As trivial as it might sound to other people, I am having a dilemma about changing my name on Facebook. The reason is because I have many family members on there, and they have friends who can see my profile and who know my mom has a daughter, and my brother has a sister. Although I truly don't care what anyone thinks, I do care that it affects my family. There are common friends, there are other family members on Facebook, and there are people in between. So it's almost impossible for me to gauge the impact it might have. I am going to start T in the next few weeks, so it's not really an option not to tell people, and I don't want to put it off any more. What do people feel is the best way to approach this, and how do you decide who to tell individually? What have people's experiences been?

If you haven't considered it, you could always go with a first initial/unisex middle ground, although those tend to only work if your name is close to your given one. In the same vibe, you could just not show your sex until you feel it's alright to change it to male. As for who to tell individually, you could just tell who asks. In my about me, I have "ftm transsexual (IM/inbox me or wikipedia it for details)", which seems to work. No one's ever been unnaccepting, just curious.

I went from a unisex name to my actual one, but I guess the difference would be I never had my sex show. If it doesn't bother you, you could just allow people to keep you listed as female cousin, niece, sister, daughter, and the like until they want to change it.

Much luck, however you go about it.

Fabulous way to come out. I did the same. Also changed my gender marker and profile pic. If your not completely confident in explaining to people in a face to face conversation using Facebook is an ideal way to express yourself. Sure your going to get the messages of WTF is going on and you may even lose some friends and alienate family members, but at least you have got your feelings and intentions out there.
This makes personal dealings with friends and family a lot easier when you dont have the burden of having things bottled up anymore.

All the best
Krissy

I'm a real planner, and a bit of a control freak when it comes to some things. When I knew I was transgender (although wasn't sure if I'd transition) 8 years ago I started getting involved in LGBT stuff and every once and a while would post LGBT related material on my profile on FB. Soon I became known among my friends as someone who was an LGBT advocate. Actually, a few of my friends over the years have even started supporting LGBT causes too even without knowing I was trans.

Gradually over the last few years I've altered my look slowly (without estrogen). Just grooming, a tiny bit of makeup, etc. I wasn't intending it for a slow motion coming out, but more as myself making sure I really had to transition and not just be a "femme" guy.

But this actually has worked well. I'm now sort of seen among my friends as being kinda liberal/progressive, LGBT friendly, and a little andro. Some of the people who met me in the last few years wondered if I was "gay or something". But this has worked in my favor. I'm not out publicly, but I've come out to all my immediate family on my and my wife's sides and a number of close friends. Not a single person has rejected me nor been disrespectful. My sister said, "yeah, I knew you were trans" and my mother in law said, "I knew something was different about you".

It kinda softened the blow.

I'm coming out on FB publicly next month. I'm going to have about 20 people who already are supportive know exactly when my coming out post is going up. And I'm going to ask them to publicly support me. That way I think it will start things off on a positive note. I don't know how it will go, but that's the plan anyway.

I'm all for the slow come out over the course of a year or whatever. But as soon as you add T to the mix you're voice will drop pretty quickly and that's gonna give you away fast. So maybe things will have to be much more compressed for you than it has been for me.