Does your gender change after your transition physically?

[Kate T]

Please, if I offend anyone or just have no idea then I apologise but I have a question that the answer seems obvious but I don't know if it is.

Principally for those who have undergone or are a significant way along their transition and at least have had some change to their physiology or anatomy to alter their sex. I also make the assumption that we are treating Gender and Physical Sex (i.e. anatomy and physiology) as independant characteristics of an individual.

Do you feel more feminine or that your gender is more female now that your physiology / anatomy has been rectified to be more female? What I am getting at I guess is do you think that altering your physiology or anatomy has had any effect on your perception of your gender?

[noeleena]

Hi,

Never haveing transioned i would have to say im the same now as iv been for 65 years, allso being intersexed should have in many ways made me or put me in a i like both male & female. & then the can of worms would have opened.

Being femininein im not not in that leage, well i dont think i am,

Yes im a female / woman, has my gender changed ill say im a non sexual though fall under female not discounting some of my maleness,

Haveing surgery's , has that changed how i think or how i see men or women . no. meds the same. no.

Because of my difference i never saw male & female as different to me they were the same or so i thought, i thought they = every one was like myself normal.......a ooops, later on in life i found out ... oh dear ....i was the one that was different,

...noeleena..

[Kristy_K]

Do you feel more feminine or that your gender is more female now that your physiology / anatomy has been rectified to be more female? What I am getting at I guess is do you think that altering your physiology or anatomy has had any effect on your perception of your gender?

When I first transition looks didn't matter that much to me. But what woman doesn't want to look prettier. Now that I have had couple of surgery's I will have to say it has boost my confidences in being me right up there. I guess I would have to say they made me feel a little more female because of getting my body in line with who I was.

I just reach 1 yr. into my transition. I have learn that being female isn't about how you really look but does help.

[abigailf]

I am a pre-op trans-woman. I still will not use any locker room at the gym because I am so self conscious of the fact that I am a woman with a penis. It makes me very uncomfortable. It complicates situations like dating, going to a new doctor or any place where my nakedness is expected to be different than it is.

So:

Does having a penis make me less of a woman? Not at all, but having a vagina will allow me to feel more comfortable with myself.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

I had SRS and FFS a couple years ago..and don't forget HRT...thats a physical thing, you are changing your body to be more chemically female...

More than anything, its what i got rid of that resonates with me. The crazy internal dialogue that haunted me more and more is totally and completely gone... the non-stop wishing, wondering and internal whining about why I couldn't be a "girl" was over, and in all honesty, i feel that "I'm just here" or "im just me"...

I recall talking to my sister about this prior to transitoning, and she was very upset...one thing she said was the she didn't have any idea about how anyone could have some kind of internal sense of sex or gender...kind of like a popeye i am what i am type of statement...the idea of what is your perception of your own gender is murky..

I don't feel much more female or much more feminine.. my friends have told me they are amazed at how instantly i "acted more like a woman", and to me i have no idea what they are looking at.. (perhaps staring at a male my whole life makes it impossible for me to see it??)...

so i guess what i'm saying is that overwhelming feeling i have is that I am whole and that i am myself...Putting in terms of the concepts of female or feminine don't do it justice for me....in fact, as i write this and reread the whole idea of what i went through seems distant and almost imaginary..it doesn't compute that i went through all that because i feel so normal

[Frances]

Transition is about making visible to the outer world what is inside us. In other words, acquiring a body that communicates our actual gender so that the world communicates back the right way. Our gender is already there, it's the sex that gets changed.

Being post-op, I get asked a lot how I felt after surgery, if I felt different, if I had some spiritual awakening or something along those lines. I did not feel any different, and did not expect to feel any different. The biggest mistake that someone could in life would be to expect that transition would somehow make them feel like a woman. I feel more feminine, prettier, but my core is the same.

Someone bought their letters and got surgery at Dr. B a short while before me and thought that their gender would change. This person (I am avoiding gendered pronouns on purpose) thought that they would feel like a woman if they acquired a vagina. Upon waking up, the realization that the core had not changed and that the core was man while having had SRS was too much to bear. He attacked the nursing staff with scissors and had to be brought to a psychiatric facility.

