How has being trans changed your life?

[Trinity]

Few things are as life changing as discovering you are trans.

How has that discovery changed you?  How is it changing you now?  Your ffiendships, job, love life, isolation, spirituality, body....

How has it changed you?

Trinity

[Valerie]

Hmmm... Well it certainly has taught me to view the world completely different!! My life has changed because I've from being raised in Christian family where man/ woman, and you can't be too feminine. I was always on more feminine side, and I noticed and picked up on it, so I would try to be more masc, but let's face it I was always a more feminine person and still am!!

But anyways, I now see everything as how it is, everything is gendered especially in marketing to make more money, if things weren't gendered companies would go down because people would buy whatever. Also, that our gender binary society is bullshit because people gender the most ridiculous things like colors, food, drinks, glasses, video games, razors, deordant, clothing, etc etc

Basically, I try to view the world now as when I see or meet someone I try thinking them of as "they /them" until I find out they're preferred gender. I try not to assume. And of course I see everything is more gray area!! Nothing in this world is just black and white. It really has changed me for the better in being a more open minded and accepting Person.

My friendships hmmm... Well I know my best friend she is super supportive!! I just wish we weren't supported by distance. As for other friendships, hmm I barely speak up abouts it. Although, I kinda wanna be more open and be me! It's just meehhh... I worry too much about judgement. I also would love to make more trans/ nonbinary friends!

As for love life haha I'd need one to answer this I recently went back on Grindr, and well once again having to be bombarded by profiles that say "masc+" or "masc only" it really sucks! Especially since I'm more attracted to feminine guys, and usually they aren't looking for someone who is just as fem as they are!!

Like I met a guy off Grindr yesterday, and he was super cool!! We talked, and stuff, and I told him I was nonbinary and viewed myself as neither male or female, and he seemed cools about! And I told him about my heeled boots I bought, but he seemed quiet about that. But later he said that we get along well and would like to be friends, and hope that doesn't disappoint me, and I was like no of course not because when I meet people I go not expecting anything, and I'm okay with friends because you can never have too many friends! And then we exchanged numbers. So hopefully it'll grow to a good friendship! :3

But yea, I do tend to have a fear that me being nonbinary will lessen my chances of being with someone. Like before I finally figured myself out, I thought I was just a more feminine gay guy, now I'm genderless, which I'm happy about, but like... I don't if people will understand or want nothing to do with me, or respect me and use prefer pronouns. I don't know. So many guys want, and use "I'm a guy into guys so be manly" and it just makes me feel less??

Now as for work, well a couple of my coworkers know, yet they still use male pronouns, but I let it slide, because like I'm still trying to stop misgendering myself as well. Aside from that I don't say much about my gender because I don't wanna be seen as being "politically correct" or "unprofessional" it sucks.

Hmmm isolation... Not really... I mean I already am a very more introverted, shy, awkward, and kinda more reserved and keep to self type of person.

As for body I have moments where I can't stand how masculine I look!! Like my broad shoulders, or how super hairy my body gets or just how bushy my eyebrows get! I wanna get them done Audrey Hepburn style :3 And I wish I had a more of hourglass body.

Spirituality... well I definitely go down the more witchcraft path, which is very genderless or at least in my point view!! I see it as more of an omniscient genderless entity that can take many forms, and different facets of like a diamond.

As for me I can definitely see how I fluctuate! Sometimes I'm very feminine, sometimes I'm a lot more masculine, and then other times I'm right in the middle between them being both!! And I actually love being all of them

[EchelonHunt]

Sometimes, I feel like when I first discovered I was transgender (transguy, back then), it felt like I was swapping one cage (female) with another cage (male)

This gif describes the feeling with painful accuracy ahaha.



"I'm free, I'm free!"
*trips and falls into another trap.
"Oh, dang it!"

Being non-binary however, it has opened my world up to the possibilities and allowed me to learn how to love myself, something identifying as a transguy didn't allow me to do because of that toxic mentality of femininity or anything remotely feminine being a "bad thing"

[Shan]

Well let's see...

All of my former he-man outdoorsy buddies are a thing of a past because our interests are now about 180 degrees out from one another. Last hunting trip I was on was about fifteen years ago and they all joked in a sexual context about who would get to put their cot next to mine in the tent. I'm not the brunt of their jokes ever, so I pushed them all out of my life.

My interests have changed dramatically, all the firearms are gathering dust in the gun locker and I'm more interested in meaningful conversations and relationships than having to continually revalidate what has now become my former manhood. Such a dreary exercise in futility anyway...

Cis women realize that the male threat is no longer present and that I actually like women for who they are rather than for their physical attributes. It makes for a much more relaxed environment and is so much easier to have women friends that like me just as I am.

I've become accepting of the GLBTIQ community more now than ever before and look disdainfully on the mean spirited jokes and criticism towards those who are different that come from bigots.

I can dress more colorfully mixing feminine with masculine and enjoy a more androgynous appearance in public.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure there is much more if I wanted to think about it.

[Julie B]

I've known I was trans at a conscious level for at least a dozen years and at the existential level for decades.  But it has only been the last four years that I have done anything constructive about it and only the last three that I have been on transition levels of HRT.  What I believed was true about people, ideas, truth, and justice hasn't really changed, but how I live bears little resemblance to anything that went on before.

Foxglove posted a short essay on the change from black and white TV to color.  My life is now in living color, full of scents, filled with appreciation, and mostly filled with joy.  The cost of living authentically full time was, in money very large, but trivial compared to living in the sunlight of the spirit as I do almost all of the time today.  For me being trans at a conscious level and pursuing living as I have always believed I ought to, is not so much about what I do differently, but how I think differently.  It is about how I perceive opportunity and treat, love and loss, joy and sorrow.  It is altogether good and almost always better.  HRT was the catalyst for me.  Watching my physical body become closer to what was real and true for me moved my thinking, and ultimately how the world relates to me socially, sexually, and spiritually.

Julie

[kdkorz10211]

I feel like I see through all the bullshit society teaches us about men versus women and how those designations supposedly determine basically everything about you and are supposedly naturally opposites(and of course are taught as the only options). All the unnecessary gendering of things just baffles me.

[Ember]

I finally feel like I deserve to be alive. Accepting the parts of me that are feminine, and accepting that feeling non-binary when taken as a whole is a perfectly ok thing, has opened me up to experiencing every facet of myself. I feel like I finally have given myself permission to love myself. I wake up excited every day to groom myself, because I feel like I want my 'home' to be well cared for now that I feel like I belong here. I no longer worry about being 'male' enough, no longer worry about hyper-expressing the male parts of me (which are few and far between I might add), I'm free to just be me. It's like having a full head of hair instead of a terribly inadequate comb-over. I feel complete, like the real deal - I'm not just some shoddy attempt at masking the truth.

Thank god for my luxurious curls.