Alright. Figured this beat coming out to Smogon on #capasb.
So...after a long time in the closet, I realized I'm trans shortly after Thanksgiving of last year.
I've mostly kept my activities on that to my Reddit account, although you might have noticed a few clues here and there here on Smogon (most recently, using the female gender option instead of "unspecified").
So...I guess I'll just reply to Squarewalker's post as a starting point for my story?
For people who want to understand more about gender, gender dysphoria and in general trans woman issues, I'd recommend Julia Serano - Whipping Girl, probably the most important and best-written book on the subject I've read so far (if anyone has read that as well as a book they thought was better, I'd be very curious to read that book as well).
I'm a short way into Whipping Girl myself--it's definitely been a good read so far.
So yeah, it's pretty much impossible to accurately define it. From anecdotal evidence and from my own experiences, starting to identify as the gender associated with the opposite sex usually (except for people who identified as such since their childhood, or people who instantly realised after finding out the truth about transitioning) comes through a series of "trial and error".
Like, it's always been there, but not knowing about the real possibility of transitioning (sucks that shows / films in the past, that even lived off of ridiculing transsexualism, only mentioned breast implants and an inaccurate portrayal of SRS) kept and still continues to keep a lot of trans people not to even dare to think of possibly being associated with a group of "freaks" how they've seen trans women being misportrayed as for decades (while trans men were virtually never mentioned / never heard of), so the gender dysphoria is extremely "quiet" through this subconscious repression. People simply write off the "signs" as unimportant, and since the signs are usually very far apart from each other in time, and the only possible answer that unifies them is thought of as literally impossible, some people might not realise until their 40s-50s, or perhaps never realise, that they are trans.
Indeed--although I think I might have privately started the trial and error before truly understanding the capabilities of hormones.
At first I thought that I would be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven if I just kept it in and followed the Church's doctrines (yay conservative Catholic grade school!) during this life. Then my faith died, and I learned and I spent the next few years without much real permanent purpose or sense of inherent self-worthiness. During that time I came up with plenty of creative reasons to shame myself for thinking about "wouldn't it be nice to be a girl doing whatever it is I'm doing/want to do," particularly if it involved standing up for myself and feeling powerful/leading people as a woman rather than maintaining my "duty" to be an extremely passive guy. I also shamed myself for repeatedly vicariously projecting some of my own desires onto girls I knew.
Something to note is that (like many, many other closeted trans women) with no other real means to express my desire for transition, I ended up fetishizing having sex as a woman (or even just transforming from male into female)--to the point of trying to actively figure out what sex as a woman felt like (then simulate it by stimulating the right parts and imagining, because hooray for analogous structures).
I sort of figured it out...but I also realized that I liked feeling female independent of my sexual activity. I rationalized it as something I could look into temporarily when I was older.
I had a number of other independent revelations after that before I actually really came out to myself, but most importantly: during Thanksgiving break last year I finally managed to combine tucking in my private parts, wearing a camisole over (girl's briefs? boyshorts? panties? I have no idea what kind of underwear it was), and filling in the hips and breasts with socks--all to, in a non-sexual environment, simulate the overall feeling of an actual female body. And...it felt strangely right to have a body like that. Sleeping in it felt right. Errands with a heavy coat covering it all felt right. Going to get some hot tea to help wake up in the morning, while wearing a light jacket with small sock boobs underneath, felt right--and that was coming from someone who looked into social anxiety support groups earlier that year.
I ended up finally deciding to go onto the transgender community subreddits to find information shortly after first putting that together, and stumbled upon asktg.
But when one finds out about antiandrogens' and estradiol's effects, respectively testosterone's effects in the case of trans men, and seeing hormone therapy timeline images, it simply opens up a whole new picture, a possibility they thought was never going to exist. Then starts all the research for all trans-related information. But the excitement is not for long, for fear, shame, guilt, depression and anxiety strike. So a lot of people try to make compromises, only thinking of crossdressing in secret, or trying to experiment by seeing how publicly identifying online as genderqueer/genderfluid/etc. feels like, since they'd rather find only looking more androgynous or having to lead a double life as the truth, instead of having to transition.
I may have learned about the effects on Wikipedia while thinking that I just had a fetish. I also learned about how sex reassignment surgery worked. It took me a while to actually look into it seriously--again, probably because the fetish was easier to accept than the reality.
Going to /r/asktransgender pretty much opened the floodgates to awakening/coming out to myself, as more and more stories echoed my own. Most importantly, I learned
no, these feelings stay with you for your whole life, many of your concerns are completely normal, you're at a great age to begin transition, and the longer you wait the harder it gets. Do not compromise on this.
While I had plenty of doubts/rationalizations to mull over, I eventually managed to process most of them.
I ended up coming out to my slightly younger sister early in December (while I was still heavily questioning), then a counselor at the counseling center, then my mom, then (after much paternal badgering) my dad. My sister was totally on board with it, my mom was cautious but ultimately on board with it, and my dad...kind of went into denial/invalidation mode, but is cautiously supportive (though I suspect he still wants it to be anything else...).
Thankfully my college is rather progressive, and I'm in probably the most progressive major there--so far, all the people I've come out to there have been supportive.
For some people, crossdressing might be the only thing they actually wanted, or identifying as non-binary might be the gender they really actually are. But for transsexual people, it becomes quickly apparent that female pronouns feel so much infinitely more "right" (there's no other way to describe this) than male ones (or vice versa for trans men). That's probably the most important step in the series of "trial and error" in starting to consciously identify as the gender associated with the opposite sex. Then that feeling just deepens. There's no turning back from that, the cat is out of the box and it never goes back in, and that's when gender dysphoria (which until then was mostly silent) truly starts to make one's life really miserable (sadly often to the point of suicide) until they manage to transition.
I can attest to this--I'm getting increasingly annoyed at using my birth name over my girl name on things, I've generally resolved my doubts, and I'm increasingly feeling like many effeminate childhood tendencies I suppressed are coming to the forefront again (and I love it). I dislike being gendered male and like being gendered female.
It's weird, though, because I've found that I've had a really weird mixture of both sometimes feeling really really good about myself for knowing who I am and really really frustrated/miserable about having a male body.
The positive side has been enough to make me significantly more productive than I was last semester so far--and while some of the academic success is just better habits, fewer non-transition outside distractions (I'm not starting off the semester thoroughly entangled in CAPASB affairs, for example), less stressful classes, better scheduling (I don't have stressful meetings before my longest class periods), and better work techniques...I have to admit, I really feel like my immediate happiness is worth fighting for. I actually want to take control of my life now.
Also, I'm going to have my first meeting with someone capable of prescribing hormones in April. The wait is really annoying, so I'm...likely to come out socially in the meantime. Again, yay for going to an accepting college!
And this post got way too long, but trans-related topics are just extremely broad and problematic to just very succinctly talk about them.
Indeed.
