Forgive me if this is in the wrong sub forum, but I would like to know in your opinions what it was that made you feel the need for ->-bleeped-<-. Such as, was it the feeling of being masculine that besieged you? In your mind Do you feel that you do this because you want to be a different person entirely, or you feel completely that you are in fact yourself. I'd love to hear what any and all have to say

Quote from: codyfletcher on March 22, 2015, 05:08:38 AM
Forgive me if this is in the wrong sub forum, but I would like to know in your opinions what it was that made you feel the need for ->-bleeped-<-. Such as, was it the feeling of being masculine that besieged you? In your mind Do you feel that you do this because you want to be a different person entirely, or you feel completely that you are in fact yourself. I'd love to hear what any and all have to say

My brain is wired so that when I see myself as a female, I like what I see. When I see myself as a male, I don't.

It has nothing to do with "feeling" feminine or masculine or wanting to be a different person. I'm me, that's all I'll ever be, whether masculine or feminine. There are some very masculine trans women and feminine trans men, but they still need to be who they are.

That's not it.

My brain needs me to be female. It's that simple.

I didn't "need ->-bleeped-<-". I am transgender.

I gave up needing a reason a loooong time ago. To paraphrase Popeye - I am what I am.

I have in the past thought about that subject before I accepted my reality, but now I am in Grace's shoes, really don't care anymore.  However while I really don't care, I will sometimes read an article on the subject if I trip over it.

Quote from: suzifrommd on March 22, 2015, 05:16:57 AM
My brain is wired so that when I see myself as a female, I like what I see. When I see myself as a male, I don't.

It has nothing to do with "feeling" feminine or masculine or wanting to be a different person. I'm me, that's all I'll ever be, whether masculine or feminine. There are some very masculine trans women and feminine trans men, but they still need to be who they are.

That's not it.

My brain needs me to be female. It's that simple.

I didn't "need ->-bleeped-<-". I am transgender.

Hmmmm, very interesting points that being non transgender I would most likely never have thought that way myself. Thank you for elaborating with me

I started out with the same question.  Many have pointed they are just a tg female, when in fact I know and science has proven they are in the case of mtf "just female"..  Our bodies didn't make the change at birth.  When your brain knows something to be true, you feel better when you know you are doing the right thing.  This is still my opinion and that of the scientific community,  but after living it, I can't see it any other way but to be fact.  Anyone else?

I felt female and saw my body in my mind as female when I was very young. I thought for sure my parents wanted a boy and had an operation done on me at birth. The feeling is so strong I would cry myself to sleep and hope and pray I would wake up female bodied.

I am in transition to find peace within myself. The war had finally been won but the cost is very high.

Typically masculine stereotypical actions and thinking I do not have.

I do not want to be a different person.  I want to be me. What others see is an assumption of who you are. If you do not meet their definitions then you are ostracized. 

I am of the opinion it is a lesser degree of IS but still a real nature occurrence.

My Nickels worth.

Quote from: codyfletcher on March 22, 2015, 05:08:38 AM
I would like to know in your opinions what it was that made you feel the need for ->-bleeped-<-. Such as, was it the feeling of being masculine that besieged you?

To me, being transgender is just a sum of all of the gender issues I encountered since puberty.  Anxiety from being expected to act/speak  masculine, to behave male in romantic roles (either sex), emotional responses, body hair, posture and body language, clothing, etc.

It wasn't overnight.  It took years of people pointing out things I was doing subconsciously (anyone else told to stop covering your mouth when you giggle?).  Only after trying extra hard to fit into a male role (eventually as a feminine gay person) did I eventually realize most of my problems came down to being transgender.

Very interesting points shared, and again i thank all that can share with me in better educating me on the matter. I'd really like to actually meet a transgender in person to sit down and have an actual 1on1 conversation between eachother, ya know, oldschool. However, In my area, i've not seen a single transgender person (or at least been able to tell) sadly i feel this is due to the judgmental types that roam about this state. I'd surely like to better educate it's entire populace and get rid of the hate and ignorance that people spread.