There is a lot of talk on this forum about how to figure out if one is trans or not. Usually it centers around interests and stereotypical traits. Women know they are women at their core. It is essential, and has nothing to do with make-up and dresses.

Your gender will not change with transition.

[ReneeT]

I had SRS and FFS a couple years ago..and don't forget HRT...thats a physical thing, you are changing your body to be more chemically female...

More than anything, its what i got rid of that resonates with me. The crazy internal dialogue that haunted me more and more is totally and completely gone... the non-stop wishing, wondering and internal whining about why I couldn't be a "girl" was over, and in all honesty, i feel that "I'm just here" or "im just me"...

I recall talking to my sister about this prior to transitoning, and she was very upset...one thing she said was the she didn't have any idea about how anyone could have some kind of internal sense of sex or gender...kind of like a popeye i am what i am type of statement...the idea of what is your perception of your own gender is murky..

I don't feel much more female or much more feminine.. my friends have told me they are amazed at how instantly i "acted more like a woman", and to me i have no idea what they are looking at.. (perhaps staring at a male my whole life makes it impossible for me to see it??)...

so i guess what i'm saying is that overwhelming feeling i have is that I am whole and that i am myself...Putting in terms of the concepts of female or feminine don't do it justice for me....in fact, as i write this and reread the whole idea of what i went through seems distant and almost imaginary..it doesn't compute that i went through all that because i feel so normal

This accurately sums up my experience. While I have not yet completed transition, i am far enough into the tunnel to see the light ( train?) at the other end. I have never felt male or female or like a boy or girl. I have always felt like me, and i expect that i will go on feeling that way. What is different about me than other genetic males is that how I am most comfortable interfacing with the world is stereotypically more female. So, for me, transition is really a social thing, a means to facilitate the world interacting with me, in the rigid gender binary society that we live in, the way that I feel most comfortable interacting with it. I dont hate my penis, or other male attributes; they just stand between me and harmony with the world. I am certainly longing for the day when the constant gender conversation in my head goes away. At least it has subsided from an argument to an encouraging discussion....

[Inna]

I believe what you seek is the assurance of a positive congruity between body and mind which is achieved through transition.

GID or GD, Gender Dysphoria where body is perceived as a wrong aspect of already birth imprinted brain gender, refers to that state which you seem to describe.

So do I feel any more female then I did before the commitment to transition? YES I DO!!!

However superficial it sounds and perhaps it is, as already mentioned above, I set out to let the world know who I really was. When interacting with environment we constantly being bombarded with connotations of who we are, within the simplest relationships we are being approached based on visual clues first and interacted with according to those clues. A perceived male will be approached differently then perceived female, and so I feel that my transformation wasn't only for my self mirrors reflection but in fact in a very large measure, it was my reflection in the eye of societies gaze.

Now when ever and where ever, I am perceived without question as a natal, genetic woman, and that is exactly what I was after, I feel and breath as a woman, where before I always had a feeling and stigma of a freak, outcast, abnormality!

So, My GENDER did NOT change, but the overwhelming feeling of womanhood definitely have risen to a new HIGH!!!!

[STACY B]

Sure Lady's all of you that have replied !! That's EASY for you LADY'S to say ,,,Your BEAUTIFUL ,,,,

[ReineD]

Transition is about making visible to the outer world what is inside us. In other words, acquiring a body that communicates our actual gender so that the world communicates back the right way. Our gender is already there, it's the sex that gets changed.

Being post-op, I get asked a lot how I felt after surgery, if I felt different, if I had some spiritual awakening or something along those lines. I did not feel any different, and did not expect to feel any different. The biggest mistake that someone could in life would be to expect that transition would somehow make them feel like a woman. I feel more feminine, prettier, but my core is the same.

Someone bought their letters and got surgery at Dr. B a short while before me and thought that their gender would change. This person (I am avoiding gendered pronouns on purpose) thought that they would feel like a woman if they acquired a vagina. Upon waking up, the realization that the core had not changed and that the core was man while having had SRS was too much to bear. He attacked the nursing staff with scissors and had to be brought to a psychiatric facility.

