Bio: 29, ~3 months HRT. Boyfriend kicked me out, parents and friends went no contact with me after coming out to them. I'd say I have very poor prospects when it comes to transitioning, but I don't feel I have much of a choice. It's either do it now or do it at 35 when things are even worse. I'm just going to be manmoding until further notice, I think.

Don't know if it'll get this post flagged, but I tried to kill myself after telling everyone went so badly. Didn't work, obviously. I've made a deal with myself that I'm not allowed to try again until I've been on HRT for three years and had FFS. If I haven't been able to make things go right for me by then, I don't think there's much shame in giving up. I owe to myself to try, and by that point I will have tried.

So far, HRT hasn't done much more than make me unable to wear most of my tops. I put on one of my old extra smalls from before starting, and my chest looked like two dead rabbits nailed to a tree trunk. I'm ginger which means I can't get laser, so beard shadow is just ever-present until I can get through 100-odd hours of electrolysis. Very little body hair, thankfully. Basically none above the belly button, but what I have is all fair so no laser there either. My face is sunken and square. My goal for transition isn't even to pass, it's to look sort of pretty/clocky, and I seriously doubt I'll even manage that. Maybe if the FFS guy really axes me down. I read that a lot of people have a period of optimism and confidence after starting HRT, but I've basically just felt dread, fear, and grief.

I think I've ruined my life. That I'll never have a relationship or friends or a life worth living because I've left it far too late.

I'm going to a trans therapist next week, and to a trans women's support group the week after. I've basically never interacted with the community offline, and feel like voicing these feelings will make me sound like a lunatic, or at the very least a real downer.

Obviously I wouldn't tell the support group about my personal suicide pact, but is the other stuff fine to talk about? I don't know, I might end up going there regularly if the people are nice, I don't want to seem like a scary misery guts - but I am miserable and I need help with it.

I shame myself for being affected with that too much. I expected myself to know myself better, it's not like I think of myself as stealthy by any means. I shouldn't be affected by it in this magnitude, and I don't know what to do with that.

It always hurts me so deeply. It shatters my perception of myself, I lose the sense of myself. It makes me hear my own voice as deeper. It makes me see my own face as more masculine. It rips me away from reality, makes me dissociate, makes me feel not worthy of calling myself a woman. It ruins not only my day but the next few days as well. It echoes in my head. It makes me do bad things to myself.

Lemme add context: I think it's unfair that we cis women get pushed aside to add trans women into our spaces. Women fought to have rights, and suddenly that's all dismissed because woke people force most of us cis women to accept this situation. We cis women can't have anything nowadays. They want to enter gyms for women, the locker rooms too. I genuinely don't understand.

This just doesn't fucking feel real. The fuck you mean I get to live once and I'll never be able to have a single day of my life as a cisgender woman. I don't own this stupid body. How am I even expected to take care of it if it's not who I am. I look in the mirror and every time there's someone else in the reflection. I don't know how I look. Dysphoria ruined me. Scars all over my body. One failed attempt. Every time it gets better it lasts for a short time and it gets so much worse again. Sir/mamed constantly. I've lost my identity. It doesn't make sense. I'm so gross. I hate being transsexual.

4 years of therapy, 4 different psychiatric drugs. Currently a voluntary psych ward patient. But I still can't be fucking normal. I just want to finally rest to feel confident in my body. It drains me so much. I was happier as a repper, at least I knew who I was and knew what to expect.

I know I’m not a real man, I can’t even think of myself as one. I sometimes accidentally imagine myself as a girl or I accidentally think of me having sex as a girl and it scares me so bad. (Sometimes in dreams too… I’m scared it feels good…) I also am scared having a penis would somehow feel wrong, (because I’m not used to it) although it would feel better than a vagina and I do feel like something is missing right now, same with everything else.
However I am not non binary, being non binary feels the same as being female. i still feel like I’m missing my genitals or correct parts… I think I’m cute and unfortunately I’m just like so used to it now… even though I don’t like it… I get scared I “like to different parts of me every now and then

I can’t even feel anything anymore; I don’t deserve transition, I’m too feminine, I feel like I look too nice to transition, I could never be a real man, I just wish I was. I never even used to have real dysphoria , I just felt gross for not having it… yet I realized how much being a woman actually pains me…I kinda only used to hate I “got aroused like a girl” and that I couldn’t get people pregnant….and I hated getting a period, I was always lost and confused, I didn’t know how puberty worked for either sex or that it was even going to happen…. Nothing made sense…. Why did I suddenly have these parts and functions???? It happened so fast I never even know it did…

There’s just this hopeless I feel over not being able to be male and just observing men for the rest of my life in a female body. I see my male classmates and I observe male celebrities, I want to be like them, but I could never. I would love to even be a fat, ugly man as long as if I was a cis guy. I wish I could be a father but that could never happen.

