Help me, please. It'd be appreciated

[ThisIsMyUsername :)]

It's going to be a long post, but please read through for me...

 

I want to be agender. (I hate the way my autocorrect won't even recognise that word). I would hate to spend the rest of my days 'trapped' as a female. I need to get out of this ASAP.

I'm not feminine. I have Asperger's syndrome and some psychopathic traits so the whole empathy thing- no, that's not me. Before anyone says gender stereotypes aren't accurate, please bear with the rest of this post. I am analytical and maths is love; maths is life. (Yes, I know this alone shouldn't be gender-question-worthy, but bear with). I've never been into girly things; never. I can be control-freakish and dominant at times. I'm not a girl.

 

And being a female who doesn't conform to gender stereotypes isn't enough. I'm still going through puberty, so on periods (I don't care about periods, but I hate being forced through PMT) but still with A-sized cups, and I am repulsed at the thought of my breasts growing any larger. I remember the days before they started developing, when I could run and play sport without having elastic across my chest to hold it up! I hate them. Then again, I don't want to bind them and risk impairing my respiratory system whatsoever, as I play several instruments which require full lung capacity. It's not fair that biological males get that superior lung capacity, either. I hate my female body. It's physically inferior, and that's a reason gender isn't fair- it's not on either gender, because the opposing gender will always have some advantage in a certain respect or discipline. I hate it.

 

Then again, I can't become transgender. I'm not a boy. I also don't want to have my life interrupted excessively by gender concerns- I actual images of the male anatomy. I've seen depictions on Greek statues etc, but I always avert my eyes immediately. So I have no don't want to go through testosterone therapy, and invest everything in that. I don't want extensive surgery. (In my life, I've never looked at damn idea how I feel about different genitalia). But I really don't want to let gender interfere with my school life etc either, by undergoing anything so dramatic as transgender changes (Just like I would never get pregnant, for fear of it interrupting with my career). I desperately don't want to be male either. I was thinking this when I discovered agender, and other non-gender binary.

 

When my hair is down and I'm wearing loose clothing, I could perhaps pass for an effeminate male. My voice is fairly low and could probably pass for either gender, thankfully. If I'm wearing tight clothing and I've done something with my hair, I'm blatantly female. I feel like I'm acting when I try to blend in with females, but my whole life feels like acting, thanks to my Asperger's, so that's probably not important. (And I'm not in many social situations with males).

 

And if I were agender...I'm not even sure I would be an asexual aromantic, like I've assumed in the past. I think I was only scared of having to assume a female role in a relationship.
 
Gender-binary options don't appeal to me; nor does becoming transgender. The concept of gender really irritates me, in all honesty. If I became agender, I don't know what I'd do about pronouns; I'm not sure to what degree that matters to me- I've been too caught up with all of these other concerns. I would say my biological sex was female, if it came down to it, especially initially- for gender segregation tasks etc. 

 

If you've read this far, thank you so much, thank you so, so much. I need help and advice on what I should do, what should happen next. I'm petrified and have no idea on what action to take. If you have anything to say, then thank you.

[lazypanda]

OMG......u just described me !!!! I hate being in a female body too,but I don't want a man's body either. I just wish we could all be like humanoids !!!!

Even after puberty I lacked femininity in behavior but my body got as feminine as it gets !!! My behaving un-ladylike also got me accusations of trying to turn on the guys (yea,from my teacher...imagine that...I,of course,had no idea what she was talking about) !!! I was not as lucky as you and had pretty big bo**s,and it only later came to my notice that my bo**s were very popular with the guys in school and I wanted to kill myself !!!! Anyways,as I got older,I learnt to stop caring what other people said or thought ! I have decided to do my own thing and while I can't have an agender body,I can have as agender a mind as I wish !!!! I have decided to accept my female body,but I don't let that dictate my thinking or behavior !!! If guys are checking me out,fine,check me out,i'm not going to let it bother me . I'm firm in my mind that I'm only human,not female human and I see other people as human only,irrespective of gender !!! Don't think too much about this and confuse yourself. Just accept what you can't change but never change your attitude and personality !!!!!!! 

[RK800]

First off you don't really choose your gender, what it more sounds like to me if that you are agender or some shade of non-binary and want you body to match that. In which case seeking out a gender therapist would probably be best.

[.,.]

What a mess you're in! Personally I think identifying with any gender outside of the binary sense is useless. 'cause with this modern understanding of gender, what even is gender? It can't just be a feeling you have - that would be untangible and unreliable, it's not about gender roles, it's not about what clothes you like to wear. The only interesting aspect of it as far as I can tell is whether or not you feel comfortable in your own body, and even that doesn't necessarily need to imply that you're any other gender than what biology says you are. Let's make a distinction here: there's not feeling comfortable in your body because of its sex, and there's the more classic approach where you just don't feel comfortable having a body in general, especially while it's changing in the transition into adulthood it will obviously take a while to get used to your new body. For some this includes physical impairments, like tripping on flat ground because they're not used to the length of their limbs, but it can also - obviously - cause mental discomfort. I think then to assume a position as agender is a bit too quick and convenient, as many will tell you on here it's not a thing you become either, some would probably even be offended that it's something you want to be - I get the sense that you mean it in a physical sense as well though? You want to be physically gender neutral, like children are?

