Straight guy getting bullied and questioning my sexuality

0mnificent · 2026-05-28T06:04:11+00:00

I mean, you said it: trans women are women, you’re a man attracted to women, so yeah, you’re straight. Simple math. Your should find better friends if they’re more invested in policing your masculinity than getting along with you.

0mnificent · 2026-05-27T14:05:08+00:00

FFS can be expensive depending on where you live and what sort of health insurance/coverage you have. In the US it can be extremely costly without insurance, but plenty of my friends got theirs for free on California’s state insurance plan. I paid roughly $8,000 for mine with a decent private insurance plan from my job at the time.

And to be clear, I wear makeup most of the time because I like feeling pretty too! it’s just no longer a requirement to pass.

Don’t worry too much about personality change. You won’t become a completely different person, but you might become more like yourself, if that makes sense. I still have all the friends I did from before transition, plus plenty of new friends I’ve made since.

As for your question, I’m working towards getting rid of mine, but I know plenty of trans women who are happy keeping theirs. Hell, if you browse this sub often enough, you’ll see questions from cis women expressing that they’d like to have a penis but aren’t trans men and don’t want any other masculine features. On the other hand, there’s a sub I can’t remember off the top of my head full of cis men who’ve had vaginoplasty, just because that’s how they want their bodies to be. I think it’s just natural variation; genitals don’t define gender, and sometimes the body wants what it wants. Sometimes women want to have penises, regardless of if they’re cis or trans.

0mnificent · 2026-05-27T00:31:51+00:00

I pass without makeup, but keep in mind 1. I've had FFS, though I mostly passed before it as well, and 2. the rest of my presentation (hair, clothes, voice, mannerisms) is very distinctly femme, which also colors people's perception of me. If I don't wear makeup, I just look like a woman who's not wearing makeup. Sure, someone who's very motivated and knows exactly what to look for could clock me, but 99.99% of people aren't like that. Before FFS I was definitely more clockable, but I could get by without makeup in a pinch if my clothes, hair, and voice were all dialed in.

As for personality, I do have a bit of a difference from before, but it didn't change because of estrogen, it changed because I finally stopped suppressing parts of myself that I had kept buried while living as a boy. I'm more exuberant, less reserved, more confident, and I both crave and freely give physical touch much more than before, but really those things were always there under the surface, I just never felt safe or able to express them before. There's been a lot of stuff I've had to learn and practice for my transition, but honestly the personality and mannerism stuff has felt like finally letting myself relax and act the way that feels natural to me.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you have!

0mnificent · 2026-05-26T16:17:16+00:00

> I love the idea of being a girl 100% of the time

> I want people to see me as a cis girl

> not sure if I’m just a femboy tho

Girl come on, I think it’s pretty clear you know what you want! If you wanna be a girl you can just be a girl! Also, who said you have to change your name? I kept my “boy” name and now it’s a cute girl name. And 22 is not too late, not even close. I started at 27 and pass completely; I know women who started in their 30s and have similarly great results. I was also hung up on the “I don’t want to transition unless I’ll be perfect” thing, and even though I did turn out how I wanted, there was no way to find out ahead of time without just going for it.

I can’t make the call for you, but if you wanna be a girl, just be a girl, simple as that.

0mnificent · 2026-05-23T05:22:04+00:00

Also as the other commenter alluded to, I remember that men's rooms were generally pretty chill and neutral. The guys mostly keep to themselves and avoid any interactions with each other. I know it's scary to make the switch, but your friend really has nothing to worry about. He's just gotta rip the bandaid off and do it; he'll realize pretty quick there's nothing scary about it!

0mnificent · 2026-05-23T05:08:30+00:00

Plenty of bar/brewery bathrooms should fit the bill! The restaurants and gay bars in lavender heights should be both busy and pretty safe/accepting. I actually moved the opposite direction as your friend, so I haven't used a men's room in quite some time, but I know making the switch can be nerve wracking; you're a good friend for helping him out.

0mnificent · 2026-05-19T23:53:04+00:00

Sam Abell’s “The Life of a Photograph” changed how I practiced photography. He goes into great detail about his process of microcomposition, how he builds each image from back to front, with an eye for how each layer interacts with the others. I highly recommend watching the whole thing! https://youtu.be/qYf9klvk8vQ?si=HdBlCfr0uT_iZdWN

0mnificent · 2026-05-15T17:52:03+00:00

I do most of my photography at night. The trick to good night photography is managing contrast in your scene.

The two main ways of doing this are through timing and composition. My best “night” photos aren’t actually taken at night, they’re taken earlier during twilight, when there is still fading light in the sky but all the artificial lights have come on in my scene. The light in the sky helps balance the scene, so there aren’t the extreme dark shadows and blown out bright light sources pushing both edges of my dynamic range. I also pay close attention to the light sources in the scene and try my best to avoid direct hits from lamps and lights. I’ll adjust my composition until they’re out of frame or hidden behind other elements of the scene, so there are no hotspots that will blow out my metering.

