well storm since passing as male i find that i seem more 'approachable' as before i came out a had short hair and didn't really have many feminine traits or aspects in style so basically just looked like a butch lesbian and while i looked like that i remember people being reluctant to sit in the same 4 seater bit of the train as me or things like asking for a lighter but now i'm treated more like anyone else. men do still hold the door but now if i'm walking down the street and there's a woman walking down in the opposite direction she won't move for me (i don't expect women to move out of the way for me at all, a always move except for rare occasions when it's very busy and i'm sick of moving for people who don't do it for me) when previously 'as a girl' they did

champagne i've been living as a man for 5 years now (since i was 13, now 18) but have known since i was as young as about 4 and would constantly tel my parents and friends that i wanted to be a boy and would tell my mum when i grew up o was going to get a 'sex change' (if only it could be that simple). i have made all of the social changes such as changing my name legally, all of my records, telling everyone, etc. and was referred to the tavistock clinic in london when i was 14 to get help with hormones and blockers but while i was there i constantly just felt as though they were trying to find any excuse to tell me i wasn't trans and after 2 years of not getting anywhere i left but now am going to go private

have been transitioning since 13 cat but by transitioning i mean the transitions from living as female to living as male as some people perceive transitioning as just physical changes like hormones and surgery. i am and ever since puberty have been dysphoric about feminine aspects of my body it's hard to describe what it's like though, it's like having something that you're really insecure about that you know you can't change but is also outing something? like for instance have a really big obvious stretch mark in the summer and there's no comfortable way to hide it and it makes you ashamed to be you. i've always been so grateful that my swimming pool has one big changing room with labelled male and female cubicles but they're all together so it's not really an enforced thing, however when i was in school i got changed in the male toilets in the block where kids with special needs or just need a bit of extra help can go because i overheard a lot of the boys saying things like 'there's no way she's coming in here', etc, etc and it just felt safer i guess. i feel very lucky to say that i've never really experienced transphobia like people
shouting at me in the streets or being bullied at school for it but it's always people’s first choice for ammunition during an argument or whatever when it's 99% of the time completely irrelevant

museum it's not that i felt i needed to present as a man rather than a butch woman it's that i know i'm a man but gender isn't always as simple as being born something and being happy with it (although it is for a lot of people). i know a lot of people don't understand the 'feeling like' a man/woman and is really hard to explain and it's by no means me trying to cheat the system being it's hard being a woman with mysoginy (i'm not sure how it's spelt and apparently that's wrong sorry) and female bodies not being as easy as mens but it's like if you've every experienced disassociation it's like looking at your body and it's not yours and it's not right and there are things missing and things that shouldn't be there and you can't for the life of you figure out why you're like this and trying to make sense of it all and when you finally realise that living another way makes it all feel right then you know

john i know for a fact that mental health departments in the nhs are EXTREMELY underfunded and the Tavistock clinic, as one of a few (if not the only) places that takes trans people under 18 is really oversubscribed as now trans is more acceptable and more people are aware of it and i don't want to say it's a trendy and popular thing but some people do get confused when trying to figure out who they are and when a lot of other similar people are something it's easy to think that that's you too but as i said the Tavistock is really oversubscribed and struggling and i don't know if it's me being salty that they couldn't help me or i didn't give them enough information as i've repressed so many of my memories pre-coming out but i feel like if they have an opportunity to not help someone and make the load lighter then that's a lot easier for them, however i have heard stories from a lot of people i know online and in real life who were helped tremendously by them and it was all smooth sailing but not everyone always has the same experience, but i really don't think it was because of me being ftm as opposed to mtf.
i think self ID is really important for a lot of people as the only other thing that can confirm your gender is a diagnosis of gender dysphoria but because as i said about me repressing so much of my life before coming out i no longer physically remember a lot of it it's really strange, it's like a was born and then suddenly i was a trans teenager, obviously i do remember some things but it's very patchy, and to be given a diagnosis they need a lot of info about your past as well of which a lot of it i could not give them so they couldn't give me a diagnosis, but i know i'm trans and have been recognised as male by schools, colleges, doctors, and pretty much everyone else for a while now but they required the diagnosis to treat me as male i wouldn't be able to and i know for a fact the i wouldn't still be alive today, it would just be insult to injury really. i know that with the girl guiding controversy and trans woman rapists being put in female prisons and the such people are really on high alert i guess but with the girl guiding one i promise you that a 10-14 year old trans girl is so ashamed and embarrassed of her own body that she has no interest in perving on everyone else's (and certainly wouldn't want to be showering at the same time in the same room as all of the other non trans girls), if one of the girls didn't feel comfortable sharing a tent with a Tgirl then i think that they would be allowed to sleep in a different one and wouldn't be made to stay and be uncomfortable i really don't think it's as extreme as everyone thinks it is

simply shots living 'as a man' means that i have a new name, title, pronouns, use male sex segregated spaces as opposed to using female ones and using miss and she/her pronouns. i know it doesn't sound like much but it really means the world.

trying to put into words what feeling like a man/woman is is really hard and something people really struggle to do. i mentioned it in one of my replies on this thread but it's like when there's a solution to a problem you have such as 'i hate all of these parts of my body that make me feminine, they make me feel disgusting and dying of blood loss in the process of cutting them off seems like a much nicer idea than living with them being there' (it's somewhat graphic i know but a reality) and the solution is being treated as male (by this i just mean having the pronouns he and a different name of it was particularly girly before) which really helps and eventually going through surgery to make your body more stereotypically male if that's what you feels right and isn't just a snap decision then i feel like that's what feeling male is

new when i was that young it was less wanting to be a boy and more thinking i was a boy and then finding out the shock that i wasn't and that there were serious physical characteristics that i didn't have that would make me male that felt like they would have been so much more natural and right in a way.

dysphoria definitely increased during puberty as apart from genitals boys and girls bodies aren't really that different but when they suddenly start getting very different and there's no way to hide/stop/change it then it's really distressing

i'm gay so a man attracted to men :)

theoriginal it was less being persuaded to wait and more not being listened to and people thinking i was just a really big tomboy, DM did me to an all girls school which i feel was influenced by me being so dead set on being a boy but she's never outright said it was.

the advantages of transitioning at a young age is that you never have to go through the first (female in my case) puberty and when you take hormones after already going through it not everything changes e.g. breasts don't shrink and voice sometimes goes quite whiny depending on how deep is was before. for trans girls it's A LOT more beneficial to transitionin young as when they go on oestrogen their voice doesn't change, hair doesn't become thinner or lose facial hair growth, adam's apple doesn't disappear, etc. and a lot of these things can't be changed with surgery or if they can not much (you can have vocal chords shaved to make your voice higher but not by much). but obviously at the same time as a parent it's a big decision to trust a child on which can have permanent effects on them

irene and newt i do date and have a boyfriend but to a lot of people especially when you're younger is that sex is important to and a lot of gay guys just need a dick aha so it's a bit harder and scary (sort of) because at some point i'll have to 'let them down' with the fact that i might not quite be what they're looking for. but at the same time that's ok being having a genital preference doesn't make someone awful it's just what they want