 

My personal opinions on this whole agender-thing might be polarising, but with my experience going through puberty as a reference I think many people who identify as agender most of all want to return to less dimorphic body of a child, although they probably don't wanna grow smaller or weaker again, but I believe many confuse plain old being uncomfortable with a new body with something closer to the level of uncomfort that someone trans- would feel. The difference between the two is huge and fundamental however, -so obvious that explaining it feels superfluous.

 

Most likely is that you'll grow into your body and get used to your sex, - and I know little about Asperger's compared to many others on here, but I wouldn't be surprised if your syndrome in your case makes it harder - meaning, it might take longer for you than for many others. A major point here being that you shouldn't automatically assume the most complicated reason for why you feel like you do, because discomfort with one's own body - Let me put it this way: I don't know anyone who didn't go through that. If you wanna identify as agender in the meantime, that's up to you.

[Dodecahedron314]

There's so much of this I can relate to, honestly--this is a lot like the place I was in a few years ago, minus the still going through puberty part (and possibly the Asperger's, still not sure about that one). Unfortunately, there's no one magical way to automatically cure your dysphoria in every situation, so what I would suggest is experimenting with your presentation and seeing if there's anything you can do in terms of that that makes you feel better about your body. (It sounds like your physical dysphoria is more severe than any social dysphoria you might have, so that's what I'm focusing on--please correct me if I'm wrong.) I understand your reticence to bind as a fellow wind instrument player, but for what it's worth, I don't think I've had any problems with my lung capacity since I started binding, though your results may vary. If you're looking for non-binder-involving ways to minimize your chest, sports bras/tank tops with built-in shelf bras under loose shirts can help. 

 

It sounds as though you've already come to the realization that your physical body is totally irrelevant to the way your mind is, which is definitely a good start. The next step is realizing that you don't have to be boxed into being female if you don't identify as such. You may not see much in the way of options for your body at this point, but your mind is your own, and your mind doesn't need to try to be anything it's not. If you need it to be your sanctuary away from societally-imposed gender nonsense, then it can be that, and not whatever gendered thing people try and tell you it is. The right to self-determination is one of the most important things you have as a human, and while you may not be able to exercise that to the fullest physical extent in every situation, your mind is yours and yours alone, and it is whatever gender or lack thereof you determine it to be. If nothing else, you have that.

 

Cake and sushi on your gender journey! 

 

1 hour ago, i am a little boat said:

I believe many confuse plain old being uncomfortable with a new body with something closer to the level of uncomfort that someone trans- would feel. The difference between the two is huge and fundamental however, -so obvious that explaining it feels superfluous.

Not only did my dysphoria not really kick in until well after puberty had ended, it's sure as heck still here. Just putting forth a counterexample.

[Rynn]

Hey, I'm agender too.

 

As ~Syl~ said you don't really choose your gender identity. You're agender if you identify as agender. What your body looks like doesn't determine your gender identity.

 

What you could do next is experiment. Try to look at this as a slow process of trial and error. Don't change everything at once. Just slowly ease into things.Try things out and see in which kinds of clothes or with what kind of haircut you're most comfortable. Try out less feminine mannerisms. Try out a new nickname that sounds more genderneutral. You don't have to tell people why you're doing all of that yet. If it feels right, keep going, go further. If it feels wrong, stop. There's no one right way to do this. It's different for everyone.

 

You don't have to change pronouns if you don't want to. You don't have to change your body to be able to identify as agender. Some agender people don't transition, others do. Some only transition medically, others only socially. What you should do next really depends on what makes you feel the most comfortable in your own body. Keep in mind that the goal is to be comfortable in your own body, the goal is not to become 'agender'. There is no one right way to be agender anyways. It's different for every person. You define the label, the label doesn't define you.

 

I'd advise to go see a gender therapist about this. It's possible to get puberty blockers, though they won't just give them to anyone who asks. That can buy you some time to figure yourself out, to figure out how bad your dysphoria is and to figure out what to do about it. If you decide transition (either HRT or surgery) isn't for you, then you can always go off of puberty blockers and you'll go into normal puberty.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, i am a little boat said:

I think many people who identify as agender most of all want to return to less dimorphic body of a child, although they probably don't wanna grow smaller or weaker again, but I believe many confuse plain old being uncomfortable with a new body with something closer to the level of uncomfort that someone trans- would feel. The difference between the two is huge and fundamental however, -so obvious that explaining it feels superfluous.

Could you please not assume what agender people are feeling? You don't know what it's like to be agender. Don't pretend that you do. Non-binary trans people are equally as transgender as binary trans people are, and they can experience the same kinds of dysphoria and have the same options available for transition. 

 

2 hours ago, i am a little boat said:

Most likely is that you'll grow into your body and get used to your sex

That's possible, but who are you to say what's going to happen? Saying this is as patronizing and dismissive as telling asexuals that it's "just a phase, you'll grow out of it". Please don't do that. It's just as likely that they won't grow out of it.

2 hours ago, i am a little boat said:

'cause with this modern understanding of gender, what even is gender? It can't just be a feeling you have - that would be untangible and unreliable, it's not about gender roles, it's not about what clothes you like to wear.

You know, I happen to have typed up a lengthy answer to just that question "What is gender identity?" I needed it for my thesis. I think reading it would clear a lot of things up for you, 'i am a little boat.'

