What am I?

[EntirelyUnsure]

I'm not sure if this is going to help anything but I thought I'd at least ask. For the record this is the first time I have ever mentioned anything about this to anyone, ever. I am 39 years of age, and I've never mentioned any of this to a soul.

This is not supposed to be a sob story, it's supposed to be information.

I was born physically male and I am attracted to women, but I have always wanted to be female. That desire is just about the earliest memory I have. I certainly wanted to a girl long before I had any idea about sex or romance, this is not a sexual fantasy. I first became aware of it at infant school. I didn't fancy the girls. Of course I didn't, I was seven or eight years old. I wanted to be them. The envy was horrible and it still is, every single day, without exception. I want to be female. I would do anything for it. I fantasise about it constantly. It is absolutely the defining aspect of my life. The constant feeling of hating oneself and despising one's own body would depress anyone. I don't really want to self diagnose but I know that I have all the signs of clinical depression and it is no surprise why. I have never had a long term relationship and I am not financially independent at 39. I can pass exams, but I have no confidence. I hate what I am.

I guess this means I am transgender.

If I were 10 years old again now, I would say something about it, I would get treated, and I would hope for a decent outcome. People seem to do very well these days and I would do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately when I was 10 it was 1988, and things were different then. I am six feet three inches tall and it is impossible for me ever to make a convincing woman. I would rather be what I am now, than be an unconvincing woman and face all the prejudice. Other people feel differently and that's great for them, but it's not for me.

What the hell do I do. It's torture. I can't be in the same room as women without feeling like cr*p. What do I do.

[Steffi]

This transwoman is a model......and she's 6'7" !
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Eve


Disclaimer - I am not a doctor. Even if I were I would not venture a diagnosis on the basis of one short letter.

However....
I am a post-op transsexual and have been reading and advising on this board for over a decade. From what you wrote, you certainly appear to be transsexual.
Unfortunately the inner angst of it will not ever go away, so your choices are either to transition or to suffer in silence, although there are perhaps some things that you can do which might make that more bearable.
I have to also comment that in my experience, more often than not, the person eventually becomes overwhelmed by it and transitions, which means that they are older and have "wasted time" which they later regret.

I was 6 foot and a half inch, very broad shouldered and really quite a fine figure of a man.
I did eventually transition at age 53. (I add the information that I was not in the least balding and that I was and am still attracted to women)

Since you are suffering so much, for a limited time, I will add below a couple of Before and After pics of myself.
I am not a good pass, although I definitely do convince some people, even when not wearing make-up. I do not much care whether people "Read" me or not, as long as they interact with me as female.
I have not suffered any significant * abuse, zero physical confrontation and am not aware of ever being discriminated against because of my trans-ness.

I fully understand your current decision that you cannot transition because you are too tall, too masculine and do not want a life where you are marginalised and discriminated against. I felt EXACTLY the same
Also ...... I wanted to be A WOMAN - not an artificial, surgically-created compromise.
That was in no way acceptable.
After a minor mental crisis when it came to a head I went to discuss my Trans??? with a shrink when I was 23. He more or less offered me entry into transition and I DENIED WHO I REALLY WAS and deliberately lied to slant my dialogue towards transvestism.
It took me another 30 years of part-time cross-dressing - in a marriage and in a perfectly functional male life - to eventually snap.
By then I was actively engaged in quiet preparations for suicide.
THAT is how far I personally had to be pushed. At that point, I thought "Well...since I'll be dead in a couple of weeks anyway, I might as well do what I've always wanted to do and live as a woman."
From the moment that I decided to go full-time, my mood lifted. The lifelong inner pain was gone.

I would suggest to you that IF indeed you ARE Transsexual, then you are merely denying to yourself who you really are and that being the case, it will be very difficult for you to find any inner peace.

