Quote from: Lady Lisandra on December 15, 2017, 09:12:30 AM
The first time I heard about a trans guy I couldn't understand why would a genetical woman want to be a guy. For me it's like the most boring and horrible experience.

Completly agree, i cant describe what being a man or a woman feels like all i know is what it feels like to be me, and even then like mentiones above its like trying to decribe colours to a blind person its just something that feels normal to you and thats a very subjective area.

For me its when i look at girls and see there body ratios, skinny arms all the way up ie no bicepts. A waste that goes in from the hips and then back out again to the chest. A chest that completly changes your profile. A soft jaw and eyes you can hide under your hair. The feeling that you want to taken care off or you want to be submisive and not have to take charge in everything. The instinct to care for others and help when you think someone is down. Oh and the voice, a voice that projects femme.

Feeling me isnt about how i feel about what i currently have its about what im missing, im not who i am now, no thats a shell that other people see. Im the empty space inbetween, the shadow, the dream.

Purple i love your outlook and the thoughts that run though your head, you have a brilliant way in putting your thoughts across.

Quote from: Shambles on December 26, 2017, 05:04:40 AM
Purple i love your outlook and the thoughts that run though your head, you have a brilliant way in putting your thoughts across.

Ha, that made me smile today  !

Kathy Lauren, I agree with you! Letting feelings flood through your body is new to me! A woman has so many choices! It definitely takes longer to get ready but I now enjoy waking up and getting ready for the day! I enjoy the looks I get! Life is better being a woman! I could never go back! I'm much more than I was! I'm 61 and enjoy my new me! I've been on herbs for a year. I'm looking forward this year to get on hrt by a md! Getting involved in a transgender group!


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After my absence of  at least thirty days while going back to the "dark side". LOL All I can say is now and many times before is... Sensual. To me it just feel normal and right. With bare legs a skirt hymn feels really good on bare legs. Stockings feel really good too. Most cis women bitch about bras but if I had to drive a truck without one on rough roads I would be hurting. I abhor body hair and facial hair and not too long ago I actually grew a goatee in a cross dressing phase.  It bugged the piss out of me, smelled even though I shampooed it during a shower and it just itched. That was only a month. In that month I got had so many irritations from the hair between my legs and not even the pubes.

So what does being a woman feel like? Sensual and clean. To me regardless of the hygiene it just feels right and normal. I do not get off on it in the least. I just feel real. Nothing about it turns me on.

I have dated gay guys that asked me if they got me hot. Really. Dude I am a girl so yes you are hot and just because something doesn't go "boing" don't mean I think you are a dud. It don't work that way.

look sweety, being a woman and feeling like a woman is just that. Being and feeling like a woman. There is no explanations that can explain it. You either are or not. And sweetheart, that is ->-bleeped-<-ing pretty hard to explain sometimes. It sux and get ready for it. BUT and I capitalized the BUT, but never be ashamed. You are you and you are unique and beautiful or handsome when it pertains to FTM. How many people thought a redneck "bitch" from Arkansas and lives the same uneducated lifestyle could have any idea? Well I do. I do my part. Has anyone ever heard of Pro Bono? In my home town I do pro bono work. People really need it there but what my business is the companies that I deal with don't need pro bono. In my home town I will never turn anyone away and word always gets out. they do not pay and it may take a while for me and they may have to meet me in a '50 model trailer in the woods but hell I don't charge and I am a trans woman and will give them the ->-bleeped-<- as straight as I can. Trans men are welcome as well. But it is pretty much a "girls" thing though. If a trans man wants to come then they are more than welcome but don't complain because it is more or less geared to trans women and girls.

The thing about pro bono with a degree is that these people become less clients and more friends. Now the shrink that I work with in LR gives me business or paranormal aspects, I still don't charge. How could I ever feel good about charging a person in need of help? If I did how good would I feel about it? That is the reason I will die a pauper.

