Posted 4 years ago on June 13, 2020 19:11
Hey! A Figment member asked me over Discord about what my process of figuring out I was trans was like, but when I started to answer it got too long for a Discord message, so I figured I would answer it here instead!
First some background for folks who might not be familiar: I'm non-binary, which means I'm neither male nor female, and I'm transmasculine, which means I was designated female at birth and have since changed my social identity and my appearance in the direction toward what people consider "male".
I don't wanna bother too much with my ~childhood~ since gender wasn't really too relevant (my favorite toys were gender-neutral things like crayons and Pokemon anyway), I'm not one of those trans people who knew ever since they were a kid. And to be honest I *did* identify as a girl for some period of childhood, I was born into the Girl Power 90's and for a while I was all about that--and I think that tiny baby Entropy's experience is valid too, gender can be fluid! Though I guess one of my first "should have known I was trans" moments was that I felt *ashamed* and like I was doing something wrong when my favorite show was a Boy ThingTM, Dragonball Z (and thank god for the friend who was like "yeah so what" when I nervously confessed this to them). Anyway, really I think dysphoria started when puberty happened and suddenly my body was doing things I wasn't okay with and people were treating girls and boys more differently than when we were little. Around 13-14 I started to realize I was uncomfortable with the whole "girl" thing. Somewhere around then I heard of trans folks for the first time, and weirdly enough my first reaction to the idea was jealousy--of course nobody really wants to be stuck being the gender they were raised as, do they? It's not fair that they get to pick and I don't! (part of the problem was, as a non-binary kid who had never heard of non-binary genders yet, it felt unfair in a way I couldn't comprehend that some people could solve dysphoria by changing to the opposite gender, but the thing that would feel right for me didn't exist) But I eventually started wondering if I might be a trans man. The more I thought about it though, I realized I would probably be just as uncomfortable living as a man as I would be living as a woman. So I decided I wasn't trans. But by like ~16 I started describing myself as "androgynous", half joking, because the only examples of non-binary gender I knew were mythical creatures so of course I couldn't REALLY be that.
Then I went to college, joined the LGBT group (more because I knew I was bi/pan than because of my gender stuff), and met a genderqueer person for the first time. As soon as I heard the word genderqueer I instantly knew, oh my god that's me. So the rest of my 6 years of college were a process of slowly figuring out what that meant. Trying out different gender expressions and ways of dressing, chopping all my hair off, testing out how different pronouns felt, learning what words felt good or bad to be called. Pretending to be a boy online and trying out different names. Trying many, many different ways of explaining what my gender felt like, and listening to a lot of other people's experiences with gender and comparing them against my own. Wearing a binder sometimes. I figured out that being perceived as a woman or called any female-coded words felt really bad, that being seen as a man felt not so bad but kind of weird but maybe sometimes good, that having a flat chest felt good, using a gender-neutral name (Van) felt good, being recognized as specifically not falling into the binary genders felt good. Having the word "genderqueer" to describe myself now felt especially good. One of the sillier moments in this process was being in a student meeting where someone pointed out that all the girls happened to be sitting on one side of the center aisle and all the guys on the other, so I made a whole big show of getting up and sitting in the middle of the aisle, lol. At first while I was exploring it felt good to wear any kind of men's clothing, in the sense that it was like, liberating compared to having always worn girls' clothes growing up, but after a while I realized that the aesthetic I like is honestly more femme (I've kept a few men's shirts that I now think are pretty ugly but they have a lot of sentimental value because they were part of my first discoveries).
Actually a really important piece of figuring out and becoming comfortable with my gender was developing a more nuanced understanding of gender, that I don't need to be macho to be masculine and I can wear skirts and still call myself a boy; after becoming more comfortable with this alternative kind of masculinity my identify has shifted toward feeling closer to male. It's always firmly felt best to be identified as non-binary, but these days I usually feel okay with being kinda categorized under the male side of things, too. I ended up eventually choosing Vance, a more masculine variant of the nickname I'd be using, as my permanent name.
