What is/was the first step?

[elizabethamy]

Hi Everyone,

What is/was the first step of your transition? Over the years I've heard people say it was electrolysis, the first visit to a gender specialist, first time out dressed, first time to a support group, first dose of estrogen, telling your SO, telling your boss, etc.

I think for me it happened yesterday. I shaved for the first time in almost a decade. Hadn't seen my own face in that long. Still getting used to it. Is she in there? What do I have to do to get her out the rest of the way? My wife seems stricken/gone silent from it. Perhaps when I look back the first step will be remembered as something else. But for now, it was an encounter with a razor and some lotion.

How was/is/will it be for you? What constitutes the beginning of transition?

elizabethamy

[Kaitlyn Michele]

sounds like a pretty good start to me...

lots of hair on those legs too I bet

to me one of the most powerful self actualizations you can do in the near term is with regards to your hair... a wig, a hairstyle, a coloring...whatever...

but that was just me...finding the right first wig is something I recall really well because I just whispered "WOW"...because for that one moment I saw it...I saw what was possible..

also another thought is get out and hit the makeup counter...just tell them what you are doing..... they will show you what to do, it will be an experience because they will take you seriously and give you the kind of practical feedback that will help but also the emotional feedback of being taken seriously for who you are...

in the end its you.
there will be as many different answers as people...

[Lana Mae]

Elizabeth, for you it is/was the hair! That is a great start! I saw Lana Mae for the first time at my transformation when Jennifer did my eye make up and Lana Mae was staring back at me from the mirror! She made those eyes pop! I can not do eye make up! I just end up smearing everything together for a smoky eye effect which is not what I want! Sigh! Oh, well I have moved on from there and can see Lana Mae without eye make up! Maybe it is the hair(wig)! Hugs Lana Mae

[Paula DAngelo]

Maybe i'm misunderstanding what's being asked, but i would think that the first step for everyone is realizing the need to transition. i would have to wonder why anyone would go thru everything involved with transitioning if the need wasn't there.

[elizabethamy]

Paula,

You're not wrong -- but one can sit with that knowledge for a long time until one acts on it. Maybe forever if you can stand the dysphoria. So for me, knowing that I sat and sat while fully aware of my trans-ness, I thought it would be interesting to see what other people saw as their own first steps...a case could be made for things I've done earlier even in the past few weeks, but there was something about shaving that felt like crossing the river to me. everyone's mileage surely varies...

elizabethamy

[Kaitlyn Michele]

its interestng...i have looked back and said many times i "felt like a robot"...i never realized i needed to transition in a moment...it came over me day by day year by year.... i was "doing " trans stuff...dressing...socializing..experimenting..suf fering the GD...then one day it was like...OH S^^T.... im transitioning...

[pamela7]

Surely this is a trick question. Every next step is the first step onwards in transition. i think your post is about "when did it become irrevocable?", such as Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the point of no return. Everything that followed was then inevitable.

I would then say that my moment was when I put on my first dress and looked in the mirror. What followed needed no more steps as such, effortless momentum.

[Rianna Humble]

Pamela, I don't think that we need to look for dark motives, I read this as an honest question.

In my case, I would say the very first step was when I asked my diabetes nurse which doctor I could trust to help me transition. Although that could have been the last preparatory step in which case it would be when I said to the doctor that I would rather die a lonely old woman than spend another day as the man I never have been.

[Pat]

I feel like the first step of my transition was when I decided to transition. But that's kind of theoretical because while I know I did make that decision, it wasn't an event I could mark on the calendar so much as a process that started with a vague unease and progressed gently until it became inevitable. Like a planet being sucked inexorably into a black hole, it started with a gentle tug. ;)

[Mirya]

My first step was going to a transgender support group meeting. Prior to that, everything was in my head and any actions were done alone. Meeting other trans people in person, sharing and doing life together, helped me to discover who I really am.

[MarieTS]

This might seem odd to some of you, but for me it was tucking. Banishing the stem provided a sense of comfort and relief that dressing alone could not provide. It also told me very early on that I needed to FULLY transition in order to be at peace with myself and live a complete life.

[rachael.davis]

Diaspora was there for as long as I can remember, I'd acted on a lot of things (going out, ear piercing, some eyebrow shaping), my point of no return (yeah, I'm transitioning) happened at a spa I used.
I was in for my usual back, arms, legs waxing, the tech was working away, I had always specified that I took care of my eyebrows. The owner came in, moved the table around a bit, and took the posts out of my ears, she said your ears are horrible, your nose is horrible, and your brows are horrible - if you want to leave my shop looking horrible that's ok, Mei will finish what she's doing, but please don't come back.
My ears were waxed (loved it), my nose was waxed (OMFG it hurts worse than a Brazilian), and my eyebrows were waxed, and arched.
I looked at myself and thought - well, you can't glue your brows back I guess you're in transition :)

It's been forever since I read any "transgender fiction", but somehow the owner taking control of my appearance was a very "fictionmania" moment - my GI therapist laughed when I told her the story, and said most women get intimidated by beauticians suggestions about their appearance, and go along.