@mfox, you mentioned "I eventually realize most of my problems came down to being transgender." Do you really see this as being an actual problem? Or is it more just factual to you. In my opinion, The fact that you are transgender shouldn't necessarily be born a problem, rather I think it should be more of an enlightenment to something you already knew but wasn't completely sure of. Which brings me to my next question, What was the final straw or the ultimatum that led to your actual transition, I'd certainly like to hear others experiences as well. If this is all too much i can certainly stop at anytime.

You might look up a leaflet called "doh-transgender-experiences.pdf" .
Only thing I would disagree with is page 7, where they state stress, instead many experience relief.
it states a few facts not widely known... and some experiences of transgender people.
Its written also for family to understand... so it might offer a few points of view that might be helpful...

It states that being trans has some biological connections, which is imo additionally socially a bit better acceptable..

And well its difficult to explain... for some its some kind of puzzle until they see clearer... some knew from early on... people are different...


hugs

Quote from: Laura_7 on March 22, 2015, 11:55:43 AM
You might look up a leaflet called "doh-transgender-experiences.pdf" .
Only thing I would disagree with is page 7, where they state stress, instead many experience relief.
it states a few facts not widely known... and some experiences of transgender people.
Its written also for family to understand... so it might offer a few points of view that might be helpful...

It states that being trans has some biological connections, which is imo additionally socially a bit better acceptable..

And well its difficult to explain... for some its some kind of puzzle until they see clearer... some knew from early on... people are different...



hugs

I'll definitely be looking that up, thank you so kindly for the info. When did you know if you don't mind me asking? Was it relief you felt when you actually made the transition, or are you not yet in that phase?

Well I'll be frank with mine. My whole life I've been bullied about my weight to where it's had a toll on my subconscious. Tie that into being just a complete screw-up and having depression. Everything about my life just sucked. Sure It's been alright on the outside but on the inside I simply felt like crying anytime people said anything. In Dec. 2014 I started researching life and stuff, and I can across the term transgender. Everything seemed to fit. After that point I've now set my sights on becoming what I Meant to be. I never once guessed that having feelings and being a social outcast growing up was me just trying to free myself.

Also for that fact I grew up around racist people and was always basically told to judge people like ourselves. So I've always been a negative and hateful person. Once I understood myself, I got angry at myself for thinking this way and wanted to prove myself. I have contacted a few people who I knew were gay and apologized for any bad remarks I've ever said to them. Most understood what I was trying to say but said they never felt any pain from things I've said.

It's hard you know. To completely 180 your whole world because everything you knew was wrong. That's what Transgender means to me. It's a new opening to a better life.

Quote from: CaptFido87 on March 22, 2015, 12:19:41 PM
Well I'll be frank with mine. My whole life I've been bullied about my weight to where it's had a toll on my subconscious. Tie that into being just a complete screw-up and having depression. Everything about my life just sucked. Sure It's been alright on the outside but on the inside I simply felt like crying anytime people said anything. In Dec. 2014 I started researching life and stuff, and I can across the term transgender. Everything seemed to fit. After that point I've now set my sights on becoming what I Meant to be. I never once guessed that having feelings and being a social outcast growing up was me just trying to free myself.

Also for that fact I grew up around racist people and was always basically told to judge people like ourselves. So I've always been a negative and hateful person. Once I understood myself, I got angry at myself for thinking this way and wanted to prove myself. I have contacted a few people who I knew were gay and apologized for any bad remarks I've ever said to them. Most understood what I was trying to say but said they never felt any pain from things I've said.

It's hard you know. To completely 180 your whole world because everything you knew was wrong. That's what Transgender means to me. It's a new opening to a better life.

