Transfem

I spent so, so much time in trans subreddits, especially /r/egg_irl.

It took over two years of basically exclusively looking at trans memes, "to get a better understanding of the trans experience as an ally", for me to start considering I might be trans!

I also recall a time near the beginning of that trans meme phase where I said to a friend "I think I'm probably non-binary". He was like "what?" to which I answered "what?" and I just left it at that, not even a hint of introspection.

1. I was so relieved when my wife came out to me as bisexual, you know, "just in case"

2. Being jealous of women for having all the fun colors and variety in clothing, feeling dejected that men’s fashion was much more utilitarian and boring

3. Feeling uncomfortable and not knowing how to act in groups of all men

4. Having the thought “if I could decide for myself on a do-over, I’d want to be a lesbian woman”. I assumed all men felt this way lol

5. Hating and vigorously resisting the gendered uniform rules enforced by my Catholic school (like growing my hair as long as possible, and the school had to make a rule saying that boys couldn’t wear jewelry other than a religious medal or a watch)

I remember thinking "No way I am lucky enough to be trans femme, I am not that special." Yeahhh... not the brightest bulb

Literally wishing that I was trans so that I could access bottom surgery

Lots of relatable experiences itt. I'll add a couple things

*For a school assignment, I was required to call myself a crossdresser for a day and it felt like it was a little too on-the-nose for what was mostly supposed to be a silly scarlet letter assignment.

*I realized I specifically wanted an orchi and tried looking up excuses to get one without considering side effects (didn't realize loss of hormone production without replacement was a problem) or considering that it might somehow be related to related to gender. I had 0 clue why it was so appealing and I refused to think about that for even a second.

I never really tried putting all of this in a list before. It’s always just random stuff popping up when I think about this. Some of these memories are over 30 years old. And I repressed a lot of them.
So this is just a short list. There’s more, but some of it is too personal for me to share.

• Having a phase where I tried wearing masculine office wear (but no ties) and feeling very out of place.
• Never shaving my beard, because I don’t want to see what’s underneath. Using it as a mask to hide behind.
• Hating the general shape of my body
• Feeling very out of place in all-male groups.
• Feeling very in place when spending time with the few female friends that I did have.
• Internally wincing at being called handsome
• Looking enviously at my wife as she squeezes herself in a tight pair of pants, making me wish I didn’t have to deal with all that dangling stuff between my legs.
• Being very involved with helping my wife pick out clothes.
• Playing an online game under a female persona. *Pretending* to be a girl and really enjoying my interactions with everyone. Making a few female friendships that felt genuine and made me happy. And then deleting the whole account for feeling guilty because I believed I was deceiving others :(
• Writing a game module in my teens, wherein all the adventurers were turned into women by a wizard’s curse. And dropping it after a couple of hours when I realize having six women try out different dresses doesn’t make for an exciting fantasy adventure (and was getting uncomfortably close to a truth that I wasn’t ready to face)
• Thinking how nice it would’ve been if I were a lesbian instead.
• Trying out pantyhose and wearing it under my pants when I was a teenager. (Weird when under pants, better on its own when I was home alone :) )
• Also in my teens, fantasizing an entire alternate life as a girl when I was lying in bed.
• Feeling strangely positive when a girl in my class said that I walk like a girl.
• And of course, always choosing a female character when playing games. (With a whole bunch of other in-game activities that could form a list of it’s own)

One thing I remember is gaining muscle after working out for a few months and feeling this really confusing sadness when I noticed that my shoulders got broader. I was so confused as to why so many guys liked being muscular but it just made me really depressed instead. Took me a while to realize that that strange feeling was actually gender dysphoria.

A lot of mine are the same as ones that were listed, so here are the most stupidly obvious ones I somehow missed (or ignored) for like a decade.

1. I hoped my future partner would be bisexual "just in case"
2. Always being weirdly interested in watching trans youtubers and learning about HRT "as an ally"
3. And also weirdly envious of lesbian relationships, yet finding it hard to imagine myself in a relationship as a guy
4. Whenever I'd see a transition timeline, my immediate thought for transmasc ones was "good for them!", but for transfem ones it was "dang, that's goals" followed by "wait I'm cis, where did that come from"
5. I "knew" I wasn't trans, but kinda wished I could be
6. Just before finally fully admitting I was trans I started HRT so I'd "know for sure", and was worried that after starting I would realize I wasn't trans and not be able to keep transitioning lol

I was Narnia deep in denial, but the signs were there.

