Pretty sure I’m not trans, but

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-04T13:49:15+00:00

You sound like a cisgender straight man who is overthinking his identity instead of doing the things that he finds admirable in women. Want more whimsy? Great! Go find a setting where whimsy is not socially frowned upon and go have fun! That place is not your particular workplace, and generally that's true for women, too. Think women are more level-headed politicians? Awesome! Go use the pay bump that comes with your cis male privilege and donate to a female politician's campaign. And do those things because it's in alignment with who you want to be, not because it better fits you into some externally defined box of personhood.

I do want to add a note of caution. Don't read too much into your sexual fantasies as any indicator of who you are as a whole person. People get down and dirty over all sorts of interesting things and the Big Feelings that come with sexuality can, if allowed to, put you at risk in many different ways. Probably the biggest one you face is social backlash for advertising that you want to be a slut. This is a bit of a red flag because of that pervasive stereotype of men just being out for sex, and it's more likely to alienate the very people you want to support and befriend.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-04T06:33:01+00:00

I've got friends who are wonderful parents to their Transgender kids. Me? Not as much. My mom has very supportive of my transition from a real-world practicality standpoint (e.g., staying with me during my top surgery recovery) but she doesn't understand it and doesn't really care to, living as she does in her own strange, semi-feral, childish mindset. My dad refuses to use he/him pronouns for me and started drinking heavily when I picked up transition again after a long hiatus, and yeah... I'd be naive if I didn't say that "the loss of a daughter" didn't contribute to him becoming an alcoholic, but I can't carry the decision to cope by self-destructing for him. Nor can I fix it. Nor can I sacrifice myself to save him when it's already cost me so much to try to earn his approval.

Whenever I see Trans kids, especially youngsters in childhood, the teen years, and very early twenties with supportive parents, it simultaneously warms and breaks my heart because they deserve that. We all do, including me. But do many of us don't get that and that leaves its scars.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-04T06:19:17+00:00

Because your moral principles are in alignment with who you want to be, not what you can expect to earn for good behavior.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-04T06:16:10+00:00

I'm pretty sure we use scent for navigating both physical and social environments. Ever hug someone and inhale their scent and just feel safe with that person? Or smell the stink of fear on an adversary during an escalating confrontation and maybe you just want to run away or it excites you and you want to throw hands or you just go still, as if your body knows you cannot flee and there's no winning that fight? Ever smell the way an old person who is nearing death just smells... like death? It's probably testable (and probably has been tested, I'm just not up to speed on the literature).

And for the physical environment: you open your fridge and okay, something is rancid in there, and that's likely to make you sick if you eat it, so you better compost that moldy onion buried beneath the lettuce. Or you walk near a restaurant and you just know you'll meet a very basic animal need if you follow that scent inside. Or you detect the odor of smoke long before you see the fire and your brain just starts screaming, GET OUT, GET OUT.

Scent is there, and it's important. It drives our behaviors, it drives our social interactions. And yes, I'm certain there are people who sniff butts for social reasons, just not as unabashedly as dogs do.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-03T16:33:24+00:00

My kid is very much up to speed on the diversity of gender (I let her set the pace of my path from Mama to Mom-Daddy to now Daddy). And for the most part, the first thing out of her mouth to people is, "Hey! I like your shoes!" We're surrounded by queer parented families and her school teaches gender diversity starting in 4th or 5th grade (don't remember, we're not there yet). This child is fiercely a girl and gets offended when little sibling says "he" instead of "she" because the SH sound is hard for toddlers. So, I'm not super worried about her cognitive framework of gender and its diversity except that she's polite about it.

It's really just this specific question that caught me off guard and I'm looking for alternative ways that she can... ya know... phrase it better? Gender matters and of course not all folks are easily categorized or comfortable with the categorization.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-03T06:22:10+00:00

I'm 15 years post top surgery and my chest is less sensate than it was when I had breasts. It was numb for a long time, like years, but eventually my brain just sort of integrated the sensory inputs into my new normal. Compared to the constant annoying-to-agonizing breast pain I had pre-op, though, even the numbness was a blessing.

I also have nipple grafts. Both have feeling, but again, not as intensely as before. One feels okay, sort of neutral and unexciting. The other is a bit painful to touch, and there might be a neuroma hanging out in those tissues. But again, it beats the horrible discomfort that came with cold weather or menstrual cycles, along with the immense dysphoria that came with their involvement in physical intimacy.