Kaitlyn Michelle - oh yeah, big time agreeing

[KellyJameson]

The first thing was seeking out others like me. Looking for my own kind. It helped me understand what I am but I was also afraid to admit what I knew subconsciously so I was also afraid of those who I saw myself in.

Gay bars, drag and theatre but alternative life styles in general were the places I frequented along with heavy use of the internet.

Coming out of a very religious family that was and still is very trans and homophobic, who placed every obstacle imaginable to keep me from doing anything that went against their beliefs or embarrassed them, made me very secretive.

To this day I'm still very private and cautious. The world has changed but not as much as some think it has.

Most of the members on this forum are much older than me and married so have different concerns.

I started to subconsciously transition before I consciously transitioned. Finding ridiculous reasons to wear my hair long or get hair removed from my body. Excuses that I'm sure some saw through.

I was married to my fears ( as society) instead of a partner. I'm still amazed when I see people doing Youtube vids about their transition (making it very public). I'm friends with two of them that are very well known and I have witnessed how this has come back to haunt them.

If you are not seen unquestionably as a woman it changes how you experience yourself as such. Becoming famous as a person who transitioned locks you into that in-between world I feared never escaping. Gender is a performance (Judith Butler) and if you cannot perform the performance you do not experience that which makes it real for those who can.

Having people respect your choice of gender nouns does not compare to people who do not question the need to.

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,'' Simone de Beauvoir wrote in ''The Second Sex''

The essence of the Second Sex really captures what I'm trying to say. But to experience this you must first experience "Being experienced" by others as a woman.

Transitioning does not actually make you a woman. It only opens up (for some) the possibility that they may become women.

[Nikki.]

So then do those public transitioners or those that do not pass “experience ‘being experienced’” as feminine transgendered people? And is that the gender they perform?

Edit: The above wasn’t posted as a challenge to Kelly. It was posted as an existential question hoping for further exploration. Kelly’s post led me to look up Judith Butler re. gender as a performance, which led me to look up Sandy Stone. So I realize this is tangential to the OT, but really, how else are interesting and intellectually challenging topics spawned on internet forums?

[AllieSF]

So Kelly,

In your opinion and your quoted references, if you are not accepted by women you are not one, even though you clearly know that you are? You depend on the acceptance of cis women for your own validation? I am very confused by your writing. Help me understand what I am missing please.

My belief is that once you seriously identify as a woman, you are one, whether or not you go through all the other steps in a transitioning process that those that want and need to transition do.

[Rianna Humble]

This thread is not about your interpretation of what Kelly wrote.

I will let the two challenges above this post stand.

Please do not take the thread off topic.

Rianna Humble
Moderatrix

[Dorit]

To bring the thread back to the original question! :)
The first step in my "psychological" transition was coming to accept myself as born a transgender women. Growing up in the 50's and 60's I related to my desire to be a woman as some sort of sickness or perversion and hated myself for it. So about 10 years ago thanks to the internet I finally saw that there was a completely different way to relate to all these feelings and desires I had all my life. So I slowly began a journey of self acceptance and spent more and more time as Dorit in certain protected situations. Last summer I was full time Dorit for two months on vacation in California with family. So when I came back home to Israel I knew in my heart that this is how I wanted to live my life and found a gender therapist to guide me. With her guidance and support, I began my physical and social transition to full time life.

[Devi SM]

I think we answer this question in two senses: one when we did use our will and consciously did something knowing we were transitioning and the other was the unconscious thing that we didn't realize we're part of the transition.
I open a thread like this but I call it the girl birthday.
In my case I did things, as many here, when a child, but the first concius but at the same time ignorant of the meaning and transcendence was when in my twenties, married, as a joke I wear one of my wife panties, a thong, for the whole day. It was uncomfortable but I like it, then I watch my butt in the mirror and I like it too. From then I start wearing them every day, then buying for wife and me. I would call those the first steps of unconscious transition.
Now the conscious was may be to clean, arch my brows and finally the cherry on top of the cake, to ask for HRT. Then is when i realize i wasn't a croosdresser but a trasgender.
There's no back for me and I don't know where I will end.
But now I have very clear that I was born to transition...