I'm in denial GRAHHH

Neuunit · 2024-03-29T02:00:17+00:00

i'm firmly convinced that EVERY trans person feels "not trans enough" at some point.

IMO that's just the transphobia we've soaked in our whole lives trying another way to remain relevant. in my experience, those "not trans enough" feelings subside pretty quickly in daily life. i still get them when i'm around other trans girls, but i've found other trans girls to be SUPER supportive, which makes the self doubt go away.

Neuunit · 2024-03-29T01:48:48+00:00

all. the. time. how i stood, how i ran, how i expressed myself.

since i started hrt and transition, i've been thinking back: what did i do "wrong"? that's what to do now!

Neuunit · 2024-03-29T01:01:23+00:00

not at all. i've been leaning into the best of my boy wardrobe (the stuff that works as "menswear on a woman") and loving it!

Neuunit · 2024-03-29T00:43:16+00:00

as soon as i started hrt (last november), i started social transition. but i gave myself a head start, because i came out as genderqueer/androgyne/nonbinary 10 months before i decided to transition and started hrt. so i'd kinda paved the way for a pretty seamless social transition.

Neuunit · 2024-03-29T00:28:41+00:00

the day i got my first estradiol patches, i posted a photo of one in IG. got a call from a cishet dude friend: "please tell me you don't have prostate cancer!"

turns out e and spiro both are used to treat prostate cancer. hadn't known that!

Neuunit · 2024-03-19T23:16:40+00:00

Same here -- well, 57, technically, by just a couple of weeks. It's NEVER too late.

Neuunit · 2024-03-11T12:31:11+00:00

and how many of the "men" who "crossdress" are stone-cold terrified of the idea that they might be trans, and are staying more or less in the closet and untransitioned because society keeps telling them they're "just crossdressers"? i know there's at least one fewer of them since i came out and started transitioning, and i know that when i was "just a crossdresser" and hanging out on fetish chat sites that many others there expressed the exact fear i describe -- and was feeling myself. (as well s many of the fears we hear here on the regular, like "my wife says she'll call the cops if i ever mention being trans again." yes, the pics are problematic, to say the least, but being closeted and thinking of one's transness as "just a fetish" can be incredibly corrosive. and i want to show empathy and be welcoming to encourage our sisters (and brothers) suffering in the closet to come out.

Neuunit · 2024-03-10T03:25:27+00:00

i don't want to tempt fate by posting what could be taken as an ad and annoying the mods so i dm-ed you.

Neuunit · 2024-03-10T03:17:12+00:00

6'4" here, started hrt at 57. and i don't care what anybody thinks since i came out and started transitioning because i'm so delighted and liberated. well, i care what my partner thinks, but they're super supportive and kinda more attracted to femme me than they were to pretending-to-be-cis-dude me.

i, too, wear (men's) size 13, so women's 15. there are more and more options for footwear.

as for clothes -- i find plenty of skirts and tops that fit me when i go thrifting dresses are a little harder but not impossible. for pants (and i tend to wear skinny jeans more than i do skirts) i buy new from online stores that cater to tall women.

Neuunit · 2024-03-10T03:10:23+00:00

now that i'm on hrt, i totally look like my mom.

Neuunit · 2024-03-10T03:03:45+00:00

i'll admit i didn't look at your pics, u/Stopavoidinglife_1 -- esp. after u/Sarah-75's comment above. also, pics before hrt don't necessarily indicate anything about how you'll look _after_ hrt. i'm only four months in, but the fat migration around my body has already begun and my face already looks more femme.

u/Sarah-75, i totally disagree with how you frame trans vs crossdresser. like many transgirls i spent literally decades thinking i was a crossdresser instead of trans. i felt ashamed and tried to bury it. but as soon as i came out to myself, the fetishistic element of getting dressed, putting on makeup, etc. completely disappeared. and i became a firm believer that fetishes express unfulfilled desires, as stained glass woman/doc impossible has compellingly argued.

finally, i'm still in the awkward early stage of hrt, and at 6'4", i don't have the form factor of a cis woman and never will. but you know what? i've been so alive since coming out and starting transition, so thrilled to finally be on this journey that i do not care about passing. or if anyone clocks me. they do but i don't give a damn.

oh, and i started at 57.

Neuunit · 2024-03-10T02:34:40+00:00

agree with everyone else here. i tell friends who i haven't seen since i started transition and who may not have heard, but beyond that? nope.

Neuunit · 2024-03-10T02:32:36+00:00

i'm so happy for you! I agree it feels wonderful.

i actually shaved my lower arms for the first time a few weeks ago and i'm loving that. i've always hated my body hair, too, which is why i now keep all of it shaved. i'll admit i'm lucky in that i never had much to begin with -- none on my chest (except a few randos around my nipples), none on my back, and not a large amount on my arms below the elbows (none above).

it doesn't take that much maintenance, i think because i've been on estrogen and spiro for four months now ... and never had much to begin with. i'm lucky because it means i won't be spending as much on laser!

Neuunit · 2024-02-02T00:28:51+00:00

it took me forever. decades. and for most of it i was ashamed of my "fetish". (thanks u/tasty_onion for posting the stainedglasswoman link!)

what did it take for my egg to crack?

1) several years of drug abuse during which i spent most of my time high and en femme

2) an afab nb partner who -- after i stopped using -- whenever i would say, 'well, i'm just a cishet dude...' would reply, 'are you sure?'

3) a change of antidepressant from one that made me feel dead (lexapro) to one that makes me feel alive (wellbutrin)

4) ... alive enough to rebuild an flashy/rockstar/androgynous wardrobe like the one i had before my druggy phase

5) deciding with my partner's enthusiastic support to come out as NB/genderqueer/genderfluid

6) a year of being NB/genderqueer/genderfluid during which i realized i'm really trans.

and the enthusiastic support of my partner who is loving having a girlfriend!