Spoiler

What is 'transgender'?

Basic definitions & explanations

First of all, this is the first definition of transgender that pops up in Google, written by a transgender author:

 

Transgender:

Denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

 

But what is meant by 'sense of personal identity and gender'? In this next bit I'll lay out some of the theories around what 'gender identity' means.

 

Sex is whether you’re biologically male, female or intersex.

Gender is psychological, not biological, and should be separated from sex entirely. From here on, I’m going to leave sex out of the equation.

Sexual orientation is even less relevant to this conversation. It's who you're attracted to, not who you are. I'm leaving this out of the equation too.

There are a lot of different aspects to gender.

Gender roles/norms/expectations are unwritten rules society has for how men and women should behave. (Men can't wear make-up. Crying is for girls. Women shouldn't be too assertive.) These are not part of an individual's identity. They are part of a society's culture.

Gender expression is what your gender appears to be to other people. (Includes gendered things like clothing, colors, make-up, mannerisms, tone of voice, way of walking, gestures while talking, how intensely emotions are expressed etc)

Gender identity is a very complicated concept and it is the core of what we are talking about when we’re discussing trans issues. Before you can know what ‘transgender’ is, you need to know what ‘gender identity’ is. 

 

So there are two main theories on what 'gender identity' is.

 

First you've got the (in my opinion outdated) theory put forward by Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir and the like. They resist the idea that any aspect of gender identity can be innate. As de Beauvoir says "One isn't born a woman, one becomes a woman." This basically means that you feel like a woman because it's what you're used to. You behave like a woman because that's what's socially acceptable. In this view people act how they're supposed to act according to the gender roles in their culture. The constant repetition of doing what they're supposed to do gets etched into their brains and becomes their gender identity. For Butler and de Beauvoir, gender identity is the internalization of culturally imposed gender norms and expectations.

 

Then there's a newer theory about gender identity. This one builds on the first one and accepts it as partially correct, but asserts that gender identity is also partially innate. If it wasn't, then it would logically follow that trans people simply can’t exist, because your gender identity would entirely depend on what you were raised to be.

 

Joan Roughgarden, a transgender evolutionary biologist who wrote a whole book on the science of lgbt identities, is a proponent of this one. According to her, ‘gender identity’ is a deep-seated sense of self that's been established from the time you were born. In her book 'Evolution's Rainbow', she writes:

 

I envision gender identity as a cognitive lens. When a baby opens his or her eyes after birth and looks around, whom will the baby emulate and whom will he or she merely notice? Perhaps a male baby will emulate his father or other men, perhaps not, and a female baby her mother or other women, perhaps not. I imagine that a lens in the brain controls who to focus on as a “tutor.” Transgender identity is then the acceptance of a tutor from the opposite sex. Degrees of transgender identity, and of gender variance generally, reflect different degrees of single-mindedness in the selection of the tutor’s gender. The development of gender identity thus depends on both brain state and early postnatal experience, because brain state indicates what the lens is, and environmental experience supplies the image to be photographed through that lens and ultimately developed immutably into brain circuitry. Once gender identity is set, like other basic aspects of temperament, life proceeds from there.

 

So a cisgender female baby instinctively emulates women, a transgender baby with a female body instinctively emulates men, and a non-binary baby instinctively emulates both. Simple. 

 

The innate part of gender identity is the part that decides which of the two genders (or both or neither) you will instinctively emulate during your life. The behavior of that group of people then supplies you with the learned aspect of your gender identity. So the innate part tells you which gender(s) to imitate and the learned part is what kind of behavior you're actually imitating and internalizing.  

 

Gender identity as Roughgarden describes it, is a deep-seated, immutable sense of belonging or kinship to a gender (either to the social construct or to the group of people). A sense of "I belong with those people, or the other group, or maybe both or not really with either."

 

You can't change this sense of belonging by raising someone differently. There have been cases where a doctor made a mistake while circumcising a baby boy and accidentally cut of the entire penis. The boy was raised as a girl instead, from birth, but still always felt like a boy. They had to tell him when he was 14 because it was just not working. http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/13/local/me-reimer13     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

 

Differences between transgender and cisgender people have also been caught on brainscans https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan/. 

 

Gender identity is at least partially innate and biological, not just cultural, so the argument that your gender identity can't be anything but 'man' or 'woman' because that's the only two genders that exist in our culture is not applicable. Gender identity =/= gender as a social construct. Gender identity is to which degree you instinctively identify with those two culturally established genders.

 

Why is it so hard to imagine that some brains are simply somewhere in between male and female? Why is it so hard to imagine that some people feel a sense of belonging to both genders, and others to neither?

 

My guess is agender people don't feel at home in either group, genderfluid babies could emulate their dad during some activities (like boxing) and their mom in other situations (like socializing), and neutrois people sort of feel stuck in between the two groups, but I don't know. The only way to know is to ask them. Our neurobiology science skills aren't advanced enough to read people's minds yet.

Spoiler

 

Gender Identity versus Gender Expression

Yes, of course everyone has a feminine and a masculine side, but that's not what we're talking about here. For example, a man can be feminine, he can like wearing make-up and dresses, talk in a stereotypically feminine way, and still identify as a man. Is his feminine side a 'deep-seated sense of identity', 'a cognitive lens that determines which gender(s) a baby will emulate from the minute they're born'? I doubt it. I think it's gender expression, not gender identity. For a nonbinary person, that's different.