Meanwhile, whilst you consider that , there are some things which might make your inner suffering more bearable.
(You have not said whether you go out anywhere dressed as female and whether you know anyone else in a similar status?)
First, locate your nearest Trans-group. Go along, meet others. They almost universally have changing facilities and the opportunity to interact with others whilst "en-femme" Also, they often go out into relatively safe parts of town as a group.
I REALLY do recommend that you talk - in person - to transvestites and transsexuals.
Secondly, many transsexuals have found that taking female hormones even at a low level can have a big influence on how they feel and can considerably reduce the inner angst. Some even find that the herbal hormone supplements (e.g. Black Cohosh etc) are a great help even though they are relatively very weak when compared to pharmaceutical hormones.
Disclaimer - I am not specifically RECOMMENDING that you self-medicate, I am merely reporting the comments of those who have.
Personally, I had a great deal more inner peace the moment I transitioned. When I started hormones soon after, for a while I was literally blissed-out.

Realistically, you do only have the two options - either you tough it out and try and stay as you are, perhaps helped by the things mentioned above or else you transition. If you transition then you almost certainly will get some insults, rejection etc in the early days.
Personally, my own opinion regarding myself is that I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Even though my life now "is nowhere" compared to my previous male life and sometimes does suck for practical and mostly financial reasons, the sense of inner peace is utterly priceless.
My experience of talking to many other transsexuals is that - regardless of what and how much they lost - they feel much the same.
Yes, there is a small percentage of Regretters. Many of them can effectively be discounted because they were almost entirely driven by a delusional sexuality. Of the rest, some very clearly rushed into the entire process and took all available short-cuts to reach the end. Most of those will have knowingly lied to the Gender team ...... and perhaps to themselves. Some will have had very unrealistic expectations.

The question for you is one of Pain Management:
The fact is that although you would rather have been born female, you were born physically male, so that ship has sailed.
You ARE Transsexual ......it's how you were born, the same as your hair or eye colour. It's who you ARE. There is no escape from that.
So the question simply becomes "Which hurts more?
1) To live as you are and be superficially accepted in a more straightforward life whilst being relentlessly tortured inside.
or
2) To (get definitely diagnosed and) begin Transition - taking whatever financial and social losses that entails, valuing the sense if inner peace above all else.

In my experience, because this ache is relentless, never subsides and in almost all cases just grows in magnitude, in the end Transsexuals do eventually transition.

This is YOUR one-and-only life. You have to do what makes YOU happy, if you can figure out what that is.

(btw If you click on my Profile you will see there a link to Search my posts - I think that some of my recent replies to others might be of interest to you )

( pics here, now removed )

The second picture was taken about 6 months after the beardy one. The other picture is about 5 years later when I went bowling with the younger lesbian I was dating.
* I did once successfully prosecute two scaffolders who abused me several times one day near my home every time I walked past. This was over 10 years ago and at the time I had only just transitioned, was wearing a wig and had not yet even started hormones.
The only other and perhaps more serious incident was just after I started hormones, still wearing a wig.
I was waiting at night on a deserted railway station when two drunken absolute louts came onto the platform. - these guys were a fight looking for somewhere to happen. One immediately Read me and growled "Are you a MAN?" There were a few tense seconds as I explained, but it all came to nothing. Nothing happened at all.
I have never had any bother since.It is about nine years since anyone has even said anything negative

[EntirelyUnsure]

Thanks for the response.

I don't think I'm denying anything. I am, or at least I feel like, a woman trapped in the body of a man and it is incredibly horrible, as you would expect. I'm not really sure why anyone cops an attitude about it - how would they feel if they woke up the following morning in a body of the opposite gender? Absolutely f!"£$%g horrible, which is how I feel about it.

I'm not sure it's clear that a majority of people are eventually pushed into seeking treatment. If people keep it a secret all their lives and never say anything, they simply won't appear on the statistics. That's what's likely to happen with me, after all.

I have occasionally worn women's clothing, only ever indoors in private. I don't take a lot of pleasure from it because I know what I look like - I look like a man crossdressing, which is not what I want to be, any more than I want to be a man at all. I'm not a transvestite; I don't get any sexual pleasure from it. As you suggested yourself, I want to be a woman, I have very little interest in being a poor imitation of a woman, though again, I appreciate this is not the choice everyone goes for.

