Quote from: Janes Groove on April 03, 2018, 08:26:56 PM
We can't really change our core personality.  That's pretty set by nature and nurture.  What we can do is what cis women do.  Study the feminine arts.  They actually used to have things in my days called finishing schools where young women would go and this was studied and practiced.   The motivation for this can be different and vary by individual practitioners.  Many study stereotypical female mannerisms and appearance mainly for one reason.  And this is where "passing" comes into the picture.  By practicing the stereotyped commonly accepted norms of the gender binary we can ease our passage in the world and not "stand out" or "be read." (This by the way gets us in big trouble with radical feminism as we are viewed as embracing stereotypical societal/patriarchal demands of how women should look and act).  Changing our voice is a big one.  Is is artifice? Yes. But it undoubtedly eases our transition into the larger society.  Also there is walking, sitting, hand movements, facial expressions, etc.  It must be practiced with great caution as it is easy for the beginner to go "over the top" and, self-defeatingly, stand out calling attention to "over the top" feminine compensation behaviors.

This is, I think, as much art as science.  Do cis women do it? Absolutely.  For me, I find it best to find a balance between artifice and authenticity.  I try to use the feminine arts to reveal my core personality rather than to disguise it and this for me means at times owning and accepting many masculine parts of my personality.

I agree with much there, but finishing school (in Europe at least) was very upper class, so unless you are upmarket in manner and lifestyle, the artifice is going to be seriously on show everywhere to everyone.

Ironically I think acting with great caution is one of the greatest give aways here, because aristocrats do nothing with caution and everything effortlessly. That tends to include acting in the most 'unladylike' ways, and aside from formal settings, swearing like truckers and slobbing around in any item of clothing to hand (some old rugby shirt, old jeans, unisex sweaters and coats) etc.

At the end of the day, that is generally a class of person who is so innately confident that nothing matters. For those that everything matters to, they're going to fall hard and badly by trying to ape that.

While I would generally be unacceptable to some radical feminists in terms of my dress, habits, dating, and the basic fact of being trans, I don't disagree with the basic principles that underpin radical feminism. It's a valid critique of how women relate to society and are related to by society.

You can only be yourself. We all have stereotypically masculine and feminine things. Relatively few people are at such extremes on the gender binary that 'female' (or men perceived as gay) hand movements or masculine leg positioning (as opposite examples) are going to be seriously problematic.

There are a few other big giveaways to me of things that aren't 'feminine'. Mainly to do with over compensation as you say.

They include stuff like saying you enjoy domestic violence or can't wait to be objectified at every turn, or talking about things like lactation/sex itself in quite a pushy and overtly sexualized way, and I do read that sort of stuff from some trans women and reel in horror. That's relatively rare for women to say those things, however vulgar people can be with friends or on nights out and with the caveat that women often tell far dirtier jokes much closer to the bone than men ever dare.

Finding your balance is an individual endeavour, and again, I don't think that's unique to trans people.

     The original question wasn't really geared towards adopting mannerisms and putting on a show for the purposes of passing, but in finding the feminine feelings within yourself. 

     How do you know that you are a woman...what makes you FEEL like a woman?  What is the difference between looking and acting like a woman and actually BEING a woman? 

     If my therapist says that I am a woman inside my head, what does that mean?  I mean is the female version of me the same as the male version but with breasts and a vagina?  ...that doesn't seem right.  I know my core personality won't change, but I am trying to wrap my head around that which makes me woman, because as much as I want to be a woman, if I don't feel like one at the end of the day, then what is the point?

          Julie

Quote from: JulieAllana on April 04, 2018, 12:09:17 AM
  How do you know that you are a woman...what makes you FEEL like a woman?  What is the difference between looking and acting like a woman and actually BEING a woman? 

     If my therapist says that I am a woman inside my head, what does that mean?  I mean is the female version of me the same as the male version but with breasts and a vagina?

I can't point you to a specific high level thought, concept, or test.   What I can tell you is that at some primitive level, likely linked to body image and controls maintained in the brain via the insula, stria terminalis, and other sexually dimorphic regions, there is something that sets our gender identity.

This setting is independent of body features.  In MOST people it matches their body, in that the gender identity matches the sex assigned at birth from visual evaluation of the genitalia.  In a fraction of a percent of the population, some of these regions of the brain that develop in the second half of pregnancy have a different sexually dimorphic value than the genitalia that develop very early in pregnancy.  This mismatch, or gender incongruity, is hypothesized to be what gives rise to many transgender folks.

It's not something I can point to and say 'Here it is; this makes me female'.  I just know that I expressed the idea that I was not my assigned sex very early in life, as some of us do.  (Others may first notice the gender incongruity at puberty, or even in early adulthood.)

Quote from: JulieAllana on April 04, 2018, 12:09:17 AM
     The original question wasn't really geared towards adopting mannerisms and putting on a show for the purposes of passing, but in finding the feminine feelings within yourself. 

     How do you know that you are a woman...what makes you FEEL like a woman?  What is the difference between looking and acting like a woman and actually BEING a woman? 

     If my therapist says that I am a woman inside my head, what does that mean?  I mean is the female version of me the same as the male version but with breasts and a vagina?  ...that doesn't seem right.  I know my core personality won't change, but I am trying to wrap my head around that which makes me woman, because as much as I want to be a woman, if I don't feel like one at the end of the day, then what is the point?

