I’m Trans, Here’s My Story

[SnugPeach]

Hi I’m Trans, I know I’m essentially coming into what some would consider the wolf’s den by coming here to make a post. But I’m also a strong believer in trying to help people to understand and am happy to explain my story and experiences if it helps to enhance others understanding.

I kind want this thread to be AMA but also to give a bit of backstory. Now I know some of you are going to hear the next few thing. I say an immediately just tell I’m confused or misled, but yes I have Autism. I was diagnosed at a young age, but Autism is just one part of me. Had being Autistic affected my gender? Maybe who knows, I am me, Autism is not something separate thing that it’s me.

Anyway I’ll try not to waffle as I do tend too. I’m currently 28, have been DIYing for 1 and half years. Have everything updated and changed, Name, Passport etc. I also extensively researched everything I could on HRT over the years as the NHS system takes year and years to be seen.

During Childhood really I was I guess you could say less aware of ‘gender’ than my peers as I was for most things. I was heavily bullied at school by the boys for being ‘weird’, they’d call me ‘gay’ not that I understood what that meant but I doubt they did either, it was the early 2000s afterall. Where as on the other hand I was quite friendly with the girls, they didn’t bully me and treated me often with compassion and I’d enjoy spending time with them. Unfortunately even they would get bullied from time to time for associating with me. The boys often disdained at my lack of interest in football or other ‘boy’ things. Instead I loved working out technology how things worked, along with people. Despite being Autistic I have always been fairly sociable even if it’s been riddled with difficulties and learn curves and I still struggle with that today, but I love connecting with people and sharing feelings.

Skip forward to Secondary School and here is where a few things happen. I’m still very behind my peers in my understanding of allot of things. My feelings on my gender are neutral are based purely on fact of I am what I am because how can I not be. It did learn about Transgender people but it didn’t still click for me. I remained still extremely cautious of the boys but was more of a loner. I wanted more girl friends but the social dynamic had changed. I viewed most of the boys as idiots and bafoons. They would do the dumbest stuff like all this stupid competitive crap and honestly a majority of time I found myself sharing my female peers feelings towards them. It was around this time I found myself more aligned with Femininity and started to self describe as a feminine-guy. But still I would be considerate and respectful towards the girls who knew saw me as a boy even if not the same. Afterall who could blame them when I myself felt the same way. My Mum taught be about the day to day struggles women deal with and I very much took that to heart. Honestly the way some of the boys acted towards girls in my class outright appalled me. I became invested in Feminism and equal rights which also spanned I to my experience with Autism and my own femininity (which had been policed just in the opposite direction, aka made fun of/discouraged). In the later years of Sixth Form I became friendly finally with people again after some therapy which also arose from me being on my own (was supported by a ta for most of my schooling, we had an autism centre in the school I went too) I grew very close to the girls in the group we would natter and gossip about all sorts. I kinda felt honoured that they considered me trustworthy enough to include in conversations they didn’t include the two other guys in. Also around this time people started asking me if I was Gay I was mostly confused, because I wasn’t Gay, Asexual yes technically (but did not have word for that yet), But not gay. I liked Women but romantically only.

Fast forward it’s university and I became a sort of shut in again. I commented to Uni and after my first year I hated the course. But my Mum refused to let me take a break or quit as by the time I’d had enough I was ‘halfway’ so her logic was to push through. Not that my degree has done anything for me. Anyway this is where feelings first started. Now in my early 20s I was finally catching up to my peers not that I’ve ever full caught up. I was fully realised as a feminine guy, however that never felt right. I also still felt outcast for this. That’s when I finally started to explore gender. Upon turning 18 I hate being called a Man and tried desperately to get people to call me a Guy as it felt less Man more neutral. So I after university came out as non-binary, I started to pass my nails get my hair dyed, But it still didn’t feel right. My Mum supported me until I bought a Jumper from the women's section. I cared deeply about my mum and her backlash was enough to push me back in the closet back to bring a feminine guy, but now my mum instead of being sensitive around my gender, it felt like she empathised my manners, which honestly disgusted me. I near had a referral for the gender clinic back here but due to this I basically let it go. One of things that made me so happy was just how unmanly I was including the fact I didn’t start growing any sort of facial hair until I was in my mid 20s and I grew and kept my hair long and it made me so so happy. Anyway back I went for a few years.

