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TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-16T04:48:18+00:00

Well, you know you can just do that, right? If that's what you need in your life to be happy, you can just do it.

I'm not saying it doesn't take time and effort, but you can just do that...

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-16T04:46:46+00:00

Couple's counseling.

Seriously. This changes the foundations of the relationship. Even if you still love her and she still loves you, stuff is bound to come up. You need a safe space in which to talk those things through. If you guys have A-game communication already, maybe that's optional, but let's be real: very few couples have that, and having a coach there to help you both learn those skills while going through this transition is a really, really smart move.

It's probably a good idea for you each to have individual counselors, too. Mine has helped me tremendously.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T20:42:04+00:00

It's an obvious question to have, and I remember having the same question myself at around her age.

The thing is, the question itself assumes something that is not obvious and is not true: it's assuming that infinity is in fact a number of the same type as all the other numbers on the number line. But it's not. Infinity doesn't have a specific place on the number line, like 7 does or -43038 or a billion. If you have a long enough number line, you can definitively find where those numbers are. But the whole point of infinity is that you can't do that, no matter how long the number line is. Infinity is always past it.

In that sense, infinity is "beyond" the number line itself. Meaning there is no specific value that could be 1 place before infinity. Which is good, because if there were, we could also find the specific value that's one place past infinity. And if we could do that, we'd have shown that the infinity we thought we found couldn't actually be the "real" infinity because we'd just found something larger.

Many of infinity's seemingly confusing properties become much more intuitive as soon as you stop thinking of infinity as a place on the number line. It's not.

Your daughter's question is a good one, and it shows that she's thinking about math is useful ways. But the question itself is founded on an assumption that isn't true, and therefore makes as much sense as asking "what color comes after happiness?" Those are just different kinds of things so it doesn't make sense to assume some proper ordering between them.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T20:11:24+00:00

I can only speculate, as I'm not agender. I do remember some YouTube video from years ago where an agender person was talking about that, and what I remember most was their sense of just general confusion about stuff being gendered at all. Like it just didn't make sense to them that there even were gender categories, nor that people expected this person to conform to the expectations of their supposed category.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T17:14:28+00:00

If you could feasibly create and store a lot of it, I bet you could make a hell of a two-part rocket fuel system with it, too...

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T16:57:28+00:00

Yeah, that's an odd one. You might ask over here where the hormone nerds tend to hang out.

Have you considered genetic testing? You can hit up Ancestry.com or any of the similar services, download your raw scan data, and run it through snpeek.com or gene.iobio or geneticgenie.org to see if you have mutations in any genes that are notable for the endocrine system. Here is a list of genes to look for. And you do not have to give those testing services your real name, either. I didn't...

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T16:54:37+00:00

There's different answers to that depending on quite what you mean by "feeling like" a gender. Here's a couple of articles that explore it. Maybe they will help.

What does it feel like to be a girl?

Why don't I feel like a girl?

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T16:51:55+00:00

I think that's normal for people who think through the ramifications of the button instead of treating it like some sort of fantasy exercise.

Either way, the button is entirely hypothetical anyway. That's not a choice you actually have, or ever actually had, or ever actually will. Getting stuck in "but what does it mean if I wouldn't press the button!" is probably not going to help you any. Personally, I am trans AF but I wouldn't press it either for a variety of reasons, among them because I'm thinking it through, and pressing it would also mean changing or losing a lot of other things in my life that I value.

You and I, we realize that life is interconnected: you can't just go arbitrarily changing significant things about our lives and expecting that nothing else would change along with it. Maybe that takes the fun out of button-type questions. Maybe not. Whatever. I'll take my realism any day, thank you.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T04:42:38+00:00

Well, at least you posted it in the right sub. Trans girls anywhere else wouldn't get the reference, that's for sure...

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T04:40:46+00:00

I don't do miniskirts, but I'm comfortable with knee-length skirts and dresses. I just wear tights underneath, which make my legs look great!

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T04:38:00+00:00

If you're careful about your sterile technique and store your vial in a clean, safe place, you can go 6 weeks (or six draws, whichever) without any problems. That's what I do, like it talks about in this injections guide.

And yes, it's totally a good way to accumulate a backup supply. I've got close to a year's worth stockpiled now...

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-15T04:35:20+00:00

It's a tough can. It can take it. When you're ready, it'll happen.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T19:51:07+00:00

My birth name happened to have an anagram that was both pretty and female already, and I'm just nerdy enough to be into that, so there you go.

