Hi. So far, this site has been immensely helpful for me while trying to figure out gender stuff. Thank you so much to those of you who have shared your experiences here. You are all so beautiful.
I wanted to share my own story so far, if that's okay. If really long introductory posts aren't okay, I'll take this down. I just started writing, and then I couldn't stop.
My whole adult life, I was a pretty feminine guy. I even tried wearing feminine clothing in college, but was mocked for it and stopped. My wife teases me that when we're picking something to watch, she's the one who always suggests action movies, and I'm the one who suggests emotional dramas (I've always defined a good movie/show as one that made me cry).
While it never felt "wrong" to me to be male, and I didn't really mind it, I always had serious body issues. In college, my body looked so wrong and unattractive that I was anorexic for most of it. It wasn't specifically the fact that it was male that seemed like the problem, it just didn't look right. I learned to accept my body and actually start eating for reals after college, but mostly by avoiding mirrors and not thinking too much about it. As recently as a year ago, I had a panic attack in a store while trying on clothes (and therefore looking at myself in a mirror).
Whenever I'm creating or choosing a representation of myself, like making a character in a video game, for the past ~15 years, I've always made a female one. I remember back when I was ~13 and playing Everquest the moment when I realized that not all of the people playing female characters were women, and I was like, "Wait, you can *do* that? But that's
cheating!" It took a bit for me to get over the feeling that it was "cheating," but once I did, I never used a male avatar online again. I felt it was cheating because I really wanted to do it, but didn't think I was "allowed" to.
About a year ago, I started identifying as genderfluid. After finding an excuse to do so, I convinced myself to buy prosthetic breasts. My wife let me borrow some of her clothing, and I would occasionally dress up in feminine clothes around the house, and as good as it felt, there was dissonance when I looked at myself in the mirror. I have a very prominent adam's apple, and my facial hair grows extremely fast, and it just looked wrong. So, I didn't express as female outside of the house despite identifying as fluid.
I do a lot of LARPing. A couple months ago, there was a LARP convention where I put down my gender as "male-leaning genderfluid" (male-leaning because of my aforementioned hangups), and for one of the games, I was cast as female. I used this as an excuse to buy a dress, and since it was free shipping if I ordered more things, I threw in a bunch of feminine tops (tank tops, crop tops, etc) to pad the order. After costuming for the game, I got a ton of compliments from my friends about the outfit and how cute I looked. There was a guy taking semi-professional photos for people, and I had a few taken after the game, and was feeling really good about it. When I got home and saw the pictures (which really were well done), I freaked out. There had been five hours between when I shaved and the photos were taken, and I had this visceral negative reaction to the way my face looked in the photos.
Between that convention and another a couple weeks before, I had met two new people who were also questioning their gender and reconnected with a third at work whom I had known in college. Since then and now, I've spoken with them (and a bunch of other people) extensively about gender and gender identity, and confided with one my reaction to the photos. They convinced me to go and look at them again, and I did, and once I got past the initial reaction to my face and neck, I realized something.
I am beautiful.
I went and put on a dress, shaved, and found a mirror. I looked at myself, like, seriously looked at myself. For the first time in a long time, I loved my body. It looked right. My face was a little weird to me still, but the rest of me was honestly beautiful in my eyes. I had started shaving my armpits, legs, and arms a couple weeks before the game so if I screwed up and nicked myself bad during the first pass, it would be healed by then, and when I looked at how my arms looked in the dress in the mirror, they looked right. I looked down at my legs where they left the dress, and they looked right. I realized then that I wasn't genderfluid, but it took me some time before I admitted it.
I was talking to one of my genderqueer friends about being genderfluid, and they said that since I was fluid, there must be times when I felt male and times when I felt female, and they were curious about when those times were. They had said that they identified as fluid for a bit, but quickly realized that there were no times they identified as male. I didn't answer then, but I thought about it for a few days. I realized that there weren't any times for me either.