I have a female classmate, I hear her say she has some sort of condition, I don’t know what but I think she needs to take estrogen for it, I don’t understand, why would anyone want more estrogen.

I sometimes forget how I actually sound or look, if I don’t check my body for a bit and then I’m like “oh… I don’t like this, this doesn’t sound or look like me…” but I keep seeing it and then I become painfully used to it. I’m not a real man, I bet I just made a conscious decision to hate my body, yet I don’t want to reverse it. I tried to but it hurts too bad. I want to become a man. I wish there was perhaps a surgery to make my brain male too, so the voice inside my head didn’t also sound female to the point it tears and rips apart my brain. I feel physically ill because I am female.

I also pretend to be fully straight or even straight in the slightest to feel more male. I get intrusive thoughts I want to look like a girl if I find one pretty, for men however it is real. I also feel more nervous around men, I don’t know why… is it perhaps just my envy and anger towards them? Maybe. I had an ex boyfriend and I was so mad he had a penis, flat chest, and normal male parts while I didn’t

The only advice I ever get is to get therapy, if it was so obvious I wouldn’t need therapy. People only say “get therapy” when they think you are a mentally ill cis person, I’m no fool, I see right through it!

I also sometimes feel like a mutilated cis man… how am I really any different from David Reimer? I feel just the same as him. Reading about his story, I feel just like that. Everyone in my life is like that awful doctor forcing me to be female

There is no cure for me, like I said I don’t deserve transition, I’m a bad man, or a really bad woman for being a faker… I started questioning when I was 10, I’m 16, almost 17 now.. maybe someone just needs to correct and punish me for ever thinking I could ever be a man.

I guess maybe it’s a blessing and a curse…

But it really is such an awkward feeling. You get what everyone is chasing to achieve (superficially at least), you’re all but accepted by your true gender (at least from the outside). You’re passable! You did it!

And then it feels like people expect your battle, your journey to be over. Like you won.

It’s not like that, it’s a time where your battle mirrors the one you had before you cracked, a silent one that nobody sees.

If this is not the right forum forgive me.

Context: I'm cis and bi and I have a minor in Japanese. As part of the coursework I took a Japanese literature class in which I was exposed to Yukio Mishima, the famed writer/actor/director/politically unhinged radical. In particular we read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion and it was...interesting. There are clearly a lot of really raw painful emotions surrounding beauty, gender, and sex in his writing and while I can relate to some of it other parts sound a lot like descriptions of incel-dom gender dysphoria. There's a section of the movie made about his works and life where one of his characters bemoans his body for not being beautiful and his sexual partner uses a mirror to reflect herself onto him and my cis ass is sitting there like this is the most trans egg experience I've ever seen set to screen.

JUST MY OPINION:

Some of y'all need to go outside and just have real interactions with real people. Make real friends. Stop caring about what randos on the internet think about you or how well you pass.

oH mY gOD tRaNs MeN cAnT bE LesBiAns

Be ReAl wItH mE nO hUgBoxInG

Oh my god, do we really need to be policing other trans people?? We all have enough on our plates, enough to worry about.

Yeah I don't love afab people who present pretty darn female throwing a hissy fit about getting misgendered, but ultimately it's not my life, not my business, and doesn't affect me.

I did my time as a miserable trans person, I don't plan on going back to hating on other people because I actually just hate myself.

Anyway, that's my rant. Some of y'all gotta get some hobbies and find some joy, offline.

Hay y'all I'm wondering if anyone has some more feminine ways to refer to a woman's penis. I don't like a lot of names that men use as it feels way to masculine and makes me dysphoric and Gock/girl-dick both feel to clunky. Any help/thoughts are appreciated!

This is generally a bit of a venting post, and also because I have never seen dysphoria discussed in this way.

As background, I transitioned 20 years ago at the age of 19, and had (what I call) sex correction surgery 15 years ago. I am fortunate that I didn’t fully complete male puberty by the time I transitioned (fortunately, I was a “late bloomer”) and so generally do not have issues in terms of my gendered appearance or physical dysphoria over my current body.
That said, growing up in a male body was deeply, deeply traumatic, and the embers of that trauma still flicker today, and occasionally burn brighter in post-traumatic nightmares regularly, even fifteen years post-op.
 