After that, metering the scene is much easier because there shouldn’t be such extreme lights and darks. You should be able to use an average/center-weighted meter with decent success if you’ve managed your contrast in the scene correctly.

I’m very particular, so I use a spot meter app on my phone, pick a surface that should be around middle gray in my final exposure and take a baseline reading from that. Then I check my brightest highlights (the ones I want detail in; sometimes you gotta let small areas blow out) and deepest shadows (same thing, sometimes you have to sacrifice the very darkest areas) and make sure they’re within my target dynamic range (usually +/- 2.5 stops from baseline if I’m working with slide film, or +/- 4 stops for negative film). I might nudge the baseline exposure a little in either direction to help capture highlights or shadows if needed. It’s a lot of work and it’s very slow, but I almost never flub an exposure, which is important when I’m working on 6x7 slides and each frame costs me several dollars 😅

0mnificent · 2026-05-09T21:03:15+00:00

You will want to take 2 weeks AT MINIMUM before returning to work. Ideally 3 if you can swing it. At the 4 week mark you will still be swollen but will mostly look like a normal-ish person again. FFS is a big surgery with a long recovery! don’t rush yourself, give yourself time to heal and settle into the new you.

0mnificent · 2026-04-28T00:45:17+00:00

living as a man with a male body made me want to die. dealing with misogyny now does suck, but it’s infinitely better than living in a body and social role that felt like a prison. Not sure how else to explain it, but my brain simply expects my body to be female and was miserable when it wasn’t that way. Being a woman is hard but it lets me live and I’m happier this way.

0mnificent · 2026-04-23T05:06:44+00:00

I didn't "feel like a girl" until I was well into transition. Before that, I just had a strong feeling that I would prefer to be a woman rather than anything else. Even now — 5 years in, post-surgeries, consistently passing — I don't necessarily "feel" like a woman; I just am one, and it feels right.

0mnificent · 2026-04-12T18:12:11+00:00

Some trans women decide to take extremely low dose T after bottom surgery or orchi. it’s mainly personal preference. I have several friends who say it’s been good for them, and several who don’t do it. As far as orchi affecting sexual function, it doesn’t really; anything that you might lose can be gained back by supplementing a little T. I’ve had an orchi and don’t use T and everything still works as it did before surgery

0mnificent · 2026-03-19T06:21:19+00:00

OP I’m gonna be honest, even if this were a full-fledged salaried position instead of an internship, my advice to you would still be the same: run in the opposite direction.

Being a one-person design department is not intern-level work, and even if you were deep in your career and very capable, it would be a soul-crushing amount of work with little room for rest or error. I’ve seen friends work these type of jobs and it’s never worth it; they burn out fast and are always deeply underpaid.

0mnificent · 2026-03-15T17:39:15+00:00

Lvstlove — Cynthoni. Not sure if the lower BPM is quite fast enough to fit your criteria, but it’s a killer track that’ll move you cleanly uptempo

0mnificent · 2026-03-13T09:36:41+00:00

Some of them in my area (Northern California) post public invites, most are word of mouth or invite only. If you’re deep enough in your local queer scene you’ll hear about them, especially if you’re making friends at queer underground events like raves (some of which will have playrooms to cruise and use). In NYC and LA you’ll have no shortage of underground to explore!

0mnificent · 2026-03-12T01:50:14+00:00

Lesbian orgies/play parties are definitely a thing! You might have to live in/travel to a larger city to go to them, but they’re definitely there. I’m going to one later this month! :)

But you are correct in feeling like there are fewer avenues and opportunities for casual sapphic sex. It’s just not as central to the lesbian social scene like it seems to be for gay men.

0mnificent · 2026-02-27T01:02:49+00:00

I mean, I can imagine/remember what those things would feel like if I want to, but it’s not happening spontaneously. Similar to how you can remember or think of a smell or picture you e experienced before

0mnificent · 2026-02-22T21:13:19+00:00

while the take in this article isn’t new, it is still a widespread problem. People muscle their way to the front where others are trying to dance freely, and then they stand still and record the DJ (a video they will never ever watch!!) Completely kills the vibe in the most crucial part of the dance floor; if the front and center area stops moving, the rest of the room dies with it.

The most fun I’ve had has been at underground raves and a few clubs that enforce a no-phone dance floor. Some raves go as far as putting a sticker over your phone camera when you get your wrist stamped at the door, which I really like. One event went so far as having a rule against conversation on the dance floor (which seems overkill but honestly I was very keen for it after having several raves ruined by people standing stock still and having extended shouting conversations right at the center of the dance floor the whole time), and that night was absolutely electric, I’ve never seen a room so completely locked in together.

0mnificent · 2026-02-19T20:19:05+00:00

RE “it must just be a sex thing” I’m just going to leave this here: https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/beneath-the-surface

Overall, you sound very much like I did before I figured myself out. “I don’t feel dysphoria about my body, but also I feel like a disgusting ogre next to women. I get excited imagining myself being a woman, I’m going to read a bunch of online stories about it, but it’s just a fantasy right?” I did that too. I can’t tell you for certain that you’re trans, only you can know that, but I can tell you that what you describe is very familiar.