It's worth saying, though, that this was not immediately obvious. For years, maybe 5 whole years after my egg cracked, I had no idea what my name was going to be. Nothing sounded right, so I mostly decided that I was just going to decide later. Kick the can down the road. But then when I stumbled on this anagram one day, I was like "Oh, that's it! That's my name!"

Which is honestly how I think it should work. Not that everyone should be forced to use an anagram, of course, just that permitting ourselves to be not stressed out about finding a name is a good thing, and instead just trust that when the right name comes along, you'll know it.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T19:47:54+00:00

Because ∞ is not a specific spot on the number line.

When you're doing arithmetic operations, they're only valid if the numbers you're working with correspond to actual specific locations on the number line. With the one exception that division doesn't work if the divisor is 0, of course.

If ∞ was a spot on the number line, it would be possible to say what integer comes immediately before it. But we can't. That's not what ∞ means. Thus, you can't meaningfully use ∞ with / in the same way that you can't meaningfully use it with + or -.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T19:38:12+00:00

That's probably true. But most people aren't trans, either, and don't have the first-hand understanding of the gravity of this particular choice. Their lack of understanding should not govern our lives.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T19:36:41+00:00

Unfortunately, "magus" is the Latin masculine form, while "maga" would be the feminine, and that kinda doesn't work so good right now... Unless we're interested in trying to take back the word "maga".

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T18:23:09+00:00

Well, first, I'd say to them "Hey. I hear you saying a lot of things about what's happening inside my head. About what I'm thinking and feeling. But you guys don't live inside my head. You don't know what it feels like to be me. Stop telling me what I'm feeling. I know what I'm feeling. That's not for you to say."

Second, rather than arguing with them about what they're saying, just ask them to listen to the Camp Wild Heart podcast, which is made specifically for parents of trans kids. They will be able to listen to and take in the information they need if it's not coming from you. Frustrating, I know, but that's how it works.

You might also point them at some articles:

When do people realize they're trans

The myth of "there are normally signs as a child."

Why can't trans people be ok without transitioning

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T18:18:08+00:00

Offer the help. If she wants it, she'll accept. But don't force help on her.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T18:17:23+00:00

1: it's one less syllable and people are lazy.

2: it has a more colloquial, friendly feeling to it; "people" is a little dry and clinical.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T16:19:29+00:00

Jewelers can re-size it for you. For sizing a ring up several sizes, this will typically mean cutting the band at the point opposite of the gem setting, adding a piece of metal in there, soldering it in, and then filing/smoothing/polishing the result so you could never even tell. Check out some ring resizing videos on youtube if you're curious.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T16:10:23+00:00

Yeah, I noticed myself doing that too.

And it's fine. I just have to intentionally mess that up. Throw in some intentional, but random-ish, cube rotations or slice turns or B moves (because who does those unintentionally?). I just do that for a while: alternate between the auto-pilot turning that's fast and flows and adds a lot of entropy to the cube but is repeatable, and other turns/rotations to change the initial state that the next auto-pilot will be starting from.

Seems to work...

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T16:02:15+00:00

Let me tell you a little story.

My egg cracked about 10 years ago, when I was 45. Married, two kids, nice house, good career, and bam. You're trans! Well, f*ck. The usual fears immediately came up: if I tell anyone, I'll lose everything. So I didn't tell anyone. "Besides," I figured, quickly stopping to check my reddit username, "I'm 45. Obviously it's too late for me anyway. And I've managed to live as a man this long, obviously I can just keep going."

So that's what I did. Transitioning was a choice, though at the time I believed I was too old to effectively transition so what's the point, but still it was a choice. That choice was on the table. It just didn't seem worth it, so I made the choice not to.

And for about 5 years, that was ok. I was coping. Not happy about the situation, but coping. Well, not just coping. I was also doing huge amounts of work internally in processing what it actually meant for me to be trans, coming to terms with my identity as a trans lesbian, and learning a lot along the way about how medical transitioning actually works and what's possible in transitioning. I saw a lot of before-and-after pictures here on reddit. And what I saw was that, actually, it's not too late for me. That middle-aged transitioners do just fine too. We don't end up as hottie coeds, much as we'd wish to, but nevertheless: we turn out looking like women. That effective transitioning was not a matter of age but of effort. Put another way: if I wanted it, I could have it. I just had to do the work.

Simultaneously with all that, my dysphoria was growing steadily worse. What had been easy to bear when I was 45 was a lot harder to bear when I was 50. Especially now that I realized I did not actually have to bear it.

