For someone who has recently comes to the realization that i desire to transition this subject is where i really question my trangender-ness.   I never played with girl toys.  I did love crossdressing, which started when i was 9, that's when i first wanted to be a girl.  I wanst into many "male" activities (like sports...i throw like a girl...no pun intended)....What my thing was was that i couldn't see myself sexually as a male.....When my friends ogled over supermodels i couldn't relate...I didn't seem them as sexually as they did...I had no aggression nature towards being with women like most men do...Male on female porn never aroused me....only lesbian porn...where i imagined i was a girl being with a girl...   I could masturbate forever thinking about having sex as a man and nothing would happen, but when imagined myself as a woman...not even being sexual...just being dolled up in a miniskirt feeling sexy...it arouses me so much....I'm my heart i really want to transition now that i've come to terms with this part of myself....my first meeting with a therapist is tomorrow and im nervous about what she will say about me...So i just wanted to share

PucksWaywardSon, I think we've had parallel lives, even down to the all  girls high school! 


I am (ever so slowly) physically transitioning because of how it feels to wear my body ie how my shoulders feel square like I've always thought they should, how my center of gravity is slowly evolving as I gain top muscle ad loose bottom fat, etc not necessarily because of how my body looks from the outside.  (But I'm getting more pleased w/ how I look.  I don't have to squint and look sideways at the mirror as much anymore. I can look eyeball to eyeball for a few seconds now without having to avert my focus.)

Chris

I just don't know.

To me it isn't question of why and how, but rather what am I? that should suffice for me. Science is limited, and we basically no nothing about life in general. It is safer to say that we're ignorant. Science likes to think it knows everything, but it can't even recreate one leaf of grass and blow life into it. If something is explained, the explanation then demands a cure. And that is where things start to become scary. These days doctors can know if your child will be born retarded. Are we willing to play God? what if they could detect that your child would be born transsexual? what would you do? abort it? That is the risk of cold hearted science. Ah, ignorance is bliss, sometimes...

i was born with DSD, and i never thought it as "Being Born in the Wrong Body . . ." i am different from others and this is a fact. i am who i am. i sometimes think it is homologous to the relation between different brands of same product. e.g. cars, if everyone drives a toyota and you drive a honda, does it mean you are driving "the Wrong CAR . . ."? obviously not. it is not "Wrong", it is "Different".

lmbo, i sound totally nerd   

I find that a very hard question to answer... sure I would prefer to be born as a girl. It would save me of all the issues I have been dealing with and still will have to deal with. But to say I was born into the wrong body I am not sure. I haven't felt like this my whole life, I just felt different about it.

This is me.  Jennifer

I like to think of it as "Just a girl stuck in a sea of masculine expectations." 

I was born in the right body, just wrong plumbing and lower parts.

Quote from: Ferretty on November 13, 2014, 12:57:52 AM
I like to think of it as "Just a girl stuck in a sea of masculine expectations." 

I love this one

I was supposed to be a boy, but my mother suffered from miscarriages and at the time Doctors where told by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe massive ongoing doses of an artificial estrogen called D.E.S.
Sadly it did not work and wasn't tested properly and caused massive health issues in the mothers, children and grandchildren.  In me it disrupted my sex determining hormones and made me a jumble of both sexes.  I developed a physically female brain, this creates a horrific sensation called Gender Disphoria that is so traumatic suicide rates in sufferers are up around fifty percent.  I take female hormones to give my brain the right chemical balance it was designed for, and slowly regenerate my body to female on a cellular level using my female DNA.  I am female, this mind in this brain, but my body is out of alignment.

 I know for me I'm 95% certain how and why I am transgendered. I believe I should have had an older sister. My mother had a tubal pregnancy terminated August 1970. I was born in November of 1971. I believe her spirit refused to die so she melded herself into me. My sister got my male spirit cause she's more manly than feminine. That's what I think.

I describe myself variously, depending on my moods.  Generally I'd say I'm "a female soul born into a male body".  I like using this word "soul" (1) because it accurately reflects how I think about myself, but also (2) because it's a word that a lot of people, especially religious people can relate to, even though my concept of the word isn't really religious, given that I don't view the soul as eternal.  I don't have a soul.  I am a soul.  My body doesn't define me.  It's only the place my soul inhabits.

