So for the vast majority of my life I've been convinced I'm a cis male however recently I've been getting onto shaky ground. I got into being a femboy quite a while ago but rationalised this as an attraction to them due to being bisexual (though it was also kind off a reaction to social alienation, it's just I went down the femboy path rather than the misogynistic path). In general I don't really dislike being a guy on the whole it's just that I found myself increasingly seeing women in public and just thinking "oh shit I wish I could look like that" - the latest round of this (which has also been the most intense period of wanting to look like / be (maybe? I'm not really sure) a women) kicked after seeing the women dancing in this music video at the 1:35 point in the video.
I don't entirely want to not be a man because I like being a guy but I also kind of want to be at least woman like in some ways but also I don't really want to be non-binary because in a way that feels like the worst of both worlds where I'm not a guy or a girl so I just feel like :blob-on-fire::blob-on-fire::blob-on-fire: whenever I start trying to think about my gender. Also it doesn't help that I haven't even come out to my family yet about even being bisexual.
A few days ago I saw someone on this site list what they like about being male so I've decided to try and do that for being male, female and maybe also nonbinary. So, here goes:
Male:
Pros:
- I like being a guy because I prefer being around other guys to girls and I'm afraid that the dynamic of me and my all guys primary group of friends will change if I transition into being a woman
- I feel like a guy more than I feel like a woman
- I like having a dick (it's just pretty cool, what can I say?)
- I'm more used to being a guy
- I just really like being a guy and I can't really explain why I just like being a guy
- I like my side burns
- Dudes rock
Cons:
- I really hate leg hair and having hair everywhere
- I don't look like the average strong masculine manly man even when I'm presenting as masc (which is most of the time because I haven't told my family I'm a femboy so I only wear my femboy clothes when none of them are around, which is rare since I'm living with them currently, and I'm too self conscious of looking too much like a guy that I don't want to go for a night out wearing femboy clothes)
- I simultaneously feel like a guy but I don't feel like a guy at the same time :blob-on-fire:
- my hair grows back so fucking fast all the time :no-thats-wrong:
Female:
Pros:
- Sometimes I see women in the street and just really wish I could be like them and look like them
- It would be nice to look more feminine
- There's just a general appeal to femaleness as a whole for me but I can't really work out why
Cons:
- I would be weird to change from being a cis femboy to being a trans women
- I don't know how to be a woman properly because I've always been a guy
- I'm afraid that even if I do transition I'll be a really ugly woman
- I have a genetic hair condition that means my hair can't grow longer than an inch or so long before just falling off so if I do transition I'll just look like a man trying to look like a woman and failing and ahhhh :cri:
- And if I did transition, even if I looked like actual shit I'd just be lovebombed by well meaning liberals and maybe also hexbear users (:same-picture:) into being told I'm beautiful and just a cute smoll bean trans girl when I'm not - not that I'd post selfies on the internet off course, I do have a very basic understanding of not doxxing myself
- some of my friends are kind off transphobic
- I live on TERF island :ukkk:
- My parents are kind of transphobic but in the kind of confused liberal way of wanting to protect womens rights but not fully understanding that trans women don't hurt the rights of cis women and just generally being severely infested with :brainworms: (though my dads brainworms are in general harder to shift I think that he would just become pro trans rights if I transitioned because I'm pretty convinced that he doesn't consistently hold any ideology outside of "self righteous left wing Britain hating chattering classes" vs "GET BREXIT DONE, Britain loving conservatives telling the truth like it is" and I think he'd default to supporting his son / new daughter (damn it feels weird to type that) over dumb culture war bullshit)
- I just don't think I feel enough like a woman and I'm afraid that if I start trying to transition to being a woman that it'll be the wrong choice and I'll completely fuck up
- I'm not really sure if I actually want boobs even though based on the size of some of my family members breasts I'd have some pretty big bazongas :awooga: so that's, at least in my opinion, good because I think it would be pretty hard for someone to look at me and see absolutely mega honker wonkers and think "MAN!!!"
- I'm kind off scared about what the first year or so of hrt would be like where I'd just look look really ugly and horrible and not like a woman at all
- I really like the idea of being a guy but looking feminine
Non-binary:
Pros:
- I could present both fem and masc
- I've always thought it would be cool to be really androgynous so people can't work out what my actual gender is
Cons:
- I wouldn't be a guy or a girl
- people would just misgender me all the time accidently
- the idea of being non-binary just feels a bit weird
I know this is a confused mess of a post and that's probably because I am too rn, possibly also because I drank a little bit before / while writing this post so that I'd be more open about everything. Maybe as I sober up I'll return to this post and provide more useful information.
