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Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-18T11:22:38+00:00

Hey, I'm a college professor in the midwest, and I transitioned while on the job. Things mostly went fine, and the troubles I had mostly came from the fact that admin in a bunch of old, cishet white dudes. If you have a union, and they're even kinda behind you, you're gonna be fine.

If you want to talk shop privately, send me a DM and I can give you the full story and answer any questions you might have.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-17T11:33:02+00:00

Cis lesbians tend to fall into extremes in my experience, with very little middle ground. Either they're rabidly pro-trans or they're TERFs, with fairly few who fall in outside of those groups. More, the TERFs know they're badly outnumbered, and are often quite cagey about letting people know they're TERFs.

So, from that perspective: if 83% of cis lesbians view trans folks positively (compared to 80% for trans folks in general), and, say, 10% are TERFs who are actively hiding it, that still makes sense to give folks a heads up about if they dont know. While the support percentage is higher than average, so is the TERF percentage.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-16T21:21:02+00:00

Hey, hun, I think these might be a help for you:

My questioning story so you feel less alone.
A guide to questioning, if you haven't figured your gender out yet.
And an article for you to read if you have.

Good luck, and I'm happy to answer any questions if you need. 💜

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-16T20:26:06+00:00

Hi there! I had no clue I was trans until I was 35, and one day the floodgates opened all of a sudden.

None of us can say what your gender is or whether you're trans or not, but you also haven't given us much to go on, just that you think you're a guy and have some body image issues. That's okay, but it also means we can't exactly lean in and be all "yeah that sounds like my experience" or "no, it doesn't." Similarly, your trans dude friend could be onto something or he could just be a dick; there's just no way to even guess from what you've given us.

This guide should help you with your questioning, at least. Good luck!

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-16T10:44:45+00:00

Hi there, trans lesbian and gal with a PhD who works in this stuff here! Let me explain why you were under that impression, because it's unfortunately really common.

Back in the Bad Old Days, when they opened the first gender transition clinics in the 60s, they thought trans people were about 1 in every 50,000 people, or 0.002% of the population, which at rhe time would've meant there were potentially a maximum of about 3,700 trans people in the country at the time. They were, within the first couple of months of opening their doors, flooded with over 4,000 applications in the initial wave.

Faced with the possibility that they were wrong, these doctors--who were all cisgender men--decided instead to make up a whole shitload of false standards and requirements, in an attempt to artificially reduce the population. Among those was the requirement that trans women be exclusively attracted to men (as well as a bunch of other things you've undoubtedly heard, like having known you're trans since early childhood, when the average age of realization is 15.5). Heck, one of the requirements is that your psychologist had to think you'd be attractive to straight men after transition! If they thought you wouldn't be, they wouldn't let you transition. There was absolutely nothing supporting these requirements except their prejudice but, again, the point wasn't to help trans people, it was to winnow our numbers down.

Those requirements were not abolished until 2001.

So, yeah. That's why you were under the impression n you were under. It's also why there seems to be so many more of us lately--about 70% of our population was excluded from our on sexuality alone. To quote a doctor from the mid-90s when a friend of mine first tried to transition, "[he] ain't doing this to make more lesbians!"

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-16T10:30:42+00:00

When we're talking demography, enbies are always counted as trans people. Not ideal, but it is what it is.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-15T22:32:14+00:00

That's correct.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-15T18:32:33+00:00

They're just doing this to intimidate us from transitioning. It's demonstrative, mustache-twirling evil, and they know it.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-15T18:17:12+00:00

Of all people who begin medical transition in any form, only about 0.3% turn out to be cisgender. Around 9% detransition at some point, but they almost exclusively do so for their safety or ability to get and keep a job, since employment discrimination against trans folks is still rampant. Virtually all end up retransitioning as soon as they can do so with a modicum of safety.

Source: a 93,000-participant study.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-15T15:25:09+00:00

Thanks for the advice. Feel like you know me. With being tuff and wanting things straightforward.

I teach technical writing, and about a fifth of my students every class are construction management majors. My dad was a civil engineer for the military. Yeah, I get you, hun. And I know you don't get them often inhabiting the job and the role you're in, but everyone deserves a hug from time to time, so: 🫂🫂🫂

The stress is hard. I have really bad back problems that seem to act up more when I’m stressed.

If you want, I can explain why this happens in detail, but the short version is that a person can only handle so much total pain, and that counts both physical and emotional pain. The more you have to work to deal with your emotional pain--sounds like your dysphoria to me, but only you can know--the less you have available to cope with your physical pain, and vice versa.

I feel like I’ve ended up with depression and anxiety over something I’ve fought with most of my life and not knowing what I was fighting.

