Controversial?Maybe Intresting?Absolutely

[Inna]

For as long as I live I felt out of place. "I am not like the rest of the boys", I used to think, so I am not a boy. What was left for me to choose from was being a girl, but am I? Do I really know what it is to be a girl? what it feels like to succumb to abdominal pains and have a first period? To bear a child? to grow up with hormonal fluctuations and experience puberty from girls perspective? I suppose not! So how can I say for sure? Am I an in between species? Why then such need for assimilating my look with female, is it because I have focused intensely all my life in this direction? I wonder when you dig deep into the psyche, is it all clear or might you feel same emotional fog?

[gretchen2]

I have felt the same thing and have not come up with any answers.

[Traci Elizabeth]

One of the important lessons we eventually learn in life is that rarely ever, almost never is anything simply "black or white!" Life is a never ending spectrum of grays.

[Chari]

Great previous advice! Your conflict of discovering "who you are" has happened to many, including me. Life can cause many moments of confusion, challenges, and wrong decisions. More often we gain strength from our mistakes and continue in the search to be comfortable and confident in who we are - no matter how we are dressed. You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself!

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Ask a natal woman what it means to "be a woman" or "feel like a woman"...you'll get different answers and lots of..."uhhhh......."
its impossible to really describe in words, but a woman expresses her femaleness every day in many many ways...and i bet very few women actually think about it..

as natal males this idea that we are female has no where to go!! knowing that we are female leaves us to simply look at those women and the only information we get is to receive those outward expressions...
however we must look from afar, because when we get close, the female person communicates to us as female TO A MALE...and so on it goes.. our entire female person is stuck

and i disagree that gender is artificial...it informs and impacts every single human interaction...women and men treat each other differently in a gazillion ways...and we are stuck getting the wrong inputs our whole lives..
my best guess is that for folks like us the ONLY way we can get that feeling of being a woman is to observe women and therefore we end up obsessing over how we look..(which is usually a more feminine trait anyway).

and to make it worse, we look more and more like men every day...

and appearance matters, you want a job, it matters, you want a date, it matters...you want to change your gender role? it matters! so you are not crazy to care...but obsessing over it isnt gonna help
i've learned more and more that the appearance part of it is like an important key to a best quality of life as a woman.. if you look like a woman, doors that are otherwise closed are opened...you cross the line from being assumed male to being assumed female...its a quality thing tho...it doesnt make you less or more of a woman...it just impacts how experience being a woman (just like any other woman that looks gorgeous or obese or curvy etcetc!!)

if you transition you will find that the real benefit of transition is the day to day filling of the cup of your needs... you won't get magical mystical knowledge that only folks like Reine have...day to day we don't sit there and say "how do i feel?" "im a woman" etcetc...we just don't ...we react, we interact, our instincts control much of our behaviour...thats what makes it all work...i don't think you miss out on one fricking thing by just accepting that the past is past, you can't give birth and there are lots of female experiences that you will never have...these needs you feel are most likely just the most obvious expressions of femaleness you can think of... or the ones that you longed for as you suffered your confusion alone for all those years..

alexia i encourage you to think of yourself as your own wonderful woman..do what you think is right for you, as best you can, and then enjoy the incredible benefits of feeling like a woman WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT!!!!...

.....so there...
kaitlyn

[7sisters]

Alexia listen to what Kaitlyn says.

[Stephenie S]

OK, here goes Stephenie with another outrageous generalization. Sorry.

You can never feel what it's like to be a woman any more than you can feel what it's like to be a man. All you can do is feel like yourself. Even after you transition you will still be you. That's all that can ever happen.

If you know in your heart that you are a woman, that you are female, then you will gain some peace. But you will know no more of what it's like to be another person than you do now.

Those silly statements like, "Oh, I feel SO feminine when I put on my stockings and heels," are just that. Silly. You can feel what it's like to be YOU with stockings and heels on, but you will never be able to feel what another person "feels like".

Who are you? Are you a man? Or are you a woman? Most of us come up with an answer to that either through conviction from an early age, intensive therapy, or eventual maturity. But we will only find out who we are. We will never find out what ANOTHER person feels like.

So my opinion? Stop worrying about it. You will never feel what it's like to bear children. You will never feel what it's like to have menses. You CAN find out what it's like for YOU to live YOUR life as a woman. Many, many, of us do just that. And quite contentedly, I might add.

If you don't have a life long conviction of your identity from your childhood, sample some gender therapy. Or just wait. It may come to you eventually. Good luck, hon.

Stephie

[Kathryn Martin]

For as long as I live I felt out of place. "I am not like the rest of the boys", I used to think, so I am not a boy. What was left for me to choose from was being a girl, but am I? Do I really know what it is to be a girl? what it feels like to succumb to abdominal pains and have a first period? To bear a child? to grow up with hormonal fluctuations and experience puberty from girls perspective? I suppose not! So how can I say for sure? Am I an in between species? Why then such need for assimilating my look with female, is it because I have focused intensely all my life in this direction? I wonder when you dig deep into the psyche, is it all clear or might you feel same emotional fog?