There is a lot of talk on this forum about how to figure out if one is trans or not. Usually it centers around interests and stereotypical traits. Women know they are women at their core. It is essential, and has nothing to do with make-up and dresses.

Your gender will not change with transition.

This needs to be emblazoned in bright lights.

I also know someone who felt that transition would change them. It didn't go well.

[Kathryn Martin]

I she didn't have any idea about how anyone could have some kind of internal sense of sex or gender...kind of like a popeye i am what i am type of statement...the idea of what is your perception of your own gender is murky..

This is such an interesting comment. It reminds me of the poem by Christian Morgenstern entitled The Impossible Fact.

Palmstroem, old, an aimless rover,
walking in the wrong direction
at a busy intersection
is run over.
“How,” he says, his life restoring
and with pluck his death ignoring,
“can an accident like this
ever happen? What’s amiss?
“Did the state administration
fail in motor transportation?
Did police ignore the need
for reducing driving speed?
“Isn’t there a prohibition,
barring motorized transmission
of the living to the dead?
Was the driver right who speed … ?”
Tightly swathed in dampened tissues
he explores the legal issues,
and it soon is clear as air:
Cars were not permitted there!
And he comes to the conclusion:
That his mishap was illusion,
for, he reasons pointedly,
that which must not, can not be.


It seems your sister had a Palmstroem moment there, which is completely reflective of societies general approach to us.


I experienced and continue to experience very similar things. Today I realized that I could not visualize anymore what I looked like three years ago. My internal self image is, for the first time congruent as well. And all of the dismay and despair through the years has faded away.

[EnglishRose]

Yup that's really quite scary. I didn't even contemplate transition until I already knew I was female.

[Badtranny]

Your gender will not change with transition.

Wow that was chilling, ...but not surprising.

I see similar attitudes on this very site quite often. In fact there is a banned member who always kinda made me think that she regretted the glorious vagina, and I also wonder about those that are always banging the "I am a woman!" drum. I personally regret some of the ridiculous arguments I was pulled into (if not volunteered) about the value of various surgeries and whose feminine identity was strongest. I have never believed that the final cut was necessary or instrumental in a gender change from an outside perspective. Obviously it's extremely important to those that need it but that's not what this discussion is about is it. The question at hand, is will you indeed FEEL like a woman after transition? I believe the short answer (like I've ever had one) is "no".

I said before that I have no idea if I feel or have every felt like a woman. I may feel like a monkey as far as I know. One thing I can be sure of is that I have never felt masculine or "like a man". Or at least what I think men must feel like, and again we are brought to the real puzzle. What do men feel like? How do I know I don't feel like a man? I wrote once that if I could have had the courage to stop hiding when I was very young, and I mean like Kindergarten, then I don't know for sure that I would have ever transitioned. Maybe I still would have, but maybe I would have found a place that was comfortable being whatever I would have been. As it is now, I've been socialized to the point that I don't know any other way to interact with the world around me, than as a woman. Frances nailed it with the following;

Transition is about making visible to the outer world what is inside us. In other words, acquiring a body that communicates our actual gender so that the world communicates back the right way

People do not transition for anything else other than this. At the age of 40ish I had grown so weary of being misunderstood by women that I literally couldn't take it anymore. I tried being openly gay but that was almost ridiculous at times, because I found myself "acting" like a flamer so that women would know right off the bat that I was "one of them". I know it sounds silly, but those are the kinds of things that happen when you are "acting" instead of being. After awhile I was forced to come to grips with what my 9 year old self tried to bury forever. Reading sites like this was even more confusing at the time because I didn't CD and I didn't hate my pickle, so maybe, just maybe there was something else.

Transition is about making visible to the outer world what is inside us. In other words, acquiring a body that communicates our actual gender so that the world communicates back the right way

There was nothing else. This is the truth about transition. It is NOT about surgeries or clothes or makeup. Strip all of that away, strip away your life, strip away your body, and now ask yourself who you are. You are nothing but an essence. Who are you?

