Why tons of M-to-F's and so few F-to-Ms?

[pocoyo]

Oooh this thread's picking up with some great stuff now! Liking it...

I'm conjecturing that a large population of FTM's (not present) have enough support and tolerance from women and society in-general to remain well connected in life - "not isolated".

I'm sad to say that actually, being FTM (as in the transexual/gender confused sort) is pretty difficult and it's really really hard to find support.
There are lots of mtf resources but not many ftm ones. When phoning a trans helpline for instance, I'm quite a novelty as they are so used to mtf's.

As for support from women & society... well if I'm anything to go by, a lot of FTM's just keep it a secret because they don't even know there's anyone else like them out there (although I did suspect there must be). I felt a little ashamed though (although inside I did know there was nothing bad about what I was doing). I knew that others would think I was strange and would not understand. And they didn't.

When dressing boyishly when a little younger (and didn't know about other transmen), I got called a lesbian (in a horrible way, and even though I am not one). And "weird" and "freak" and got bullied. Even pushed around by boys who were saying "lesbians are meant to be hard aren't they? Come on then... let's have a fight..." and sometimes I would fight and stick up for myself, because I am a boy, and because I am tough. Funnily enough I am about as far from a lesbian as you can get. I see myself as a gay man. At school I even got spat on.
I didn't have support from anyone for ages. Eventually I got a counsellor and he suggested I reach out to others like me, which is why I came here
That is cutting a long story short.
Please don't ever think that being (any sort of trangendered) FTM is easy. Because I promise you, it isn't.


.... perhaps it's not a case of why so few ftms compared to mtfs... it's just that most of the ftm's here are transexual, wheras a large proportion of the mtfs are crossdressers. Probably largely due to the previously stated fact that a man is "crossdressing" by wearing just one feminine garment, wheras a woman isn't deemed as crossdressing unless she is nearing transexual.) Especially as there are a lot of unisex clothes now which are largely more male-looking.

Maybe the real question is... why so many crossdressers and so few transexual?


Maybe it's not that FTMs and MTF's are so different... perhaps it's that crossdressers and transexual are different (although naturally they overlap). Perhaps we shouldn't be "divided" by our mtf/ftmness but by our particular transgender status.

But whatever, I think that all of us transgender folk (whether a mild crossdresser, a crossdresser, genderqueer, transexual etc etc, any one of the many things throughout that huge and amazing spectrum,) are comrades, and should be united by a respect for each other and people's individual transgenderism.