Those of us females of the male persuasion and males of the female persuasion always feel like we are not like the rest of them. The question whether we become our chosen gender is a very serious one. If you ask yourself the question: but am I a girl? then I would ask you how much work have you done in your garden? Have you cultivated Alexia with candor and effort. There is a description of each gender that does not include hormonal status pregnancy or female puberty markers. Many of our genetically female friends cannot bear children, have hormonal status across a widest spectrum and may have experienced puberty in a myriad of ways. So how much work have you done in your garden? I have for so many years now, against all of the flowers that grow in this garden cultivated them, to make them less colorful, less soft, less moving in the winds of time and more filled with purpose and I was successful. Things have grown in my garden that by rights and by my inner configuration should not have been there. And I love them all, because they are all mine. Then, a while ago now, I finally had to say to myself, why are your cultivating that which struggles to grow, why don't you recognize that which belongs here and wants to grow and cultivate it. How much work have you done in your garden?

I spread my arms and I gathered the garden inside and have blown my breath into it, have weeded it, watered it's beautiful, colorful flowers, they are rocked gently now in my time and their petals have grown soft caressing the sun that shines into it. And in this inside space I have found the eternal female. She lives there as my archetype, the Kathryn I know to be. Not always, not ever present yet but in glimpses and in the touch of her hand, of her words and her song I touch her and I know that this is what I must do now. Cultivate my garden. How much work have you done in your garden? More than you I know! I don't see the storm I see your garden and it is beautiful and complete. It is the nature and the quality of the space created that makes a woman not what fills it.

To our brothers striving I would ask: How much work have you done on your way? Tell me where it travels through the narrows and where it opens to the vistas. Show me your inner arrow as it travels to it's mark, have you found it's feathers on your way. Have you cut it's ashwood, and cleaned and smoothed it so it may travel true? By the beauty of your way and the straightness of your arrow I will recognize your manliness. It is not the form that makes the man but the content.

We all forget at times that our differences have no value. They are and we must embrace them.

[CharleneCD]

Alexia, I understand completely how you feel. In other words been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I dont fit in with the guys, yet I am masculine enough I know transitioning would not be best for me. I had been thinking about posting something along similar lines to what you have. I guess right here would be as good a place as any other.

in the middle

I am here but where do I fit? Crossdresser? I do dress, but the need seems so much different from others. It is not a hobby or a lifestyle, it is an expression of a part that is inside me. They can Dress on Sat for fun and then come Sunday be all male hanging out drinking beer with their buddies watching a football game. As a genetic male I have never fit in with the beer drinking watch football type. I have never fit in with a majority of the male population. So what about Transsexual? But I am not uncomfortable with my body. It doesnt seem wrong. The idea of hormones or GRS send my brain reeling with the two halves fighting it out. The female half says yeah lets go. While the male side screams just as loud absolutely not. This happens with things as simple as a weight bench. The male side says hey lets buff up, while the female side says women look horrible with big muscles.

So where do I fit? I feel it is more than just dressing up for fun or stress relief, (though it can be fun) it is an expression of my inner femininity. So it is more than just crossdressing, but I dont really fit into the fully trans side either as I know that all transitioning would accomplish is to turn me into a FtM rather than the MtF I am now.

I am Bi-gendered. My body is male, but there is a strong enough female aspect to my personality that I dont fit in well with most other males. My female side at times needs to come out and express herself, but I feel no desire to stay that way. I can relate to both simple crossdressers and transsexuals, but I never feel I fully fit.


In a nutshell that is how I sometimes feel.

[Faith_G]

Alexia listen to what Kaitlyn says.

I agree. From time to time I get to experience just being a woman without thinking about it, and when something jars me out of that state it's bittersweet. It's like "Wow, I was just being a woman there - oops, now I'm thinking about it. Crap." I think as time goes by there will be more being and less thinking, at least that's how things are going now. :)

[Inna]

I suppose when I look back at my statement and place my self in the middle or towards masculine, sense of loss and void overcomes my being. It isn't that I realize who I am but whom I am not. I nearly needed to loose my fixation on femininity to realize what I would loose if I couldn't embrace such feeling. I had to cleanse emotionally to see the fundamental pillars of my being, and for however long I interlaced with forcefully embraced masculinity I am not he, but mare imitation. Imitation which by virtue of time has grown into my psyche and corrupted from within. Stating this feels almost as taking anew breath of fresh air, and permission to be Her frees my spirit. It just feels natural, if not for the image, I would be whole. I must though deal with this image issue until it itself no longer reminds me of masculine past and frees me to roam as she, whom I am.

[Rianna Humble]

For as long as I live I felt out of place. "I am not like the rest of the boys", I used to think, so I am not a boy.

This thinking sets you aside from cisgendered males who don't fit in. I have known men who are not like the rest of the men but still don't conclude that they are not men. Those are cisgendered men who have difficulty fitting in for other reasons - often leaving them feeling like an outcast. To me the fact that you concluded you are not a boy shows that there is at least a degree of dysphoria.


What was left for me to choose from was being a girl, but am I? Do I really know what it is to be a girl? what it feels like to succumb to abdominal pains and have a first period? To bear a child?

As others have said, for nearly every woman you ask what it feels like to be a woman you will get a different answer if any at all. I know that the inability to bear a child can make someone feel less of a woman, but those cisgendered women who are infertile don't cease to be a woman.


to grow up with hormonal fluctuations and experience puberty from girls perspective? I suppose not! So how can I say for sure? Am I an in between species? Why then such need for assimilating my look with female, is it because I have focused intensely all my life in this direction? I wonder when you dig deep into the psyche, is it all clear or might you feel same emotional fog?

IMNSHO your need to look female as born out of a deeper need - to express the real you. You need to look like a woman because inside you know that you are a woman.

It is natural to doubt ourselves from time to time and I would be worried for you if you never experienced any doubt at all. But from all that I have read of your writings, I have no doubt that you are a woman and that you are not just experiencing a period of "pink fog".