          Julie

Kind of following Michelle's comment, Our brains have sections which take on neuron patterns based on our body's exposure to androgen hormones at specific growth stages. Much as our bodies develop our outer genitals in the first trimester, our brains become wired in the second trimester. These brain regions effect how we think and how we process information and emotions. These form our much more basic human instincts. As a trans person we tend to fight these basic instincts and surpress those parts of our minds that do not fit with who society tells us we are supposed to be.

For myself, I always had to surpress my emotions. Looking back at it now I'm not certain how I actually did it so long. I think for me, coming to terms with being trans has been my saving grace as I finally allow my emotions to flow. I honestly fell so much better as my emotions flow in my thoughts now seemingly effortlessly. I know also within my head are female instincts that have been very strong throughout my life. I know that is a really vague description but it is not easy to describe either.

Julie

My simple advice would simply be:

1. Observation of women in general
2. Voice training. I am arranging this later this year (although I never expect to pass but it should give me greater confidence)
3. Socialise if you can with women with common interests to you and you (and I) should hopeful develop accordingly.

Finally I agree precisely with Michelle's scientific explanation above.

I wish you the best for the future.

Pamela

Quote from: Michelle_P on April 04, 2018, 01:08:17 AM
I can't point you to a specific high level thought, concept, or test.   What I can tell you is that at some primitive level, likely linked to body image and controls maintained in the brain via the insula, stria terminalis, and other sexually dimorphic regions, there is something that sets our gender identity.

     Right, and I get all of that, but some of us here have gone most of our lives knowing that something was wrong, but not what it was and then one day, BAM!  Not all of us have had the overt notion that we were "women trapped in men's bodies" for our entire lives.  As for myself, I have had fantasies of wanting to be a woman since around 13 or so (and huge amounts of repression to cope with that for most of my life) but never huge amounts of dysphoria about my body.  Now, as I am beginning to transition there are fleeting moments where I feel more feminine and sometimes where I can say I am a woman and feel/mean it and then there are times when I just feel like everything is normal...nothing to see here, move along. 

     Maybe I have answered my own question with my erstwhile (and probably continuing) repression being responsible for impeding the feelings of being a woman trapped in a man's body.  Maybe it's just layer upon layer of societal propriety that I am having to shred and peel off...I am having to consciously undo that which my subconscious has wrought behind the scenes over a lifetime.

     To quote my therapist, "it's a mind ->-bleeped-<-."

           Julie

Julie, my experience is very close to yours, I'd have been entering puberty around 1967 and while I could envy Michelle some experiences she's written about -- very much tied to access to San Francisco -- I know she paid a price for the self knowledge that she got so much earlier. Long before I heard her story I'd mostly come to terms, realizing had I known fully about my gende, that it could have exposed me to dangers that I now know she experienced.

I think the common thread is that we all knew we were different. For most of us the path isn't an easy one. But then what life is?

Quote from: JulieAllana on April 04, 2018, 07:27:01 AM
     Right, and I get all of that, but some of us here have gone most of our lives knowing that something was wrong, but not what it was and then one day, BAM!

Right!  It's that weird sensation I once described as like a silent alarm going off in the back of my head.  No details, no nothing, but it is there, alerting us that there is a problem, without a clue as to what it is.

We can try to push it away, ignore it or suppress it, but it persists, and the damn thing gets more annoying with each passing year for some of us.

I think my earliest clue were the two sisters down the street who babysat me, and used me as a 'living doll', putting me in their old clothes and makeup when I was about 5.  I liked it, at least partially because of the attention I'm sure, but it didn't bother me appearing as 'the other gender' at all.

As @SadieBlake mentions, I had other experiences at puberty where a drive to be feminine came to the front. That was in the late 1960s, though, where it was considered unacceptable in both cultural and psychiatric circles, and was thought to be 'curable'.  (It's not.)

Julie,
   My gut feeling is that you  want to know how it goes from here. You want to know if you will always feel like 'feeling like a woman' is out of your reach. Also, maybe, how do you work toward getting to that 'woman' state of mind. Am I at all close? I started  a thread a while back about tipping points of transition and the normalization of transition to the point where it is all just coming naturally. I am not all the way to normalization, but each  new day and each new experience brings it closer to reality. For example, I went for a mammogram today. Last year, my partner came with me and I was nervous, out of place. This year, I went alone, did everything as any other woman would. It isn't old hat to me yet, but I felt more normalized, more natural, more like any other woman. Think of it this way, maybe it is like living all your life in California and then suddenly moving to New York. You become a resident, pay your NYS taxes but you feel out of place for a while. You are not comfortable calling yourself a New Yorker yet. Once you live it, learn the in's and out's of that life you start to feel like you belong. If all your life you thought of yourself as a New Yorker, it still takes time for the experiences to happen to make you feel like you really are one. Same with being trans and feeling like a woman.
   This is so new for you. Do you really think that a few months in, you should have everything normalized? I don't think there is any way (in most cases.) This is why you relax, give yourself a break, know that you have to have transition time and that will lead toliving mentally as a women time. Allow yourself to experience transition and don't stress out by trying to jump ahead. Don't panic because you are not mentally where you want to be at the end of transition. YOU WILL get there. 
Moni

For me it was getting lost in my artistic skills as it made me feel more complete and around 10 or so I felt a certain feminine state of mind as I was drawing or painting.
   As a preteen and thru high school I had way more female friends than male because I felt I understood them better than I did guys, and for many years female friends always would say "you're not like other guys at all"

It's funny but my spouse sez I'm way more feminine than she is in mannerisms and fashions and she can't believe how natural and never forced being a girl is for me, actually it's the easiest thing in the world 😊