1. I knew I liked guys since I was like five, and even experimented with sex with boys at that age, but it didn't feel quite right. I do not like gay porn so I can't be gay, right? Better get a couple kids and a couple wives.
2. My cousin wanted to put makeup on me and god I wanted that. Didn't dare to say yes.
3. Jokes about wanting to wear dresses because they aren't as restricting as pants and nicer when it's warm. A lot of similar jokes, you know the ones. "Trying to lose a bit of weight, it's soon bikini season."
4. I think I remember every trans reference I've ever heard.
5. When being depressed I constructed elaborate fantasies about myself as a woman.
6. Bad mental health
   Tap for spoiler

   I was on suicide watch and during a breakdown blurting out "I'm living a lie" and blam, the mental wall came down. Not an allowed train of thought. Fifteen years later, I finally got it.
7. Always hating how I looked in the mirror. I recently realized I look kinda hot as a guy. Skinny, androgynous and a nice smile. I'd totally let me do me. Is that weird?
8. NSFW
   Tap for spoiler

   Cutting off the penis of a male doll. My mum did not react well to that incident. Probably thought I had serial murderer tendencies or something.
   There were other signs too of course.

1. Always playing girls or male none-humans in pretty much all forms of fiction

2. Hating the way guys treated girls (most often in dating)

3. Rejecting traditional masculinity, hated the idea that it was expected to act like that

4. Ungodly ammounts of trans related porn and no interested in traditional one

5. Very open and radical pro-choice position, even from a relarively young age

6. Being around guys was always scary and wrong, while being around girls made me feel safe and in the correct place

7. You could not bring me to undress in front of guys

Is it okay for someone agender to join in this discussion?

I relate to some of these, but I don't experience dysphoria. I was raised female but I feel zero attachment to any particular gender expression.

Some things that come to mind:

• Never minding when somebody called me "one of the guys"
• Finding it funny when people mistook me for a boy
• I was always fascinated by medical shows, especially ones where people transitioned
• Fantasizing about freely switching between genders
• I used to make up stories with my dolls where people switched genders. Most of my Barbies got their heads swapped with Kens at some point in time.
• I hated make up. Still don't want any. Whenever someone put make up on me, I lamented that I "didn't look like me."
• Dressing androgynously and choosing androgynous hair cuts
• Purposely shopping for "men's" clothes to add to my wardrobe
• Being offended when people wanted to give me a "make over." I guess this is something girls are supposed to be excited about, but I always thought it was a judgy way to say something was "wrong" with how I presented myself as a woman.
• Not feeling attached to any particular pronoun. I don't like being asked about it, because I truly do not care.

My appearance is unequivocally female today, but it's not something I care hard enough about to change. It would require significant top surgery. If I lost my breasts I think others would be more upset than I would be - I'd just double-down on the androgynous look I had before these puppies grew so much. I have told friends (both trans and cis female alike) that I'd happily donate breast tissue to them if I could.

Anyway, so that's an agendered woman's experiences.

Imagining that it was perfectly rational to keep a complete set of women's clothes in the house just in case you end up having someone over who has somewhere important to be the next day and no clean clothes to wear.

Every girl i dated was a lesbian and I was "their only exception".

• Hated being topless, even while swimming
• Curious how having boobs would feel
• Drawn to lesbian relationships
• Never even tried to look good as a man
• Been taking antidepressants since a little after puberty
• Cried when a psychiatry form asked if I had thoughts of being the opposite gender
• Hated being juxtaposed to men
• Didn't dream much about romance or sex because every time I thought about them they would just feel underwhelming and draining
• When I imagined myself following a similar life path to my dad or any other male figure, I felt like life wasn't worth living if that was my future
• Wished I was born a different person, because I had no attachment to who I was and nothing to lose
• Disassociating in the mirror
• Hated being seen as a big man, I wanted to be seen as soft instead
• Just like, all the signs that who I presented as made me feel awful

Well among other things:

• A recurring dream where I'd become a girl and live an ordinary life; feeling devastated upon waking up back in a male body
• An detailed knowledge of the effects of feminizing HRT (I just like random knowledge, I swear!)
• Being fascinated by and jealous of trans women
• Constantly daydreaming I was a girl
• Imagining how my clothes would look if I had breasts
• Feeling uncomfortable around men; predominantly female friends (I honestly didn't notice this one)
• Disassociating during sex and imagining I was the woman
• Unable to see myself as me in the mirror
• DPDR

And it just got worse from there. Yeah, the closet was glass.