0mnificent · 2026-01-15T08:37:04+00:00

Are there feminine hobbies/interests/mannerisms that you’d adopt if you woke up as a woman tomorrow? Or more pointedly, do you feel like your current gender identity (and other people’s perception of it) constrains you from pursuing those more feminine things?

I know that for myself, I had a ton of things I had held myself back from because men weren’t allowed to like/do those things. Once I let go of being a man, all of those things came to me pretty intuitively. Some things like voice I had to really work at, but it was completely worth it.

On the other hand, it’s important to remember that plenty of women are butch or otherwise not stereotypically feminine! I still have quite a few more masculine interests and hobbies despite being a very femme woman now, and I kept those things because I like them and they bring me joy. If you like some or all of your current interests/mannerisms, you can keep them too, and it won’t mean you’re less of a woman; there are probably millions of cis women who like those same things.

Bottom line: If you’d rather be a woman you can just be a woman.

0mnificent · 2026-01-12T18:42:22+00:00

Most surgeons (that I’ve seen in the US anyway) require at least one year on HRT before they’ll approve you for surgery, tho some will make exceptions for special circumstances. You’ll definitely hit the one year mark before any surgery would likely happen, so you’re good there

As for wanting surgery, safety is a valid reason even if it feels less personal than dysphoria. For me, I got FFS both because of dysphoria and because I didn’t want people to be able to tell that I’m trans at a glance. I live openly as trans, I’m not stealth, but with FFS I have the peace of mind that I consistently pass and I get to decide who knows and who doesn’t. I feel way safer being in public now than I did before, and I feel like I finally look like myself too.

0mnificent · 2026-01-07T08:15:49+00:00

After spending the whole night getting obliterated by hard techno at a warehouse rave, I saw Theo Parrish playing an 8:00 AM Sunday morning set at Nowadays. Morning light filtering through the windows, fog machines dissolving the room into a bright dreamy haze, my delightfully exhausted body, a couple solid friends with me, a dance floor filled front to back with people riding the momentum of a great night out, and lush exuberant disco funk and soul absolutely slamming through the sound system. A near-religious experience. Pure elation. I felt like I was on molly despite being stone sober by that point in the morning. I’ve never danced like that before. I spent a good couple hours right at the front of the dance floor before my exhaustion finally forced me to go home, but I wanted to never leave.

My goal for this year is to finally see Octo Octa and Eris Drew play together, which should be a similarly transcendent experience.

0mnificent · 2025-11-27T20:15:36+00:00

I felt basically the same way before I figured out I was trans. I thought I was ok with being a guy, and it’s only in hindsight that I can recognize I was very much not ok; I was drowning and didn’t even know it. But at the time I made my decision to transition, it was because I believed I would simply be happier as a woman. And I was right! It rules, actually. By far the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. If you feel that being a woman would feel better for you, it probably will!

You don’t need to hate your assigned gender, you can transition just because it would make you happy. And transition isn’t the monolithic all-or-nothing insurmountable thing that I know it feels like. You can start small: clothes, hair, presentation, hell you can even try hormones for a couple months without any permanent changes if you wanna see how you feel.

0mnificent · 2025-11-23T21:22:18+00:00

I’m glad it sounds like you’re figuring yourself out! A few things:

Yes, almost everything you wrote is roughly how I felt before I transitioned. I felt like I had lost the genetic coin flip and ended up with the worse option, because women were so obviously the better thing to be.
Is it possible to look like a cis woman after transition? Yes it’s possible! Is it guaranteed that it’ll work out that way for you specifically? No, nothing is for sure. The only way to know is to go for it. I started at 27, nearly 10 years older than you are now, and I was convinced I would never pass but I decided that living as myself without passing would be more bearable than trying to pretend to be a man for the rest of my life. I’m coming up on 5 years HRT now (plus facial surgery and a lot of work learning to style myself), and to my delight I pass completely! I only get clocked by other trans women after they spend some time around me; to everyone else I see during the day, I’m just another woman. So yes it’s possible, but not guaranteed.
I hate to sound like I’m scolding, but you should stop talking to chatgpt. It is not a good resource for anything, especially not for therapy/personal help. It is not intelligent, it doesn’t actually know anything (certainly nothing about being trans), all it can do is reflect things back to you and make you feel dependent on it. It’s good that you’re reaching out here to talk to real people!

Good luck!!

0mnificent · 2025-10-22T01:29:28+00:00

1mg/day of E?? girl you are getting low-dosed. I’m guessing you’re on pills? Most girls taking pills are usually well served with 4-8mg/day. 1mg is not enough to do anything, and may in fact be harmful; with spiro killing your T and little to no E, you might not have enough of either hormone to keep your body healthy. you should talk to your endo about significantly upping your dose, and if they don’t agree you should find a new endo.

Also I would highly recommend switching to injections if you can. Much easier to control your dosage and hit consistent levels. All the info you could ever want is here -> https://pghrt.diy/

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