 

A nonbinary person is not someone who simply dislikes the gender role they're put into. A guy who likes to break gendered expectations by wearing dresses is a crossdresser, a drag queen or a gender-nonconforming person, not a nonbinary person. Those are terms for people who have non-standard gender expressions. A nonbinary person is a person who has this innate, deep-seated, unchangeable sense of belonging to both genders, or to neither. If their body or the social role people ascribe to them doesn't line up with their inner sense of what they are, this leads to dysphoria. Dysphoria is an integrally important sign of ‘transgenderness’.

 

Gender dysphoria is either a feeling of disconnect/discomfort/distress with gendered aspects of your body (meaning you'd feel a need to change your body = transition) or a feeling of disconnect/discomfort/distress because of what gender people perceive you to be (meaning you'd want to take steps in order to be perceived differently = transition).

 

Gender expression includes gendered things like clothing, make-up, mannerisms, tone of voice, way of walking, gestures while talking etc.

The innate part of gender identity doesn't have anything to do with any of those things.

Are NB’s trans?

                                                                Trans people

                                                       ↙                                  ↘

                                    binary trans people                nonbinary trans people

They're all trans.

 

Nonbinary people can transition, so even if you were (in my opinion incorrectly) basing your definition of ‘transgender’ on whether or not transition is possible, you still wouldn’t have a reason to say NB’s aren’t trans. NB’s can transition medically (through hormone treatment and surgery) as well as socially. Social transition isn't easy. It should be taken seriously. http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Transition

 

An NB transitions for the same reasons a binary trans person transitions, in order to have their body reflect their inner selves more, and in order to be perceived differently. It's true that in this culture NB's won't 'pass' as their true gender, because not enough people know that nonbinary identities exist, so they won't automatically recognize someone as 'Oh, that person doesn't look quite male or female, they're probably nonbinary,' as they would (most of the time) correctly recognize a woman to be a woman and a man to be a man. However, that's a problem with our culture, not with nonbinary people.

 

'Binary trans' and 'nonbinary trans' are two different types of being trans. If individual nonbinary people don’t identify as trans, then there's probably a personal story for why they don't, or maybe they just aren’t aware that nb’s are trans, or maybe they’ve made the common mistake to confuse gender expression with gender identity and they’re actually gender-nonconforming. You won't know until you ask them.

 

NB's not identifying as trans is kind of like black feminists not identifying as feminists. Some black feminists don't identify as feminists because they don't feel represented by white feminism. They feel white feminists aren't committed enough to ending all forms of oppression, instead of just to ending sexism. I believe they call themselves womanists. They're feminists, but refuse to identify as such for personal or political reasons.

 

That's what it's like with nb's too. They're trans, but some refuse to identify as trans for personal or political reasons. These reasons are very diverse.

 

 

The above is what I've written on the topic. I've also collected other trans people's explanations and experiences of their gender identities (for someone else, but I still have the document on my computer, so why not share it?). Read it if you're interested in discovering what being trans feels like for some people. It would be more accurate than if you just assumed to know what they were feeling.

Spoiler

What’s gender identity? What does it ‘feel’ like?

This next bit is just tons of trans people explaining gender identity and what ‘feeling’ male/ female is. Every time I hit enter two times, a different trans person is speaking. AVEN has ridiculous numbers of trans people for some reason. Some are binary, others non-binary, some are still transitioning, some aren't, others have transitioned years ago. This first one isn't from AVEN, the rest is.

 

In order to understand what gender identity is, we’d need to eliminate everything it isn’t. If gender identity is not determined by relative masculinity or femininity (as indicated by the fact that these traits can exist in any combination with gender identity and assigned sex) then those are separate variables. If a person of any gender identity can have any sexual orientation, then that’s a separate variable. If gender can be presented or expressed in any number of ways across gender identities, then that’s a separate variable too. The only thing that is consistent across all individuals with a given gender identity (such as “man”, or “woman”, amongst others), is the deep-seated sense of identification with that concept. The term rings true. It holds meaning. Something inside of us says “yes, that’s right. That makes sense. That feels like home. That is what I am.”

 

 

 

As for how to "feel" gender... I strongly suspect that we use the word "feel" simply because it's the closest word we can find, not because it's actually a sensory thing or an emotional thing. I don't "feel" my gender the same way I feel angry or happy or sad. I also don't feel it the same way I feel hot or cold or smooth fabric. I feel it like I feel like someone is watching me. It's a persistent feeling, and it's there, and it can be quite strong. But it's hard to point to a specific location of where you think that someone is. Like in a horror movie, where you're sure you're being watched, and it's a strong feeling, and you're probably right, but you can't actually see your observer.

 

I can feel my gender, and I'm sure it's there (when it is... sometimes it gets lost, silly fluidity  ) but I can't point to one specific spot on my body or brain that houses my gender. The conviction is just as strong, and I'm probably right, just like the scenario above. It's there, I know it, but it's often hard to pin point what it is and how to describe it to people.