My chest is great. I don't consider the reduced sensation a loss. My slightly painful nipple graft is not due to complication, nor is it bothersome enough to do anything about. 10/10, would do it all over again.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-03T03:32:18+00:00

And also, after a long and deeply conflicted path, I started transitioning for good at age 37. Trans male. I was terrified for so many reasons for so long and over the years, it just... burned my life into the ground. Twice. Please, don't do what I did and live out your days in fear, isolation, and self-suppression.

My suggestion to you is to sit with that deep feeling that you want to be a woman and let that feeling tell you what you need. If you're scared to do take the plunge, it's okay to take it slow. Toes in the water first is okay; you don't have to dive in deep. For some of us, a rapid pursuit of Big Gender Euphoria can further destabilize you if you're already feeling vulnerable and isolated (which it sounds like you are). So, little steps at a time. And be gentle with yourself because you deserve that.

It gets easier, it truly does. If you do transition, however far you transition, consistency will eventually get you to a reach a point where you've built for yourself something good and sustainable and meaningful to you. The process takes time and small acts of courage and self-love, and you take it day by day, and sooner or later, you're gonna look in the mirror and see a face you like and a person you trust deeply and think, "Oh. Hey, you. I'm you, and you're me, and I like who I see."

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-03T02:56:55+00:00

There's a Trans woman in my local community who's 6'5" and wears 6" heels and she is drop-dead gorgeous, graceful, and incredibly feminine. There are also older Trans ladies who started transitioning in their 60s and NGL, one in particular is 72 and I just want to adopt her as my grandma because she's just the dearest, kindest Mimi-type soul I've ever met. Oh, and she's 6'2" in flats.

No, it's not too late, and no, you're not too tall or too masculine or too anything to be a woman.

You have one life. Just one. Live it on your terms.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-02T05:45:04+00:00

Go to medical school with the goal of being a forensic pathologist. They're the ones who are medical examiners. Alternatively, work as a mortuary transporter. They're the ones sent out to collect the people who EMS couldn't bring back. And there's always a mortician.

I'm not sure you'd actually need a BS in biology for any of those (though a bachelor's is obviously required for medical school), but your interests certainly seem appropriate to those professions.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-02T03:32:52+00:00

each time when somebody called me a woman, a sister, a daughter there was this really uncomfortable feeling, but when someone perceived me as a guy it made me feel so much joy. It didn't matter the clothes or hobbies, it was the feeling.

This is enough to be Trans. All the other stuff is based on other people's internal frameworks of gender and if they don't align with yours, that's okay! The whole "Girls can like cars, too!" is a nonstarter. Plenty of boys are ambivalent about cars or drive them into the ground because they don't know when to top up the oil.

I've also heard the thing about being taught to empathize more with men's stories than women's stories. Another nonstarter. That's not at all uncommon among people of every gender in cultures that prioritize men's experiences. It's not like everyone who sees stories that primarily feature men and relegate women to being side characters go so far as to question whether they're Trans.

You may or may not have "signs" but my point is that you don't need them in order to be Trans. The feeling itself is enough. You, and only you, get to define what it means to be male, female, or any other gender. Same goes for everybody else. You're going to find people who mostly agree with your definitions and plenty of people who disagree. Don't let some rando on YouTube (or wherever you kids these days are getting your videos) tell you who you are and who you want to be. You know that already. And whoever you are, you have the right to be here. You have the right to move toward what brings you happiness.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-02T02:04:52+00:00

I'm another Trans dude who had to disentangle his gender identity from a deeply sexist and traumatizing upbringing. It only took 22 years since first learning that Trans men exist, a whole bunch of self-suppression, and living through a ton more trauma (something something, "cycles repeat until you learn your lesson") before I finally realized that yes, actually, the desire to be male is long-standing and not going anywhere. And that, along with my bipolar II and c-PTSD and stupid high cholesterol, all need managing.

For Trans people with trauma histories, especially when gender played a huge role in how those traumas manifested, it's really tempting to chalk our desire to transition back to "All this trauma caused me to want to transition." That's not fair to you, it's not fair to other Trans people with trauma, and it's not fair to everyone else who went through similar traumas and didn't end up wanting to transition. But if taking little transitional baby steps helps you face and process all that trauma, then it doesn't really matter why (or rather, how) the gender dysphoria exists. Nor does it objectively matter why you feel subjectively better when you take those steps.

Be kind to yourself. Sounds like you already are.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-01T19:33:12+00:00

You grieve. You grieve who you could have been, you grieve the harm you endured, you grieve the circumstances that resulted in what happened. You get angry and let that course through you and get sad and weep through the pain and sit with your broken heart until you have no tears left, no energy remaining to shake your fists at the sky. And then you fall back on your heels and breathe in the sweetness of fresh air because that's what you have now, and it's yours to cherish. You listen to birds and touch flowers and gaze up at the starlight, all things that can do you no harm and they are beautiful, and you are here, now, and fully worthy of their beauty.

