Hi Jen

Other members have said, "do not worry about your height" and they are right and in what nobody has indicated your height is definitely an advantage and the local teams would die for you to be on their team.  Accept your height as a special gift and use it wisely.  I will leave the others to further point out the good points of you being tall.

What I will say that none of the others have mentioned so far is, that basketball is a part of who you are and I sense it is something you truly love with a deep passion.  Not withstanding, albeit that short time you did not like it because of the problems you were going through.

Like you in a sense I suffered from not being able to follow my one true passion in life.  For ten years before I changed I was involved in swimming and giving it up devastated me and caused me grief no end.  One year into my change, I started to get back into swimming (I did not have my operation at this stage), by coaching and finally I was swimming competitively in masters and really annoying some of the girls in the short distance events.  However they cheesed me off in the long distances.

Go and join the local basketball team, you will take care of what needs to be taken care of and this should not stop you from playing.  Just play for yourself and your team and the most important thing to remember is 'be who you want to be and do what you want to do'.

Kind regards
Sarah B

Quote from: Jen on July 01, 2010, 01:02:05 AM
Totally, like you can see how dusty the tops of people's refrigerators get!

hehe Yes, there are advantages such that require someone tall to do, however, I have a dickens of a time finding jeans that are long enough. Even for 6 feet tall, my legs are really long. So for now I stick to skirts ( <3333 ) and shorts.

I haven't been to the poo| since I rea|ised I needed to do this and started coming out to my nearest...
I |_0VE the poo|...

:/

I'm with you there, Miniar.  I was on my high school's swim team and grew up in pools.  It's been really hard, but until I'm further along I will not go swimming.  It's going to be such an amazing relief once I do again

I'm also a member of the tall girls club.  I'm 6'1, maybe 6'2.

Thanks Sarah.  I think I might, like you experienced, annoy the girls if I joined a girls team, but with boys... all that masculine energy they put out there on a basketball court might not be so good for me.  I do feel better now than the last time I tried playing, but somehow I just feel I may still have my dysphoria affected by it.

Tina, Old Navy and Gap both have "tall" jeans that are 36" long.  They fit my long ass legs just fine, so you might try them .

There are some female clothes that I really like.  Today I was at a store and saw some excellent armwarmers on sale, very eighties, as well as some jelly bracelets.  As much as I loved them, I didn't buy them.  Right now I just can't bring myself to wear anything even slightly girly.

Quote from: Miniar on July 02, 2010, 06:56:17 PM
I haven't been to the poo| since I rea|ised I needed to do this and started coming out to my nearest...
I |_0VE the poo|...

:/

Yeah same here. I still swim but I feel so...uncomfortable. I feel as though everyone can see who I am if I swim. It's really an annoying feeling, though recently I have tried to go swimming again since the first two times I was ok.

I gave up reading certain books (No, not romances if that's what you're thinking). There were certain books that I really liked for their history/fantasy/mythology that I just stopped reading because it felt too "girly". These were books that my female friends had recommended to me and that I have liked before. Now I just don't touch them. :/

Quote from: Kieri on July 02, 2010, 09:17:22 PM
I'm with you there, Miniar.  I was on my high school's swim team and grew up in pools.

One of the very best poo| areas in a|| of Ice|and is across the street from where I |ive.
_

A|so, for a|| you ta|| gir|s...
I'm 6'2, my mother was just under 6'1 though age has taken her down a bit, and out of my 4 sisters, the shortest one is 5'9.
Our who|e fami|y knows the pain of trying to find shoes and pants...
The standard operating protoco| amongst the gir|s is to peek into shops before they need shoes/pants and if they find something that fits, and |ooks |ike they'd wear it, and they "caaaaaan" afford it, then they get it.

Hi Jen

You are most welcome.  I too thought long and hard about the ramifications, implications the fairness and what would happened if my condition was revealed.  However, in the end I basically said "stuff it".  I was one year into hormones and and the previous year if I remembered, I had not been swimming as much.

So in effect it was not going to matter much, if I went all out, using all my energy and in the end it never did matter.  I was just another member of the swimming team, having fun with my friends and enjoying the life, I always wanted.

Have the confidence to go out and play, its just like when you first went out in public (I was nervous, going out in public and swimming the first time).  Just be yourself and believe in yourself that you know who you are.  You are just another female who loves basketball.

Kind regards
Sarah B
PS  Go and do a slam dunk for me!
PSS  I have to go to bed as I have time trials tomorrow morning, bloody hell.