Then after finding out about Femboys it all came back, maybe this is what I am. But I quickly came to the conclusion again this was not right. I realised deep down I wished I where born a girl. I had thought that my childhood would have been easier if I was, the my behaviours would have been more acceptable. Which bought me great internal conflict. Afterall I’m a feminist. I adore the women in my life and my immediate reaction was one of disgust and hate for myself. How could I feel this way when I knew full well I struggle women have to deal with, the stereotypes my femininity fell into, the fact I could be a man and be all these things. I had a privilege one that I understood yet never felt, because I completely hated everything about being a man. So many parts of myself were restrained or restricted and I felt completely uncomfortable with myself. It turned out I was asexual for example because I couldn’t see myself as a man in situation like that ever. Still I spent the next 2 years fighting over all this with myself internally. I’d let my mum know and our relationship soured even more so because it. Over the course of the 2 years I fought with myself daily over my feelings, one side of me telling me what I was feeling was an offence to the women (cis and trans) I cared about. The other side in full acceptance that I did feel this way. I’d give away anything ANYTHING to have been born in a body that matched my mind. Again I don’t want to be a Male, full stop. I always have felt more female than male and why that’s something that’s not easily explained it’s just how I genuinely feel. All the acknowledgment and beliefs about you don’t have to be a girl to be feminine don’t seem to matter the logic doesn’t apply to that feeling.

Eventually with the support of some friends I finally go back to get a referral. Meanwhile completely separate thing but my Mums health was getting worse. She had Breast Cancer on and off since I was young also. I 2023 she was finally made terminal after over 23 years since her first diagnose (probably 5ish years of remission between first first and follow ups). Her being made terminal was a big wake up call for me for many things include this situation. For a while the debate stopped in my head because it was filled with worry about her but once that eased off (she lived about a year longer than they predicted) it all came back and hit me really hard. I was training 27 at the end of year. I was miserable my body disgusted me and I didn’t want to waste anymore time wondering if HRT would help and if it would allow me to finally put to bed some of my feelings. So I started to DIY just before my 27th birthday. I felt a tonne better within the two weeks and despite the fact it’s not like a magic bullet pill that took away all my dysphoria and stuff it’s helped to insane degree. My Mum obviously did not support me which was hard and broke my heart deeply since she was the women I have always looked up the most in my life. That all it’s own story really.

Right now I’m sort of back I a bad way. Sure due to my Autism amongst other things I still have allot of mental health issues. I’ve never worked, have allot of anxiety, issues with depression but again I had these before transition and arguably they where better and being more manageable after until the Court Ruling early this year. Since that ruling I have been referred and put back into Therapy again because of the effect it’s had on me amongst other stuff going on. I’m honestly terrified of what it all means. All I want is to live my life in peace as myself. I know you’re all going to have different views on what that should look like but all I ask is to have some empathy. I’m literally scared, I just want to be like any other woman and get on with my life. Instead it feels like the whole world is crumbling around me and people view me as undesirable, undeserving and less of a person. Tell me who would sign on to feel like this?

it’s just so hard for me. I’m not even sure if what I’ve said is any good but I’ve just tried to describe best I can my experience and how I feel. I wish you all a pleasant day and please feel free to ask anything. Also apologises for any bad grammar/spelling mistakes, Dyslexic too.

I admire your bravery in posting here, and the courage it has taken you to get to this point in life.

For what it’s worth, I think (and hope) you will find a greater proportion of accepting and understanding people in the real world, than on MN. But thank you for this detailed and heartfelt post which I hope will help the more open-minded on here to understand your experience.

The most important thing in life as I see it is to love one another. I’m sure you’re a good person, I can see it in the way you write.
Do you have any special interests that might lead to more social connections and widen your circle of friends?

I wish you the best of luck, and that you find contentment and self-actualisation just around the corner. Xxx

PS Have you seen the sit com Smoggie Queens (BBC)? 😊

"Again I don’t want to be a Male, full stop. I always have felt more female than male and why that’s something that’s not easily explained it’s just how I genuinely feel. All the acknowledgment and beliefs about you don’t have to be a girl to be feminine don’t seem to matter the logic doesn’t apply to that feeling."

The important thing to understand is that the presence of "that feeling" of not wanting to be male is 100% irrelevant to whether or not you are male and whether or not you have a right to be treated as female.