That was beautiful sister,

I can certainly relate what you mean by 180ing your life around. I was in the US army for 4 years and it really took a toll on my psyche. Most of the human emotions that people feel are just not there for me, my entire feminine side is just gone, I enjoyed being a feminine bisexual male, i was very kind hearted, loving, caring, emotional, expressive, but the army changed most of my emotions, and I'm still trying to fix that to this day. Even though I haven't achieved my endeavors I'm most certainly happy that you have and continue to pursue your own. Best of luck mate!

I never understood males, in spite of years of trying to be one.

When I tried "being just myself", I was far too girly for the guys (they thought I was homosexual or just plain weird)...but when I tried to adopt "guy behaviors" (mimicking what I saw other guys doing) it was like being in an unknown play without a script or director, and people throwing tomatoes at you if you forget a line.

Long story short, I went to therapy to figure out why I was depressed and anxious all the time (unless I was in a group of lesbians) and after dealing with some intense personal issues, the subject of "maybe you're gay?" came up. Looked into it by asking questions and interacting (no sex) and someone suggested I might be transgender.

The more I looked into that the more I realized that it was ok for me to BE girly, and the more girly I let myself be, the happier I became.

There's no "acting" with me when it comes to feminine behaviors...it's natural and is automatic, unlike guy behaviors, which are very stilted and contrived.

I love being me.

Quote from: codyfletcher on March 22, 2015, 05:08:38 AM
Forgive me if this is in the wrong sub forum, but I would like to know in your opinions what it was that made you feel the need for ->-bleeped-<-. Such as, was it the feeling of being masculine that besieged you? In your mind Do you feel that you do this because you want to be a different person entirely, or you feel completely that you are in fact yourself. I'd love to hear what any and all have to say

What is it that made you feel the need to be cis instead of transgender? Do you feel that you do this because you don't want to be transgender or is it because you feel yourself and comfortable as a cis gendered person?

I'm just turning your question around a little and hopefully you get the idea why. We don't choose to be transgender anymore than you choose to be cis gendered. I know you didn't mean any harm but some people may be bothered by the implication that we can choose whether or not to be transgendered. It would be similar to going up to a person who was born without a limb and asking why they want a prosthetic and why they chose to not have that limb. They didn't choose to be born that way and they want a prosthetic in order to correct their body, to improve the quality of their life and to be able to function as well as any other human being. It's similar to why transgender people transition. They want to correct the parts of their body that don't match the gender of their brain, they want to improve the quality of their life by eliminating or lessening their dysphoria and they want to be able to function healthily within society and their gender roles as other cis members of their gender do. Hopefully that sort of puts things into perspective.


For me, even at a really young age I knew that something didn't match up between my brain and my body. I was hyper aware of the physical and social differences between boys and girls. Gender was and is always something that's at the forefront of my mind like an invisible barrier that holds me back from so many things. Most people don't even pay much mind to their gender or gender roles, they just are who they are, but I wasn't.

As a little kid I would go to my mother and cry, trying to ask her why I felt uncomfortable about being a girl, trying to tell her that I knew I was actually a boy; but she didn't understand and in some ways my childish mind couldn't quite grasp what was wrong either so I was constantly depressed.

I remember watching cartoons as a kid and noticing that all of the characters were male and getting this crushing feeling of "I'm not like them, I'm not male, I can never be." It wasn't so much verbalized as it was something I felt emotionally.

In school I had male and female friends but when the teacher would split the class up by gender I got that sickening, sinking feeling again when I was made to go to the girl's side because I knew I wasn't a girl but no one else did.

I remember when I went to the department store with my mom to pick out a shirt and tie for my dad's Father's Day gift. I looked at the men on the ad displays and thought that one day I would grow up to look like them: broad shoulders, muscular arms, flat chest and slim hips in a suit and tie. I looked forward to it.

When that didn't happen my anxiety started. I was in middle school and female puberty hit me with the reality that it was final, I was male but my body wasn't. For some reason I had always held out hope that my body would change or I would wake up as a boy one morning. But that didn't happen, of course. Instead, I had to watch as all the other guys around me grew taller, more muscular, their voices deepened. Instead my chest grew and the dreaded time of the month started. I was literally in a state of shock because of it. I realized how trapped I was and my life felt worthless. I started withdrawing from my peers and doing really badly in school, I just didn't care about anything anymore. Then I became angry and resentful which was even worse.

