So many of us have been there, wondering about the nature of our gender and whether or not to transition. I certainly have. I was born male, but I have an almost unquenchable drive to be female. I want, need to validate what feels like an innate female identity. Or do I? Sometimes I don't know. Sometimes I am comfortable being male, while there are other times when... well, I won't go into detail.

I know conventional wisdom holds that if you think you are transgendered, then you are transgendered.

In an age where our understanding of consciousness, gender and personal identity is limited, this simple concept can provide buoyancy in a sea of doubt and despair.

Yet while there is a soundness to this self-identifying precept, I often ask myself whether I'm involved in some elaborate self-deception.

For if I fall back on self-identification to support the nature of my gender, then I cannot help but wonder from where those initial self-identifying thoughts originated. And there lies the nature of my doubt.

How about you?

I have doubts from time to time as well.  I learned to figure out where they were coming from and found out it was through fear.

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Quote from: Hannah.Emma on July 14, 2015, 05:24:27 AM
I have doubts from time to time as well.  I learned to figure out where they were coming from and found out it was through fear.

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So you didn't really have doubts about your gender (or transitioning), but rather fear was blocking you from progressing?

For me, yes.  I seem to have always know but fear and anxiety limit my progress.  I have the normal fears that alot have.  The fear of losing everything.   It's real to me because most aspects of my life is tied to family.  I am trying now to separate myself from some of these. To become my own person apart from family.  There lies fear as well.

Quote from: Hannah.Emma on July 14, 2015, 05:33:20 AM
For me, yes.  I seem to have always know but fear and anxiety limit my progress.  I have the normal fears that alot have.  The fear of losing everything.   It's real to me because most aspects of my life is tied to family.  I am trying now to separate myself from some of these. To become my own person apart from family.  There lies fear as well.

Congrats for overcoming your fears. I envy your confidence in knowing the nature of your gender and using that knowledge to inform such important aspects of your life.

I have never had any doubts about who I was, I was born a female in a male body, realising from a very early age!

However the very questioning of my gender identity was shot down.

So I entered into the world of self preservation, hiding battling to suppress my feelings, so I did not and had no idea how to transition, scared of asking and probably scared of the outcomes.

Did the male thing, married and had kids and now g'kids, could not risk screwing them up, so carried on this male world, until inside you are ready to explode... I have started to transition, but the fear of screwing up my families lives has been the biggest hold back. I have always wanted to transition, but so many fears have been stoping me!

Katy xx

Thank you for such a profound question Echo Eve. I think that it is too deep for one person to be able to give you an answer and all I can do is provide my perspective.

Gender is an incredibly abstract concept and for me, an understanding of it sometimes feels like searching for the base of a rainbow. It changes with time, it changes within varying social and socio-economic backgrounds, it changes with culture around the world and it changes within each individual. Given that, how can we ever hope to trap it in a net for long enough to study and comprehend it?

For me, I have known since I first learnt about gender roles that I was different. There were numerous and varying influences in my life where which some said I was male and some said I was female. As a scientist I embarked on a stubborn and ultimately futile journey to consciously understand in an intellectual way which gender I really was, if any. I felt that some of the words you used to pose your question reminded me of that seemingly endless journey. 'Think', 'consciousness', 'self-deception'. As if you too are approaching it from an intellectual perspective.

In two days I will have my first appointment with my endocrinologist with the intention of starting HRT to transition from MtF. I never thought (there's that word again) that I would ever be here, except for a peculiar quirk of fate. I stopped thinking about my gender and began to feel it instead. I turned off all the chatter in my mind and allowed my gender identity to stretch it's legs and for my gender expression to just tumble out. And after a while, I realised that the answer was there in front of me. It felt so harmonious, so congruous with my inner self to embrace and project my femininity. Like, all of a sudden I opened my eyes and there was the rainbow rising out from the earth, right in front of me.

Now I know that's a clichéd overuse of hyperbole, but that worked for me. Just do what 'feels' right and how can you go wrong? Good luck! 

I often feel the same way, Echo. There are so many fluid factors to consider that doubt is often creeps its way into my mind. Does identifying more with a gender role which may or may not change over time make me that gender today, but not in a few years?

I personally envision myself as a more tomboyish girl, a sort of fringe stance between the two gender roles. I don't know why I feel that way. Perhaps it is a desire to express myself in a very specific way, but as you said, the origins of such self identified feelings are difficult to trace.

