How did your gender perception shift in the long haul

[Trinity]

I was looking back and just am curious

Post transition, post coming to acceptance, there was a shift.

Pre transition it was brutal, repression, dysphoria, self hate.

Then came the release from that and all hell broke loose and I went pretty far to the mtf side of it, career self destructed, theater took off and then I walked away from that for personal reasons connected to family and faith, and then the last 4 years have just been diffferent.

I wound up instead of being full out sh'e which I thought would happen and which I did live out for a while, to being nonbinary trans, multiple presentations and really pretty happy.  But it did not go where I thought it would go.

How was your journey?

[Leena]

I had a lot of self hate when I was repressing. Mainly at not being able to totally repress. I think I worked through most of that before I transitioned, as it took my a very long time to move forward with that.

In some ways, my gender perception hasn't really changed since I began to understand what nonbinary is. I felt like I was like binary trans women in most ways and like nonbinary people in some ways then and still do now.

Transitioning changed how others perceive me though, and that changed my perspective on things a bit.

[Trinity]

It's always been very binary for me with the body, but its different in social interaction. Its like voice modding, I don't do it and on the phone I sound like a guy, although I can flip in intonation and sensitivity to the female side pretty fast depending on who I am talking to.

Out female presenting I can be very female, and I don't act like a guy does around here, whether they are in the stereotype or not.

Honestly I see women and I say, no, I am not a woman, and I see men and I say, no I am not a man, and I am attracted to both.

Transmen as well, to be honest, though with all of that I shut those feeling down fast because of being married and faithful to her. But I am aware of it, sometimes very aware of it.

Because of early life maie fail, and because I was attracted to women, I consciouly or unconsciouly became very sensual or ladies man or whatever you want to call it, I was looking for validation through sex and through sexual attraction. In this later part of life, that is a royal pain in the ass. I don't want it or like it but on a subconscious level and with body language and just about everything the undercurrent exists and it ruins things for me, I hate it. And it has a lot to do with the bullying.

But the self hate is bad for the male fail me, I need to see the trans me, the nb me, the male me just looks effeminate and I want to either put a bullet through the picture or do some other thing, its a serious hate and anger at that guy, maybe some frustration too that I could never fix him.

I know we are in the now, but it cannot be denied that the first 25 years of my life were extreme abuse and danger, up to 18 it was abuse and after 18 it was drugs and sex and how am I still alive....

It took great amounts of alcohol to be myself, and even more grass to get laid. I was totally out of control, waking up in broom closets in the bar once stashed with the band's instrument cases, or just all kinds of other very embarrassing situations, the entire period frmom the late 70's to early 80's was a blur, and its crazy that I did 100 shows during that time in the theater, most of the crazy happened after the curtain went down at night.

Out to the discos fully dressed under guy clothes, bottle of champagne in one hand and poppers in the other on the dance floor picking up men. Or not. But getting very smashed for sure.

When I broke from dysphoria, I am pretty sure now that I went over the edge, not to the point of hte psyche units, but it was a self destruct kind of thing. I got sober when I came out, but I purged and tried to be a guy out of love of my wife and out of a theology that condemned being trans. Eventually that folded. When I broke from dysphoria though it was bad, Ativan and I talked every night trying to keep me away from the edge, so did Patty and Aisla, constantly keeping me from cracking up, and holding me back from the full mtf conversion path I was on.

Which was good.

There was so much rage and repression that the she inside me or that part of who I am, and you can stop the label but at that time it was two binary genders inside e fighting because I wasn't integrated yet, that happened later and it all came together, nonbinary. But she was feral and he was trying to hold it together and it just crashed and burned, and yet it didn't. Survived it and stayed sober. But I had a ton of help and I still check in every night with my very dear friend....

Its too much to handle alone. it still is. Life is.

But the latter days are much more nonbinary, much more sh'e and not she, not he, much more they, more like the nonbinary trans youth I see that change their bodies the way they are happy with them and don't trip out on it all.

It was a mid 50's transition too, and those are very hard, and the regrets and the pain of losing the young years of female body still is severe.

But as my very dear friend has told me, mature women, mature trans women, are still very attractive or can be, and the maturity is a beauty all by itself, grey hair can be beautiful. Kind eyes are always beautiful.

I still struggle with the emotions, repress some, they can go off too far, i see it as a female thing or an estrogenic thing, but there is more to it, and I have always been very afraid of my feelings, not my rage or depression or anxiety feelings, but the love feelings terrify me. I have strict boundaries of how far I will let those go, they can go as far as they want in my marriage only. As a bisexual its been very hard not taking care of the female sexuality, but its necessary to how I live, I love my wife. And that gets hard too becasue she is cis and straight, and it can bother her because I am full transition no op. No op because I love her. There's the money and other things too, but mostly its all because of her.

Heck it took me 10 years just to be able to grow my hair out, and I still wait for the shoe to drop on that one.

But more comfortable nb now. Of course, here I am tonight doing construction in men's work jeans and a bra and nothing else.....

