Hello everyone, sorry for the lengthy post and possible english mistakes in advance, english is not my first language so I hope you can bear with me :) I hope I don’t come across as rude or disrespectful, I’m still fairly new to the topic gender identity in general.
Context For almost 2 weeks I’m actively questioning my gender identity, after i watched some trans youtuber. Some of their feelings resonated with my and at several points I thought: “huh, that sounds familiar…” I’m 27 years old and AMAB, I’ve never really questioned my gender actively (Exclamation on “actively”). But in the past 2 weeks many memories I had almost forgotten resurfaced. But many of these experiences are from the time before my current 7 year relationship. So I’m not really sure if could trust those “distant” memories or if I am just warping them to fit my current interest. I hope you get what I mean. When I was a child I had been diagnosed with ADHD and from time to time i fall into a hyperfocus where I’m extremely interested in specific topics. I think i might suffer from a mild case of imposter syndrom. I have many accomplishments i should feel proud of (I have a fairly decent bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and am almost finished with my masters degree), but I always have the feeling I don’t deserve them or am just more lucky than my peers. With these things out of the way:
Here are some of these experiences, with my instinctive responses These are in no particular order and I have even more saved in a .doc file :D
- Whenever I play a game i choose female instinctively, sometimes I don’t even play a game if there’s no female character the game is much less compelling to me.
- I think that’s true for many cishet men, atleast 3 of my close friends tend to choose female characters too.
- I draw, but when I’m drawing characters I always want to draw women
- I guess that’s also true for many cishet men (?)
- Eventhough I like to draw women and always wanted to draw myself as one, there was always some kind of barrier which prevented me from doing that…
- Last week I finally did it and somehow the picture gave me some… “interesting” feelings (almost like a longing?)
- When I have the feeling if another player in a mmo assumes that i’m female, it always feels kind of nice
- could be a roleplaying thing but i dunno…
- We have a Call of Cthulhu roleplaying group in which I’m playing a woman. Whenever I’m spoken to with female pronouns, referred to with her given name or if my character receives a compliment it feels really nice
- This year we had a murder mystery party where I played a women. I burrowed a nice dress from my girlfriend, put on some clip-on earrings and wore a pair of 6cm heels. I’ve felt surprisingly confident even more after i received some compliments from the female players for my appearance.
- Maybe the confidence boost came from the heels lol
- I’ve remembered in my last middle school year I went during the costume week in a dress from my mother and received some compliments then too and had similar feelings (11 years ago i think) and also felt weirdly confident
- I guess everyone likes to receive compliments?
- During high school my favourite manga which I read several times was a genderbender manga where the protagonist trasformed into a girl. I was kind of envious of the protagonist and was sad that I could never experience something like this. (8 years ago)
- That’s a normal feeling among adolescents right?
- During my apprenticeship (7 years ago) one of the other apprentices said to my drivers license picture “You look like cute lesbian”. In that moment I felt complimented
- Why would you even say something like that?! :D
- 8 years ago I played in the youth club of our local theater. Someday one of the others came out as Transmale. While always referred to him as male and respected his decision my instinctive thought was: “Why would anybody want to be a boy, they have nothing going for them”.
- Later this year when I watched some trans women on youtube about there coming out stories my instinctive thought was: “Yep sounds absolutely logical! I get why you would want to transition”
- If I had the option to change my gender in an instant without any consequences i would do that.
- I guess that’s quite the telling point, but the thing is, while I had these thoughts often during my time in school. Since my relationship the thought never (I think) came back to me. But my response to the question is still the same. Maybe it’s just curiosity?
As already said, there are some more points, but I don’t want to draw it out even further. I’ve also did my due diligence and read the gender dysphoria bible (which is fantastic open document imho) and there were a few points I could very much relate to, especially at the imposter syndrom chapter and the euphoria chapter… But the whole situation leaves my rather restless (and sleepless). Yesterday I confessed to my girlfriend about these feelings and she’s been really supportive and awesome, which calmed me down a fair amount.
You almost reached the End! If you have any thoughts about any of these points please, please share them with me! And also, when did you “realise” you were transgender, were there points in your live where you didn’t even thought about it or was it more of a constant nagging feeling? I can’t even really tell why all this confusion surfaced like this with such strong emotions. Maybe because it never occured to me until recently that changing your gender is an active and possible choice you have, but maybe its just my ADHD lol.
Thank you very much for reading!
TL;DR: Got complicated feelings about resurfacing memories and am questioning my gender, please share your stories :)
Your story sounds very familiar to me! I recently came to terms with the fact that I am transgender, so i think i am in a similar place to you right now, or at least i was very recently. When I had my “awakening” it helped me recontextualize a lot of feelings that i didnt even know were there. I played a female character in a Pathfinder game and felt really attatched to her in a way that i hadn"t felt with my male characters. I even has some art commissioned of her that i use as a profile picture, and i use her name as my username on lots of sites (including this one!).
It made me remember a time in middle school when i was at a birthday party with mostly girls and we had a scavenger hunt at the mall. One of the objectives was to take a picture with a bra on over your clothes, and i quickly volunteered. At the time i thought it was just funny as the only guy in the group, but in retrospect i was very excited to try it on. Ive had a girlfriend give me a full face of makeup and it made me feel really good about myself. Ive been painting my nails and doing nail art for several years. Some of my guy friends paint their nails too, but it was always a different vibe. They would do solid dark colors and i would do bright colors, sometimes with patterns or shapes, and it always felt really nice.
Throughout all of these experiences i never seriously questioned my gender. It only occurred to me around a month ago that I might actually be a woman, and thay made me recontextualize all of these things years afterward. I’m 26 AMAB and i kind of thought it was too late for me to discover something fundamental about myself like this, but that’s not true! It’s never too late to be yourself.
Ultimately nobody can say what gender you are except you, but i feel a lot of kinship with the experiences you have described. I reccomend that you experiment a little, maybe buy some women’s underwear to wear under your regular clothes, or if your girlfriend is supportive and you feel safe, try some of her clothes on. The thing that solidified my feelings on the matter was shaving my legs. It was a huge moment of euphoria for me and basically removed any doubt i had.
I hope you find the answers you are looking for!
Thank you very much for the reply, Ravindra! It helps my to know, there are people in a similar age bracket with similar experiences. I think i will follow your advice with shaving my legs and maybe let my gf put some nail polish on my nails! Buying women’s underwear seems like a step too far at the moment, but who knows what the future brings ;)