So yeah, during college, transition mostly consisted of telling my friends to call me Van and use gender-neutral pronouns for me and not think of me as a girl or boy; I basically was out to anyone close enough to know me personally, but most of my classmates and teachers presumably still perceived me as a cis woman who just was maybe a little bit butch. Which bothered me, but I was too shy to correct them (and honestly, how do you even bring that up with casual acquaintances?! it's not like you usually even hear what pronouns classmates use for you). I spent basically the whole duration of college trying over and over again to come out to my parents, having to painstakingly specify for every little thing "don't call me that word" "don't include me in this list of girls" etc. The first time I came home for Christmas break I excitedly showed them the Wikipedia page for Genderqueer and told them it's what I was, and their initial reaction was to laugh in my face. -__- They eventually got it but boy was it a long process of saying the same things over and over again, it took them a long time to literally just be able to comprehend that gender was separate from sex and could be non-binary. During college I thought about medically transitioning, and kind of wanted to, but tbh I always just assumed that it would be way too expensive and complicated and was too intimidated to look into it much.
Basically my last year of college was when the big changes started happening; especially as I considered going forward into new jobs and things, I really dreaded the idea of having to start all over again, going into new places where everyone would meet me and assume I was a girl. I really wanted to be able to move forward in a more authentic identity and have these new people not ever need to know me by my deadname. So I spent a lot of time that year looking for names, though I didn't actually find one that felt right until the summer after--Van was just a quick placeholder name until I found one that felt right, but I ended up getting so used to using it that it was hard to relate to new ones, but at the same time it felt too nicknamey to use as a real name. But once I stumbled on the name Vance it instantly clicked, and I finally felt ready to change my name *everywhere*, so I changed my name on Facebook which conveniently allowed even people I didn't talk to anymore to know about it, and I started telling my extended family about my name change too and having conversations about my gender with my aunts and grandmother. That fall I introduced myself to new people as Vance for the first time, made my first irl friends to not know my deadname, and used my new name in person around family for the first time.
So that fall (4.5 years ago now!) is really what I think of as the point where I transitioned or came out. And somewhere around that time I finally made up my mind that I did want to start medical transition, and researched HRT and was shocked to find out that my insurance would actually cover most of the cost and that I really could afford it! It took another year or so to find a doctor who would actually prescribe it to me, but I've been on testosterone for a year and a half now and it gosh it feels good and makes my body feel so much more like my own. The first time I heard a recording of my voice after it changed was like being hit by lightning because I'd hated my voice my whole life and hearing it now instantly felt like, oh my god *this* is what I always thought it was supposed to sound like. Sometimes I wear a binder, but a lot of days my dysphoria is mild enough that I don't feel like I have to (though I'd still love to get top surgery someday, but I don't feel as much anymore like I *need* it in order to be myself). Of course I still struggle with dysphoria sometimes, like we all do, and I still get misgendered by strangers (but only about half to 2/3 of the time now instead of always!) and by some of my relatives, but the burden is a lot lighter now because even when those people misgender me I know I can come home to friends, and even some family members who've finally come to understand, who know me for who I am. I have this beautiful new life I've built for myself surrounded entirely by amazing, affirming queer folks and allies to fall back on. uwu
If any other trans folks want to share your story too, that would be cool, and might be further helpful to the person who asked me (or to anyone in our community who's questioning) to hear more than one person's experience. And I'm interested to hear from anyone, trans or cis, what your gender means to you or the role it plays in your life--I always find it particularly interesting to hear from cis people what it is that makes them know they're a man or woman, since we usually only think of "how you realized you were [gender]" as a trans thing, but actually gender-affirming moments can be meaningful for anyone, and I find the differences between trans and cis people's gender-affirming moments really interesting (and hearing from cis friends what affirms their gender helped me to figure out my own). Also, if you have any questions about my experience, or general questions about transness that you think I could answer, feel free to ask them here! (PG-16 though so any talk about genital situations is off limits)
Mods, if you feel that anything in this post is inappropriate for Figment (medical stuff or me disclosing my age or anything) let me know and I'll delete it ASAP.