During the summers I would watch my dad do yard work without a shirt on and feel jealous because my body was female, I could never take my shirt off and have that freedom of  feeling the warm air hit my chest. When I would go swimming I would wear a shirt and shorts because I couldn't stand looking like a girl in a bathing suit or bikini.

I didn't have any friends because how can a person know how to make friends when they don't even know how to be them-self? On top of that I had know idea how to interact socially as a female. Eventually my sister introduced me to some of her friends and by some miracle they took a liking to me.

Since I was then surrounded by female friends I tried to fit in so I started wearing makeup and things like that. I started acting very homophobic but it was just a mask because I had developed little crushes on my friends and knew that would be unacceptable to my family. I accepted that I would probably be hateful and alone forever. I pretty much pushed myself deeper into the closet before I even knew what being transgender was. I just knew I was physically a girl who hated being a girl.

I was happy with my friends but I still struggled badly with anxiety and depression which was being caused by my dysphoria. Eventually I took to gaming online as a male and it became like a second life for me because it was one where people actually knew I was male. The dysphoria in my real life was getting so bad though that I was starting to think of suicide. I just couldn't stand myself and my female body anymore. I was Googling painless suicide methods (which don't exist by the way) because I was trapped in the wrong body so suicide seemed to be the only way out when I decided to Google "I'm trapped in the wrong body" instead and that's when I started to learn what it meant to be transgender and that I indeed was. I saw some videos of guy who had transitioned but thought I could never do that because it seemed like such a drastic change and I would be scared to. My depression from dysphoria kept getting worse and worse until I couldn't even function at work anymore and I was losing the few friends I had so I revisited the idea of transitioning again and the more I learned the more I wanted to finally become the man I always have been inside.


So that's kind of the short story (I wouldn't want to write the long one much less have someone read it all for now anyway but if you have questions you can ask) behind some of the things I felt and what led me to learning that I was transgender. I had known it all along, just never knew there was a term for it or anything I could do about it.

I'm not sure how to describe dysphoria to you but maybe: imagine one day waking up as a woman. All of your male physical characteristics are gone, if you know what I mean, and everyone throughout the day refers to you as a female. It might seem comical for a day or two but imagine having to live the rest of your life trapped like that and never being able to get used to it because you know you're male, you want your body to be male and you want to be treated like a male by others but that can't happen. How would you feel?

Quote from: Contravene on March 22, 2015, 12:58:35 PM
What is it that made you feel the need to be cis instead of transgender? Do you feel that you do this because you don't want to be transgender or is it because you feel yourself and comfortable as a cis gendered person?

I'm just turning your question around a little and hopefully you get the idea why. We don't choose to be transgender anymore than you choose to be cis gendered. I know you didn't mean any harm but some people may be bothered by the implication that we can choose whether or not to be transgendered. It would be similar to going up to a person who was born without a limb and asking why they want a prosthetic and why they chose to not have that limb. They didn't choose to be born that way and they want a prosthetic in order to correct their body, to improve the quality of their life and to be able to function as well as any other human being. It's similar to why transgender people transition. They want to correct the parts of their body that don't match the gender of their brain, they want to improve the quality of their life by eliminating or lessening their dysphoria and they want to be able to function healthily within society and their gender roles as other cis members of their gender do. Hopefully that sort of puts things into perspective.


For me, even at a really young age I knew that something didn't match up between my brain and my body. I was hyper aware of the physical and social differences between boys and girls. Gender was and is always something that's at the forefront of my mind like an invisible barrier that holds me back from so many things. Most people don't even pay much mind to their gender or gender roles, they just are who they are, but I wasn't.

As a little kid I would go to my mother and cry, trying to ask her why I felt uncomfortable about being a girl, trying to tell her that I knew I was actually a boy; but she didn't understand and in some ways my childish mind couldn't quite grasp what was wrong either so I was constantly depressed.

