Hey everyone!
Karen345 here, game designer, botany grad student, My Little Pony fan fic writer and all around weirdo (a name I wear with pride).
So, here's my brief life story (with emphasis on stuff that lead me to my current gender confused state)!
So I was born genetically, and as far as I can tell physically, male on a horse farm raised by a couple of science fiction nuts.
My first close group of friends were all female, for whatever that's worth, but gender has always been a confusing subject for me. You see my mother was a self proclaimed "Female Chauvinist Pig", was notably terrible with people, fairly sloppy, and aside from occasionally wearing skirts and putting on makeup so she could run off and be a corporate lawyer, didn't really show a lot of stereotypically feminine traits... Whatever those are (they weren't programmed into me okay! I don't really get them). Well, I admit, she did like regency romances, which I never really got into (seriously, Jane Eyre is so much better than Pride and Prejudice), but that was about it.
My father was... there I guess? I mean he's a nice guy, but I've always had a bit of a rough time emotionally connecting with him. I love him, but it's an odd kind of love.
I should probably mention I also had an older brother who, all things considered, was a really cool guy. Unfortunately he was the "golden boy" valedictorian all the way through high school, so while I was growing up there was always a small part of me that hated his guts. But he physically saved my life at least once (farms can be dangerous) and I didn't have nearly as venomous a relationship with him as some people have with their siblings. We're pretty much good (I wish I could see him more often, he's cool).
Anywho when I was very young I actively rebelled against gender stereotypes. I befriended girls, got addicted to Sailor Moon, denounced people who said girls sucked at sports, ect.
I realized I was at minimum attracted to both girls and guys and possibly trans when I was about... 13? I kept a journal at the time so I could actually probably find the exact date I started questioning my sexuality/gender if I really wanted to, but 13 is a good estimate.
So if I was open with others, I might have been able to get an idea about what I was feeling by talking to the people around me, but I wasn't born in the most accepting environment. Also, honestly, I didn't spend much time with other people (I saw my friends at school and went to the occasional party like once a month). My views on the universe were shaped by something very different.
I mentioned that I was raised by sci-fi nuts right? Well, I spent a good chunk of my time reading science fiction and fantasy stories, but not the ones that people often think of in terms of gender roles. There are actually a metric ton of Female SF writers and my mother, being who she was, fed me as many of them as she could find. K.A. Applegate, C.J. Cherryh, Louis McMaster Bujold, Marion Zimmer Bradley, those were my childhood. I was pretty cooped up in a farm in the middle of nowhere surrounded by people I didn't much understand, but reading set me free. Needless to say, the ladies in those stories did not have clothes and makeup as their top priority.
So I got hold of a book that had way more influence on me than it really deserved to. If you're a fantasy fan you'll know the type, some ridiculously superpowered male self-insert character goes off and claims a girl as is his pre-determined magical right... Basically sexist trash. However, in this case the "boy steals girl" fantasy was made slightly more interesting by the fact that the characters were DRAGONS.
Being the rebellious sort, I read this book and said "Wow, this is garbage. I could write this so much better!" This lead to my first attempt at writing a novel. It never got very far, but I got to comfortably put on the boots of the female character in that story, outwitting the male dragons trying to chase her down and basically saying she wasn't interested in any of that, and wanted to be her. The story evolved and changed over time, and it came out... eh okay, at some point I might even go back and re-visit it, but the point is from that moment on (probably earlier than that, but at least from that point) when I imagined myself in other bodies I wasn't really limiting myself to typical human anatomy. I was used to sentient fantasy creatures, so why wouldn't I pretend to be them?
This, obviously, left me rather unsatisfied with my current body, but aside from physical frustration (yes, I admit it, I get attracted at times to thoughts of being in different bodies and having female anatomy), it was all rather academic. I sort of accepted that I was ugly and moved on with my life.
I wasn't happy though. I got diagnosed with everything from depression to schizophrenia (some psychiatrists can't accept that sane people can have imaginary friends, so long as they acknowledge that those friends are imaginary) and eventually did come out to my mother about what I was feeling. I even saw some therapists... who were really, really unhelpful. They kept talking about how females should walk, or dress, or whatever, but for me that was like looking at femininity through a tiny cultural window when I'd seen girls in a thousand worlds and bodies doing a billion different things.
I didn't do much therapy (at least on the subject of gender) once I got to college. Partly because I moved out of state (I wanted to see the world and get away from a place where I just had so much baggage), and partly because it didn't seem very helpful. I also was fortunate enough to meet a couple of trans friends (one of whom I ended up with a massive, unrequited crush on), but I was super shy, like, "standing in the stairwell wondering whether I was close enough to anyone in the lounge to hang out with them" shy. I did come out of my shell eventually, but at that point I'd sort of decided to take one thing at a time and work on accepting my sexual orientation more than worrying about my impossibly weird body image. Two relationships with women (one of whom I found out was available by asking her whether she could introduce me to a guy) and a bunch of mistakes (and minor triumphs in other areas) later I ended up in grad school working on my PHD in Botany. I had one relationship with a guy after that which just didn't work out for completely unrelated reasons, and now here I am trying to make sense of it all.
I'm 23 now. I still oscillate between thinking of myself as a girl and a boy, probably leaning girl, though I wonder if it's just some kind of fetish or something. I still have body issues and still don't know what the heck I should do. If I was honest about what I wanted at this point I'd say that I'd like to try hormone therapy for like a month so I could see if the change reduced my depression or anxiety or whatever (I know, that's not how it works for everyone, and it's usually better to start a lot smaller, but pretty dresses are of limited interest to me) but I'd have no idea where to start on such a thing. I'm basically lost, at least on the whole "gender" count. I don't think I'm comfy being lost though. I really don't.
So... that's my weird story. I guess I hope to get some advice and get to know people on the forums!