And uh, blanket disclaimer for this thread that nobody posting here is a doctor and can't give medical advice and if you want to physically transition then it's recommended to do so in consultation with a doctor.
eta: oh goodness this layout was not made to house posts of this length, was it. lmao. also i will accept my penalty/trophy for longest post now w h o o p s
vance | they/them/their | entropy#4419 @ discord
feel free to dm me about the wiki
First some background for folks who might not be familiar: I'm non-binary, which means I'm neither male nor female, and I'm transmasculine, which means I was designated female at birth and have since changed my social identity and my appearance in the direction toward what people consider "male".
I don't wanna bother too much with my ~childhood~ since gender wasn't really too relevant (my favorite toys were gender-neutral things like crayons and Pokemon anyway), I'm not one of those trans people who knew ever since they were a kid. And to be honest I *did* identify as a girl for some period of childhood, I was born into the Girl Power 90's and for a while I was all about that--and I think that tiny baby Entropy's experience is valid too, gender can be fluid! Though I guess one of my first "should have known I was trans" moments was that I felt *ashamed* and like I was doing something wrong when my favorite show was a Boy ThingTM, Dragonball Z (and thank god for the friend who was like "yeah so what" when I nervously confessed this to them). Anyway, really I think dysphoria started when puberty happened and suddenly my body was doing things I wasn't okay with and people were treating girls and boys more differently than when we were little. Around 13-14 I started to realize I was uncomfortable with the whole "girl" thing. Somewhere around then I heard of trans folks for the first time, and weirdly enough my first reaction to the idea was jealousy--of course nobody really wants to be stuck being the gender they were raised as, do they? It's not fair that they get to pick and I don't! (part of the problem was, as a non-binary kid who had never heard of non-binary genders yet, it felt unfair in a way I couldn't comprehend that some people could solve dysphoria by changing to the opposite gender, but the thing that would feel right for me didn't exist) But I eventually started wondering if I might be a trans man. The more I thought about it though, I realized I would probably be just as uncomfortable living as a man as I would be living as a woman. So I decided I wasn't trans. But by like ~16 I started describing myself as "androgynous", half joking, because the only examples of non-binary gender I knew were mythical creatures so of course I couldn't REALLY be that.
Then I went to college, joined the LGBT group (more because I knew I was bi/pan than because of my gender stuff), and met a genderqueer person for the first time. As soon as I heard the word genderqueer I instantly knew, oh my god that's me. So the rest of my 6 years of college were a process of slowly figuring out what that meant. Trying out different gender expressions and ways of dressing, chopping all my hair off, testing out how different pronouns felt, learning what words felt good or bad to be called. Pretending to be a boy online and trying out different names. Trying many, many different ways of explaining what my gender felt like, and listening to a lot of other people's experiences with gender and comparing them against my own. Wearing a binder sometimes. I figured out that being perceived as a woman or called any female-coded words felt really bad, that being seen as a man felt not so bad but kind of weird but maybe sometimes good, that having a flat chest felt good, using a gender-neutral name (Van) felt good, being recognized as specifically not falling into the binary genders felt good. Having the word "genderqueer" to describe myself now felt especially good. One of the sillier moments in this process was being in a student meeting where someone pointed out that all the girls happened to be sitting on one side of the center aisle and all the guys on the other, so I made a whole big show of getting up and sitting in the middle of the aisle, lol. At first while I was exploring it felt good to wear any kind of men's clothing, in the sense that it was like, liberating compared to having always worn girls' clothes growing up, but after a while I realized that the aesthetic I like is honestly more femme (I've kept a few men's shirts that I now think are pretty ugly but they have a lot of sentimental value because they were part of my first discoveries).
Actually a really important piece of figuring out and becoming comfortable with my gender was developing a more nuanced understanding of gender, that I don't need to be macho to be masculine and I can wear skirts and still call myself a boy; after becoming more comfortable with this alternative kind of masculinity my identify has shifted toward feeling closer to male. It's always firmly felt best to be identified as non-binary, but these days I usually feel okay with being kinda categorized under the male side of things, too. I ended up eventually choosing Vance, a more masculine variant of the nickname I'd be using, as my permanent name.