I remember watching cartoons as a kid and noticing that all of the characters were male and getting this crushing feeling of "I'm not like them, I'm not male, I can never be." It wasn't so much verbalized as it was something I felt emotionally.

In school I had male and female friends but when the teacher would split the class up by gender I got that sickening, sinking feeling again when I was made to go to the girl's side because I knew I wasn't a girl but no one else did.

I remember when I went to the department store with my mom to pick out a shirt and tie for my dad's Father's Day gift. I looked at the men on the ad displays and thought that one day I would grow up to look like them: broad shoulders, muscular arms, flat chest and slim hips in a suit and tie. I looked forward to it.

When that didn't happen my anxiety started. I was in middle school and female puberty hit me with the reality that it was final, I was male but my body wasn't. For some reason I had always held out hope that my body would change or I would wake up as a boy one morning. But that didn't happen, of course. Instead, I had to watch as all the other guys around me grew taller, more muscular, their voices deepened. Instead my chest grew and the dreaded time of the month started. I was literally in a state of shock because of it. I realized how trapped I was and my life felt worthless. I started withdrawing from my peers and doing really badly in school, I just didn't care about anything anymore. Then I became angry and resentful which was even worse.

During the summers I would watch my dad do yard work without a shirt on and feel jealous because my body was female, I could never take my shirt off and have that freedom of  feeling the warm air hit my chest. When I would go swimming I would wear a shirt and shorts because I couldn't stand looking like a girl in a bathing suit or bikini.

I didn't have any friends because how can a person know how to make friends when they don't even know how to be them-self? On top of that I had know idea how to interact socially as a female. Eventually my sister introduced me to some of her friends and by some miracle they took a liking to me.

Since I was then surrounded by female friends I tried to fit in so I started wearing makeup and things like that. I started acting very homophobic but it was just a mask because I had developed little crushes on my friends and knew that would be unacceptable to my family. I accepted that I would probably be hateful and alone forever. I pretty much pushed myself deeper into the closet before I even knew what being transgender was. I just knew I was physically a girl who hated being a girl.

I was happy with my friends but I still struggled badly with anxiety and depression which was being caused by my dysphoria. Eventually I took to gaming online as a male and it became like a second life for me because it was one where people actually knew I was male. The dysphoria in my real life was getting so bad though that I was starting to think of suicide. I just couldn't stand myself and my female body anymore. I was Googling painless suicide methods (which don't exist by the way) because I was trapped in the wrong body so suicide seemed to be the only way out when I decided to Google "I'm trapped in the wrong body" instead and that's when I started to learn what it meant to be transgender and that I indeed was. I saw some videos of guy who had transitioned but thought I could never do that because it seemed like such a drastic change and I would be scared to. My depression from dysphoria kept getting worse and worse until I couldn't even function at work anymore and I was losing the few friends I had so I revisited the idea of transitioning again and the more I learned the more I wanted to finally become the man I always have been inside.


So that's kind of the short story (I wouldn't want to write the long one much less have someone read it all for now anyway but if you have questions you can ask) behind some of the things I felt and what led me to learning that I was transgender. I had known it all along, just never knew there was a term for it or anything I could do about it.

I'm not sure how to describe dysphoria to you but maybe: imagine one day waking up as a woman. All of your male physical characteristics are gone, if you know what I mean, and everyone throughout the day refers to you as a female. It might seem comical for a day or two but imagine having to live the rest of your life trapped like that and never being able to get used to it because you know you're male, you want your body to be male and you want to be treated like a male by others but that can't happen. How would you feel?

Wow, Thank you so much for that indignation. If I did offend I'm terribly sorry, I was not trying to imply that being transgender was something by choice, i was rather searching for answers straight from the source, not some BS that I could get from a so called "doctor". You all are incredibly brave to be able to go out and be yourselves even when you know for a fact you risk facing persecution, discrimination, and even in some cases assault. It deeply saddens me to hear some of the peoples stories here, as 100% of them that I have read so far, always started off really really low. However, there is light at the end of every tunnel thus far and everything just gets lighter from there.

