Am I transgender?
In the last few posts I have tried to talk more openly than is possible offline about my gender dysphoria. I have also tried to state it more like a fact than a nebulous feeling, just to experience how it feels to say (or write) it out loud.
It felt positively confusing.
In this unexpectedly long post, I want to explore my confusion in more detail. Please bear with me while I will give examples of events and situations in which I experienced gender dysphoria. Finally, I will explain why I am not convinced that I am drawing the right conclusions. Or so I thought! After writing this post, I am more confused than ever - and also crying.
I decided not to edit the post too much because I suddenly realized things while writing that I never admitted to myself. In case anyone reads this post, I want you to be able to follow my thought process as well as my emotions because I am quite happy and proud that I felt them. At the end, I put on some hair clasps now I am blushing.
I started my life as a normal kid, then I became a weird kid, who finally grew up to become a weird teen and a weird adult. Since I was in pre-school, I was only ever friends with girls, with whom I never really connected, though, because... they somehow didn't let me in. I was always lonely, and was constantly being bullied at home and in school. Bullying took many forms, yet two of the favourite topics were my gender-ambiguous name and my “femininity” regarding my body, my posture, and my presence. I greatly suffered from this apparent misgendering1 and I did not enjoy it.
Yet at the same time, I enjoyed many things that in hindsight seem a bit unusual for cis men. I was proud of my high pitched voice and was devastated about my voice breaking in puberty: before, I was able to sing higher than all the girls, what an accomplishment! I also liked having long hair on my head, and was embarrassed and slightly disgusted when my face began growing hair as well. At Halloween or on other occasions where people dress up, I liked wearing a dress and ribbons in my hair - as a joke, of course, but maybe a tiny bit serious?
The list goes on and on. In puberty, I started envying girls because they have it so much easier to masturbate - and their body is just, you know, so much more practical in all ways. Think about genitals: men always have to fight off unwanted erections, and generally have this annoying stuff hanging around between their legs. Women have it neat and tidy. Of course I did not envy my classmates for their monthly ordeals of pain and suffering2 but my basic point still stands.
I was dreamy, suicidal, and unconcentrated at school but I was not a stupid kid. I started early on to think about the men and women in my life and I noticed a pattern: men are disgusting and they are literally the root cause of most problems. I loved history in school, and I was not surprised to see the same pattern there as well. I was convinced that I didn't want to become like one of them.
There are many more examples of situations where I experienced envy for girls, or where I tried to be less “manly” - but at the same time, there are also many situations where I tried the opposite when I was faced with bullying. I despised all my male classmates almost without exceptions - because they were objectively terrible people. Almost all of them were bullies and felt the need to express their “manliness” in the most disgusting ways. I wanted to be better than that - with little success, much to my chagrin.
It took me a very long time until I realized that my amount of thinking about gender and gendered issues was maybe a tad more than is usual for cis men. When I tried to talk about this to other people, I was confronted with so much resistance that I soon cocooned back and never ever talked about it again.
I talked to multiple therapists about my thoughts - they all said “well okay” and moved on, not allowing me to elaborate. I already mentioned bullying in school and at home so I never attempted to speak to anyone there. In a last-ditch effort I talked to my new-found closest and most open-minded friend, who turned out to be a massive prick and laughed at me for being so absurd. Everyone's conclusion was: “you're gay.” I am not, though, that is the only thing that is crystal clear to me3.
Today, there are times when I cannot stop thinking about these issues for a few days or weeks. Then I feel the need to talk to someone but there is no one to hear me. Yet most of the time, all of this is not a pressing issue. Then I feel silly and am glad that I didn't bring it up, only causing awkward situations.
How normal is it for cis men to dream of having a vagina, though? Rather unusual, perhaps. How normal is it for cis men to be more aroused of the thought of masturbating with a dildo than other things that normally get you going? Quite unusual as well, I dare suppose. So maybe there is at least some substance to my struggles?
On the other hand, there are many arguments that go in the opposite direction. The most basic one being: anyone, regardless of gender, will and must feel some kind of gender dysphoria if they are actually empathetic beings. You cannot actively empathize with someone without feeling that other person, i.e. without seeing through that person's eyes. Almost all the men I know are incredibly unable to muster empathy or even access their own feelings let alone someone else's. If that is an alpha male's wet dream then it sure explains their lack of gender dysphoria4. The same goes for women, of course, but in my experience most men, nay: people, are jerks.
Another important point is this: there are many days when I feel absolutely fine with me, myself, and my body. I feel right in my body, I feel good, and I like being me. I even like what I see in the mirror. It mostly happens when I am freshly shaved and when my hair is cut very short (so I look more like a man despite my feminine face). It also happens when I wear tight clothes, oh right, clothes that hide my stupidly and disgustingly big penis, and clothes that make me look like I had boobs. Oops.
I realize that I am breaking my own argument, but when I start thinking about looks, I can't help it but be put off by my facial hair - that I keep at a few millimeters so I don't look like a teenage boy. And then, the memories start trickling into my mind: I remember the day when a (female) friend of mine used an app to make my face look like a woman. I remember how I envied my sister when I was a kid for her privilege of being who she is5. I remember dreaming of love, of having a girlfriend, and of growing beautiful hair. Maybe wearing a sundress, and ribbons, and flowers? Maybe feeling pretty for once?
Why am I tearing up writing this?! I last cried when I was eight, like a real man.
Still, I want to close with an important piece of the puzzle that I couldn't solve yet: I may like being a tad “feminine” but is this reality? Sometimes, I can't stop smiling when thinking about being a girl, yet I am still not sure: is this really me, and is this the real me? Or is it just a story I tell myself, a story that I have perfected to the point that I start to believe it myself? Is it a story I only adopted to cope with the bullying and constant abuse?
Maybe these feelings are simply yet another way of trying to escape from reality? Is it just an impossible dream that helps me to get through the day in a ruthless and ugly world?
Is this me, or am I giving in to pressure from outside?
I don't have an answer to any of those questions. The only thing I do know is: I long to feel I belong. I dream of being loved, and of loving myself. I dream of having actual fun, and being fun to be around. I dream of escaping from this reality, and often I dream of dying.
Yet I am too much of a coward to admit any of this to myself. Who - am - I?
Originally, I had planned to not disclose my gender on this blog, mostly to keep my anonymity. While writing this post I realized there was another reason too: I quietly hoped that people would read the blog as if it were written by a woman. Admitting to myself for the first time that I truly wish people would see me as unambiguously female is hard, confusing, yet it feels so... good?!↩
...once that started for them, and once I realised what was going on. Which admittedly took me some time as sex-ed was non-existent at our school.↩
Well, technically if I turned out to be the opposite gender at my heart then I would, in fact, be... lesbian? Tingly.↩
Though I suspect that anyone who feels so insecure about their own masculinity that they have to call themselves “alpha males” actually has incredibly much deeper issues with their gender than I ever had.↩
...and how she can masturbate. A lot of things come down to this, which is quite classically manly of me.↩