 

It's essentially a feeling of something's off.  Or a feeling of something's right that isn't usually right, when I swing to my cisgender times. The feeling is distinct. And sometimes that off feeling is uncomfortable or downright painful, in which case I call it dysphoria. For me, most of the time the dysphoria is physical; I feel wrong, like I have body bits that shouldn't be there. It's like all my curves are warts, growing in places they don't belong. I want them gone. That's when the off feeling is strong and painful: body dysphoria. However, sometimes I can be fine with my body and the off feeling has more to do with how people treat me. This is when things like being called "girlfriend" feels like a stab in the stomach. A jolt. It's much like when someone who doesn't speak English very well calls an object by a gendered pronoun instead of "it", or calls all humans "he" no matter their gender; you instinctively know that's wrong, and it feels like a mini jolt to the system. That's what it feels like to me when I get slapped with "girlfriend" when I'm socially dysphoric, and that one is called "social dysphoria" because it has more to do with how others treat you than how you want your body to be. Bathroom things come under this one too, and gender roles, etc. Though none of those things are mandatory, of course.

 

So, in short, it is a feeling of bodily and/or socially being off somehow, unbalanced. Sometimes that gets bad enough to be uncomfortable or even painful, in which case we call it dysphoria, but it doesn't have to be like that to be legitimate. It can simply be a nagging persistent feeling that something isn't lining up. Does that help?

 

 

 

I knew I was transgender when I realized that being feminine felt like a performance instead of who I was, a role that I was failing at and should never have been cast for.

 

 

 

To me, gender is and always will be a multifaceted object. An array, or a vector, or something that includes multiple pieces of data.

 

The first is physical. No, gender is not the same as your current physical sex. But for many people, it is related. That's where body dysphoria and euphoria come in; when you feel something is wrong/uncomfortable/painful about the primary or secondary sexual characteristics of your body, then that's dysphoria. And when you feel that the sexual characteristics of your body are right and good, then you have euphoria. Obviously, there's a spectrum with a middle somewhere where it doesn't matter to you.

 

There is also a social facet. Gender also corresponds to social conventions, such as what washroom you use, who you get to marry in some countries, whether people use sir or madam, or Mr, Mrs, Ms, or Mx. It affects who flirts with you; a straight man is more likely to flirt with someone society classes as a woman than a man. We are social creatures, and this can be as important or more so to feelings of dysphoria and euphoria, depending on the person.

 

Finally, there is also a sense of internal kinship. At least for me, I feel a certain "belonging" or kinship to the gender I am. Kind of like I feel a kinship based on being a physicist. I identify as a physicist and I feel like I'm "one of them". The same goes for gender; I feel like a [insert current gender here], and I feel like "one of them". The boundary for entry into being a physicist typically involves years of academic training, but the barrier for entry to a gender is much less; you just have to identify genuinely as such a gender, and (hopefully) people will take your word for it, because there's no way for them to know better than you do. But the feeling of kinship can be just as strong as any other kind of kinship; I am very definitely this gender and not that one, just like I am very definitely a physicist and not a biologist.

 

So, to me, those are the three main components of gender. There is a Venn Diagram somewhere, where there are people who experience any combination of those gender facets. And perhaps there are even more facets that I just haven't discovered yet.

 

 

 

I'll straight out admit that I’m not entirely sure quite what it is to "feel male" either - and I’m a transsexual man.

 

I think, for me, a huge part of it is the feelings of confusion and disorientation i get every time either my body does something that only female bodies do or someone treats me the way that they treat female-bodied people. It really does feel like "What the actual f*ck is going on?" it just feels completely wrong. Every single "she" or use of my female birthname etc. just feels wrong. Those words don't apply to me. But "he" and "William" (that's my name feel RIGHT. They are the right words to describe me.

 

Similarly, wearing female clothes always felt like i was wearing a disguise, putting them on every day was like adopting a female persona that i always knew wasn't me. Dressing as a man now, that isn't dressing up. I'm just dressing as myself and not pretending to be someone I’m not.

 

This feeling of wrongness and rightness is one of the main things i have to go on. I feel like someone who should dress like i do, be referred to how i want and be treated in the way that our society usually treats men. I am a person who knows how they should be treated and it's as a male person gets treated here.

 

Further than that, i am so surprised and disappointed every morning to discover once again that i am female-bodied. Even before i consciously knew that i was supposed to be a boy, i would feel such sadness whenever i saw my increasingly feminine body as i had been quietly hoping that it wouldn't look like that when i woke up.

 

Something i said on another thread that might come close to explaining what it's like to "feel male" -

 

I do not understand women in the way that a woman does. I understand women from the outside perspective, rather than from my own experience of womanhood. Everything i know about what it is to be female, i have learnt by watching females, not by being one, despite living as a girl for several years. I understand men in a different way because i am one. i understand men from my own experience of manhood.

 

I hope some of this made sense and /or has been of some help 

 

 

 

Women are other people, I am absolutely not one. I can't explain how I know that, and at first I thought it was an age issue. But reflection caused me to realize that rather than being a perpetual girl or something, I'd never been one at all. I'd been living as an unwitting imposter.

 

 

 

I don't think I "just knew" anything. I had gender drilled into Me from an early age (raised by an older man who believed in raising girls as GIRLS -- dresses and all) and I felt like I had no room to think otherwise until I pushed Myself out of My acquired transphobia and realized that I was simply rejecting what I had been taught to reject. When I started breaking down the wall, that was when I knew.