[KellyJameson]

This is an amazing thread, it flows like pure poetry or a ballet in perfect harmony.
I wish it could become a sticky so it does not disappear into oblivion.

For me the experience is a coalescing, a bringing together of scattered pieces of myself into one complete whole so changing the physical self is making what was already there more so, it heightens the experience of being me and I have noticed a much stronger awareness of everything, leaving me with a very powerful sense of being connected to everything.

You discover the person that was already there but was hidden in the shadows because you could not experience the physical manifestation of that person

We need our bodies to live through so we can experience our "self" and this "self" is immersed into the experience of reality called life which acts on you much like being carried by a strong current down a river but "you" the "current", and the "river" are one and the same. Life is movement and through movement we have experience and in this "experiencing" relationship we are transformed so become the unexpressed potential that was locked inside us waiting to be born.

Every person is a seed and from this seed everything springs forth, the seed already holds that which is inside it and everything else is the soil so the seed and the soil dance together each affecting the other that through the randomness of life becomes a life lived.

Life is a holistic experience and it is only an illusion that we are separate but gender dysphoria is that illusion turned into reality, you become a permanent outsider to yourself and without a self cannot experience reality so stay partially stunted until the dysphoria is resolved.

You change by being released from that which was preventing change to become what you already are.

Life is a metamorphosis that gender dysphoria stops so we create one metamorphosis to continue the one we were destined for at birth.

[Kathryn Martin]

There is so much truth packed into the few sentences of your comment it makes the head spin. you have in these few words expressed the essence of transition for true transsexuals.

Transition is about making visible to the outer world what is inside us. In other words, acquiring a body that communicates our actual gender so that the world communicates back the right way. Our gender is already there, it's the sex that gets changed.

The dissociation of being of a gender and the world communicating back your birth sex is so fundamental it amounts to a sense of being invisible and never to be touched. It is the loneliest place imaginable.

Being post-op, I get asked a lot how I felt after surgery, if I felt different, if I had some spiritual awakening or something along those lines. I did not feel any different, and did not expect to feel any different. The biggest mistake that someone could in life would be to expect that transition would somehow make them feel like a woman. I feel more feminine, prettier, but my core is the same.

Our spiritual awakening is the same as any other woman. We grow up to be women but experience as if our self is an unheard caller into the wilderness. Now, after the process is complete, the world communicates with us for the first time and we become visible and touchable. This existential loneliness is no more.

There is a lot of talk on this forum about how to figure out if one is trans or not. Usually it centers around interests and stereotypical traits. Women know they are women at their core. It is essential, and has nothing to do with make-up and dresses.

If your inner experience is not that of a woman and your dysphoria is rooted in what gender you are rather than what sex you are the likelihood that you are transsexual is not very high. Attraction to "shiny things" such as clothes, makeup, extended pinky fingers and playing with dolls does not mean you are a girl, a woman.

Your gender will not change with transition.

[Kate T]

Thankyou everyone for your replies and thoughts.

I think I understand. IF I do then my next should also have an obvious answer (I think!). Does that mean that you never felt "male" before starting your transition?

[Frances]

Thankyou everyone for your replies and thoughts.

I think I understand. IF I do then my next should also have an obvious answer (I think!). Does that mean that you never felt "male" before starting your transition?

Not quite, we felt like women.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

This is one of those threads i thought about alot (which tends to get me into trouble!!)

To Frances and Kathryn's points..

A key point to me is that putting the concept of "we felt like women" into words is darn near impossible to verbalize(even in your inner dialogue).. cisgender people simply take it for granted...the same way they take for granted that they like cake vs pie..and they don't sit there and say my boobs or my penis make me feel like a woman or man...even tho they clearly do!...when they say words like "feel like a woman", it really can mean anything..it just doesn't matter that much...just like it really doesn't matter that much if you like cake or pie..

