Flexible, I've met "real" women, cisgender women, who envy certain aspects of men's lives but would never undertake any kind of physical transformation. I've never met a cisgender woman who would or did. I have heard that there are a few people out there who claim to take testosterone and/or get top surgery as some sort of political or social statement, but I feel that these people would not be able to do that if they didn't feel some sort of gender variance. I could be wrong, but I would call these people transgender just on the basis of that physical transformation. I don't know what they call themselves.
If you did start T and/or have top surgery so you could live as a man, I would see you as a transsexual of sorts because one definition of that word is someone who wants to live in the sex opposite to the one they were assigned at birth. There are a few definitions of "transsexual." That's part of the problem; someone I would think of as transsexual doesn't necessarily see himself that way. It's up to you to define yourself for yourself.
From my perspective, you are somewhere in the transgender world. Have you done any research on transgender issues? Perhaps you can just be a full-time drag king!
Since you are definitely "questioning," you might want to find a good gender therapist to help you to sort all of this out. But be warned; if there isn't any kind of informed consent system in your neck of the woods, you will need recommendations from a therapist (possibly two; I'm not sure how it works in some venues) in order to get the physical changes that you think you want, especially if you want surgery. If the therapist says no, then you will have to decide what to do. It really depends on where you live. And a person who sees "herself" as a woman who wants to transition and live as a man might well be classified as mentally ill. I don't know.
I don't recommend that you start any physical changes without the benefit of therapy. Being transsexual and going through transition is a tough road, even for FTMs. I know that this is not absolutely true for absolutely everyone, but I've seen few exceptions. For actual transsexuals, the regret rate is low, but for someone who says she isn't a transsexual...I don't know.
Think about how you see your future life. What physical changes do you expect to make? Will you still see yourself as a woman even when you're living as a man? Will you want to stay legally female? If you feel like a woman and identify as a woman, what will it be like to have that go unrecognized by others? Will your transition make you the target of work discrimination? And what about family and friends and romantic relationships?
I should also point out that for a lot of us, the promise that we'll "still be the same person inside" is a lot of hooey. Take me, for example. In many ways, I've stayed the same. In many ways I've changed. Freeing myself up has changed me and is still changing me. Being seen differently by the world is changing me. The stresses of transition are changing me. Testosterone has definitely changed me in some ways. It's different for everybody.
Therapy should help you to figure out what you want. You might find that you haven't been entirely honest with yourself. A lot of us who do identify ourselves as transsexuals find that out about ourselves. Many of us compartmentalize our lives and have elaborate coping systems. I've been in therapy for over a year and a half, and I've been in transition for just over a year--and I'm still peeling back layers of self-deception. But then I guess my self-deception ran pretty deep. That might not be true of you.
Good luck. I hope you get some useful feedback here.