 

Wasn't any childhood "I'm a boy!" moments for Me or anything like that. Thinking back, I remember trying to do certain things that I was baffled and frustrated at My inability to do (like peeing standing up... yes, I tried valiantly as a young'un), and being frustrated at the "feminine" expectations put on Me that I wanted so badly to reject... but being closed off from the "progressiveness" of modern society, these behaviors were incidental and surreptitious.

 

So in that, I can't really relate to many trans-persons' experiences in that area. I was told I was a girl, so I was a girl. Faithfully (though I was not very good at it).

 

 

 

Acting like a "man" or "woman" always feels like I am in drag. Every single time it is drag. Neutral comfortable clothing is my only option to be happy, though playing around with gendered fashion can be fun, especially with friends. If I have to wear a suit and tie to some formal function, it is solely a performance for other people, and definitely not of my own choosing. The same would go for a dress and makeup. :s

 

 

 

Me? I'm not really that effeminate. Not over-the-top or obviously so anyway. But I'm not a guy. Sometimes when I'm discussing things with my therapist, she might say something seemingly simple like, "so as a woman you feel more free and relaxed than when you're a man?" And I have to be completely honest, that little bit, "when you're a man" makes my skin crawl. It shouldn't! Right? I mean, I am a man? Aren't I? Chromosomes probably say so. Genitalia says so. Why does that hurt so much? That's the rub I think. Saying "I'm a woman" feels "wrong" on a surface level. I don't look like any woman I've ever seen, but I can fix that. But saying "I'm a man" cuts extremely deep. Oh, I've got the hardware, but the software doesn't know what to do with it. The drivers are flakey. Changing up the software would fundamentally change who I am, and I'm not comfortable with that. Even if it were possible (which I don't think it is).

 

 

 

Trans people explaining dysphoria

Have you ever seen a broken leg? I don't mean a normal broken leg. I mean the nasty freaky broken leg. No exposed bone or blood, but the knee is bent the wrong way. The leg doesn't go in the direction it's supposed to. It's something that's sort of terrifying to behold because you know it's absolutely horrifyingly wrong deep down in your most instinctual parts of your brain. Now imagine that you look down at your own leg and it's broken like that. You're not feeling the pain but you are feeling the utterly freaked out feeling of "OMFG MY LEG IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BENDING THAT WAY."

 

Not a pleasant feeling, right?

 

Okay, let's go further. Let's pretend that this freaky bent broken leg is seen as utterly normal by everyone else. They look at your body and go, 'what's the problem?' There's nothing freaky about them, you're the only one with the freakishness driving you nuts but no one else sees it. Forget the leg and just remember the feeling. The feeling of intimate, screwed up, almost grotesque wrongness. Like the very laws of how your body ought to be are violated, just like if you had that bending the wrong way leg. Imagine that feeling applied to everything about you that is male or female. Imagine seeing the male/female parts you have and getting that "OMFG MY BODY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT." That deep down instinctual feeling of "OMFGWTF" that you get when you see a shattered knee bending a leg the wrong way or even worse see that bent leg on yourself. It's not rational. It doesn't make logical sense. It's utter instinctual response.

 

That's bodily dysphoria.

 

Now. Imagine living with that every day for the rest of your life.

 

 

 

I guess the first thing I'd want to tell people about dysphoria that I've seen very infrequently elsewhere is coping mechanisms. They are very real, and they're also a very natural response to discomfort. In my case, they were so natural, and so gradual, it kind of had the effect of finally "waking up" one day, looking back on my life, seeing the decline and thinking, "what the hell have I done?"

 

I can't even get over what a natural response it is. It's insidious! Like, I can remember very, very early in my life, around 5 years old, listening to story time in kindergarten. Now, there weren't many stories where characters changed gender (trademarked, no one can take that idea ;)), but there were lots of stories where a character transformed into something. This captured my mind so strongly even then, and I remember feeling... just... absolutely gross about how much I wanted that ability to transform.

 

I've never told the following to anyone before, but it's relevant here, so here you go. By the time I got older and hit puberty, I remember thinking that if I just thought hard enough, I could become a girl. Like I could will it to just happen. Now, being a teenager at the time, I had no reference for this. At the time, I thought trans women were what you became if you were really, really gay, which I was not. I labeled it a weird fetish in my head, assumed everyone felt like that but never talked about it, and moved on with my life. It's hard to describe how hard I wished for it sometimes. This coincided with when I first started to understand the differences in male/female anatomy.

 

I also became extremely self-conscious about facial hair at that time, and leg hair, which was thicker and denser than anyone else in my immediate family. It was pretty lame, really. There were several years of summers in there where I just stopped going swimming. Prior to that, I loved swimming so much I never would've gotten out of the lake if my parents hadn't told me to. I eventually got back into it, but only years later, and even now, it's like I'm completely disconnected from my body if I'm sitting there on the beach in swim trunks and no shirt.

 

Another weird thing I never really told anyone was how I actually did things to try to hide the fact that I was a boy. It's weird because no one was fooled, ever. But in my head, I just instinctively did things that made me feel like it was hiding that fact. I never even thought about why I did it, I just did. They were subtle things too, very subtle.