But to be female, to dress like that and not be seen as an embarrassment or a deviant? I don't crave looks, I don't crave being an attractive woman in the conventional sense. Zap me into the body of a five foot three she-nerd tomorrow and I'd still be a nerd, but to have that... god. Presumably that's what women actually get, at least some of the time. I guess everything becomes normal if it's your everyday life, but it's almost unimaginable.

So as you say it's a matter of toughing it out in the knowledge that life is never going to rise above a level of misery. I am fully aware that's what I'm in for. I am not expecting inner peace. There is no fix. Does it make sense if I say that I'd happily take any pill that would make me content to be male? It's not my ideal fantasy solution, obviously, but if it leads to not having to deal with this every second of every day for the rest of my life, I'd do it.

Do we have any idea why this happens to people? It is an awful disease.

[Steffi]

Hello EU
Apologies for delay in replying.

I'm not sure it's clear that a majority of people are eventually pushed into seeking treatment. If people keep it a secret all their lives and never say anything, they simply won't appear on the statistics. That's what's likely to happen with me, after all.

You are correct and the fault is with my imprecise wording. Of course we do not know of the many who suffered in complete silence and managed to struggle through their male lives. No doubt some of the suicides where friends and relatives were mystified as to cause were actually secret transsexuals who had reached the end of their rope. Who can guess how many of those there have been in the past when the entire subject was unknown or taboo.

When I said "denying to yourself" I did not really mean in the sense of mental awareness, I meant in the sense that you - or anyone with this unfortunate affliction - is literally living-a-lie.

I have occasionally worn women's clothing, only ever indoors in private. I don't take a lot of pleasure from it because I know what I look like - I look like a man crossdressing, which is not what I want to be, any more than I want to be a man at all.

He-he.......but you still DID it!
This is what true and total acceptance means, becoming comfortable with who you are and what you look like in your desired role.
It's a long and painful journey.
No doubt the plainer born females stare at themselves in the mirror and wish that they had been born radiantly beautiful - but they weren't and they have no option but to come to terms with who they are and learn to make the most of what they actually have.
....... IMO that is the same position transsexuals are in. We are who we are.

For me personally it devalued a lot of things. People who became close friends and sometimes shared quite personal information would sometimes express their affection and respect and I used to feel guilty and think "If you knew who I really am, you wouldn't even like me at all."
In the face of their frankness and honesty It troubled me that I was conning them. That feeling grew worse with the passing years and eventually I did used to tell the closest friends that I was a transvestite and sometimes cross-dressed, that I had always felt I was a woman but that with my build etc a sex-change was impossible.
Apart from a couple of experiments when I was still trying to figure out who I was I have always been attracted to women. Really I have been a lesbian all my life - it's just that I was hampered in my earlier life by the presence of a large throbbing c*ck!
- When having sex with women I would mentally flip our situations. I would imagine that I was them and would do to them what I would like done to me.
But it troubled me when they expressed love for me that they were loving a person that did not really exist, that I was not being genuine.

The first person I ever told at all was my wife. She is now my ex though we remain good friends. I told her before we married, because to not do so seemed like a huge sin.

I felt in my younger days that I did not want to be a transsexual, even if I had Passed well and could have moved into the ranks of women undetected.
I wanted to be a proper born-woman and nothing less would do. Since that was impossible I reached the same conclusion that I had in childhood, that since maleness was what I was stuck with I'd have to try and make the best of it.

Each day in life we can only play the cards we are dealt, the hand that we hold on that particular day.
For me as for many others, the general tedium of playing Life's game whilst dealing with the ache of my inner yearnings eventually made the game just no longer worth playing.
One day I just snapped and decided to go all-in on the cards I actually held instead of bluffing and I played my Joker.
It *IS* an all-or-nothing move, but by then one cares little about what might be lost.