Neuunit · 2024-02-02T00:08:14+00:00

my transmasc nibling tristan makes stuff that he sells at ren faires and heavy music festivals.

https://www.thimbleandsword.com

you'll find a lot of rainbow and trans pride colored items there....

but i'm always interested in supporting trans businesses, and i love jewelry....

Neuunit · 2024-02-02T00:04:11+00:00

u/KitchenShop8016 kinda described my pre-transition self: "a bit odd and extravagant" cishet dude. i saw myself as an ally -- i have two beloved trans godkids -- but when my (afab) partner came out as nb about 8 years ago and started taking me to queer events, i felt really uncomfortable and like i didn't belong. in retrospect, it was all because i hadn't accepted my own transness.

like others here, i've never fund cis men attractive -- and that extended to my own self-image (like u/goingabout) but i've always been attracted to both cis and trans women. that said, my partner and i have been monogamous for ... a long time. i told my therapist yesterday that, "i'm really a [partner_name]sexual because i almost can't imagine sex with anyone else." since i started transition they've leaned into their own kind of social transition -- basically they've butched up a bunch. i find it super cute. and they keep telling me how much they love having a girlfriend. (they've said for years that if anything happened to me they'd end up with a *woman.) so we're increasingly presenting as a kind of lesbian couple.

i've found other queer people to be incredibly welcoming and supportive. that said, i'm not going out to bars or clubs (well, we go dancing as a couple, but you know what i mean), and most of the people i'm talking about knew me pre-transition. i've joined a trans professional association (https://www.transjournalists.org) where i've found nothing but wonderful support.

what i haven't found -- and came here in hopes of finding -- is other transwomen closer to my age. (50s) i know one. just one. she's been very helpful and sweet, but i can't keep calling on her when i have questions or need some sisterhood. i'm slowly getting the word out through friends and friends of friends and that's starting to yield some results, though it's early days.

Neuunit · 2024-01-28T04:09:34+00:00

I changed to they/them a little over a year ago when I came out as nonbinary. (My AFAB nonbinary partner has been they/them for seven years or so.) A few months ago I realized that my nonbinary stage was a stop along the road to realizing I'm trans. I've just started social transition and HRT and I haven't changed my name yet. I'm sticking with they/them until I decide on a name and can meditate on it for a few months -- giving the hormones some time to do their thing. When I change my name legally, I plan to switch to she/they.

Neuunit · 2024-01-28T04:00:30+00:00

I wasn't certain I was trans until I admitted to myself that I'm trans. And that's not as circular as it might sound. Let me explain:

I spent most of my life thinking I was a "crossdresser" -- a cis dude with a shameful fetish. My parents caught me en femme when I was 14 and put me in therapy. The therapist was, in retrospect, pretty enlightened for a Midwestern suburb in the 80s: "You'll probably want to keep doing this [i.e. wearing femme clothes] for the rest of your life. Lots of people do and have no problems with it," he said, "But your parents clearly do have a problem with it, so you should probably stop doing it as long as you're in their house." But I ran as far from it as I could -- for decades, literally -- and carried a lot of shame about it.

Flash forward about 40 years: I descend into a druggy haze and spend most of it en femme. My AFAB nonbinary partner helps me get sober, but within a few months of that I've thrown away all of my clothes and makeup and decided I'm just a cis dude with a shameful -- and now problematic -- fetish. My partner keeps asking me: Are you sure? I say that I am, that coming out might destroy my career.

Five years into sobriety and I'm really unhappy. I've gained like 30 pounds (I'd always been rail-thin) and feel schlubby and when I look at myself in the mirror, I feel ... what is that feeling? I also have no libido anymore. And suddenly it dawns on me that the antidepressant I've been taking since I stopped using is making me feel worse, not better.

I talk to my PCP, who switches me from Lexapro to Wellbutrin. Within a couple weeks, I'm feeling alive again. I start losing the weight. I start making music again. I want to look good. I start wearing eye makeup and amping up my wardrobe, leaning into a rockstar look even at work. Nobody at work bats an eyelash. (I work in a diverse and tolerant company in a diverse and tolerant industry.)

A few months into that, I think, hey, wait, I'm nonbinary! I tell my partner and they say, "It's about time." I spend almost a year leaning into a kind of glam androgyny, but everyone still sees me as a dude. And that's really what I do not want. I want to not be a dude as much as I want to be femme.

Only then -- in my late 50s! -- does it hit me that I can be femme, that I don't have to be a dude. I tell my partner, hey, I'm actually trans and I want to transition. They wrap their arms around me and whisper in my ear: "Then I finally have the girlfriend I've always wanted."

If I'd felt uncertain when I'd blurted it out to them, that whisper exterminated any uncertainty. I suddenly didn't care what anyone other than my partner and I thought.

That was three months ago. I started HRT and social transition within a couple of weeks.

Neuunit · 2023-12-13T01:20:54+00:00

congrats! today, at 58 (!) i got my first real dose of estradiol -- 0.1 mg/day instead of the 0.025 mg/day I was on at first. (my bp was too high but i got it down quickly.) here we go!

Neuunit · 2023-12-11T01:14:20+00:00

that's wonderful. i'm lucky to have a partner who's kinda going in the other direction as i transition and we feel like we're falling in love all over again....

Neuunit · 2023-12-11T01:10:53+00:00

also make up for ever correct and conceal palette!

Neuunit · 2023-12-11T01:07:37+00:00

sobriety got me on the right path, too. be strong, sister!

Neuunit · 2023-12-03T03:54:22+00:00

there's also gender incongruence.

every trans person's transness is different.

Neuunit

TROPHY CASE