So yeah, during college, transition mostly consisted of telling my friends to call me Van and use gender-neutral pronouns for me and not think of me as a girl or boy; I basically was out to anyone close enough to know me personally, but most of my classmates and teachers presumably still perceived me as a cis woman who just was maybe a little bit butch. Which bothered me, but I was too shy to correct them (and honestly, how do you even bring that up with casual acquaintances?! it's not like you usually even hear what pronouns classmates use for you). I spent basically the whole duration of college trying over and over again to come out to my parents, having to painstakingly specify for every little thing "don't call me that word" "don't include me in this list of girls" etc. The first time I came home for Christmas break I excitedly showed them the Wikipedia page for Genderqueer and told them it's what I was, and their initial reaction was to laugh in my face. -__- They eventually got it but boy was it a long process of saying the same things over and over again, it took them a long time to literally just be able to comprehend that gender was separate from sex and could be non-binary. During college I thought about medically transitioning, and kind of wanted to, but tbh I always just assumed that it would be way too expensive and complicated and was too intimidated to look into it much.
Basically my last year of college was when the big changes started happening; especially as I considered going forward into new jobs and things, I really dreaded the idea of having to start all over again, going into new places where everyone would meet me and assume I was a girl. I really wanted to be able to move forward in a more authentic identity and have these new people not ever need to know me by my deadname. So I spent a lot of time that year looking for names, though I didn't actually find one that felt right until the summer after--Van was just a quick placeholder name until I found one that felt right, but I ended up getting so used to using it that it was hard to relate to new ones, but at the same time it felt too nicknamey to use as a real name. But once I stumbled on the name Vance it instantly clicked, and I finally felt ready to change my name *everywhere*, so I changed my name on Facebook which conveniently allowed even people I didn't talk to anymore to know about it, and I started telling my extended family about my name change too and having conversations about my gender with my aunts and grandmother. That fall I introduced myself to new people as Vance for the first time, made my first irl friends to not know my deadname, and used my new name in person around family for the first time.
So that fall (4.5 years ago now!) is really what I think of as the point where I transitioned or came out. And somewhere around that time I finally made up my mind that I did want to start medical transition, and researched HRT and was shocked to find out that my insurance would actually cover most of the cost and that I really could afford it! It took another year or so to find a doctor who would actually prescribe it to me, but I've been on testosterone for a year and a half now and it gosh it feels good and makes my body feel so much more like my own. The first time I heard a recording of my voice after it changed was like being hit by lightning because I'd hated my voice my whole life and hearing it now instantly felt like, oh my god *this* is what I always thought it was supposed to sound like. Sometimes I wear a binder, but a lot of days my dysphoria is mild enough that I don't feel like I have to (though I'd still love to get top surgery someday, but I don't feel as much anymore like I *need* it in order to be myself). Of course I still struggle with dysphoria sometimes, like we all do, and I still get misgendered by strangers (but only about half to 2/3 of the time now instead of always!) and by some of my relatives, but the burden is a lot lighter now because even when those people misgender me I know I can come home to friends, and even some family members who've finally come to understand, who know me for who I am. I have this beautiful new life I've built for myself surrounded entirely by amazing, affirming queer folks and allies to fall back on. uwu
If any other trans folks want to share your story too, that would be cool, and might be further helpful to the person who asked me (or to anyone in our community who's questioning) to hear more than one person's experience. And I'm interested to hear from anyone, trans or cis, what your gender means to you or the role it plays in your life--I always find it particularly interesting to hear from cis people what it is that makes them know they're a man or woman, since we usually only think of "how you realized you were [gender]" as a trans thing, but actually gender-affirming moments can be meaningful for anyone, and I find the differences between trans and cis people's gender-affirming moments really interesting (and hearing from cis friends what affirms their gender helped me to figure out my own). Also, if you have any questions about my experience, or general questions about transness that you think I could answer, feel free to ask them here! (PG-16 though so any talk about genital situations is off limits)
Mods, if you feel that anything in this post is inappropriate for Figment (medical stuff or me disclosing my age or anything) let me know and I'll delete it ASAP.
And uh, blanket disclaimer for this thread that nobody posting here is a doctor and can't give medical advice and if you want to physically transition then it's recommended to do so in consultation with a doctor.
eta: oh goodness this layout was not made to house posts of this length, was it. lmao. also i will accept my penalty/trophy for longest post now w h o o p s
vance | they/them/their | entropy#4419 @ discord
feel free to dm me about the wiki
Loading...