Our evaluation of the cards we hold is not indelibly fixed. e.g. Last year my sister was diagnosed with cancer - suddenly her entire structure of what was important in life changed. Decorating the bathroom, getting her hair done, the slight rust on her car and a host of other things suddenly ceased to matter. Mere Survival was the only thing.
For the moment the other things you have or may achieve in life seem more important and more valuable but that may not always remain so, which is why some people who have achieved a lot suddenly transition late in life, risking and often losing almost everything.
There have been several high-profile cases sensationalised in the media in recent years. These were capable, rational people with a stable and well established male persona in a materially successful life but eventually that inner ache broke them.

For me personally, what had stopped me transitioning in early life - apart from how little I would Pass - was my adamant refusal to "be a transsexual." I wanted to be a born-woman and would accept nothing less.
It took decades for me to recognise and accept that prize was never on the table and confront the question of Here, this is what IS on-the -table........do you want it or not?
It took me a very long time to reach the conclusion that it is better to be who and what I am.

Back at age 23, the pill that makes me happy to be a male and content with my body was exactly what I was looking for when I went to see that shrink. He told me there was no such pill, that it was neither his job nor even possible to shape people to some cookie-cutter form, that I should just be who I am and get on with it.
I was a little outraged at the time, LOL. Looking back I wish I had listened to him, but knowing something and accepting something are two different things. I already knew who I was, it just took me a few more decades to accept it.

As to what causes transsexualism ...... it it still not definitively settled.
What seems established is that M-to-F transsexuals have female brain structures, particularly in the region of the amygdala and some patterns of brain activity which are atypical for males.
All of us are proto-female in the early embryonic stages. Those with a Y chromosome undergo a wash of testosterone in week 6 or so which causes the uterus to be re-absorbed. The labial lips fuse together and sag into a scrotum (...check yours. On the lower side there is a visible seam that runs from near the anus right up to the tip of the foreskin ) the ovaries turn into testicles and eventually drop down through the ingual canal and the clitoris wraps around the urethra and grows into a penis.
It is thought that this time is where things go wrong for transsexuals and that the brain is not fully differentiated to male. The brain is in any case the last thing to finish developing and it's structure is still being built for some time after birth takes place.

I would not push people towards transition, that's a sure recipe for disaster. Those who have to will certainly get there eventually.
I wish good fortune to those who do decide to just tough it out. If you can manage it then it is surely the easier option.
I merely observe that for those we know about - like yourself, who have felt motivated enough to write in to this forum - a great many will eventually transition.

Good luck to you EU, whatever your choice.

[EntirelyUnsure]

Thanks. And not to worry, you don't owe me a thing.

I felt in my younger days that I did not want to be a transsexual, even if I had Passed well and could have moved into the ranks of women undetected. I wanted to be a proper born-woman and nothing less would do.

Personally couldn't care less, so long as I looked convincing. Nobody's going to come along and count my X chromosomes. I've never wanted kids, and I've never wanted to be a pregnant woman, just a woman. If I thought the hormones and the surgery would get me a convincing result, I'd pursue it. I'd have pursued it years ago, no question whatsoever. Pain and indignity be damned, that's the easiest decision I'd ever have to make. Sign me up. Start now. I'll book out the next howevermany years to the process.

But of course that's not really what's on offer.

Possibly my disinterest in starting a family is because my experience of life is so horrific that I would not want to inflict it on anyone else, but that's a side issue. I certainly wish I'd never been born, and I mean that literally.

I've never felt like I was conning anyone. I'm presenting to people as they will (overwhelmingly) prefer for me to present to them. I'm sure many people I know, particularly family, would be utterly horrified to discover the truth, although I suspect that to some of them at least it would explain a great many things - my total failure to have any sort of normal adult life, for a start. It was OK when I was 25; people could assume I was a late starter. Pushing 40, though, things look a bit different. Presumably people just assume I'm a complete loser, which is more or less true at this point. It's a bit late to do anything about that even if I could snap my fingers and undergo a flawless transition tomorrow.

I wonder if it'd be worth going to see my doctor about it. Perhaps if they filled me up with antidepressants I'd be able to at least take the edge off it and avoid just living in a constant crushing gloom. Perhaps then I'd be able to have some sort of life, achieve more success professionally and live a bit more of a fulfilling existence away from dysmorphia.