Sometimes I describe myself as having been born "of mixed gender"--i.e., psychology female but physically male.  And sometimes I describe myself by saying, "I am a woman.  I just got the wrong kind of body, that's all."

Good question.
I actually don't think I am in the 'wrong body' but rather with the WRONG GENITALS (initially at least).  If I had the right genitals from the beginning, I wouldn't have additional things I don't accept like breasts and oversized hips. So right now, I disassociate basically my entire torso from who I am. This is not to say that I love my limbs that are cursed with the estrogen fat but they're mine.

I hate the "X trapped in a Y's body" and "born in the wrong body" phrases, personally. It's way too simplistic to the point of being even more confusing. Honestly I think it makes cis people assume we're a bit crazy. It sounds like a spiritual explanation; implying there's some greater control over my birth, and that events should/should not happen a certain way. Mostly it sounds like the tagline of a bad science-fiction film.

I was born female-assigned, and this wasn't right or wrong. It just happened that way.. nature is weird. People are also weird, because they assign very specific social roles based on your genitals. I think gender variation is natural and fairly common. There was nothing inherently wrong about my behaviours and self-identity not "matching" my body. But for whatever reason, I've experienced gender dysphoria and I felt like some aspects of my body were alien, and didn't feel right with some innate sense that I am male and want my body to look a certain way. I like to think of it like my brain has a "body map" of a masculine body, and this is why I felt so alienated from my 'female' characteristics. Everything about developing into a woman felt wrong and distressing, and transitioning has made me so much happier and comfortable within myself.

I like some of the other explanations I've seen here, but the ones that ring the most true still have the same spirit of wrong body, right mind, and that explanation has always worked fine for me.  Maybe it's an oversimplification, but it kind of needs to be.  You have about one sentence before a cis person's eyes start to glaze over.

I think the essence of simplicity that is conveyed by the phrase works, but, I agree, it is too simple. How do you sum up the internal struggles, expectations and culture into just a few words? I have a male, XY body, which I have had from birth. My mind/spirit is female.  Somehow, there is a disconnect between the body and mind/spirit which creates horrible feelings of anxiety and depression. I tried to play the part that the outward appearance conveyed. Internally, I struggled the whole time. It took me 25 years to finally realize what was going on between me and my body. Once I finally accepted who I was, I was and am able to do something about it.

What irritates me most about the phrase is the immediate write-off that happens after someone says it or hears it. Something like, "oh it's just that simple, right?" No, it isn't that simple. You have to account for relationships, education, habits, feelings, emotions and everything in between that makes us who we are. As others have said, I would not wish this on my worst enemy.

I'm in the right body.. my body.. it just went through an unfortunate process in which it was doused with testosterone.. I long to think of how I'd appear outwardly had I had the correct puberty. Funny story: my parents said I didn't breathe for a long time after I was born.. like 15 minutes.. not sure how I survived, but my sister and I joke that my former boy soul left in that time span and a girl soul entered into me. Haha! Kind of interesting to think about. What a crazy thing for a soul to do.

its not really being born in the wrong body, its more like your body receiving the wrong instructions for puberty/genital development in the womb.

Folks, this is a description thread, not an explanation thread. How do you describe yourself and see yourself? Not "how did you get this way?" because that question does seek causes.

If you don't think the "born in the wrong body" paradigm is a good explanation, that's because it cannot really function as an explanation for our condition. "Oh, there were a bunch of empty bodies floating around, and my consciousness accidentally slipped into one" doesn't quite cut it as a cause for how we are. But so many people outside of the trans community--and some within--describe themselves as born into the wrong body (an apparent effect from whatever cause), so I was wondering how many people here use that same description for themselves.

Quote from: Arch on December 16, 2014, 09:38:04 AM
so I was wondering how many people here use that same description for themselves.

Given I'm a simpleton I have to keep things simple otherwise I confuse myself.  "Hi, I'm Rosie" is about as much description as I ever give anyone.

Rosie