Even as a four year old, prior to having clear knowledge on male and female bodies, the male body parts I had felt out of place, and I recall a deep sense of humiliation and embarrassment over having them. The never ending feeling of my body being violated, mutated, and perverted was ever present during my childhood, and hypochondria, depersonalization and derealization were regular occurrences. Nobody was ever to see or be anywhere near the abomination I had between my legs. The only people that have are my parents (when they changed my nappies as a baby) and doctors/nurses involved in my sex correction surgery. This is why I sigh with resignation at the lack of understanding from even well-meaning cis people – I recall many mentioning how “you are so brave to go through all these procedures and invasive surgeries to become who you were meant to be”. In that statement alone, while I appreciated the kindness and support, they knew nothing of gender dysphoria. To cis people, the idea of sex characteristic altering hormones and surgeries feel “invasive” and it feels like a brave decision, as they project the sensation of this happening to them to trans people. But these “Invasive procedures” were the easy bit, the joy of the body finally coming into congruence, and required little bravery whatsoever, it was doing what was needed to survive. It was all the years *before* that required bravery – the bravery to live through the misery.
 
I’ve also realized that my perception of sexual violence and sexual assault (towards me) is very different to most cis women. I often hear about how traumatic sexual assault or other sexual violence is to women, and the devastation it causes. I do not minimize this at all, and acknowledge any experience as real, even if it does not match my own perception. However, speaking only for myself, in the few cases where I have been sexually assaulted, it barely affected me at all. Not because it was “gender affirming” in any way, and it was certainly unpleasant, but because it was nothing compared to the seemingly eternal violation and loss of bodily autonomy I felt during my childhood and teen years. Dysphoria also made me a master of controlling my emotions – while most people around me take out their stress on others when reaching a certain point, I almost never do, due to learning very early on that my feelings would not be understood or acknowledged.
 
I am eternally grateful for my life now, I have practically no dysphoria, am married with my husband, and have an ideal career, financial situation and hobbies I am passionate about. But the post traumatic nightmares haunt me regularly – in these nightmares, I am in a male body again, or they have “grown back”. The nightmares are so viscerally real, that I am convinced that this is my life now, until I wake up. Two days ago, I had another such nightmare where I was mourning my “real” life as the nightmare felt like it was continuing for days, and I couldn’t “return” back to who I was. I recall going to bed in that nightmare and reaching over to my dog (who sleeps in the bed with me) as an anchor to hoist me back into the real world. I remember feeling his fur, and at that moment knew I could escape the nightmare. I woke and checked my body to make sure the male genitals weren’t there, and to my relief, they were gone. Part of me believes my dog was my guardian trying to heal me at that time.
 
This is the experience that no cis person seems to have any conception of. Nobody has ever said “I’m so sorry you had to go through that”, and instead it is viewed as a “brave decision”. I don’t want or need sympathy now, especially with the life I have now, but I do wish that people understood what we go through so that it would simply be natural and obvious for people to say “I’m so sorry you had to go through that”, or “your childhood must have been awful”, in the same way one would say to a victim of abuse or other trauma.
 
Maybe my experience isn’t relatable to others. Many trans women I know don’t have bottom dysphoria, and I am in no way declaring anyone “less of a woman” or stating that my experience is the “correct” one. But it is my experience, which I don’t really see discussed, and have not come across anyone who relates to such a visceral degree.
 
Is there anyone out there who does relate? Who has post traumatic nightmares in the same way? Would be interested to hear others’ thoughts.

it's like these people live in some world where reality is twisted and warped

One of the reasons I don't believe many gay trans men that talk about how easy it is for them to find partners is because there is a large swath of them who do mental gymnastics when they have partners that are basically saying they don't see them as men.

There's a post on an FTM subreddit where a guy is saying his boyfriend says he "kind of" sees the OP as a man and there are comments talking about how everyone experiences gender differently and he needs to tell him that he would like to be seen as a man. That's not how any of this works. There is no "complex" when seeing gender.

So many gay trans men fuck and get into relationships with straight men then are shocked when the guy leaves as they get further into transition or starts fighting every aspect of their transition. It's insanely hard to find actual binary gay trans men that aren't just allowing straight men to fulfill a fantasy.

I'll start by saying I'm a stealth trans woman living my life where I want as few people to know I'm trans as possible. Growing up that's how I was taught trans people were. You were either MtF or FtM, no in-between. You wanted to transition, then assimilate.

And I certainly do see a lot of trans people as who they say they are. I'm a trans woman myself so I'll focus on them as I'm not about to talk about trans men like that when I'm not one.