I often wonder if I'd even be considering this had the idea of being transgendered not been as prominent in the eyes of the public (at least in the liberal NYC area I live) as it has been over the past few years. I wonder if I would have interpreted things differently had such an option not been presented to me.

I too feel somewhat comfortable being male at times and feel an extremely powerful desire to be a woman at others. Perhaps I am not trans but a form of non-binary gender. All I know is that for some reason I can't explain I like certain things and I dislike others.

I really love the color green, for example. Is there any reason to pick it over others? I could say I really like nature and many plants in a natural setting tend to have green in them, but that would only lead to an endless search for things abut my identity that just are the way they are.

Perhaps some of the desires I may have are nurture while others are nature. I don't know if it necessarily matters for me at this point in time. I know that expressing my feminine side makes me feel happy in a way that is refreshing and liberating.

Perhaps my way of seeing things will not be consistent with changing gender roles. That is one of the reasons potentially transitioning scares me. I have found, though, that the more I have been willing to get past my fears of expression and let it happen, the more comfortable I have been with myself. I think our minds are full of defense mechanisms that try to inhibit the acceptance of a personality trait that would put us through much difficulty in the future. I don't know if this would work for you, but I think trying to accept your feelings and seeing how you personally react to that may be a good way to try sorting those feelings out.

I have been aware of my need to be physically and socially different for most of my life. Since around 9 or 10. Ever since early childhood when I first heard the word tomboy that has been how I internally self identified. Though I did not have the words until I was in my mid teens and I didn't know about hormones and surgery until my late teens. I too didn't transition out of fear. My family was unstable at best when I was a teen and I knew with some certainty that my paternal grandparents (who lived next door) would hate me if I were queer in any way. I was the one who tried to solve my family's fights. I couldn't bear to risk tearing my family apart.

And so, supression of my feelings, self doubt, depression, substance abuse and years of denial. I allowed my tomboyish feelings to get confused. If I liked doing boy stuff I must just be a boy right? So I had a long term girlfriend, and we nearly destroyed one another. We were both in a ton of pain (her father died unexpectedly and we went through two abortions) and the relationship ruined what had been a very close friendship. I kind of lived through her too. She was very much like I wanted to be. And I don't believe silent envy is a healthy thing. I subconsciously bought and wore women's clothes  and converted all of my men's pants to capris. I couldn't let myself know why anymore. I had literally begun to forget huge swaths of my childhood. My mind looked right past all the pain, fear and the joy, the rightness I felt when I was mistaken for a girl or the couple times I went to school fully dressed. I did secretly, and at times it was a secret to me too, tell myself that when the relationship was over I would have to deal with this. I knew I wasn't attracted to women, I was one.

When it did end, I got sober and finally came to terms with my sexuality. That left the gender issues becoming more prevalent. More pronounced. I doubted myself, i had become accustomed to my male prison life. So I began to "feel ok being male" and began to admit that I felt 50/50. That was a huge step for me because it was the first admission in decades that I felt female at all. So I started to identify as an unsure person somewhere in the agender range. I tried to force myself into that mold. I realized however that what felt right about saying I had no gender was saying that I was not male. And then my parents and brother began to resolve their fights. My decades of negotiations in their favor had finally paid off. The last of my grandparents died as well.

Everything in my life seemed to be making transition my next step. I still wouldn't admit that I needed to. So I examined myself more deeply than I ever had. And I tried some desperate last ditch efforts at being manly. And it nearly killed me. I ended up in the hospital after being house bound for two weeks. I had an inflammatory bowel disease and it was made unbearable by stress. The bleeding ulcers also amplified my risk of cancer. I began at long last to start seeking help. To start caring for myself. The more that happened the more certain I became of not being male. Then my need to change my body returned and I realized that if I transitioned to female  i would no longer feel half and half. I realized that my femininity was the dominant side.

When I finally came out, got on hrt and begun social transition I began to feel normal. I felt more like me. And folks can still see that I am a bit of both genders, they see who I am. A woman with some masculine tendencies. I still ponder and question deeply before taking any step. But once I am certain I act. Each step makes me happier than I realized it would. I am becoming fully me. That was the big revelation of starting transition. I am not becoming a woman, I am one, I am just becoming ME!