A little over a week ago, I finally accepted that I was transgendered. I came out to my friends a little while later. Last weekend, I went to a weekend-long LARP event where there would be plenty of down time between roles, plenty of non-gendered roles (monsters and nightmares and animals and the like), and only a couple gendered male roles already assigned to me. There were about a hundred people there, most of whom I knew, but not all of whom I knew. I went there expressing female the whole time (except when playing the established male roles that I had), and everyone was extremely accepting and amazing. I love my community. I've found that LARPers are pretty accepting of changes in people.
I've been wearing feminine clothes much more, but I've quickly found that while I didn't care what I wore as a man, I very much care as a woman. I went from "Eh, it fits, I'll take ten" to agonizing for hours over what color of skirt or dress to buy because I just
can't have two of the same. I suddenly really enjoy shopping for clothes instead of dreading it..... at least online.
Since I came out, I went shopping once while expressing female, and it was incredibly scary. But I needed more feminine clothes, and I couldn't try them on without certain attributes, so I sucked it up and just did it. I freaked out when I found out that the place where we were shopping had gendered changing rooms, but my amazing wife grabbed my hand and dragged me into a female gendered room with her before I could protest. It went fine, no one said anything, and I came out of it with a really pretty dress.
We went out to dinner once too, and though I can't shake the feeling that people are staring at me, it went fine. Being out in the general public is scary, but, not as scary in reality as it is in my head.
I haven't come out to my parents, my wife's family, or my job yet. My job is actually really accepting of trans people and I'm not scared there or anything, I just don't see a reason until I'm a bit further along. And besides, I don't have any feminine business-casual clothing yet! My parents, well, I know them and I'm worried they'll say the most offensive thing they can: "What did we do wrong?" I live far away from them and never see them, so there's no rush there...
With my in-laws, I'm worried that it'll make things awkward for my wife. Her mother and brother are Mormon, and while they're liberal Mormon Jewish Democrats (culturally Jewish, religiously Mormon, politically Democrat and very active in all three), the church is very gender-conscious. For instance, Mormon Elders sometimes come by our house so my wife can feed them (they're really nice people despite the stereotypes), and they're not even allowed to enter houses that do not have at least one adult male present.
I started laser hair removal on my face a month ago, but we haven't made it very far yet since I'm a total wuss. My next session is tomorrow, and I'm pretty excited about it. I'm seeing a therapist about all this next week so she can help me figure out where to go from here.
I have a wonderful wife who is very supportive of me and what I'm doing. She identifies as gender-fluid herself and has considered transitioning, but she's currently pregnant and isn't going to even think about it until after she's done having kids. She also admits that, while she's completely okay with me transitioning now, she doesn't know if her feelings will change when it actually happens. She doesn't know how she feels about being married to a woman - she identifies as bi and is currently dating another woman (we're poly), but has never really considered the possibility of actually being married to one.
I have a lot of hangups about transitioning. A few are long term worries, like I'm worried that my wife will not be okay with it down the road and I'm worried that I'll lose my job for unrelated reasons and have a difficult time finding a new one. But, the biggest hangup right now for me is that I am having a lot of difficulty seeing myself mentally as female. I keep slipping up and referring to myself, out loud and in my head, with male pronouns and by my male name. When my friends or wife slip up (and it's totally reasonable that they do given how new this change is and how long they've known me), I don't even notice until a while after.
Though I've changed my body shape, clothing, carriage, mannerisms, and inflection to some extent, I don't feel any different in my head when I'm not looking at myself or actively thinking about gender. I know that's the point, that you aren't changing who you are, you're just becoming more yourself. But often, late at night, I start wondering if I'm actually trans and if I'm doing the right thing. And then I break out in tears because I know I am, and I know that I haven't really accepted myself yet, and I don't know why.
It's just... I talk a lot. I talk to my friends a lot, and I talk to myself out loud a lot, and voice is such a strong contraindication for me. I feel like every time I open my mouth, there's this little voice in the back of my head that says, "But you're really a
man because you sound like one, and that isn't going to change."
And, well, that's where I am right now. Certain, confused, beautiful, and scared.
This is me. Thank you for listening.
EDIT: ....aaaaaand I already messed up. I didn't notice the "Introductions" section until after I posted. Should I delete this and repost, or can a moderator move the topic to the right forum? Sorry about that