However, that does not mean that it isn't a central part of being human... in fact, i think we are empirical evidence that its possibly the central part of being human, at minimum we exist to procreate, and there is only one way i know to do that!! LOL

Their internal knowledge of their own gender is part of what makes them feel like a person and is something that filters human experience..(this is how i read kathyrn's point earlier when she said...."The dissociation of being of a gender and the world communicating back your birth sex is so fundamental it amounts to a sense of being invisible and never to be touched. It is the loneliest place imaginable. )...perfect... call me a whiner, but that's what it feels like

The most manly woman on earth is still unequivically a woman...she may get teased, mocked or even mistaken for a man....but no one actually would ever ever consider her to be a man..and she has no inner sense of herself as a man, and she doesn't have to look at her vagina to know this..she "just knows"...she knows the same way many of us ts women know.. after years and years "we just know"

[melissaK]

I don't know that I really qualify to talk on this thread. But, I will anyway. With the disclaimer I'm not close to fully transitioned in the common sense. I'm a few years down the HRT road, with no other transition plans in play. Its been a huge task for me to get to here from where I was. And I know my journey is not done.

But that journey has had certain definitive moments, moments that have never been repressed despite the mental fog of dissociation that has so marked my life. I have at times been incapable of speaking of these moments, but they have always been there: being age 4 (or 5) and playing with the neighbor girl as a peer, trying on her Mom's makeup, and knowing I was pretty; being age 8 (third grade) and having the teachers physically bar me from my girlfriends on the hopscotch court (worst f'ing day of my life - dissociation became chronic ever since); being age 9 and being again barred from my girlfriends; being age 13 seeing Christine Jorgenson's book on a paperback carousel and just knowing that that was me; and being age 23 getting hugged by a lesbian woman and knowing that was the relationship I wanted.

So, on HRT I have grown breasts. And it is the first time any part about me other than my eyes, and sometimes in my younger days my hair, have ever been right.

So, no HRT hasn't made me feel more feminine in the least. It's ended a lifetime of pain and has played a huge role in being to unravel and reassemble my dissociative self.

[Marleena]

I don't know that I really qualify to talk on this thread. But, I will anyway. With the disclaimer I'm not close to fully transitioned in the common sense. I'm a few years down the HRT road, with no other transition plans in play. Its been a huge task for me to get to here from where I was. And I know my journey is not done.

My story is very similar to Melissa's except I'm only 6 months on hormones.

I knew I was different at about age 5. My first day in Kindergarten I cried all day because I felt like an alien that was dropped into a room full of humans. The feeling of being on the outside looking in continued until my twenties until I finally realized what was wrong. I started to take my GF's birth control pills hoping they'd change me into a girl. In those days there didn't seem to be any help for me and I gave up on the idea. I then went on to do do the guy thing until age 58 when the desire to transition hit hard again. I had blocked all of the earlier memories but when I finally accepted I was TG all the memories came back along with a second bout of GID. I finally feel "right" and all the anger and depression are gone and I'm finally happy. I'm not sure how far I need to go with this yet.

[Pamela Kay]

I may not qualify for this post either but I will give it a shot. I just wish I could put my feelings into words as well as has been done here. I agree this would be a great sticky.

I agree with most of the posts so far in the fact that I don't know that I will ever know what it feels like to be a woman but I never really knew what it felt like to be a man either. I have been all my life trying to figure out how to be a man and never could get it right. I always knew something was different about me but I never could put my finger on it and then later in life tried to fill the void by working harder at being a guy and doing what my family and friends told me defined a good man. As others have said I never quite fit in with the guys no matter how hard I tried. I did try some of my mom's clothes on from time to time but it had been drilled into me so hard what a man does and doesn't do that I always felt ashamed and would not to it again for long periods of time. It was defined to me in such black and white terms what a man and a woman was that I never really considered there could be other possibilities.

So for 47 plus years I suppressed it until I was about to go crazy (literally) and finally allowed myself to believe what I knew to be true. I went to a gender therapist hoping it was all a mistake and she could fix me but that was not the case and she only helped me verify my own self discovery.

I do identify more as a woman but it's not about the clothes, makeup, or any of the other things. I have had to dress like a guy and fight the voices in my head and the GID as has been already mentioned until I started hormones and could reach the point where I could transition. I have TS friends who feel terrible when they have to present as a man and I can relate to that. I feel that way too but this journey so far has taught me who I am no matter what I'm wearing or what I'm doing. Clothes don't always make the woman. Don't get me wrong, I am much more comfortable presenting as a woman and interacting as a woman but that doesn't mean I'm not me when I have had to dress as a male because I now know who I am inside.

