In explaining this, I'll try my best to objectively split my experiences as a person treated as male in society from those concurrent experiences of my disharmony as a female being treated as a male. My whole life I watched other males intently to see if my feelings were shared by them all and fully suppressed, and that somehow my reflectful nature had caused me to unwittingly verbalize something better left in the depths of the subconscious. To this day I still watch guys and ponder this.
I've come to firmly believe that guys are innately more emotional, caring, and lighthearted than they end up being as adults. What causes this change? The continuous drilling into their heads (including mine) to purge one's self of emotional expressiveness, frivolities, showing pain, unnecessary closeness to others unless you get sex. And while growing up, there's also your "friends" taking pride in humiliating and hurting those weaker than themselves, especially other males and even animals, with a subtle reminder of what would happen to you lest you ever fail at being a convincing badass. It's like you have to put up one emotional wall after another to get passing marks as a boy and earn your manhood.
And being MtF, this is all augmented by the feelings of dysphoria, disgust with becoming hairy, bulky, poorly proportionate from testosterone, and occasionally burning envy of those special beings that fate had seen fit to escape the hell of being born with a penis and all ensuing experiences.
I'm sure male adulthood is quite another story from adolescence with most of what described here less evident as people mature, but then again I'll never find out. Since going full-time, I've felt freer than I could have possibly ever imagined in any pre-transition dream.