The presence or absence of those strong feelings are not a guide to what you were meant to be or how people ought to treat you or anything like that. They're just strong feelings. The way to test for whether or not you should be allowed in women spaces is not to measure the strength of your feelings about wanting to be male or wishing you were female. Your feelings are 100% irrelevant, they're just feelings. It's fine to acknowledge them - they affect your life a lot. They're very very relevant to you, but they're not relevant to anybody else.

Your strong feelings don't make it okay for a woman when she encounters a male, you, in a space that ought to only contain women. Your feelings don't make other people experience you as female because they don't make you female.

I feel like one of the problems, one of the things that makes things harder for young people in particular, is a belief that each person has a single true identity that can be uncovered by self examination, and that this single true identity is one out of a particular set of identities that other people have described and defined, and all you have to do is identify the right one for you.

It's putting an awful lot of faith in people who have come before you to have correctly analysed all the identities in the world and described them ready for you to choose from.

In reality there is no well-defined set of identities and we don't all have a single solid unchanging one anyway. You don't have to try to work out which one is yours at all, in fact it's perfectly possible to live your whole life without ever finding a description written by someone else that matches. And even if you do find a description that matches perfectly, if that description doesn't fit with material reality, then it's not relevant to how other people have to interact with you.

You can examine your own feelings, but you can't decide based on those feelings that you wish you were female and therefore other people ought to treat you as female. That's just not how it works. You can use your feelings to decide how you dress and you can even use them to to decide how to think privately of yourself, but you can't use your feelings to justify making other people pretend you're something you're not.

Hope you do get peace op and also find your tribe because you sound lovely. I don’t get mn feeling the need to beat people over the head with their beliefs because the only people hurting people are eg men attacking women or in sport the people who are taking away from women and that’s nothing to do with what they identify as, they’re just not good people. Sorry for all the crap you’ve gone through and hope things get easier. Do something nice to help pick yourself up today and take care x

Yep that about sums it up

I'm so bored of these drive by chat gpt screeds

are the screen shots on Reddit yet

Is this a new gender identity LBGTQIA AI?

😁

Exactly...I don't get these 'application to be a woman' posts...having a certain life story or struggles doesn't mean women should give up their identity and rights, or that you therefore qualify as a different biological category.

The obvious thing about these posts is that they're not interested in women or women's issues, it's all about trans and gender nonconformity. That's clearly a different group where they could find likeminded people with similar struggles. Why the need to come to a women's space.

There needs to be a fifth response to threat ‘Fuck off with that shit’!

I think we need to think about what feminine and masculine actually means. Is feminine, when felt or used to describe a man, anything like feminine when felt or used to describe a women?

This 28 year old man has being described as feminine, but can that be compared with the feminity of a 28 year old women?

It seems to me that a lot of men are interpreting their feelings as feminine and then expecting women to be their mothers, therapists, and supporters. Like they have joined a club and expect to be looked after.

And the women are using their feelings of feminity to be kind, empathetic and find solutions to his dilemma, at the expense of our own needs.

When all of the time, we all know hes going to do exactly what he wants, where he wants and when he wants, because his 'feminity' is considered more important than womens.

Sadly that often doesn’t end well for women in a threatening situation. Which is precisely why women need our own spaces.

It’s boring but most people get their identities and sense of self from work.

Having never worked you haven’t even had a chance to have a full adult identity.

Late 20s is known as the early life crisis point. It’s one of the most explosive life crises even though it’s not often talked about.

Navel gazing, soul searching and trying to find oneself are incredibly dangerous activities. Really they are. Some in modern times seem to think the formation of self is some kind of thought exercise. It’s really not.

Having myself had quite an explosive late 20 crisis (in a period of lack of purpose) my advice is think less and do more.

Get a job. Any job.
What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? What do you want to see?

And if the answer to that is something like I want people to see me as a women. No that’s about other people.

You. What do YOU want.
Go do it and Goodluck 😊

As an AMA:
Would you be interested in any stories from other posters?
Thinking of mine, I would be able to include feeling isolated and anxious in many different periods, precocious puberty, major efforts from then onwards to balance hormone levels, bleeding, contraception, their effects on body and mind (especially weight and rage, which can be very problematic in employment terms) - and this continuing to be expensive and invalidating due to misdiagnosis, again many times. Unexpected pregnancy, almost a mirror situation of what happened to my own mother and how that has affected our relationship. Exploitative partners who were c.25 yrs older, in the pre-age 18 stage, but it is taking many years to actually accept the sexual side of that. Medical experiences that have changed some functions permanently, and not alleviated things amazingly.
Outward appearance and personal choices of inner identity were a boost in my early 20s when life felt it was only about me, but for a long time, have not meant much with the balance sheet of the above.