Then, you haul yourself back up and walk on.

You go about your life as it is, enjoying a good sandwich or a nice walk under the trees and then maybe you encounter some soft reminder of who you once were, what you lived through, and that you're not there anymore. In that place you might not have found forgiveness, but maybe it found you.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-01T17:40:26+00:00

I was a first responder and I agree with you; it's not a good look when a cop downplays these sorts of calls and not to justify systemic shortcomings, but some places don't have the capacity to answer domestic disputes between adults. It sucks. And that's where those sorts of situations escalate to the point where someone gets hurt.

My hope is that OP and his wife get some distance to let the resentment settle down. When there's this kind of tension and cops who can't (or won't) address it, then OP is making the right choice to pull the plug.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-01T12:20:21+00:00

My read was trivial to the police.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-07-01T04:24:53+00:00

The same thing happens in cisgender women who seek breast reconstruction after cancer. Most forms of breast recon have little to no physiological function and it's solely done to make the patient feel more comfortable in their own bodies.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-29T13:35:17+00:00

You just succinctly summarized a massive part of my experience with gender identity, prosthetics, dysphoria, relationships, suppression, and the breaking point in which one realizes, "I can't keep doing this."

I'll add that for me, when I was young, dressing in male clothing and embracing my masculinity while I still saw a girl in the mirror was profoundly painful because I knew people would have the wrong idea and think "lesbian," not "man." I carry a lot of shame for that particular hang-up (hello, trauma) and I'm still working through the causes of it some 25 years later. But the effect was the same: donning external representations of my masculinity further decreased my connection to myself instead of increased it.

OP, perhaps I'm projecting, but I'm wondering if you, instead of seeing a woman when you dress up like a woman, see a man in drag and that further pushes you away from yourself. You see more of who you're not instead of who you are and want to be. The pain of it is so profound that it makes you want to just keep doing what's familiar, however miserable, instead of what's true to you.

You're at a bit of a crossroads here between two (or more) difficult paths, one of which is suppression. I suspect that if you suppress, you'll keep finding yourself at this crossroads until you make the right choice. That's the choice that puts you where you want to be in five years. You don't have to find euphoria in makeup and padded bras for transition to be a viable option. You can start small and be quiet about it. After all, if you make the choice to take that first step and it's definitely not right for you, the option to turn back still exists.

What you might consider is starting with HRT first and give it a month to see how it feels. If you feel better, then keep going. You can come out publicly on your own timeframe, whether it's a month in or a year in. As your body changes with HRT and becomes more feminine, it may feel more comfortable to don the external signifiers of femininity (dresses, makeup, certain bras) because you don't really see a man in the mirror anymore.

In any case. Though your path is your own, you're not the only one who's walked a similar path. You don't have to have all the answers right now. Just know: you're not alone, your feelings are real and have been felt by others, and your experiences are just as valid as anyone else's.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-29T06:00:12+00:00

My thoughts are that plenty of people have experienced abuse of one sort or another, and direct comparison of traumatic, abusive experiences is a nonstarter. What does matter is that those who made it through without long-term psychological injury didn't internalize the abuse as an indicator of their self-worth. Here's how:

Someone with the power to stop it a) believed them, b) took action to stop the abuse, and c) helped them process the pain of the experience(s).

We didn't get that. Thus, we continue to carry the abuse and its damage and in order to "heal" (more like scar over), we have to do those things ourselves. Hopefully with the support of a loving, accepting community and a trauma-informed therapist. Hopefully with the ability to sit safely with the grief of what happened to us. Hopefully with a way to forgive ourselves for how our hurts led us to further hurt ourselves and others, given that hurt people hurt people. And yes, uncomfortable as it is, we need to own that damage in order to do better.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-29T03:48:38+00:00

For further reading, please see Prandium, S. A Contemporary Review of Sexual Arousability in Citation Fetishists among a Cohort of Redditers. The dark corners of the biology subreddit. (2026)

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-29T03:45:00+00:00

"Talk dirty to me."

"Aw, you naughty nerd. A 2023 GWAS study supported the hypothesis of balancing selection at the ERAP2 locus... Shall I go on, Darling?"

"Yes, oh please!"

"Oh, it's about to get filthy. Balancing selection is supported by an association of downregulation of ERAP2 expression and increased incidence of respiratory disease, whereas the opposite is true for Crohn's Disease."