I was are from an early age as well and then the fact there were issues with my body only reinforced that more. Like others not knowing about how to go about it and what resources were offered would have been the kind that we all know is wrong in the first place resulted in my trying to bury it. The result of that wasn't good  because it resulted in one kidney being killed off by my trying to hold this back. Trying to put work and family first nearly killed me three years ago. It got to a point where I couldn't hold this back anymore. I knew I had to transition long ago, but for my family I tried to wait and false started because of them once before.
Mariah

The more I have thought about myself and my gender, the more I noticed that the only times I was ever comfortable being male was when I was perceived by others as being male.  The reality is, that if I lived in a vacuum, or in a totally accepting society, I would be girl, girl, girl.

Why did the perception of others matter so much?  Well I was subjected to a lifetime of rather extreme psychological abuse by my father.  My father, was a weak, insecure, disagreeable man who fought by manipulation rather than confrontation.  He lived by his own fears, and constantly used my fears to manipulate me.

I was constantly criticized, and constantly told how people would react or how they would treat me if I did things a certain way.  Guilt, shame and fear were his weapons, and he used them with aplomb.  Every time I got bullied in school, I was always to blame and he was always right.

Only far into adulthood did I realize that he had had me constantly performing for an almost entirely imaginary audience.  My father never had any actual friends, but it was not until he had a severe stroke and no one called to see how he was doing that I realized that -- that he never socialized with anyone except his own relatives, and even they did not pay much attention after he had the stroke.

The people who really matter to me will never make me perform to any kind of standard.  They will let me be me.  And, freed of the psychological shackles my father placed on my soul, I am a girl.

So if you are having doubts about your gender, ask yourself what is really the source of those doubts.  Take a look around you, and ask yourself how much of your doubts are connected with how you are perceived by others, and then ask if those people's opinions really matter.

I was aware of being different since around five years old or so, without even knowing about being transgender. Never was comfortable around boys in school and hung out with girls. I probably would've realized a lot sooner but I was pulled out of school in third grade and home schooled. And because of that I really did not have anyone to turn to and ask about my feelings. Plus my father was awfully mean and I would get yelled at for getting a question wrong on a test, so imagine saying I think I'm a girl?

Also didn't help that I know my dad picked up something was up with me. And tried to mold me into a younger version of himself which caused me not to really have my own personality and really caused me to be depressed for years being someone I'm not. I got told what music to listen to, what movies to watch, what books to read among other things. He also caused me emotional trauma trying to toughing me up. Making me to the university where he worked to the morgue and showing me stuff. Also making me go to a slaughterhouse which had the result of making me vegetarian. I mean who does that to a nine year old?

I kept my feelings pretty much buried mostly out of fear, but still knew something was up. Once I started working I gravitated to having all female friends and started feeling kind of happy. But since I was still living with my parents got told I was hanging out with women too much. And should not be trying to make friends I should be dating.

And then the last four years I literally became a mess. I jumped between interests that I considered masculine trying to find happiness, and really tried to overcompensate. I dealt with a really bad drinking problem for about a year or so. Stopped really taking care of myself and showed it and generally angry at the world. Kind of realized that was the wrong path and became a little better. But at the start of this year I started having really bad depression. Which I could not figure out. I told myself "You have friends who think you are cool, you have all this really cool stuff you should be happy." But then I started paying attention to my thoughts. I wasn't acting like guys I knew, I was envious of females and wanted to dress like them not hook up with them. And well after some research I'm finally at the point were I'm happy. Its weird my transition has been awfully quick for me, but it feels right. And my depression has pretty much cleared its self up and I'm more confident.

I knew I was different pretty early on and once that feeling surfaced, I knew I should've been or was supposed to be born a girl.  I have doubts about whether I should transition, but I don't think I ever really doubted that I should've been born a girl.  I can look back know and see that any denial or questions I had were purely self imposed.  In other words, I didn't want to be trans, so I found reasons to question, doubt and deny. 

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Quote from: Echo Eve on July 14, 2015, 05:20:42 AM
Yet while there is a soundness to this self-identifying precept, I often ask myself whether I'm involved in some elaborate self-deception.

I think this is where exploration and real life experience (living in your preferred gender eventually full time) helps.  To medically transition you want to be pretty sure, but you can always slowly wade into it starting with reversible changes right?