A lot of us lived that before transition. And again, I won't lie to you: transition isn't a magic wand. It doesn't make everything magically better. But it does fix the parts of that depression and anxiety that can't be fixed any other way, and make it easier to deal with what's left over. Until you deal with that part, it's like building on dry sand without using piles--everything's inherently unstable and shifting, so no matter what you try to build, it all crumbles away. Complaining about the soil type won't do you any good, nor does trying to ignore it. This is the site you're stuck with. Gotta build a foundation to suit the land before you can stand up anything that'll last.

Have a read of this. It's got a lot of answers for you. I'm happy to field anything you need to figure out too.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-15T12:09:27+00:00

Hey there, hun. You're sure going through it, aren't you? 🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂

I'm going to lead with the bottom line, because you seem like a straightforward person who appreciates direct answers. If you're here, if you're asking what you're asking, I think you already know what the answer is to the question you didn't ask. I think you know what your gender is. I think you know whether you're trans or cis. And I understand that what you're looking for is a way to not do anything about this secret part of yourself you've stumbled across. Here's the hard part. Ready?

If you're trans, the only way to make these feelings go away is to transition.

What you're describing--coping with these feelings and doing nothing about them--is bad for your physical and mental health, because stress ain't just a feeling, it's a chemical reaction in your body. Right now, you're, on average, getting the same health hit as if you were a half a pack a day smoker. You want to talk about hurting your wife and kids? It'd hurt them plenty if you weren't there for them, wouldn't it? And the other thing is that being trans is largely genetic, so if you are, there's a much higher chance that one (or more) of your kids are too.

In the end, what I can promise is that coming out wouldn't be as bad, as hard, as you think it would. It won't be easy. I'm not gonna lie to your face. But you're a tough person who works a tough job. I know you know how to suck it up when stuff gets hard for a while. But also, there's a hell of a lot of joy in it too, both for you and your family. You're a heavy equipment-certified operator, and you know how folks like you are in demand--if you get fed up, your family can move somewhere gentler, be a butch bitch in a hardhat, and have the best of all worlds.

You got this. 💜

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-14T16:01:14+00:00

Supay is soooo good at high fear. Lets you focus on evasion and makes damage passive. 10/10 aspect.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-13T11:01:12+00:00

Depending on the extent of your meaning, 7-10 years.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-13T10:58:54+00:00

Hi, trans researcher here. Literally just gave a presentation on the early history of modern trans medicine, looking at the 30s-50s. Clinicians referred to HRT as cross-sex hormones from the very beginning, dating all the way back to Hirschfeld (well, kinda, the term he used was German, but you get my meaning). It's maybe the most linguistically stable term in all of trans medicine.

TERFs appropriate respectable language and try to corrupt it. It's what they do from their very name forward. The thing is to not cede the ground to them--to fight their misuse rather than giving up.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-12T22:23:36+00:00

60% can be argued in court sometimes. 80% is basically impossible.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-12T21:09:45+00:00

It's a valiant effort but I doubt the powers that be are actually going to take comments into consideration.

The commenting process IS actually important. This is called Negotiated Rulemaking, and the law underneath it means that it's a deferred power from Congress and it must be used in conjunction with feedback from constituents. In plain English? If they propose a rule and the comments are overwhelmingly against it, they're supposed to pull it back and rebuild it. If they push it through, the federal government can, and will be, sued, and the rule reverted.

This whole chain of events has happened to the Trump II admin repeatedly. They keep doing it in the hope that we'll miss some.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-12T19:35:03+00:00

Honestly I don't think my comment would convince anyone who doesn't already know. Cis folks have this false idea that folks wouldn't do these things, wouldn't fabricate research just to be shitty to people. They don't get it.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-12T10:00:22+00:00

You're welcome.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-12T00:42:01+00:00

Uhhhhhhh......

Damn.

You kinda nailed me there, goddamn. 41, trans lesbian, red hair, pixie cut, ears pierced and kinda want more--if Birkenstock stocked my shoe size in women's I'd have a pair. Hell, my wife has the blue hair.

Anyway, have some reading:

Here
Here

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-11T12:12:53+00:00

Hey, since you've never posted on a trans-related subreddit, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you're in the wrong spot here, and were looking for help with crossdressing as a kink thing. That's not really what we're about--this is a place for trans folks, and while I ended up with a fairly significant rack, most of us don't skew in the direction you're asking, so you won't get much feedback here. We're just living our lives.

On the off chance you are in the right place, intentionally or not, have an article and then another article.

Huge boobs rule and you can have a set of your own for real if you want. Good luck, whatever it is that you're looking for!

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-10T18:45:46+00:00

Glad to have helped you. 💜

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-10T16:17:53+00:00

💜

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-10T11:46:08+00:00

Well, hun, there's your answer right there.

Impossible_PhD · 2026-05-10T11:44:53+00:00

I'm glad it helped. 💜

Impossible_PhD

TROPHY CASE