Regularly thinking that girls got all the cute clothes

I mean, this is just objectively true, isn't it? Men’s clothes, especially everyday outfits, are mostly boring and samey. The difference is night and day. I’ve been saying this for years.

Getting extremely uncomfortable when someone asks you your pronouns.

My list is probably same as most others...

• Dating trans women
• Watching trans porn
• Jealousy of women
• Hatred of masculinity
• Nonbinary Internet persona
• Avoidance of all haircare and skincare products marketed to men
• Crossdressing while in total denial of own transness

I would jump at any excuse to wear skirts or makeup or do traditional feminine activities.

Oh a funny one is me being alone at Lilith Fair at like 19yo and not understanding why none of the homies wanted to go.

i also was basically a never nude; not in the shower but near 100% of the time out of the shower. in over 20 years together my wife only saw me nude a handful of times. Now I love my body, wear all sorts of tight clothes, love myself in the mirror and I have no problem at all being topless or naked in front of my partner. I didn't even know i had body issues i just thought i hated being chubby.

Here are some that I haven't noticed in this thread yet:

1. all through K-12 I always covered up as much skin as possible and wore baggy clothes, even in extreme heat and when the clothes were impractical. I'm talking wearing a winter coat on a school bus that had no air conditioning during the heat of the summer in the South.
2. when I was 5 - 6 years old I distinctly remember thinking I was supposed to be born a girl and that there had been a cosmic mistake (I didn't think I was a girl, just that I was supposed to be a girl, but that I was a boy by accident).
3. something seemed "wrong" about my genitals when I was young; growing up I thought it was due to circumcision that I felt this way. It wasn't that I felt I shouldn't have a penis, just that I constantly thought there was something wrong with my penis, even before the introduction of social pressures about size or performance, etc.
4. I always blamed my wanting to be a girl on my sisters, thinking it was because I just wanted to be closer to them (not realizing other boys with sisters didn't usually feel the same)
5. when dark hair started to come in when I was 13 - 15 years old, I secretly shaved my legs because the hair bothered me, despite feeling insecure in my masculinity and worrying about being bullied for being less physically mature than other boys (basically there was a theme of insecurity about not being as physically mature as other boys, but then hating every time my body progressed towards manhood - I was worried and insecure about my testes dropping and my scrotum being "longer", I worried about my penis not growing or developing, I worried about my lack of facial hair, etc. - but when any of those changes came in, I hated them and did what I could to erase or hide them, despite actively wanting them to appear to fit in and not being abnormal).
6. I loved Disney movies and female-coded things, and my girlfriend in high school was interested in me partially because of her preference for a boy who enjoyed female-coded things
7. I picked out a female name for myself and tried speaking in a female voice at times, though like any other "gender affirming" activity, this just made the pain worse and trained me to never do this again.
8. I tried organizing a "girls night" with a female friend of mine, I wanted to go out dressed as a woman with her and her female friends (it fell through, and it resulted in word getting leaked to my workplace about me being this way, which killed my trust and friendship and led to bullying and discrimination at work)
9. I told my boss I wasn't a gay man, but that I was kinda gay because it was more like I was a lesbian, but on the inside - like I felt like a woman attracted to other women. My boss was a lesbian, and she didn't understand, so I just dropped it, but I always felt frustrated being viewed as a gay, effeminate man - I was just trying to explain in the limited way I understood how I felt, and that was the best way I could put it. This still didn't make me think I might be trans.
10. I idolized women and thought men were basically subhuman, I developed extreme views about gender. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to be a man, I thought it was simply rational and obvious that being a woman was superior. (I don't endorse these views now, btw.)
11. Starting around 11 years old I felt a strange sexual need to penetrate myself anally, and it just felt right.
12. Starting around 8 - 10 years old I experienced my first orgasms and developed sexually by reading stories in Cosmos magazines, preferring to rub my genitals like a clit rather than stroke it like a penis.
13. By 15 - 16 years old I was aware that I wasn't interested in penetrating women or topping, but wanted to be topped by women and be a receptive sexual partner.

