Okay, I’m fully aware that people cannot decide for me if I’m cis or trans, but I definitely don’t think this seems “cis” even if I may be in denial. After all, I feel like if I were just a woman, I’d feel like one all or most of the time and it wouldn’t change.
In second or third grade, I really liked tomboy characters like Scout Finch. I had watched the movie based on the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. I identified as a tomboy and didn’t want to wear dresses. However, not only this, but I wanted to hang out with only boys, not grow up to wear makeup, cut my hair short, do boys’ sports, and be mistaken for a little boy. “Tomboy” was what I used because I didn’t understand, but what I really remember wanting was to be a boy.
My favorite characters in media were usually men, such as Uncle Fester, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, Truman from The Truman Show, etc.
At first, I thought what everyone else in my family did: I was a straight girl with fictional crushes on men. However, I started to imagine myself as them, try to fit my personality to be like them, and even imagine myself to have a penis. At twelve, it really felt like I had one.
I was also convinced for a part of my life as a child that I actually had a penis, just a really, really small one. I didn’t want my boobs to grow either.
At thirteen, I started identifying as a trans guy called Mikey, only detransitioning due to having a transphobic girlfriend and the impact of our breakup affecting me too much.
Now, I’m questioning again. Some people see me as a feminine man. Others, a masculine woman. I am starting to see myself more as a feminine man.
Did anyone else go through anything similar as trans people? It might mean a lot about my identity to go through this, I think I might be trans.
I’m transfem, but I went through something similar to this.
I was a precocious little kitten, yet despite devouring libraries as soon as I could read, I didn’t consider what it meant that I had only a tenuous connection to masculinity until I started to hit puberty. The signs were all there, my kittenhood hero was the astonaut Sally Ride and I preferred playing house with the girl next door to playing outside with the boys further up the street, but I didn’t take any heed until the hormones kicked off my dysphoria.
I didn’t have the words for it at the time, I just knew that I was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of both manhood and womanhood, so I did the obvious thing and examined my feelings in exacting detail. Going so far as to join adults-only chatrooms in various guises to see how I felt about being perceived as different genders
The results were disheartening, as I felt most like myself when affecting a mixed gender presentation. Nonbinary folks were essentially unknown in Texas in the 90’s, and the text I’d seen on intersex folks was barely more than a footnote. So, I convinced myself that this wasn’t part of my identity, that it was just a childish sexual fantasy, and slumped through the rest of my first puberty more often depressed than not. I lived in envy of trans men and women who, for all the challenges they face, at least had a path to follow to become themselves.
Around age 16 my parents came across some browser history I had neglected to clear that outed me, but they only realized that I wasn’t straight and assumed that meant I was gay. Not knowing how to explain my true feelings and with the rising acceptance of gay people at the time, I didn’t bother to try and correct them. I got a boyfriend the next year who didn’t like it when I tried crossdressing, so I tamped my feelings down even further.
For the next 15 years I wore a mask every day, pretending to be a “normal gay guy”, sleepwalking through life, and only being myself in niche chatrooms full of similar perverts. It wasn’t until 2018 or so that things started to turn around. The aura of invalidity that clung to nonbinary identities was broken when Elliot Page came out and new research was showing that hormone therapy for enbys had wildly positive outcomes. That was the final crack in my egg, I couldn’t convince myself that my transness was just a fantasy anymore.
It took some time to get out of Texas and come out to my partners and family, but I eventually started hormone therapy just over two years ago. I didn’t realize how much the dysphoria had been weighing on me until that first dose of estrogen blew it all away like a bad dream. I’ve since settled into a gender presentation somewhere between trans tomboys and femboys, and my only regret is that I didn’t start transitioning sooner.
My advice to you is to not just passively listen to your heart, but to actively scan its depths. Reach deep and keep poking until you can discern the true shape of your soul. Figure out how you feel, both when unencumbered by judgement and when you are seen as you wish to be perceived.
If the idea of spending the rest of your life as a woman gives you a frisson of anxiety and feminine manhood doesn’t, then you already know what you need and all that’s left is to come to terms with what that means.
Take ur time to figure it out 🫶 (also someone once said to me: cis people don’t question being cis very often)
