I'm trying to concentrate on the positive. Thinking about the positives pushes me forward, and thinking about the negatives gets me down.

Anyone feel any upsides to being transgender ?

You get a unique perspective on life that CIS men and women never get to experience. You get to see both sides of the gender curtain.

Quote from: Susan on January 08, 2016, 12:04:19 AM
You get a unique perspective on life that CIS men and women never get to experience. You get to see both sides of the gender curtain.

After the transition, I would gain something amazing.
A body that matches my gender identity.

Something that alot is born with, but I would get all the way in adulthood.
Knowing 1st hand what it is like to not have that, will give me such an appreciation and a gratefulness
to finally get that.

Quote from: Susan on January 08, 2016, 12:04:19 AM
You get a unique perspective on life that CIS men and women never get to experience. You get to see both sides of the gender curtain.

This, sometimes I feel like the teen transitioners miss out on it though

Quote from: Serenation on January 08, 2016, 12:22:03 AM

Quote from: Susan on January 08, 2016, 12:04:19 AM
You get a unique perspective on life that CIS men and women never get to experience. You get to see both sides of the gender curtain.

This, sometimes I feel like the teen transitioners miss out on it though

You didn't miss out on anything pleasant Hon.

My personal belief is that just speaking for myself personally I was meant by nature to be like this, this is who I am. I doubt I would of been  free of this mystery whether I was born physically male  or female . I think what has caused my  situation is something at the very borderline of male and female and if I was born physically female I would of had the same urge to transition , but to male instead of female,  I'm bound to this situation at a primordial level. I struggled 60 years with this and I needed to make peace through acceptance. I'm a multifaceted enigma and proud of it. How do you like my new hat.

Yes, I think there are positives.   There are some things about my mind that I really like and that I think have given me an advantage in life.  The dysphoria part isn't so good but the rest is.  You just have to embrace it all and use it.

I can't prove that it's all linked but from very early in life I have believed it was.


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My experiance of being trans has been a rollercoaster of experiances. It has made me sad, happy and scared all at once... But i wouldnt change anything. I have grown to have strenght, compassion and appreciation. The strenght to stay strong when times got hard, the compassion of finally accepting myself, and the appreciation of how great it can be to finally have my dreams and have the body that matches my true identity...

Unforgently being transgender is not easy but it can be a blessing because you get to see things from all sides. And because you do, you learn to appreciate life just that little bit more than what cis people do because we have to fight for what we was ment to be.. But when you reach your final goel all them hard time fade into the distance and you start seeing things in a whole new way. Which makes all them stuggles worth it....

Stay strong and stay happy

Lea xXx

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Before you are a little awesome but after MUCH MORE AWESOME
confidence with each step, despite the hardship
meeting people I mightve never met otherwise
companionship or emotional bonding over something unexplicable
in our own judgement, grow more beautiful

Freedom of having the weight of being stuck as who you were forced to be off you so you can be you authentic self. Hugs
Mariah

Perspective most don't have
Empathy
You learn a lot about patience
Experience and knowledge from 'both sides' or many sides of gender few will ever have
Inner strength/determination you develop
Knowing thyself

Quote from: Stephanie Sammantha on January 07, 2016, 11:57:46 PM
I'm trying to concentrate on the positive. Thinking about the positives pushes me forward, and thinking about the negatives gets me down.

Anyone feel any upsides to being transgender ?

Despite the fact that I am constantly called "he" and "sir" and "(insert evil male designated birth name here)" and all that...
I do like being transgendered. I feel it is a different type of life. Like hitting a "second puberty"

I also feel and thing "I am on the road to becoming who I am"

So stick in there, and everything will be fine.

And honestly don't let anyone get you down Stephanie! If someone tells you "You are an evil person who is wrong. And you will burn in the fires of hell for your choice" All you gotta do is sit there and tell yourself "Hey... if I am going to hell, so is the doctor who diagnosed me with Gender Dysphoria. I am a woman, and I am clawing my way out of this male body!"

Also... I find writing poetry is a great escape. You don't have to be "good" because there is no "good" poetry. Poetry captures emotion and feelings. I have a whole collection of stuff I have written about my feelings of my Gender Dysporia actually

There aren't any direct advantages of being it in my opinion, because society, the gender dysphoria etc. But it changes your perspective at your life. You doesn't take everything for granted as some cis-people would. Something people think is obvious isn't always that.