Posted 4 years ago on June 19, 2020 07:07
this is such an inspiring read omg?? im so happy for you!!
im a trans guy myself and ive always been a major tomboy since a child. my parents dressed me up in pink dresses and pink clothes and pink pink pink with my hair in pigtails. i was still rough and tough with the guys on the playground tho. apparently as a baby most people thought i was a boy and i only liked guys which i find hilarious since im pan but mostly leaning to guys.
i think its around 15 i thought i was nb when i wanted to try and binder since i was getting genuinely sick with dysphoria and 16 when i read a trans guy, it wasnt so much as a "ah!" moment but slowly my mindset connected the dots in things. in games i always use male avatars, i speak quite roughly, i prefer to play with the guys, do "manly" stuff and wear "guy" clothes etc. though i now realise most of these things are actually neutral as hell it was meaningful back then before i knew.
i dont mind wearing any types of clothes and i have a fav piece thats a skirt with cats in yellow raincoats and holding umbrellas however i do wear more neutral looking clothes swamped in hoodies
i only came out to my mum first, scared of my fathers reaction since he isnt the best. we went to the doctors to get me referred to the GIC (Gender Identity Clinic) but my dad stayed home for some reason just as we were about to leave so we had to tell him. i was too ashamed to tell him or look him in the face so my mum did. i dont know his reaction to this day. ive been to a few appointment to the GIC but the waiting list is so so slow, ive had merely 2 appointments in the nearly 4 year wait but its getting there. i hope to start T soon but theres some issues needed to be sorted out. i came out 4 years ago and my parents dont use the correct pronouns and ive never pushed coz im too shy and anxious, what if they scoff at me? laugh? disown me? my fathers side is,,, really not great and my mum is so neutral i dont know what she thinks. im doing ok tho, i have lots of friends online that support me
sorry it turned kinda venty
ive struggled majorly with choosing a name, changing it every 8 months or so and only this month did i realise that i wanted to change my surname as well as first name. ive finally chosen tho! i cant wait to do the deed poll to legally change it, its gonna be so awkward asking 2 other people to help, i know i can do it though!!
he/him | discord bee#4200
im a trans guy myself and ive always been a major tomboy since a child. my parents dressed me up in pink dresses and pink clothes and pink pink pink with my hair in pigtails. i was still rough and tough with the guys on the playground tho. apparently as a baby most people thought i was a boy and i only liked guys which i find hilarious since im pan but mostly leaning to guys.
i think its around 15 i thought i was nb when i wanted to try and binder since i was getting genuinely sick with dysphoria and 16 when i read a trans guy, it wasnt so much as a "ah!" moment but slowly my mindset connected the dots in things. in games i always use male avatars, i speak quite roughly, i prefer to play with the guys, do "manly" stuff and wear "guy" clothes etc. though i now realise most of these things are actually neutral as hell it was meaningful back then before i knew.
i dont mind wearing any types of clothes and i have a fav piece thats a skirt with cats in yellow raincoats and holding umbrellas however i do wear more neutral looking clothes swamped in hoodies
i only came out to my mum first, scared of my fathers reaction since he isnt the best. we went to the doctors to get me referred to the GIC (Gender Identity Clinic) but my dad stayed home for some reason just as we were about to leave so we had to tell him. i was too ashamed to tell him or look him in the face so my mum did. i dont know his reaction to this day. ive been to a few appointment to the GIC but the waiting list is so so slow, ive had merely 2 appointments in the nearly 4 year wait but its getting there. i hope to start T soon but theres some issues needed to be sorted out. i came out 4 years ago and my parents dont use the correct pronouns and ive never pushed coz im too shy and anxious, what if they scoff at me? laugh? disown me? my fathers side is,,, really not great and my mum is so neutral i dont know what she thinks. im doing ok tho, i have lots of friends online that support me
sorry it turned kinda venty
ive struggled majorly with choosing a name, changing it every 8 months or so and only this month did i realise that i wanted to change my surname as well as first name. ive finally chosen tho! i cant wait to do the deed poll to legally change it, its gonna be so awkward asking 2 other people to help, i know i can do it though!!
he/him | discord bee#4200
Loading...
You must be logged in to reply! Login or Register now!