And compared to your experiences:

1. Regularly thinking that girls got all the cute clothes

I'm not sure I had this explicit thought, I was so repressed I didn't want to even desire cute clothes directly, but I did actively feel restrained in the clothes I was permitted to have, and while I didn't extend this to overt jealousy over women's clothes, I did live vicariously through other women by helping them with fashion choices, as well as taking their hand-me-downs and exploring women's fashion as much as I could.

2. Buying female clothes (skirt and some underwear) for "cross dressing"

✅ Yes, this happened - if you asked me why I did this, I would have no answer for you. Or rather, I would have a host of rationalizations that varied from "historically men actually wore skirts first" to "it's just more comfortable" - but none of this explains why I was roaming Belks and buying skirts I felt were cute ... I was clearly uninterested in kilts and male versions of things, I didn't want to wear "man-bags", I only ever bought or wore women's purses, and so on. But I wasn't self-aware about this behavior, or its significance.

3. Feeling physical pain when having to put off bought female clothes to go outside

If you asked me if I felt physical pain from not being able to wear my dresses and skirts outside, I am fairly confident I would have downplayed the distress I felt. Nonetheless, there was clearly frustration and upset that I couldn't dress as a woman in public (or rather, that I would be perceived as a cross-dresser if I did so, which didn't feel right to me either).

4. Imagining yourself as the women in porn (that's why I at first though I was "just gay")

I didn't do this all the time, so I didn't think it was that relevant or dominant - I always assumed it was just about the novelty of perspective taking, but at some point I did realize most of my pleasure from a scene was about the woman - and it became complicated for me when I thought about that enough. That's actually part of how I figured out I was bisexual without in any practical sense being attracted to any men or boys IRL.

Despite not usually directly or consciously imagining myself as the woman, I did have strange (relative to my peers) preferences to be a passive, receptive partner in sex - I wanted a woman to be the top, even if I was technically penetrating. I also was strangely drawn to being penetrated, but it felt taboo and didn't find the same kind of expression as the preference to be the "bottom".

5. Being sad when thinking about trans people and realising I couldn't transition because I'm not trans

I never felt this way, I was strangely aversive to trans people and hated gender and thinking about gender, and in my mind trans people were gender-obsessed and were not generally successful at transitioning to be the opposite sex (probably you could say I had some reflexive sense of them being a third gender, no longer being their assigned gender nor successfully being the other gender - I didn't know any passing trans people as far as I knew, so "trans" always meant "non-passing trans", which I never wanted or felt jealousy towards).

6. Absolutely suppressing every form of thought when thinking about "the trans topic" (in a way that sometimes I reflected myself and thought that I may be trans, but I 100% suppressed those thoughts knowing damn well, that this wasn't that much of a good strategy. This also included the thought "acts trans, looks trans, probably is trans", that crossed my mind after taking LSD for the first time)

✅ Yes, I suppressed thoughts about being trans, and every time the thought that I might be trans came up (and it did come up on occasion - more than a few times), I always went to the DSM definition of gender dysphoria and ruled myself out of being trans by not checking the boxes - I didn't experience enough distress, I didn't have a strong sense of my gender identity (wanting to be a woman was not the same as feeling I am a woman), and so on ... (I didn't even read the full DSM V criteria, because there is even a category for people who don't fit the exact criteria, so part of this was on me for failing to read carefully - tbh, I would have just found a way to rationalize my way out of it regardless).

Even if I thought I was trans, I wouldn't have agreed to transition. I was very stubborn and against such things, it was too indulgent, selfish, awkward, etc. The way I thought back then, I thought it would be like throwing away my whole life because I liked to wear skirts in private ...

7. Dissociating kinda regularly. Happened usually when reading fantasy books. Didnt realise it was dissociation until like 3 weeks ago

I didn't realize I was dissociating, but yes, I dissociated a lot. To whatever extent I was aware, I attributed it to PTSD (I would have never thought it was gender related).