Don't forget to put "fruity scents" in the pro column. Women/girls get all the great smelling perfumes, body scents, soaps. Still rather be a boy because of all the negatives though
I mean, I really don't. I'm not particularly gung-ho about being male, but I don't think I'd be happier as a girl because my problems stem from socioeconomic stresses, rather than anything to do with my gender perception or body image.
I wish I could have learned about nonbinary identity much earlier. Like back when I was having a crisis about my gender in high school I only knew the full binary MtF and FtM existed. But whenever I thought about it being a girl felt just as wrong as being a boy to me. Just for different reasons. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't reconcile not wanting to be a boy, periodically wishing I had been born a girl, but not actually wanting to be a girl.
Wasn't until about 12 years later at like 26 when I met my now wife and she told me all that sounded like nonbinary and I suddenly had things to Google. I wish I could have had a chance to actually transition before fully growing into being 6'2" and built like a fridge in a fursuit. But like now I'm 33, I had other medical issues that I didn't want to try piling a potential transition on top of, and I'm not even sure what realistic transition goals I could even have let alone have a chance of attaining.
I can absolutely sympathise, I've got a bunch of medical issues and only began my transition journey recently, well past puberty. It's the best thing I've ever done, the only goal I'd say you should ever have for your transition, is to be happy.
Also, it's useful to keep in mind that there are many ways of affirming your gender other than medical stuff, though I'll admit the medical transition has been the best for me.
I kinda have the opposite experience of gender, I feel equally comfortable as being boy and girl though generally prefer a mix at most times. It's so cool to me how differently we can experience these sorts of things
WillStealYourUsername has already given a very good overview, to add to that...
It is a highly individual process and while many trans people share certain experiences, no two trans people will have exactly the same kind of journey.
While the public perception of trans people is very much focused on the rather rare cases of young children who will insist on being trans from an early age on. While these cases definitely exist, far more trans people are going through a gradual process of realization. There may be a final "egg crack" (the moment of final realization), but it is usually preceded by a slow process of smaller realizations and it is nowhere near a linear process...
As WillStealYourUsername describes so well, in hindsight all the signs and individual quirks make sense, but most people have to attain a certain level of self-acceptance before being able to recognize the various symptoms for what they are.
In my personal case, it was an intense jealousy of fem people that would never go away and culminated in a moment where I had an emotional meltdown over a fictional character who transitioned from male to female in their storyline. That's when I finally realized that I could do the same thing if I got my shit together and accepted being trans.
Define "figure out." I figured out I disliked being male by considering what I liked and disliked about myself. All the positives were more feminine or neutral, while all the negatives were masculine or masc coded. I decided on NB, but it still felt off. I didn't want to be considered male, but I didn't know if I wanted to be female.
For years I couldn't parse my feelings when I imagined myself as a woman. I felt better, but I struggle with even identifying emotions, so it wasn't clear enough to convince me. Eventually, I imagined myself as a mother: being pregnant, giving birth, raising a child that was my own. It felt so euphoric that I broke down crying because I knew I could never go back.
I still took another 5-6 months to start the process of coming out. I was still uncertain and terrified when I finally took the leap of faith. I was on death's door mental health wise. I realized I could not carry on any longer as a man, yet it still took so much effort to make the best decision I've ever made.
It was night and day. I never thought I could be so happy or love life like that. It's a miracle that I made it 23 years feeling like I wasn't alive.
Thanks for sharing. I think maybe my dysphoria isn't as strong. I guess I'd gravitate more towards being non binary than fully identifying with being a man/woman (what does it even mean). But I'm not sure, I feel physically fine in my body, but I guess I'm still questioning a lot of things.
I mean that should be pretty obvious. Why would you want to have an oily face? Why would anyone want to look like a rectangle and look like an ogre? For real tho, who?
EDIT: changed likw to like (written in italic 🇮🇹🥖🥐)
What exactly do you mean? The properties I described were supposed to be directed at the masculine characteristics I don't like. Did you perhaps mean that some of these are not masc-exclusive?
Women and men both can have masculine features. I think they are saying that masculine features aren't a male thing exclusively and arent inherently negative.
The problem is, it depends who you ask. For me, I dont really have anyone pushing the idea of male and female stuff growing up, sort of like an atheist household might not talk about religion much.
I'm not saying that trans stuff isnt real, but it does seem like its to a degree a reaction to societies treatment of a person.
I genuinely thought this was true in middle school and got confused when my friends didn't want that (it was still true for me though I'm totally cis you can tell by the way I am)
Yeah, I was pretty much convinced of the same thing while still in school: How could my class mates not want to change their gender? It's the most amazing thing in the world to do! Who would say no to that?
not necessarily for you but for other trans people reading - transition isn't going to make you cis but it can help a lot of things. at the very least, hormones can potentially provide a lot of mental benefits, even if you won't get the exact body you want at the end of the day
and, y'know, if they don't, you can always stop taking them
It is the very definition of being cis to not understand wanting to be a different gender than the one being assigned at birth. People who are uncomfortable with their assigned gender are not cis.
But many need a while to realize that other people do not feel the way they do.
Depends on what grapple means. Very few want to be a different gender than they were born, but practically everybody has been told to behave differently because "boys do X" or "girls do Y". People just want to do whatever their interests predispose them to do or express themselves in some specific way that society often deems wrong. So yeah I haven't ever really "wanted to be a girl" ever but a million times I wish people would leave me the fuck alone when they think I'm not being a man correctly.
practically everybody has been told to behave differently because “boys do X” or “girls do Y”.
I wish people would leave me the fuck alone when they think I’m not being a man correctly.
This is what I mean by 'on a surface level.'
Oppositional sexism demands that those born in male bodies do masculine things, and those born in female bodies do feminine things. In other words it demands that everybody, not just those who are trans, conform to socially expected performances of gender.
However, cis people are afforded the security in feeling that their birth gender is the one that is 'correct' for them.
Cis people largely feel gender entitlement (projecting one's own perception of gender onto other people, and privileging those perceptions over the way others understand themselves), hence:
A lot of people don’t really care much about what their gender is
Trans people do not get this privilege. Trans people face the same oppositional sexism that cis people do (that all people that exhibit exceptional gender expressions do), as well as having to face cis people's gender entitlement being pushed onto them.
All this to say the joke is that the subject of the meme is in denial about their transness, and they are assuming that everybody feels the same way. The meme is a transfem centered meme- cis people may not get the joke; however many people DO care about their gender identity, but some identities are privileged over others.
There was nothing entitled about what I said. However you are minimizing the suffering that I and many others have gone through for not aligning to gender norms.
![egg_irl [Transfem meme]](https://files.botsin.space/media_attachments/files/112/559/575/432/621/092/original/38f97b473b27de89.jpg){kind=link}