Quote from: Miniar on July 02, 2010, 06:56:17 PM
I haven't been to the poo| since I rea|ised I needed to do this and started coming out to my nearest...
I |_0VE the poo|...

:/

Well of course some of us own our own private swimming pool... (although of course once one is completed the problem of using public pools does go away.)

But seriously if there are any Susans members living in or vsiting Cornwall UK and looking for a trans friendly pool you are very welcome to come and swim in ours. Just PM me.

But back on the main topic I have never given up anything, mainly because most of my interests are either gender neutral or genuinely typically female, but partly because even if I did have a non conforming interest I simply would have felt that hvaing been forced to go through the trauma of transition, there was no point in trying to hide another part of who I am just for the sake of a quiet life.

A very good point

Quote from: Rejennyrated on July 03, 2010, 01:51:27 PMthere was no point in trying to hide another part of who I am just for the sake of a quiet life.

Hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has said"[1], or as they say to day, 'here, here'.

Kind regards
Sarah B
[1] Unknown

Quote from: Ashley4214 on July 01, 2010, 01:03:23 AM
And here I was feeling too tall at 5'9.5

I don't meet many girls taller than me, though thankfully the reverse is also true (rarely meet any guys shorter), thus keeping the dating pool relatively open (guys shorter than me are out, lol)

Wow...I don't meet many girls taller than me, but most of the guys I meet are shorter than me.  It's made my dating pool pretty small, since I want my guy/girl to be taller than me.

I like this thread - I'm 5 foot 8 - and this is the first time in my life that I have felt like I am short! 

You are not alone Rejennyrated.  Can I join the 5' 8" Club? please pretty please!

Kind regards
Sarah B

Quote from: Sarah B on July 03, 2010, 06:36:53 AM
PS  Go and do a slam dunk for me!

Lol, yes so I can prove once and for all white girls can jump =P.

Hi Jen

Quote from: Jen on July 04, 2010, 06:45:35 PM
Lol, yes so I can prove once and for all white girls can jump =P.

Lmao,  Just thinking about this and I have a suggestion.  Just go out and try and play a couple of social games, nothing serious or strenuous and see how it goes from there.  I think you may be surprised how much you missed it.

When and if you do have fun.

Kind regards
Sarah B

I think you may be right.  Obviously it's bugging me enough to write a big thing about it, so I guess I might as well see how it goes.  I was expecting more people to commiserate with me on struggling with such issues, but I seem to be just a big baby lol.

I guess it really comes down to me still being in the process of finding my female identity and figuring out, in a manner of speaking, what all goes out with my old clothes in the trash bin, by which I mean what all from my past was part of the facade and what was really me.

(don't worry I'm giving my clothes away, not really throwing them out)

Hi Jen

I may be a bit presumptuous, but your female identity is already there and you may not realize it.  Your female identity is you.  It's within you.  Whatever you have done in the past is part of your female personality.

One of the main things when I changed, was to say to myself, "just be yourself and go out and be confident, regardless of what I did before" and I have done a lot of things that I have not mentioned here on Susan's, it was a part of my life.

Point is I had too, because as I have said in other posts, "I was working and living as female, inside of 3 months", that's not to say I did not have to contend with the day to day issues of my change. I did and basically there is no way around them.  I had to go on living regardless, of whatever decision I made and there is no getting around that fact.

So, your female personality and identity will develop over time and of course it will blossom and again be confident and be yourself and you will go far.

My old clothes did end up in the trash.

Kind regards
Sarah B

I'm really not trying to construct a frankenstein's monster here, I promise lol.  This transition has been largely about being geniune and authentic in how I live my life and so I intend to like whatever I like regardless of how things happen to be gendered, otherwise I fail in that mission.

However, athletics does carry some baggage with me simply because of having been the one way I was able to connect with guys and fit in with them.  Other than through sports, I've always found men completely confusing and weird, and even there the machismo so many of them exude in competition always made me uncomfortable. =P

I think it's been good for me to make this thread and work through my thoughts on this though, and thank you for helping me find some clarity.

I have watch this tread for a while now and I really did not give up something I enjoyed, i just quit doing it.  I guess because I felt it wasn't lady-like.

I really enjoyed working on cars.  Yes I was/am a knuckle-buster.  And maybe that is why I gave it up.  Grease under the nails, ground in to the skin, differential fluid in the hair.  Cuts, scrapes, bruises and broken nails.  Grrrrr the broken nails.

Now that my arms are beginning to tan I see all the scars from years of reaching into places, on an engine that the human arm was not meant to go.

But I do miss it.

And based on the way this thread is going, I am of average height for a Transwoman at 5' 10".