 

TMI for genitals stuff: I don't know how much of a thing it is for people to notice a penis or testicles through pants. I mean, there's this old video of Led Zeppelin performing and Robert Plant has these super tight jeans on and, well, it doesn't leave much to the imagination, let's just say that.

 

For me though, if I could see it, or if I could tell it was making any visible indent on my pants, that was 1000% unacceptable. The reason? People would find out I was a boy. Even though there was no doubt anyway. That would surely give it away. (That was genuinely my thought process).

 

If you want to know what "broke the camel's back" with all this, it was when I sent some pictures of myself on a cycling trip to my dad. He responded that he liked the pictures and was proud that I looked like "such a nice young man." I don't know. Maybe no one had ever said anything to me like that before. Maybe I was finally open to how much that wasn't me. All I know is that statement hurt. I didn't know why, and digging into it led me to trans.

 

So with all these things that happened to me, or that I experienced, the recurring theme is coping. Something hurts? Damage control. Cauterize it. Amputate it. Shut it down. Turn it off. Do that enough times and there won't be much left (as there wasn't with me at a point). And when you've done all that, and say, "Am I really feeling dysphoria?" it's easy to think, no, not really, I don't think so. But what's missing is that all the parts of you, the important parts, have been shut down or removed. That's why dysphoria is so amorphous and vague. You've essentially "cured" it, but at what cost?

 

I wouldn't say that dysphoria is something I can consciously point to and say, "yeah, I'm feeling it right now." I think it has to be enabled by something happening. For now, the only thing I can point to is my years-long bout with depression. Heh, that's another thing to consider: depression. Maybe I'll write about that another time

 

 

 

I used to be a competitive swimmer. I even used to be a synchronized swimmer. My team even got to second place in the provincials. I made the provincials once or twice for speed swimming too, in various categories. Right around when my period started though, I started dreading swimming. Like, worse than anything else. I thought it was just because I couldn't comfortably use tampons, which I wrote off as just not having broken my hymen yet (but seriously, where did this myth of “breaking” the hymen come from? Screw that!). But yeah, my hymen was strong, and I couldn't comfortably use tampons (or so I told doctors, though I remember not trying too hard because the idea of something inside me.... EEW! Not going there. Period. No way. … another dysphoria I guess – man, I'm just finding them everywhere today, eh?). I didn't want to swim ever though, not just when I was on my period. Because if I swam sometimes, but not others, then people might realise that it was because I was on my period, and then they might realise that I was a girl. That would be the most embarrassing thing ever. Not that they knew I was on my period. That they knew I was a girl.

So I stopped swimming. My sister went on to become a lifeguard, and I was at least as good as she, but now I can barely swim 100m IM, nonetheless the cool synchronized swimming tricks I used to be able to do before I was 12... I have lost so much

 

Flinch away. Don't think about it. You just don't like that activity, so stop doing it. You just aren't naturally inclined for swimming, despite being amazing at it just last year. Just focus on other things.

Shut it out. Shut it out. Shut it out... until you forget that it's there.

 

 

 

It feels like someone shoving poisonous needles all around my body and everything in my body burns. I feel sickly. I define dysphoria as severe discomfort.

 

 

 

I remember that when I was 12 I refused to acknowledge my breasts growing and I did not want to wear a bra. Whenever my mom would say that we need to go buy me one I would tell her she's crazy and that I obviously don't have breasts. But then one girl asked me whether I'm wearing one and I got really embarrassed and thought "What if I do have breasts and everyone can see them?!" Since that day I was still uncomfortable with the thought of wearing a bra but I thought that maybe it will at least help cover them up or something. But I was still having thoughts like "OK, I can start wearing a bra when I'm 14 but only when I have to go to the doctor. Otherwise, I won't need a bra up until I'm 18, because that's when you're officially a grown woman, right? I'm not going to have boobs up until I'm 18."

 

 

Dysphoria can also feel like a sense of disconnect from your body

It can manifest in all sorts of ways, and it can vary from very mild and barely noticeable right up to causing depression and suicidal thoughts.

 

Body dysphoria is feeling uncomfortable with your biological sex and your body. It can also feel like indifference, or as though the body you're inhabiting isn't really yours, as though you're detached from it.

 

Some people can also feel absolutely fine with their body, but still know they would've preferred to have been the opposite sex.

 

There's also social dysphoria, where the stereotypes and expectations of your biological sex don't match up with how you feel about yourself in your mind.

 

 

 

Looking at parts of your body and… either not really recognizing they are a part of you, or feeling anxiety/hatred towards those parts. Wanting to hide or get rid of them because of the level of disconnect/discomfort they give you.

 

Not recognizing yourself in the mirror because you 'don't look like the gender you think you should', having dreams/desires of being recognized as an/other gender(s), etc.

 

 

 

It varies. For me it depends, some days it's just like "oh yeah, my bits ain't attached" other days it's like "I'd like to remove my ta'tas with a butter knife and bury them fifty feet below the earth's crust".

 

 

 

I didn’t know that that disconnect can also be dysphoria. I have that all of the time, my body never feels like part of me, that's partly why I find it so hard to take care of it. That's my constant state of being since puberty. I thought I only had dysphoria on those rare days when I want do something drastic to my chest. But if that’s dysphoria then I always have that.