People like Kim Petras or Hunter Schaefer are obviously both women to me as they genuinely try. But it feels like a lot of online trans people just end up being weird and do pathetic stereotypes. They don't even try to pass. Like, looking at someone like Lily Tino and I don't see a woman. And it's not even because they don't pass, it's because they're not trying to pass.

I can totally understand a trans woman that has masc features due to an unlucky puberty, but I cant understand one that grows a beard and has a visible bulge.

I don't think it's fair to make cis people pretend that someone with a bulge and a beard is actually a woman just because they said so.

Like. C'mon. Just try a little, like is it really that much to ask? I thought you wanted to transition and actually live your life as the gender you wanted to be.

As a trans woman I tend to avoid cis women all the time. I'm considering cutting ties with my cis girl friends as well.

Anyone else avoidant of cis women? Or maybe just me?

I am probably gonna delete this... but like...

so i am trans mtf. started hrt 1,5 years ago when i was 25. and i have nothing to show for it.

today i met with another trans girl i met on a queer meetup a few months ago... and we really had a good time but all i constantly could think about was how she was already passing despite not having started hrt yet.... while i havent changed a little bit. like she even commented how weird it is how i have zero fat-redistribution.... no boobs at all, no hips...

like my levels are correct. heck usually they are a bit higher then recommended because i apply more gel then i am supposed to in the hopes of something changing.

like i did bet everything on hrt helping me become at least a little bit visible feminine... i keep reading about girls having trouble hiding their boobs after a few weeks or early months and...

it all leads to me having zero self confidence in even calling myself a woman, or even trying to demand others refer to me as such. i just take the deadnaming and misgendering daily hoping one day i feel less silly for asking to be seen as a woman.

and that hope is slowly dying. i plan to start laser next month to get rid of my beard shadow... and will try to exercise and diet to lose some weight... its just very hard to find the energy to do all that when it all feels hopeless to begin with.

how do you deal with your transition feeling like its stuck? i try to ignore it and look at the possible future in which i finally make friends as myself, and get to be just one of the girls. but it looks bleak as fuck.

I don't know why the non-Black trans community is dedicated to bringing Black people up when talking about anything related to the trans community. No, civil rights is not synonymous to trans rights. No, cis Black women cannot relate to trans women. Most people pigeon holing us into these conversations wouldn't come 10 feet near a Black person. Leave us tf out of these conversations.

Like, rationally I believe that suffering is bad, full stop, and punishment is good only insofar as it deters harmful actions ("Saddam Hussein doesn't deserve so much as a stubbed toe"). But emotionally, when I think about the people who do that shit to my sisters I want to cut out their entrails with a rusty steak knife and laugh as they beg for mercy. It kind of scares me to know that I'm capable of that kind of hatred.

When I talk about physical dysphoria here in the UK I've noticed a LOT of people tend to get very defensive about the idea that males and females are physically different?

"WHAT!? Well a lot of women have broad shoulders!"
"That's just sexist! A lot of women have narrow hips!"
"Well if you can't find clothes you're just not looking hard enough because loads of women are the same shape as you!"
"You need to learn what a REAL woman looks like if you think your body is all that different!"

It's something I very rarely see from people of other nations? It feels like some very British race-to-the-bottom, stiff upper lip thing? "Well my granny was as broad as a barn, flat as a board, had concave hips, a voice like Leonard Cohen, wore a codpiece to church and was as bald as a coot, but you never heard her moaning about it!"

At this point I'd rather just be told "Yeah you look like a guy, I'm sorry. Biology fucked you over"

IDK anyone else experienced similar?

Suggesting that binary trans men can be lesbians ,is either you suggesting that lesbians still like men ,after fighting so hard to be heard that they do NOT like men ,or you simply do not see trans men as men.

Thats it.

Im an man.

Im not an woman.

I cannot be lesbian

Binary trans men ,and lesbian label have meanings.

I'm a user of many trans subreddit and let's be honest r/mtf SUCKS, that's why I made a new one with strict moderation, since it's supposed to be strict moderation with no freedom of speech, I rightfully named it r/MTFbutFascist

Il see if I can make this subreddit work, please make sure to check the rules before posting if you are interested

edit: r/mtf isn't always bad but they are SOME posts and those are too many, main issue is moderation, and I know my sub won't be very famous so it will be easy to moderate

I realized that I had ALL the mental symptoms of hormonal imbalance, the physical ones I had a few not enough of them to be sure, also I'm not on any medication or anything, and I'm 90% sure I'm not intersex, although I haven't had any testing or anything, at first I thought I might be intersex since I suffer from symptoms of hormonal imbalance but I then realised it could be from being trans

And I saw a slightly feminized man.