I'm sorry you can't have everything you want, but if you really were a woman, that would be one of the first things you'd learn.

that, and the "feminism tried to destroy the boxes" sums it up.

pp asked why we were doing so well and then it all changed? 2nd wavers got older and tireder and handed on the baton. And the next wavers? turned on us and beat us up with the baton. So now, we drag our aching feminist bones back to the fight.

💯A brilliant post

Are you getting therapy to help you to accept yourself as you are and to live your life to your full potential?

It is not possible for a man to 'feel like a woman'. It is possible for a man to opt out the the stereotypes around masculinity and live a good life.

Sadly, I have tried that one in the past and been deleted.

OP knows all about women, being a feminist. Women “natter” and have long hair and paint their nails

(sorry for multi posts, am working through the thread)

OH NOES! MEAN GIRLS ALERT!

we can be as mean and sarcastic as we like. HTH.

However, this thread is full of lovely, supportive, understanding and ultimately firm strong women showing nothing but understanding to the OP. A bit of sarcasm here and now won't hurt anyone at all. Better than going to a transreddit and "here's my story as a woman" "DIE IN A GREASE FIRE, BITCH"

I do find it weird that in those kinds of posts, it never seems to occur that women can and do have difficulties with stereotypes, expectations, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, body issues, friendship issues, grief, bereavement, confusion, general difficult periods of life. It's not a 'trans' thing. That's where I struggle with the tourism aspect. Women are still the support act without the same kinds of lives.

That was long. I think really it boils down to you can never be a woman. You should embrace your gender non conformity if that makes you happy. It’d be nice if people can support you to do that. You should stay out of female spaces. Loos, changing rooms, seek out single / unisex spaces

I think this is a very good point. I once read about a psychiatrist who was involved with this, and he said it was if they thought becoming a woman was some sort of perfect answer. Their troubles would end, because it's nice being a woman. I'm summarising of course, but I thought it was interesting.

So many women taking the time to think deeply and write heartfelt responses - the women who you believe see you as ‘undeserving’ and ‘less of a person’ - I wonder if they will deserve your response ?

maybe time for a thread along the lines of "times i have wanted to be anything other than a woman"

and see how much of it matches up with a) other women and b) the trans fantasy of being a woman

The only difference between the ideology of the trans movement and the ideology of mumsnet feminists is that when a young autistic person like yourself says "I am in the wrong box" the trans movement tells you "here is how to be in the other box" or "here are a range of other boxes" whereas feminists have been trying, for a couple of hundred years now, to destroy the boxes.

I don't agree with your use of the word "only" @RareGoalsVerge but I believe the rest of this is possibly the best description of the differing stances of TRAs/Feminists.

I think there are many other differences - the exploitation, the violence, the no platforming, the misogyny, the virtue signalling following that theTRA movement attracts to name just a few.

I knew a very gender non conforming gay woman once. She was quite proud of the fact that she wasn't interested in hair and makeup and all that. Until the day she met a transwoman who told her all about what colours and styles she should wear, and she listened rapturously and told us how she had never realised before how lucky she was to be able to play with hair and makeup and have it be socially acceptable.

It was some years ago and I wasn't yet at the point where I'd scream YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN INTERESTED AND YOU NEVER WANTED TO TALK ABOUT IT WITH WOMEN YOU FOUND IT OPPRESSIVE AND BORING AND YOU ARE
ONLY FINDING IT INCREDIBLE NOW BECAUSE YOU KNOW THAT'S A MAN TALKING ABOUT IT THIS TIME AND ANYWAY HE'S GOT IT WRONG YOU ARE A CLASSIC WINTER NOT A SPRING OH FFS.

But I thought it.

Stop trying to categorise yourself using ideological identity boxes. Accept that you can't change reality and then look outward, not inward, by focussing on doing things you enjoy, developing skills you would like to have and planning for a future you would like to live. You will find you become a lot healthier and happier that way.