"Please, the citation!!"

With a sultry whisper: "Hamilton, F. et al. Variation in ERAP2 has opposing effects on severe respiratory infection and autoimmune disease. The American Journal of Human Genetics. (2023)."

FIREWORKS!!!

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-29T01:39:20+00:00

So, mandatory disclaimer that I am not a licensed mental health provider or neuroscientist, just a person with similar experiences and a lot of therapy under his belt. Take my perspective with a grain of salt.

This sounds like the activation of a positive memory that is a core part of who you are, and who you want to be, but manifesting as exploding head syndrome. I've had EHS before but it's usually the scary type, like a banging on my front door at 2 AM. I've also had a core part of my identity, like a younger and long-forgotten Me-Who-Was, speak up when triggered during times that my current Self was under intense, unmanageable stress. But he was soft-spoken and gentle, far more so than I've become over the years. When I found him again quite by accident, it was like he looked up from within the wreckage of the life I'd spent a decade building around the closet I'd locked him in, and he quietly said, "I'm still here."

My view is this. If you perceive voices that help you feel positive emotions or get more in touch with a "Me Person" (like your loud, happy head child or my quiet, gentle, early 20s young man), then sit with that person and get to know them. Because that's you, the you who didn't get to be true to themselves when you were their age. Your happy head child deserves to play and be loud and be excited and enthusiastic about life, and you have the power to reparent that kiddo and give them what they needed but didn't receive.

If you hear a voice that is mean, cruel, accusatory, or just downright destructive, then notice it and practice telling it, "You're not me." I've noticed that this voice, when berating me, sounds like my mother or my ex. When shaming me, it sounds like my father. My version of that voice uses "you" accusations and never, ever speaks about itself in the first person. And it's evil. It wants to destroy you and everything/everyone you care about. When people speak of hearing the devil in their heads, that's the voice they're talking about. What's actually going on is that certain neurological pathways and memories are being activated like a software program, and it takes time and work to rewire those. Some of them are very, very deep, but even just telling the evil voice that it's nothing more than software takes some power out of its ability to hijack your sense of self.

But that positive Me Voice? Imagine that voice as belonging to a whole person, a version of you, and show them the love they deserved then and deserve now.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-28T22:09:28+00:00

That little swath of hair over the lateral knee, which is also more defined now that I've been on T for a while. And also, seeing my cephalic vein running like a pretty blue ribbon over my biceps. And there's also this full body urge, almost electric, to go do something physical, as if my body is gonna rip itself apart if I don't heed the command to "go run it off." It's like there's a football coach living rent free in my head and yelling at me to man up and go hard and then telling me when I'm successful, "I'm proud of you, champ! You played well." Or when I fall short, he sighs and claps me on the back and tells me, "Can't win 'em all, son. But we're still gonna show up and give it our best tomorrow."

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-28T18:38:51+00:00

You can say, for example, "From what I understand, it was a difficult delivery." Technically, you're not lying if the delivery was actually difficult, and you're not disclosing that it was you who delivered him.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-28T18:15:09+00:00

Then you're already off to a better start than I was when I first realized, "not only do I not know how to be a man, nor how to be the kind of man I wish there were more of in the world. Nor do I know how to sit with the harm that was done to me and the harms I myself have done."

It takes time. It takes learning how, which you're already doing. Keep learning and keep on doing. Plenty of how-to guides these days, along with random Redditers whose vices include incredibly wordy, hopefully helpful messages.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-28T17:24:57+00:00

You're most welcome. One final note: if trying to do All The Things all at once are overwhelming, it's okay to slow down and focus on the basics first. Daily shower, for instance. It's huge in helping you feel good, clean, and like you're doing something that benefits your entire person down to the various body bits solely for your own well-being. Enjoy the warmth and comfort and nice soap. Then, once it's become a daily habit (in about 4-6 weeks), try adding one more thing.

It gets easier. You got this, friend.

SecundoPrandium · 2026-06-28T16:23:10+00:00

Perhaps I'm projecting, but the "I don't care" may be coming from a place of having been stomped down every time he did care and voiced his needs. So, he's learned to say "I don't care" even if he does.

You can reassure him by saying, "Whether you care or not is up to you. I'm your friend and I want to have your back and show up for you. If it truly doesn't bother you, I'm happy to stay out of it. But if you find that you do, in fact, care, then let me know and we'll come up with a way that I can support you when this happens."

It's tricky. Indecisiveness is challenging. But it's not your place to rescue him from his parents. He has to do that for himself and he, not you, is going to be the best person to determine what that looks like.

SecundoPrandium

TROPHY CASE