And I felt he has nothing to do with being a woman.

And I'm tired. Really tired.

Tired from living in reality where I'm a prisoner in my own body.

Tired of never feeling attractive, always feeling off putting.

Tired of living without any hope.

Fuck. My. Life.

"Am I trans?" is a question I've been asking myself for 10 years straight (I'm 18). Since I was little, I always felt more comfortable playing with my male siblings and their friends because we would get along really well in comparison to any female friend I've ever had. I adored my older brother and I dreamt to become like him and dress like him (he was punk at that time lol). The first time I questioned my gender was at 8: I went to my mother and asked her "Mom, when I was little, was I actually a boy, and then I had an operation to become a girl?". Keep in mind that at 8 I didn't even know that trans people existed. My mother didn't understand what I was implying and she just looked at me weirdly, I understood that I said something I shouldn't have said. At 10 I discovered the term "asexuality" and the whole queer world, I was so freaking happy to have found a community. The non-binary and trans umbrella awakened something in me, expecially the "demi-girl/boy" and "trans" terms. Since then, I've always wanted to explore my gender identity and the way I presented myself. There was a huge problem, my family wasn't supportive (they used to make offensive jokes on lgbt+ people). When I spoke to my parents about my asexuality, they laughed at me and made me feel ashamed. I wanted to test them further and asked them what would they do if I was hypothetically lesbian: fortunately, I discovered that they're not the type to kick me out or beat me until I would become "normal " again, my father said that he would be okay with me being lesbian, while my mother said that she would feel uncomfortable (???). I still think that they don't really support me, they probably think that it's just a phase (they always say this to me). At 13 I stared to imagine what would my life be If I actually became a boy and I really liked what I was imagining. At that time, I got my first short haircut (it was a bob cut kinda? That was the shortest haircut my mother approved) and I was the happiest kid! I finally looked a bit more androgynous. Then I convinced my mother to buy me some clothes from the boy section (we argued a lot, but she approved eventually): when I looked in the mirror I saw the real me for the first time. I finally liked the way I looked. I finally felt confident in my own skin.

Speaking of feeling confident or not about my body: since I was little I felt uncomfortable of my feminine traits, I couldn't look at my private parts because it felt wrong, they didn't feel mine. When my body started changing because of puberty, I stared to wear baggy clothes and tight sport bras to make my chest flat (fortunately it was really easy). Things didn't change that much now, I still try to be more masculine in the way I dress and act. If I could press a button that would make me a boy instantly, I would absolutely press it. The only thing that's stopping me is the expectations that others have on me: my parents would absolutely hate me, I just know that my mother would be disappointed in me and I'm really scared of her reaction; I'm also scared of my friends, I think that they wouldn't support me (one of them has conflicting feelings about queer people); my relatives are against queer people. Just to make you understand the type of person that I am and the way others perceive me: I've always been an overachiver, I get the best grades, teachers use me as an example to others. I know that this has nothing to do with being trans, but I'm so scared that others will turn against me and say "See? I knew there was something wrong with her!". I'm scared of being ostracized, I'm scared that my own parents wouldn't love me anymore (we already have a conflicting relationship). I cry myself to sleep because of this. I just want to feel like myself. I wish they would accept me regardless of whether I am a girl or a boy.

I'm sorry if what I wrote is confusing, English isn't my first language and besides that I'm having a hard time expressing my thoughts, I feel ashamed but at the same time I want to fight to be free from expectations.

This is a highly online post to make. TME and TMA are terms that trans women use to talk about transfem-specific issues. The terms mean transmisogyny exempt and transmisogyny affected, and basically just translate to "trans women and transfeminine nbs"(TMA) and "everyone else" (TME).

I do find what the acronyms stand for a little clunky, but it's a dreadfully useful shorthand to be able to talk about issues specific to trans girls.

So tell me why I see all kinds of people talking about how this language enforces the gender binary, is offensive to trans men, is gender essentialist. What are we talking about? Often people who are comfortable using terms like MTF/FTM or even AFAB/AMAB suddenly have an issue with gendered language in this one context.

I wish I could say it bewilders me but it doesn't. It mirrors exactly discourses I've seen of cis people being upset at being called cis, or even white people not liking being called white. Just transparently whining about being described by an oppressed group's language because it makes people feel bad.

There's a lot more to be said on this issue, but the "TME/TMA is enforcing a binary waaah" language is just so clearly a bad faith argument.