I see a lot where people say they've always felt like a woman inside.  What does that mean?  I don't know if I "feel" like woman or I just believe I am one or if it feels different from being a man or what.  Do I just feel like me and know that I am supposed to be a woman?

It's not something you feel necessarily, at least not for me. It's like you know what feels wrong and what feels right just feels normal? If that makes sense. It's just innate in you, transition just takes off the shell and lets your actual self come out.

Well it started for me as feeling angry when I was treated like a man, so I figured what I needed was to be treated like a woman. Later I realized I got along much better with women too. Now here I am a smidgen away from being full time with only work to tell, and I can no longer describe what it feels like again. I'm just me now, but me in a way that lets me present my feminine side without shame.

I don't know either.  As best I can describe in words, before HRT I did not feel like myself.  After HRT I do feel like myself.  Maybe before it was like a feeling of existential disconnectedness.  Now it's like a feeling of existential oneness.  My conscious mind tells me that this feeling of being now at one with myself is female.  But I have no idea if that's what anyone else feels.

Maybe in the end it's impossible to really feel the oneness unless you have first felt the disconnectedness.   Would you be able to describe cold if there were no heat; or describe darkness if there were no light?  In the absence of one it's impossible to describe the other.


Sapere Aude

for me it's just how the world interacts with me and how I fit into the frame work of social man and woman. I've just know I don't belong and never have interacting as a male in the world.

Quote from: Karlie Ann on January 25, 2016, 05:36:55 PM
I see a lot where people say they've always felt like a woman inside.  What does that mean?  I don't know if I "feel" like woman or I just believe I am one or if it feels different from being a man or what.  Do I just feel like me and know that I am supposed to be a woman?

Some people have a certainty that they are women. I've asked them to describe it to me, and they say they "just know." Near as I can tell that's a social thing. They look at females and have a strong feeling that they are like them. They look at males and know they are not like them.

I never had that feeling. What I did have was a comfortable, homelike feeling when I'm around females, and a nervous uncomfortable feeling when I'm around males. When I'm in a roomful of females, I don't feel like the odd one out, I feel like it's exactly where I ought to be. When I'm in a roomful of males, I just can't be comfortable with them. I feel I don't belong.

Quote from: suzifrommd on January 25, 2016, 07:16:13 PM
Some people have a certainty that they are women. I've asked them to describe it to me, and they say they "just know." Near as I can tell that's a social thing. They look at females and have a strong feeling that they are like them. They look at males and know they are not like them.

I never had that feeling. What I did have was a comfortable, homelike feeling when I'm around females, and a nervous uncomfortable feeling when I'm around males. When I'm in a roomful of females, I don't feel like the odd one out, I feel like it's exactly where I ought to be. When I'm in a roomful of males, I just can't be comfortable with them. I feel I don't belong.

Yes, this

It's kind of interesting how our experiences and self understandings differ.  My whole adult life from the age of 13 to 41 was spent in almost exclusively male environments.  I never felt uncomfortable and I did a good job motivating and leading nearly exclusively male Soldiers. However apart from a few friends early on I never felt I had anything social in common.  I also had an inner knowledge of who I was the whole time.

I've often wondered since being on this forum where these differences come from.  Is it a fundamental difference in the way we are trans or is it simply a difference in early environment and developed coping mechanisms?


Sapere Aude

I  know what I am not,  and that's male.   At least not the culturally accepted American male.   

I  share more in common interest, reaction,  likes and mannerisms  to a typical  middle-aged female,  but I really don't think I'm that either.

I have always figured that most people become what they think society , expects them to be. 

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

Isn't it funny how it is easier to say what one is not rather than what one is. I strongly feel that I am not a male. I have had to live in that role so long that I know exactly how to act male. My survival depended on that (or so I thought). I want to be a woman. Let me know if you think this is silly but, I feel like I need to pay my "dues" by going further into my transition before I have a right to claim "womanhood." I need to experience living full time, interacting with others in the role of being a woman. The hormones have allowed me to become a very different person. Will I ever feel like a woman? I don't know. I'm gonna make a damn good try at being happy. That means being on the female side of things. There is no one there keeping score on the subject other than me.
Moni

For me its what I enjoy and what I dont.

What I enjoy,
Shopping for clothes
Hanging around women and having conversations.
Fixing my hair, doing my nails,makeup, just trying to look pretty.
That the  hormones have changed the way I think and  some of the physical changes.
Looking in the mirror and pictures and seeing a happy woman.
My confidence as a female is more so than my poor image as a male.


What I dont enjoy as a male
Looking in the mirror and seeing some one I hate
Trying to fit in with males in general
Wearing their lousy boring fashions
Women dont treat you like their friend..
Body hair and facial hair
Machismo

That is what being a woman  feels like to me

I am not out in public yet. Moving slowly. Nearly a year since admitting I am transgender MTF.

I am not sure how one feels any given thing. I feel emotions, pain, pleasure and maybe music. I am not sure that I feel gender. I think Suzi described the closest of previous posts. There is a character from a show I worked on recently that has a monologue that starts and ends with the following:

"Do you feel all the things you say you feel? ... I don't feel authentic. I feel like I am playing a role in my own life. The role of me. ...That's what I'm asking. Is it just me? Is it just me? Or does everyone do this?"

It does not answer anything, obviously but somehow seemed important for me to add.

