I want to rant or simply talk, I can do it with friends or internet community. Also there isn't much anything new that therapist can tell me where I haven't already found on the internet. I found that the internet community is useful as well for therapy, I can receive lots of input from different perspective.

To other people my situation seems like a utter confusion. To me its just life. Its just a collection of challenge.

Like I said before for me regret is useless, unless I can turn back time to fix it. My decision I made is based on the the circumstances I have at the moment and I have determined its somewhat good. If in case its fail or doesn't work in the future then that just life. Failure is just part of life.

QuoteI want to understand you, but it seems you want your cake and eat it to. Transition means to cross to another level, yet you want to cross, but be on the same side as well.

Ultimately I just want to be happy with the least effort. I'm not even looking for perfection. Which side it is doesn't matter. Like I said I didn't really intended seriously to transition. I wasn't sure, so I thought the best thing to do is to just try it. Example, I do know that don't like my facial/body hair, alright so I lasered it. I think long hair is nice, alright I want it too and so on.