I agree on the unique perspective. I've learned to see it as being a unique gift. Not everyone can appreciate it.

you don't have to hang around with guys anymore, watching football, drinking beers, pounding cheetos and grunting monosyllabic conversations to each other. you get to understand for the first time the expression "men. am i right ladies?" 

I'm fairly neutral on this, I'd say the majority of down sides to being transgender is caused by the attitude of cis gendered society towards us. If there was no gender stereotyping and gender role expectations/enforcement (both legal and social) then I expect we'd find being trans a much more straight forward experience. But those things do exist and I can't see that changing significantly any time soon so the only upside I can see is that we get the opportunity to choose who we want to be...it is actually quite empowering.

Freedom. Most people will spend their lives trying to live up to some imaginary ideal of normalcy. By virtue of our unique circumstances, we are clued in that the ideal is imaginary, and we get to opt out of it. Instead, we get to work on just being happy.

I make little advantages where I can.  These mostly deal with gender plurality, which doesn't seem to be very common even here.

When I'm dressed more femme, I'll go into whichever bathroom doesn't have a line... or if the boys have made a total mess of the place I'll just turn right around and walk into the ladies room.  Granted, I don't feel entitled to this very often.

When I shop for shoes, I've got more options -- male clothes make me too dysphoric, but I'm okay with some boy shoes if I see enough women wearing them.

When I want to get my way, like in dealing with border guards, I can put on a boy costume and suddenly jump back into the top-notch "white male" privilege category.

I've always been comfortable around and welcomed by women, except for a few years where I was bitten by the trifecta of loneliness, anxiety and testosterone -- this has been true for almost all of my life and I think it has a lot to do with my gender as women have perceived it.

Most guys I know still accept me as one of their own.  I'm not into sportsball, but I can out-macho anybody... um... except a few corn-fed farmboys I know who... kinda make me shy now... 

I recuse myself from generalizations about gender: any time I hear an exasperated "men!" or "women!" I'm free to respond "I know, right?" or "hey, don't look at me..." as I see fit... though usually I try to confront generalizations like that.

Quote from: Cindy on January 08, 2016, 12:28:38 AM
You didn't miss out on anything pleasant Hon.

Men have a kind of camaraderie... if you're "in," it feels great.  I see a lot of women get into backbitey crap, even with their good friends, and that has a big impact on their ability to form deep and stable relationships with other women.  I think that men experience more depth in friendships.  Not all, of course... but "brotherhood" can be a very deep relationship.  Men often don't have many "brothers" but it's common for men to pair-bond many times in their lives.  Women seem to experience a larger number of more shallow friendships.

^

I'd say men have camaraderie if they tend to have something in common. But women seem to have some automatic camaraderie just over the fact they're women and seem to 'share' the experience of women socially in way men don't. I don't know how many times I've seen women who are strangers just stop and start talking to each other in a store or in the street and sort of bond over something they both experience because they're women - maybe it's their kids, maybe their experience of "men!", maybe it's something dietary, or something to do with clothing, or biology, or something else... maybe just over the general experience of being a female human being. The closest I've seen to that with guys is if they both happen to be into the same hobby or looking for the same thing, or both have incredibly annoying spouses (the latter not something they're likely to do loudly in public though). 2 days ago I was in the store and the female cashier was on about some dude or other and turned to me and said "men eh!".

Even on a text based site like this one you can kinda sense women feel closer to each other than us men tend to.

Just being perceived a female I've had a way easier time socially than many guys I think. People are happier to come up and talk to a woman than a man if they don't know them I guess, my female friends were always happy to share their experiences with me and see me as an automatic ally. Although I've always stayed far away from any two-facedness or bitchiness as some people say women's circles can be full of. I don't have much experience of that. No time for it either.

I'm only really interested in forming trustworthy friendships than casual acquaintances. So I never have time for a huge circle of friends, gossip, and all that. If I'm a typical male in that, it's not hard to see why men tend to stick to less but firmer friendships. They require a lot of time and energy for maybe no payoff... just seems more beneficial to build on good ones with common interests (although of course more devastating if your few friends turn out to be total jerks and throw you under the bus. Not that its likely to happen if you're a decent character judge).

Any Upsides To Being Transgender?

Nope, can't think of any.