I definitely couldn't imagine just suddenly waking up as a female after 22 years of being a male, Though it would be a nice change of pace assuming female hormones could change my personality. I basically have none in terms of emotions, that part of me died years ago and just hasn't been reborn over that period of time. I honestly don't even know if it ever will return, however I'm more than happy that others don't have to go through the same thing, many say, "gosh, i wish i could just be numb for a change" you do think that until it happens. How i wish i could be romantic or more intimate with my wife, but I simply can't find that it me anymore, It's not that I don't love her with all my heart, I simply can't express it in ways that most other people can.

Quote from: codyfletcher on March 22, 2015, 05:08:38 AM
... what it was that made you feel the need for ->-bleeped-<-.

From my point of view, that's an odd way to put it.

"->-bleeped-<-" isn't something we "need", any more than those of us with brown hair is something one "needs" or being 61 years old is something I "need."

"Transgender" is what we are, just as 61 years old is what I am.

In its more general sense, transgender simply means we aren't able to fit into society's idea of what or how someone with our birth sex should be.

We can choose to recognize that that is what we are, and if we do, then we have to choose what to do about it, but we can't choose whether to be what we are.

In my case, I call  myself "transgender" because:

* I've never been able to perform the gender I was assigned at birth all that well.  (Not that I was exactly "girly," I just wasn't "boy-y" enough.)  And I've never had much urge to do so, either.  I only do enough to get people to leave me alone.  When I was younger, I got called names and harrassed and punished for it, now I just get shunned by most people for it.
* I've never thought of myself as male, other than anatomically.  In fact, other than social training brainwashing and anatomy, I don't know what gender is.  (On the other hand, I've never thought of myself as "female", either.)
* I don't relate well to men.  It always feels like I'm dealing with an alien species.  I don't feel that way with women.
* There are lots of things I've always longed to do that are labelled "female-only" in our society and thus are forbidden to men and boys.  Lately, I've been trying out some of them, since I seem to be in a more tolerant place and time.

At this point, I'm considering transitioning to female, not because I feel like I'm "really" a woman, but because I think I might be more comfortable playing the role of a woman than I've been playing the role of a man.  (But I've been going up on my lines a lot, because the script for the "male" role sucks.)

FWIW, a lot of people say things like, "only trans people question their gender."  In my case, what I question is the idea of gender in the first place.  For me, it's just a bunch of stupid rules that society tries to get us to buy into, and while I may have to observe some of them to some limited extent to get by, they have nothing to do with how I see myself.

Quote from: Contravene on March 22, 2015, 12:58:35 PM
What is it that made you feel the need to be cis instead of transgender? Do you feel that you do this because you don't want to be transgender or is it because you feel yourself and comfortable as a cis gendered person?

I'm just turning your question around a little and hopefully you get the idea why. We don't choose to be transgender anymore than you choose to be cis gendered. I know you didn't mean any harm but some people may be bothered by the implication that we can choose whether or not to be transgendered. It would be similar to going up to a person who was born without a limb and asking why they want a prosthetic and why they chose to not have that limb. They didn't choose to be born that way and they want a prosthetic in order to correct their body, to improve the quality of their life and to be able to function as well as any other human being. It's similar to why transgender people transition. They want to correct the parts of their body that don't match the gender of their brain, they want to improve the quality of their life by eliminating or lessening their dysphoria and they want to be able to function healthily within society and their gender roles as other cis members of their gender do. Hopefully that sort of puts things into perspective.

