Many of the trans women and most of the trans men I’ve known are okay with their primary sexual characteristics. Women’s T-shirts reading “I heart my penis” exist for a reason.) My sample is rather biased toward the less-than-binary, but still it goes to show that this isn’t rare.
BDD looks social, not physical, to me but I’m not an expert. (Not that social dysphoria is irrelevant, anyway.)
I’m in a similar boat as yours. What I recommend is:
Don’t panic. Litany of Gendlin; whatever your true gender (defined as the gender you would be happiest living as, to appease the anti-essentialists) turns out to be, it’s already itself and knowing it will make you happier than denying it or making something up for the sense of closure.
It’s okay to be whatever you turn out to be. (Yes, even “someone who guesses wrong and tries to live as the wrong gender for decades”.) I never really had a problem internalizing that but Internet strangers telling you it’s okay seems to help.
Try it on for size! Use text-based support groups, with people sufficiently open-minded that they’ll happily comply if you tell them you’re trying names and pronouns to see how they feel and change those every few weeks.
You’ve probably tried all the things you can do in private with no medical intervention (with clothing and hair and changing your apparent body shape and posture and so on). If it’s feasible for you, maybe try to do them whenever you’re in private for long enough that it becomes routine, and see how it feels when it’s not an extraordinary thrill.
Some subsets of the trans community are binarist essentialist judges of Who Is Truly One Of Us. Avoid those.
Share your anxieties. I don’t know if that’ll help you, I just want to feel less alone.
Genderfluidity is a thing, and some people do have ‘phases’ of feeling like one gender that eventually end. Neither of those things invalidate the individual’s feelings in the moment, or make it less necessary to have a way of handling the current situation so that it doesn’t take over your life.
It may be worth considering what happens in the worst case if you go through with a modification you’re considering, and how you might handle that. Like, to use a personal example, I’m genderfluid between female, third gender, and agender, and I’m considering top surgery; the worst case scenario is that my gender might solidify on ‘female’ in such a way that I find it unpleasant to be flat-chested. I don’t think that’s very likely—as of right now I’m perfectly fine with the idea of being flat-chested even when I’m ‘in female mode’ - but even if it happens I think I can handle it, and it also suggests that I might want to go with a reduction, to the point where I can comfortably wear a binder when I feel particularly inclined and not have ’em be such a big deal the rest of the time (kinda not an option right now) rather than an outright removal.
Share your anxieties. I don’t know if that’ll help you, I just want to feel less alone.
I may feel that the concept of the “other” gender applies more to myself than my own, but I don’t know that my concept of genders is in any way correct in that it matches what other people think, or even matches what I will think in the future.
I have some strong hang-ups regarding sex that I know are deeply influencing me and no way of getting rid of them to see how gender identity feels to me without them. There is no real reason for these hang-ups to exist, I received no unusual conditioning. For all I know they could be a result of GID.
If I expect that further analysis will produce a certain result, should I just update now to that result and act appropriately?
I don’t know what your hang-ups consist of, but wanted to note that asexuality is a thing—I’ve heard a few stories from people who [now] identify as asexual who had thought [previously] that they were broken.
* I have now read downthread and suppose it likely that you have already considered this.
Not necessarily, because training/becoming accustomed to things is an important human trait that decision theorists generally ignore. If you think you’ll feel something at a certain point, trying to force it now might still be the wrong choice. IE, trying something might be the best way to find out how you feel about it, because without trying it you might be stuck wondering or might have other problems.
Many of the trans women and most of the trans men I’ve known are okay with their primary sexual characteristics. Women’s T-shirts reading “I heart my penis” exist for a reason.) My sample is rather biased toward the less-than-binary, but still it goes to show that this isn’t rare.
BDD looks social, not physical, to me but I’m not an expert. (Not that social dysphoria is irrelevant, anyway.)
I’m in a similar boat as yours. What I recommend is:
Don’t panic. Litany of Gendlin; whatever your true gender (defined as the gender you would be happiest living as, to appease the anti-essentialists) turns out to be, it’s already itself and knowing it will make you happier than denying it or making something up for the sense of closure.
It’s okay to be whatever you turn out to be. (Yes, even “someone who guesses wrong and tries to live as the wrong gender for decades”.) I never really had a problem internalizing that but Internet strangers telling you it’s okay seems to help.
Try it on for size! Use text-based support groups, with people sufficiently open-minded that they’ll happily comply if you tell them you’re trying names and pronouns to see how they feel and change those every few weeks.
You’ve probably tried all the things you can do in private with no medical intervention (with clothing and hair and changing your apparent body shape and posture and so on). If it’s feasible for you, maybe try to do them whenever you’re in private for long enough that it becomes routine, and see how it feels when it’s not an extraordinary thrill.
Some subsets of the trans community are binarist essentialist judges of Who Is Truly One Of Us. Avoid those.
Share your anxieties. I don’t know if that’ll help you, I just want to feel less alone.
All good points. I have two to add:
Genderfluidity is a thing, and some people do have ‘phases’ of feeling like one gender that eventually end. Neither of those things invalidate the individual’s feelings in the moment, or make it less necessary to have a way of handling the current situation so that it doesn’t take over your life.
It may be worth considering what happens in the worst case if you go through with a modification you’re considering, and how you might handle that. Like, to use a personal example, I’m genderfluid between female, third gender, and agender, and I’m considering top surgery; the worst case scenario is that my gender might solidify on ‘female’ in such a way that I find it unpleasant to be flat-chested. I don’t think that’s very likely—as of right now I’m perfectly fine with the idea of being flat-chested even when I’m ‘in female mode’ - but even if it happens I think I can handle it, and it also suggests that I might want to go with a reduction, to the point where I can comfortably wear a binder when I feel particularly inclined and not have ’em be such a big deal the rest of the time (kinda not an option right now) rather than an outright removal.
I may feel that the concept of the “other” gender applies more to myself than my own, but I don’t know that my concept of genders is in any way correct in that it matches what other people think, or even matches what I will think in the future.
I have some strong hang-ups regarding sex that I know are deeply influencing me and no way of getting rid of them to see how gender identity feels to me without them. There is no real reason for these hang-ups to exist, I received no unusual conditioning. For all I know they could be a result of GID.
If I expect that further analysis will produce a certain result, should I just update now to that result and act appropriately?
I don’t know what your hang-ups consist of, but wanted to note that asexuality is a thing—I’ve heard a few stories from people who [now] identify as asexual who had thought [previously] that they were broken.
* I have now read downthread and suppose it likely that you have already considered this.
Not necessarily, because training/becoming accustomed to things is an important human trait that decision theorists generally ignore. If you think you’ll feel something at a certain point, trying to force it now might still be the wrong choice. IE, trying something might be the best way to find out how you feel about it, because without trying it you might be stuck wondering or might have other problems.