I have wanted to be a woman since puberty and now at 41 am taking steps to get there.  I never did *feel* like a woman, but in the last 4 weeks I have gotten glimpses.  Certain ways of looking in the mirror at my body without facial and body hair makes me smile in anticipation.  Rubbing my smooth shaved legs together in bed is such bliss and makes me feel feminine and sexy.  Wearing women's underwear and nail polish on my toes bring giddy bouts of mirth up through my chest  and into a smile just thinking about them.  I haven't even started HRT yet and I find myself adopting certain mindsets that I am finding come easily to me after years and years of fierce repression of who I really am.  I am a budding rose reaching for the sunlight and embracing who I am.  I can feel it growing within me and it brings such joy that I want to hasten and fertilize it.  How does a woman feel, I can't speak for any other but I feel pretty darned fortunate...full of joy and hope as I am reborn. 

                       -Julie

Mr Wolf, what does it feel like to be a man.? I can't answer, as quite simply, I do not know

Rowan

I may not have a response on what it feels like to be a woman, I often wonder myself, being able to identify with many things Wolf said, but I'm just posting to stress out how feeling like a man or woman depends also on the region you are living. I'm a geek, back in my native city of Buenos Aires I could identify with a lot of people and have similar interests. Now I'm in rural America, I certainly do not identify with men here nor I can relate to them. All their interests seem to be Nascar, hunting and fitting as many pieces of camo possible in their regular outfit. If that's what men are, I'm certainly not a man, not from here at least. However, all women seem to do is work and that's just pretty much it. So I'm not a woman either. I can only find my people at comic conventions, and there there is little distinction between men and women (except for sexy cosplays).
So as several people said above, feeling like a man or a woman is related with who we identify with, but that varies with cultures. I identify more with a geek guy than with a geek girl, but I identify more with a geek girl than with a rural Washington man.

Can you always feel like a man or a woman?  Right now I look around me and I feel more like a martian than like a man. I imagine that feeling like a woman then it's also related to how the women you are surrounded by are like.

Wolfie, once again your thread is alive. Or should I say, one of your threads.

I think I measure my sense of womanhood by looking back over a period of time. If you move from Georgia (guy mode) to Maryland (woman mode), at first you feel like somebody from GA in Maryland. The longer you live in Maryland, the more you feel like a Marylander. I am more woman, mentally, than I was 6 months ago. It is not that I have acquired more outside acceptance, its more that it  is 6 months more into my new reality. My self perception has changed. For me, I hear people say they know they are women even living as male all their life. I get that and respect that, but another part of it for myself is living it daily. Having people treat me as a woman makes me feel like one all the more.

I don't want to trigger trans men here, but getting my boobs recently really eliminated me seeing my male chest, boosted my confidence, and quieted any nagging voice in the back of my head saying, "But you don't have boobs!" That last part is embarrassing  to admit. My voice is the last anchor stopping me to be completely free from manhood.  I am thankful every day for where my mind is now. It will only get better.

What's it like being a woman?  I don't know how to answer that.  I was never really a guy, and only acted masculine enough to keep people off of my back (and I still hated it bigtime).  I doubt I'll ever fit the uber girly girl stereotype (and that's OK - I've had woman friends and coworkers over the years [some of whom are and were happily married to Mr. Right for decades] who also weren't very girly girl), but I'm certainly not butch.  I remember hearing some comments back in the late 90s/early 00s after I transitioned from people who had known me since the before time in the vein of "you look and act so natural as a woman, you must have spent a lot of time practicing to be like that."  No, I did not.  Instead, I let go of/quit playing out that "kind of a guy" image/persona I was forced to have (especially after my parents got nasty with me in the late 70s/early 80s [when I was a teenager], after they learned that I REALLY considered myself their daughter, instead of their son), and could just be myself.

So what does it feel like to be a woman? - it feels like I'm being myself, instead of being fake.

PurpleWolf, you definitely ask the right questions to make us all think! 

My life experience, or what feeling like a man is not:

This is a really hard question to answer. I did not used to think of myself as a woman. I thought I was just a different kind of guy. As a child The things boys got into we're not interesting to me. The way most boys played left me trying to figure out what was even going on. I didn't really ever get to play with the girls because that was cause for being made fun of. That I learned very quickly. I avoided things girls did and avoided the girls themselves. I was felt drawn to them and so being around the girls was off limits as was anything seen as girly. So with the boys I was always feeling left out and three steps behind trying to figure out "how" to play the way they did. I managed to fudge my way through and act just male enough to not get made fun of generally. I never did feel like I fit in.