P.S. I used the image of Astolfo crying because I have no clue whether Astolfo is a cis femboy, a trans woman or a nonbinary fem presenting person - also I think the image is just pretty neat.
P.P.S, actually can you refer to me by she/her pronouns in the replies so I can test out how it feels?
Damn she really said I'm gonna make a pros and cons list of gender. I should preface by saying I did the same exact thing before I transitioned, BUT THAT DOESN'T NECESSARY MEAN YOU ARE TRANS, I'm just seeing you follow a pattern that I followed. I think if you're really curious you should keep this website on your radar and maybe explore it a bit. It even touches directly on the cons you listed for being a woman (which largely just look like you're describing gender dysphoria). You're allowed to also be bi-gender you know!
Gender is confusing af but the fun news is you don't necessarily have to pick either. I'm MTF/NB and when I say NB, I mean that. I feel dysphoric regardless of genitals (I do like my boobs tho) and often present very gender neutral most of the time (but I do wear dresses and skirts some) and use a feminine name and sign forms/have my drivers license/etc as female when possible. Honestly my gender is more of "Not being a guy" rather than anything else.
So you can be a guy and shave your leg hair and wear pretty clothes all you like, or be a girl and do that or whatever. At the end of the day it's important to remember it's all just words. Words try their best, but they can't always describe your actual lived experience and that's perfectly ok.
When you go over these pros and cons, ask yourself for each item if you think this is a pro/con because of how you feel about it or because of how others feel about it. Seperate what's inside of you from how you perform in front of others. How you perform can change (and if you do transition in any way, it will change a lot). But your gender identity is immutable, it can't be changed, it can only be hidden. Living as a dude will always appear easier before you're out, because on an objective level it is easier. Cis men have it easier than trans women. They absolutely do. But this isn't about who objectively has an easier life. Because you can't pick a side here, you can only figure out who you have actually been all along. Living in the closet isn't the life on easy mode that cis men get to enjoy. It is a miserable life of constant self denial, but if you do suppress who you are, you do not know the weight that puts on your shoulders until you take it off.
When i started questioning, i initially really liked the idea of being genderfluid because the fantasy of switching between genders seemed appealing. but after a while, i realized that i only wanted to present male in some situations because short-term it was the easier, safer, more convenient thing to do. Presenting as a dude was a mask i had adapted to protect myself. But it wasn't something i actually desired. It was something i've always hated deep down inside and i'm glad i've moved beyond it. It'll take some time to figure that stuff out for yourself. It will also take time to learn how to perform in a different gender role if you want that, whether it's as a trans girl, as an enbie person or as a genderfluid man. All of these are things you'd have to slowly grow into. But figuring that out is totally worth it, even if you just go "oh well, turns out i'm just a regular dude who experimented a bit" after a while. Because here's the thing:
Transitioning isn't flipping a switch and then you're someone else. It's a journey. And you can stop continuing on that journey at any point, and you also don't have to go back to the start if you don't want to. Anything that does permanent changes is way ahead of where you are now. You can just try the femboy stuff, you can try pushing it a bit further and you'll see for yourself if that's enough or if you want more. There's only one way to find out, and that is experimentation. You can just switch pronouns here, make new online accounts, see how it feels to be adressed as a she or as a they. You can try your hand at makeup and maybe at wigs if you can't grow your hair out. You can paint your toenails. Build up a more varied wardrobe. Maybe at some point you can do a little vacation in another town, maybe even a place where you know other queer people from your online experimentation, and then you can use that safe environment where you're not running into anybody to try what it's like to present as a woman in public. Maybe that's fun, maybe that's arousing, maybe that's a nice hobby. Or maybe that's not for you. Or maybe that is who you truly are. Only one way to find out.
First of all, I want to commend you for thinking about your gender. No matter how it turns out, it's an important part of introspection and learning about yourself. It's also perfectly understandable to have lots of anxiety, especially if your social environment tends towards transphobia -- from what you say, it doesn't sound like you have talked to anyone in real life about your gender thoughts. If you have a close friend, it might be a good idea to talk to them. If there's any LGBT community where you live, you might try making some new connections.
That said, I recognize a lot of your concerns, especially those regarding appearance, from early in my own transition. I'll be honest here: It's not a good feeling to look in the mirror or at photos of yourself and then dislike what you see. But on the other hand, are you happy with the way you look now? For my part, if I had to choose, I'd much rather be an ugly woman than a handsome man (and never mind that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder). In any case, if you have some time and money there's nothing wrong with buying some clothes and makeup and experimenting. You don't have to go on HRT immediately, you can try out things on your own, with friends or even just on the internet. Also, HRT works quite slowly, so there's not much reason to worry about it in advance.