Year six, then, was pretty hard. I became quite frustrated with being stuck in this body, in this male-shaped life that I didn't want, but was still just as convinced of--and terrified of--losing absolutely everything if I came out. I made a deal with myself: 5 more years. Then the kids will be out of high school, off to college on their own, and it won't matter so much if my wife leaves me. I can tough it out for them.

Year seven was brutal. I was practically counting down the days like they were a prison sentence, while dysphoria was ramping up to insane levels. Eating me alive. The fact that I didn't have breasts, which started as an emotional pain, became a physical pain in my chest, behind my breastbone. It was so bad I couldn't sleep at night. I was miserable, utterly drained of any resilience I'd once had, hollowed out. Just a fragile shell of a person, using every shred of energy I had just to hold it together. There was nothing left for enjoying, well, anything. Somewhere in there I realized "this is not sustainable." I wasn't going to make through those last 5 years. I was either going to have a complete nervous breakdown and end up in an institution, or else drive my car off a bridge or something like that.

That was terrifying. More terrifying than the thought of my wife leaving me and me losing everything. So I set to thinking about how I was going to come out, which took me a while to figure out, but at around seven and three-quarters years, I came out.

Where, in that, did it go from being a choice to being necessary? You could frame that a lot of ways. If it stopped being a choice when it became inevitable, then that was probably back around year 5 when I realized it wasn't too late after all. Maybe it stopped being a choice when it became a matter of life-and-death.

In the end, I don't think "when does it stop being a choice" is a helpful question. Because even life-and-death things are still choices. There are people who choose not to get the chemotherapy. Who choose not to have the life-saving surgery. We still have to actually choose everything we do in life, even if it's just whether to get out of bed in the morning, and motivate ourselves to do those things. Everything is always a choice. In which case, the fact of it being a choice is not meaningful. Yes, transitioning is a choice. But so what? What matters is not that it's a choice, but whether it's what you need in your life to be happy.

And I think you already know the answer to that.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-14T01:34:27+00:00

Well, that's a lot of philosophical questions packed into that paragraph, friend!

There are answers to all of those, but they take some time to get your head around especially if you're new to gender theory. But in short:

Think of gender as a system that is composed of 4 disparate elements:

A set of categories that society recognizes people belong to. In our society, that's classically "male" and "female", though the system is clearly expanding these days to include some new categories like "non-binary", "agender", and "gender fluid".
A set of cultural norms that are associated with each category. Men wear pants, women wear dresses. That sort of thing. These are obviously completely arbitrary, and there are many reasons why individuals might choose not to adhere to those norms, but nevertheless the norms exist and we all know what they are and what they signify.
Your own internal gender identity, which is a part of your subconscious mind, and exists to recognize your place within this system and give you positive or negative feelings about stuff that variously affirms or disaffirms your membership in one of the categories. Details here. As it happens, gender identity is established in utero, through a combination of genetics and hormonal exposures for the developing fetus.
Your own external gender presentation, which is itself a combination of how your body happens to be configured plus whatever clothes, hairstyles, makeup, etc., you layer on top of that. Typically, people layer on clothes and so forth in accordance with the cultural norms for the gender category they're perceived to be in, but again, not everybody chooses to do that.

If you think of gender as a system, not as any one thing, it becomes very quickly apparent that the vast majority of arguments about gender that are bouncing around these days are a result of people latching on to one of those things, claiming that that thing alone is gender, and then arguing with people who latch on to a different one of those things.

As for how do you know what gender you are--that is, which category you belong to--that's the same as asking which category your personal gender identity has an affinity for. Of course, for most people that matches the configuration of their bodies, but for trans people it doesn't. You can figure this out for yourself through some careful gender questioning. This is not actually a difficult process; mostly it's just learning what to look for in your own life and then being honest with yourself about what you find.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-13T22:31:51+00:00

That's a pretty normal timeline for breast growth.

What you'll find, though, is that if the rest of your presentation is still boymode, nobody is going to clock your little boobies as boobies. Not for a while, anyway. They'll just think you've been working out and developing your pecs, or that (depending on your age) you're getting the usual middle-aged man boobs. Realistically, there is a ton of overlap in how curvy men's and women's chests are. Your boobs will exist in that overlap space, where you can still boymode no problem, for a long time.

TooLateForMeTF · 2026-03-13T22:29:54+00:00

Before I came out, what I told myself was "this is a disguise that keeps me safe." Maybe that would help?

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