Looking back, being a kid was hard. I never developed good social skills. Being around other kids took effort. I was constantly observing the boys and awkwardly tried to figure out how to be like them. Seems like my entire social life in school was just trying to be as invisible as possible.

Then there was the emotions. Boys are mean to each other. It's the way they interact. I never could understand that. I tried a few times to emulate it but always ended up feeling awful for saying something mean to another. Oh EMOTIONS, yeh boys don't allow that. Funny thing was I always thought that the other boys all had to fight every day to not show them, to not cry when another boy was a jerk to you. I had to learn how to compartmentalize my emotions. I actually did fairly well at this over the years but I also avoided almost everyone after high school that I could. I focused my mind on logical things. I ended up working as a mechanic for a long time. Machines are logical. They require little social interactions and keep the mind occupied.

Men still make little sense to me. As an adult I worked traveling to business locations to work on large machinery. The guys working in these places often tried to get me into their rec time conversations. These invariably went to gross talk of objectifying and using women sexually. Sometimes cars and other "guy" stuff. I kept my mouth shut when they would talk about women. Somehow I always felt offended by group guy talk like that. I never felt like guy talk was particularly interesting to me.

My more feminine experience:
I have always felt more of an association to the girls even though I avoided being around them for so much of my formative years. As an adult, when I was allowed into a group of women talking, I find the conversation, I suppose "relevant" is the best word. It is interesting and actually enjoyable to be part of. Like I actually just feel good in general after being in female conversation. Everything is just sort of more natural. Like I actually do understand why the conversation goes as it does. I understand more what other women are thinking and feeling. It's really the opposite of being around a group of guys talking.


OK so living as a man, everyday was a limited life. I had to monitor how I acted, how I walked even. I trained myself to walk toe out more back in Jr. High to be like the other boys. Sometimes when explaining things to customers at work I had to mind how I used my hands when talking. I don't know why that was. There were occasions whe a guy would start looking at me funny because of how I would talk with my hands. I would pick up on that and immediately put my hands into my jean pockets. I think that the issue was, emulating guys was a conscious effort while acting as I had seen females act over my life was more natural. Being in the MidWest US a guy talking with his hands like women actively do is a big no-no. Basically expression of emotion while speaking is another.
Living as a man was just plain unnatural for me.

Living as a woman is FREEDOM. That is the best description. I do what is just natural for me. I do not have to suppress my emotions. I don't have to consciously think around the emotional part of my mind. The best description is that my feelings are now "free flowing". Like feeling is completely integrated in my thoughts. I just plain don't have to fight my own mind anymore. I get to talk about things that are important feeling to me. I can express my true inner instincts without fear of ridicule.

The problem with these type of questions is that someone like myself, who is very binary female, can't really answer what not feeling like a woman is. I can only describe what not feeling like a man is.

Great post Josie  ! I think that was very thoughtful !!!

And I like your signature:
"A lifetime of depression and repressed emotions is nothing more than existence. I for one want to live now not just exist!"

Haha many things on that clicked (ha can't remember what I wrote in this thread anymore) - in reverse, obviously . But I totally feel more natural being with and talking to guys. Transitioning and being considered a guy also means I don't have to pretend or repress the way I naturally act and am. Sometimes I've felt people could find it awkward if I'm being myself and saying something you wouldn't expect a woman to say (like for example a reference to my gender as a guy) or speaking with my low voice . I totally hate it when in certain situations (like on the phone) I've felt I 'must' pretend I'm a woman by speaking a bit higher or in an unnatural way to me .

I also tried to be friends with boys as a kid but was bullied for it then . So I mostly played with girls... though I always felt the most natural among boys. I also then tried to mimic the girls or their interests but that wasn't received well either! I totally didn't fit in and was bullied a lot by everyone, but also did have many friends coz I was always social nevertheless.

Also the 'guys talking gross stuff' got me laughing  !!!

I don't know what it feels like to be a woman, but I do know what it feels like to not be sure if I'm a man who wants to be a woman or if I'm a woman in the body of a man - confusing!