 

 

 

The disconnect is very strong with me as well. I recently started seeing myself in the mirror, which was really strange the first time that happened.

 

 

 

I've always felt the disconnect with being female though.. Being around other women and thinking "I'm supposed to act like that, think like that, feel like that... But it doesn't make any sense and I don't know how to (or even how to make myself because it's so unnatural to me)." And then having them look back at me and treat me like crap because I act, think, feel differently- but I was a "girl" so why was I so different? So many years of confusion.. 

 

 

 

My dysphoria feels like a disconnect between how I see myself and how the world sees me. I would get really confused when people read me as female before I started on T. Sometimes, I would not even realize that people were talking about me in conversations because they were using female pronouns. I tend to have more social dysphoria than physical dysphoria though. When I do have physical dysphoria, it just feels like my breasts should not be there. I never really had a lot of bottom dysphoria, so I cannot explain what that feels like.

 

 

 

As a child and teen, I experienced a profound sense of disconnect and distress under the following gendered situations:

 

Often, when I was referred to as a girl or had a fleeting image of myself as a girl; I did not recognize myself in pictures. If I did see a girl in a reflective surface and it was me, that was pretty awful.

 

 

 

I've got a question for people here.

 

Do you ever feel like you don't own your own body? Like you don't have the right to do what you want to/with it?

 

 

 

Yes. But I guess I differ in that I don't get the sense that my body belongs to someone else either. I just don't feel particularly like it belongs to me, or to anyone for that matter. Odd? It kinda is, now that I think about it.

 

With regards to the body changes thing: whenever I settle on some kind of change, I tend to finalise it with myself by convincing myself that it is an improvement. Like, my body is in my safe-keeping for one lifetime, no more and no less. But it's a long-term lease, something I am meant to take care of. If, for example, someone had lent me a house for one lifetime, I would water the plants and clean and generally take care of it. It would be very rude not to. That's like eating and sleeping for my body; the basics. But because it has been lent to me for a lifetime and not a week or two, then there are more than just the basics for upkeep. With the house example, I may have a leak in the roof at one point. Then it's my prerogative to replace the roof, but with what tiles?

In short, because this is a long term lease, I feel like I can "move in" and improve the lot of this body. Whether that means getting and staying in shape, or keeping a healthy diet, or any other kind of improvements. If i can convince myself that it's an improvement, then it's a good thing to aspire to do And, the business person in me says, the more I feel comfortable in my own body, the more I will naturally be inclined to take care of it. As such, gendered things count as improvements; I have to keep myself feeling at home or I will neglect basic upkeep. Like showers. Showers are good, but I have to feel good enough about my body to be able to be naked for that length of time, so doing the properly gendered things for a while helps with that. It's like storing up a battery or something

 

 

 

And as for being a body... um, slightly awkward phrasing there. One of my coping mechanisms was a strong adherence to Cartesian dualism and privilege of the mind over the body. I couldn't identify with my body at all, so describing me as a body is, while scientifically accurate, kind of difficult to deal with. I'd rather think of myself as the result of part of that meat somehow being able to think. I've grown more attached to my body since figuring out my gender, and maybe part of transition for me will be reconnecting to it more fully.

 

 

 

I don’t know where to put this stuff.

Before I even really knew about transgendered people, I caught myself referring to myself as if I were a boy. For example, when I was in high school, I saw a girl with a shirt that said something like "You WISH you had my boyfriend." My first thought in response to that was "Uh, why would I want to date another guy?" But then after a couple seconds I paused, and I thought "Wait, I'm a girl. That's right." I sort of laughed. A lot of stuff happened like that throughout my life. My friends have always said I have really masculine habits and ways of doing things. Like sitting. Or just how I act in general. My breasts are probably the bane of my existence, I want them gone.

 

 

 

My favourite little hypothetical test is "suppose you wake up the next morning in [opposite sex's] body... would that be any weirder than waking up a different body of your own sex?" Apart from some new physiological education, I don't think it would make much difference to me.

 

 

 

My Mum wants me to "Just be Elliott and forget about gender" by which she means "Don't change your pronoun! Don't transition! Please just be my daughter again!" but being myself is so incompatible with living as female that I refuse to try living that way again.

 

 

 

My biggest beef with being born into a female body is that people try to question my statement that I am a boy. I was socialized to be a woman, not a man, so I don't have every single man trait because I have to (consciously) retain some girl things so I can "pass" around trans ignorant/phobic people.

 

 

 

I have absolutely NO idea why I am transgender. None whatsoever. I wish I could feel like I am a girl, and then everything would be oke, and I wouldn't have strangers calling me "he" and people who know me as female getting weirded out, and I would have high self-esteem. Girls are prettier. Girls have more freedom with style. Girls are more likeable. But I am male in a female body. Why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jehoshabeath]

I relate to your struggles so much *hugs*  I'm sorry they're so hard, but I hope things have been getting a little better since February.   Thanks to everyone for your encouraging comments.

 

I also have Asperger's Syndrome, am not girly, and don't feel comfortable in my own skin.  But I also don't want to be a boy.  I feel just as uncomfortable as I did when I was 11 years old.  I'm exploring these feelings and acknowledging the impact that they've had in my experience.  I feel like I'm just starting to learn about aspects of myself that I had hidden or ignored.  I think the healing process will take time, but at least it's a start