So I will probably never know what it's like to be a man or a woman. All I can do is be the best and happiest me that I can be.

[Kathryn Martin]

This thread has turned out to be an amazing conversation. Thank you Adina for raising it

Does that mean that you never felt "male" before starting your transition?

Between the age of nine when I was told by my mother never to disclose that I knew I was a girl to age 45 one of the most pervasive fears I had was that I did not appear male enough. It was a constant struggle for me to project something at least marginally that would allow me to fly under the radar. My behavior, how I walked and gestured was a constant give away. I had to force myself to sit with my legs open, adopt a staccato speech pattern, take the melody out of my speech. People thought I was an effeminate man. We don't want to be women. We want the world to stop calling us men because our disability belies our self. I never suffered from not knowing who I was, or had doubts about myself. I suffered from a body that made the world disregard who I was.

One of the worst things for me was fighting constantly against my deep need for financial security, emotional security, the deep need for strong partner. I pretended to be strong, risk taking, the silent type and failed miserably. While it was enough for the world to believe I was an effeminate man, the loneliness it occasioned was like an island in an abyss which I could not cross. I walked in this valley of despair for far too long.

Through my transition I have finally found my bridge to cross the abyss and the world started to communicate with me the right way. That is what we mean when we say the pretense falls away. Now I have to unlearn the tight control I kept on my self and I can be who I am unreservedly for the first time. What a shame it took 45 years to accomplish.

[Badtranny]

We don't want to be women. We want the world to stop calling us men because our disability belies our self. I never suffered from not knowing who I was, or had doubts about myself. I suffered from a body that made the world disregard who I was.

Perfect.

Let me also add that we sure as hell didn't want to be Transsexual women. Even when I knew it was possible, I didn't want to be one of "them". All I really wanted was for people to stop expecting me to be a dude. Even at this early stage of my transition (still don't pass 100%) my life is soooo much better because NOBODY treats me like a man anymore.

[KellyJameson]

Ones reaction to being viewed as an effeminate man could be another marker for those trying to understand if they are experiencing gender dysphoria.

I would always be hurt by this label and had a terrible internal fear of believing myself to be a effeminate man because it completely clashed with my own internal sense of being stronger than those using the label against me, a label that was used as an insult to imply a weakness
that I was not experiencing because I was just being me.

The insult attacks you on two levels, one consciously where you understand the danger of appearing weak so it is about social survival and subconsciously where identity lives but it is only understood consciously so you do not see that it is a double insult but consciously focus on being labelled weak.

This creates a trap because you than learn to fear appearing weak and close down the expression of self which is the expression of identity so remove yourself from yourself going deeper into the already existing gender dysphoria that was there from the beginning.

Society makes gender dysphoria much worse by turning you against yourself so you reject out of fear the very thing you need to do to remain who you are making the fracture worse and the path back to truth longer.

You stop living identity so cannot reconcile the dysphoria in relationship to the body and believe it to be something else because that has been what you have been conditioned to believe, you go into disassociation and mental illness.

It is a type of unintentional brainwashing to eliminate the self but only because no one understands that who you are is not who they see.

It makes so much sense now why some go into a display of symbolic hyper-masculinity to prove to themselves and others they are not weak, they are defending their womanhood (self) from attack but this creates a paradoxical experience of thinking you are defending your masculinity until you realize that you were actually defending the self (identity) that is internal and not your social standing among the common tribe of men that you never belonged to, you are an outsider.

You are not fighting for advancement and it is not about ambition, you are fighting for survival.

I really understand now why so many self destruct, the true miracle is that anyone survives it.

[EnglishRose]

I think I understand. IF I do then my next should also have an obvious answer (I think!). Does that mean that you never felt "male" before starting your transition?

For me, it took a long time to come to terms with, but I realized I'd just been accepting the default and I'd never actually "felt male" whatsoever. For what that's worth (and as others have pointed out this kinda thing is so hard to qualify.)