As someone who is cis-sexual or cis-genderless (A term I made up for transgender individuals to understand my point of view), I never really liked the assumption from many trans-individuals that every cis-individuals have a feeling of gender because that simply doesn't apply to all of them and especially for those individuals who have no reason to identify other than they are born with those parts or the philosophy of essentialism being applied to biological sex and identity. I would fall under that camp as I do not have a reason to identify based upon feelings because it is not something that makes sense to me, and nor I am capable of caring to identify based upon feelings as I lack a feeling of gender while I find that essentialism makes sense for me.  I also couldn't careless about gender roles and gender roles are officially dead where I am at (If you were to go into my neighborhood, you'd see that no one enforces roles for members of people who carry a certain body because they're dead.), and from my experience, there's no good reason to believe that there is major differences in the behaviors of women and men while differences are due to inherent properties which affects their psychology indirectly such as being able to breed or having very observable anatomical characteristics.

That being said, I think the OP wants to know why transgender identify in a way that goes contrary to the application of essentialism as the OP may have hard time sympathizing on why some people do not agree with the application of essentialism when it comes to self-identity. Many cis-individuals have hard time sympathizing with the reasons of why transgender individuals go against essentialism when it comes to gender because a lot of us cis-individuals do not have a experience of feeling a gender and a lot of us identify as what in our birth certificates because it is convenient.

Regarding being born that way, I'd have to point out that the scientific community that investigates sexual orientation and gender has not yet reach to the a conclusion of what causes a person to be inclined that way or whether it should or not be seen as static for everyone, and that's ignoring semantic issues regarding sexual orientation and gender as there is no clear consensus on what constitutes a sexuality or gender. As far as whether everyone is born that way, it's hard to argue that everyone is as neuroplasticity is a thing and there's absolutely no reason to believe that sexuality or gender is immune to changes to the brain while it been proven countless of times that one's ability or personality are affected by changes to the brain which influences an aspect to a person. That position does not imply that one can simply be changed by wills.

Quote from: codyfletcher on March 22, 2015, 01:32:40 PM
Wow, Thank you so much for that indignation. If I did offend I'm terribly sorry, I was not trying to imply that being transgender was something by choice, i was rather searching for answers straight from the source, not some BS that I could get from a so called "doctor". You all are incredibly brave to be able to go out and be yourselves even when you know for a fact you risk facing persecution, discrimination, and even in some cases assault. It deeply saddens me to hear some of the peoples stories here, as 100% of them that I have read so far, always started off really really low. However, there is light at the end of every tunnel thus far and everything just gets lighter from there.

I definitely couldn't imagine just suddenly waking up as a female after 22 years of being a male, Though it would be a nice change of pace assuming female hormones could change my personality. I basically have none in terms of emotions, that part of me died years ago and just hasn't been reborn over that period of time. I honestly don't even know if it ever will return, however I'm more than happy that others don't have to go through the same thing, many say, "gosh, i wish i could just be numb for a change" you do think that until it happens. How i wish i could be romantic or more intimate with my wife, but I simply can't find that it me anymore, It's not that I don't love her with all my heart, I simply can't express it in ways that most other people can.

Don't worry, after reading your post a few times I knew you had good intentions. I think it's great that you want to learn more. There are many cis gender people out there who don't really take the time to learn about trans people or transgender issues because they aren't affected by them. I was a little taken aback at first but that's only because family members of mine insist that being transgender is a choice and a lifestyle. I've kind of been conditioned to expect that it's a loaded question when someone asks why I'm doing this or that in regards to my gender identity.

I understand exactly what you mean about feeling numb and I'm sorry you're experiencing that. I felt that way for years, mostly due to the toxic environment created by my family. I hated having no emotions but I just accepted it, thinking that "I don't have any happiness but at least I don't have any sadness either" because of how severe my depression could get at times. What I didn't realize was that my numbness actually was a symptom of my depression. I started seeing a therapist around this time last year and was put on an antidepressant which has helped that numbness gradually fade. Maybe something like that could help you too?

Female hormones would have an effect on your emotions but I don't think they would change your personality. In fact, they may do more harm than good if your brain is wired as male because it isn't meant to be operating on female hormones so that may make your emotions unstable.

I'm sure your emotions are still there though, sometimes it just takes a while before you're able to feel them again.