I would also like to share something from a few days ago that may answer more accurately, my personal take on this question. I may not know what a it feels like to be a a woman(yet). However, I recently went shopping to experiment with my female look.(I have cross dressed but rarely fully, the clothes were always purged and never in public-except for a party where 2 couples attended as the opposite gender presentation). I was trying on a few skirts, blouses and a dress. I have always had problems with seeing myself in the mirror. I still did not like and almost mentally deleted the face attached to the person seen. I also felt my arms and shoulders are so big... In other words, while I had issues with parts of me, I liked what I saw of the clothing. But more importantly, it just felt right. I never wanted to take it off. It was 2 am and I stayed up for another hour trying variations and I had somewhere to be in the morning. I was excited, not sexually but by how natural it felt. I guess the "rightness", that I have rarely to never felt before, in this little slice of my female life may be what it feels like to me.

Then again, maybe it's just me.

Joanna

Quote from: suzifrommd on January 25, 2016, 07:16:13 PM
Some people have a certainty that they are women. I've asked them to describe it to me, and they say they "just know." Near as I can tell that's a social thing. They look at females and have a strong feeling that they are like them. They look at males and know they are not like them.

I never had that feeling. What I did have was a comfortable, homelike feeling when I'm around females, and a nervous uncomfortable feeling when I'm around males. When I'm in a roomful of females, I don't feel like the odd one out, I feel like it's exactly where I ought to be. When I'm in a roomful of males, I just can't be comfortable with them. I feel I don't belong.

That is exactly it, in a room full of males I so hate it, I feel that too that I'm not one of them.  I just know if I was born female I would not be wishing I was male, this dysphoria gets really impossible at times.

Quote from: suzifrommd on January 25, 2016, 07:16:13 PM
[...] What I did have was a comfortable, homelike feeling when I'm around females, and a nervous uncomfortable feeling when I'm around males. When I'm in a roomful of females, I don't feel like the odd one out, I feel like it's exactly where I ought to be. When I'm in a roomful of males, I just can't be comfortable with them. I feel I don't belong.

I have (and always had) the exact same feelings.

Quote from: Karlie Ann on January 25, 2016, 05:36:55 PM
What does being a woman feel like?

I don't know!  LoL

taking a shower today and feeling my breasts I thought about being a woman and sure enough I felt I was a woman.

I do not know about you all but being a woman to me is rooted at childhood, before you know the difference between black and white. In childhood, you do not come up with restrictions or playing to society. I like feminine shows, I like dolls, fashion and mentally relate to womanhood.  By this age, I feel like someone not mature because I never allow myself to be mature or myself. I am an actress playing a role of a masculine man, and I am quite ackward at being so but I never let myself be the true me. Whatever the true me is.

By acting all my life, I am psychologically restricting myself to a cube I never let myself out of. I think being a woman feels exactly that feeling like a woman, which I think is soft feminine energy at its core. Love and compassion.

I am comfortable in my own skin.

Hugs

Jen

Quote from: HappyMoni on January 25, 2016, 10:57:03 PM
Isn't it funny how it is easier to say what one is not rather than what one is. I strongly feel that I am not a male. I have had to live in that role so long that I know exactly how to act male. My survival depended on that (or so I thought). I want to be a woman. Let me know if you think this is silly but, I feel like I need to pay my "dues" by going further into my transition before I have a right to claim "womanhood." I need to experience living full time, interacting with others in the role of being a woman. The hormones have allowed me to become a very different person. Will I ever feel like a woman? I don't know. I'm gonna make a damn good try at being happy. That means being on the female side of things. There is no one there keeping score on the subject other than me.
Moni

After talking to a friend, I decided to go through some early posts I made. I wrote the above  close to three years ago. I was not full time then. (Cue the spinning newspaper like they used to do in the movies to show the passage of time.lol) I have a better answer now. As time passes one forgets what one was like when one was 5, 15, 30, and on and on. I have found this true for my gender as well. After 2 1/2 years full time female, I am clueless about interacting in the world as a man, it seems so strange to me now. So, Moni, do you feel like a woman? Well, for me, it turns out that my theory holds water. I believed that as I lived as a woman, experienced life as a woman, I would increasingly feel like a woman. It is not perfect as things like my voice cause me to be more 'trans self conscious' at times, but it is like watching a fuel gauge go up as you fill the tank with gas. My sense of being a woman increases all the time. And yes, I do feel like a woman. This experience has enveloped me, changed my sense of 'me.' I think I am revisiting this because I have seen so many torture themselves thinking, "I think I'm trans female but I don't feel like a woman. Maybe, I'm fake or not trans enough." I would say, 'feeling like' comes from experiencing the thing you are supposed to be. A couple of signs of my change are, one, I feel like I deserve to be called she or her or Ma'am or a lady. It is so natural now. Two, I interact with woman more easily, comfortably. I definitely view men differently. It is not one thing or another though, it is everything. Next year, I expect I will be even further along in living this dream. Wow, transition in the rear view mirror. To think, I once thought I was a transgender pretender, a want to be.

  Am I a woman? I still don't know. 2 years on hormones, a year and a half full time. Name changed in the queue for a GCS consult and I don't know. I am going forward with it if for no other reason than this fantasy has cost me too much already and I have nothing more to lose. I might as well try to find out.