Most of all, I want to say that gender identity isn't linked to presentation or behavior. Even if you wouldn't behave like a proper woman (you seem quite worried about that), you would still have every right to call yourself one, that's the point of feminism after all. And whether you're a man, woman or enby doesn't change anything about whether you can look a certain way, take HRT or who you can be friends with. So just try out different things and maybe talk to someone you trust.
So a lot of the concerns you have about transitioning are very common among trans people and it's okay to worry about some of those things.
Keep in mind transitioning is a very personal process and you can take as little or as much time as you need to figure out what kind of presentation and identity fits you, and whether or not you want hrt. Even trans people who are a few years into their transition will discover new things about themselves. I can say I haven't fully figured myself out yet either.
On the matter of hrt, there isn't any requirement that you have to take it because you're trans and many of the effects are hrt are reversible within the first year (especially on lower dosages) so you're also free to experiment and see how it makes you feel.
Also this specific point:
I wouldn’t be a guy or a girl
This isn't really true. Nonbinariness is more about your experiences and identity not falling into a gender binary and that's it. You can be nonbinary and be a guy and/or a girl.
HornyOnMain, she can be a pretty girl too~
You can be genderqueer or the Zizekian "I'm the + in LGBTQ+" there are no rules. You can be genderfluid, my partner is, you can choose to be femme, masc, nb, present as totally androgynous and you don't have to stick to any of them!
If it makes you happy being a femboy you can just do that. There isn't a spectrum or a ladder with cis guy on one end, femboy or nb on it in the middlr, and then trans woman on the other end. If presenting as a femboy isn't giving you the same euphoria and now you feel happier in a pretty long hair wig or having people refer to you as she/her, I'd encourage you to think about that and ruminate on it. There's nothing weird about being a femboy and then figuring out you may be trans binary, I know a lot of girls that started doing the 00s and early 10s thing of doing drag at every opportunity and then putting it all together that they were trans (me included, it was obviously an egg thing for me but there are still plenty of cis men I knew who just liked doing drag). People today have it easier in that, it seems to me, playing with your gender and being a femboy is A Thing and you can do it and you see other people do it instead of having to figure all that on your own.
You definitely have some thinking to do about this for sure, happy you're starting it!
Another perspective worth considering is that what you are feeling is battling with society's expectations of men. You seem to mostly avoid the word "man" in favor of "guy" which I do as well (or even "boy", it feels nice). I think not being a "man" doesn't necessarily mean you aren't male, especially because "man" comes with a lot of baggage imo.
But I'm kind of projecting here, and you definitely seem to have more reasons to potentially be trans than I do. From my own research "demiboy"/"demiguy" seems kind of close. I don't think I would call myself that, but you might find it appropriate. There are multiple slightly different definitions floating around, but I think "partly male" or "partly a guy" sums up most of them. I think it can be or is usually considered non-binary, but it still includes being male/being a guy.
There's also "bigender" which I don't know much about but it sounds like it might apply, since it kind of seems like you might want to be both.
it sounds to me like you're trans. i can't tell you if you are, and if you are i can't tell you the exact details of your gender identity, but that's what it looks like to me. would you push a button that magically turned you into a perfectly ordinary cisgender woman? it sounds like you would, but i obviously can't make that decision for you
there are valid reasons not to transition even if it would make you happier. if you can't afford it, or if you wouldn't be safe are both obvious, but there are more and they are valid. this essay is about a lot more than that, but it's very good. basically the only person who can say whether you're trans or not is you, and the only person who can decide whether to do anything with the information that you're trans is you.
it is worth noting that i believe the writer of the essay has since begun transition, but it's a good essay that's well worth reading anyways do make you more certain of your own stance
Imagine yourself being 70 years old.
If you're a man, assuming you live that long, you're going to eventually be a 70 year old man with all that entails in being a 70 year old man. Can you imagine yourself being a 70 year old man doing 70 year old man things and facing the challenges that a 70 year old man will have to face? How does that make you feel?
If you're a woman, assuming you live that long, you're going to eventually be a 70 year old woman with all that entails in being a 70 year old woman. Can you imagine yourself being a 70 year old woman doing 70 year old woman things and facing the challenges that a 70 year old woman will have to face? How does that make you feel?
Both will suck because being old sucks, but which one sucks more? Or do they both suck equally?