[Ativan Prescribed]

Getting shit growing up was a constant, but I fought back instead of trying to repress it, I was who I am and thats all there was to it.
If it was too much and just nasty from other kids, I generally would just punch them in the face and sometimes a major sucker punch if they were that much bigger, I had a reputation.
But I got a ton of good natured shit from everyone all the time, but mostly it wasn't such a bad thing, it came from friendship and was just as much of good messing with each other as I did the same to them as well, find a weak point and just tease a bit.
I never backed down and never denied and what good is it to give someone shit if it doesn't bother them? I handed it out just as much but it was generally a different thing, but I could see their weaknesses and zero right in when I wanted to.
I never ever let them get to me to like the point of wanting to cry, which I did for lots of things, but I also was full of fighting and wasn't afraid to take on bigger kids at all, you win you lose, doesn't matter when you are a kid, at least you tried...
When I got older it was in general the very same way and I was a lot smarter than most people and had plenty of comebacks, again what good is it to try and make someone feel small when it doesn't work and probably you were going to lose because I was ruthless in picking out a weakness on their part.
In the high school years, the girls liked me better because they could just talk to me and I more or less understood what they meant, I probably had more friends that were girls than guys and I had plenty of those, I was actually fairly popular and well liked despite it all.
I had freinds that even told me a few times they wished I was a girl because they liked me more than as just friends, a few times it went a little far but to me who hasn't?
It wasn't like I was gay, but to me if you liked someone, why not? And a few of my friends confessed to me that they were or had the thoughts at least, and it turned out for some that once they got out of school they came out of the closet and became happy.
I was just never really in the closet so much because I was considered feminine to a point, but AI was also seen as more masculine for a lot of the stuff I did as well, I had a ton more daring than most of them, most wouldn't even come close in that regard.
After high school I was free to just be me most of the time and laughed in the face of people who tried to belittle me in any way they thought they could, it just never worked and nothing really stuck unless I let it.
I mean at one point I decided to just fuck it all and when I was twenty I took a job in central america watching the cocaine trafficking through the country, that evolved into me becoming ruthless with a sniper rifle and that ended in a bad way eventually, I was in over my head finally.
But I made my comeback by going back to school, becoming much more than I thought I ever would, worked in R&D and was responsible for some techno achievements that kinda made tech at the time stand up and just move a few years ahead.
By then things like being feminine just didn't matter, I was better and smarter than a lot of people I worked with and that was what mattered, who I was in anyone's eyes didn't matter, I was doing things they just couldn't do.
And yet people still made stupid comments here and there, but I could and did laugh in their faces and pretty much just gave them the so fucking what comeback, I was better than them and it did no good to their reputations to try and take mine down.
And thats the thing, people will always try and find something, if it isn't your sexuality it is going to be something else, assholes are assholes not matter what, the only way for them to get ahead is to try and make others lesser, just don't let them, call them out call them bigots or assholes.
If there is one thing I have always done and always will, its stand up for myself, I just don't care if someone is bigger or smarter or more of an asshole than me, I can and do fight back by just not giving a shit what others think of me, don't like? Why would I care?
And I do care for others, just not abusive people, why would anyone care about them at all, somebody has to be the asshole, let them be and move on in life and don't look back, don't let them occupy space in your head, thats all they are good for and thats not a good thing, fuck'm.
I think back on some of the shot I just had coming at me and it doesn't bother me at all, I have survived and I have survived a lot worse than most people will ever have to, I'm better than any bigoted asshole all the time, they don't take up space in my head.
Wanna play the who can be a bigger asshole with me? I will win because I learned how to be an asshole from assholes and they never learn how to get better at it, they reach a level and thats it, be a bigger asshole and they shrink away.

[danishcouple]

For us we had no problems in the past, altought we warn't typical females, we ware females with strong manly manners and that is most accepted.

But when we became older we tought that we were the only one with this, and we start searching to other females with more manly tan female manners.

Searching to our identity and of there were others too with the same identity we came in contact on an early age with the lhbti community and we realised that we were not alone that there were more.
At that time we also discovered that we were lesbian, but not typical lesbian we chrushes on females as man not as women.
Started searching in this we came in contact with transgenders, mtf,ftm but with this we had also problems because we didn't see our self as female, bot also not as male.
We searced further and came in contact with nonbinary people who living in between, and are transformed in between, we saw born males with a panis but having also a smooth skin and breasts and born females with a vagina, breasts but also having chest hair deep voices and beards.
This was home comming for us this was us so we feeled our selfs too.
We stayed with this group went to meetings to talk with them, and with in a half year we had our blood tests done , and they started our transformation we had our first shot of testosterone.

Now day's we living full our lives didn't have any problems in society because society change very fast here , couse of lots of misbehaviours in churches and consvartive groups their political input drops down (these groups are shrinking also more and more people get out of the churches an believings )lots of things are changing for lhbti people and others life gets better for us ( for examle railway compagnies changed their call from lady's and gentle man into dear passengers, also toilets in public places gets more gender neutral, some clothing shops scrapped the lady and mans part but all together etc ) for us life gets better and better and easyer, people didn't look strange to us, lots of people are thinking that we are intersexed ( but don't not know the real thing ) thats not a problem any more.
The only problem what there is are the islamitic people they are very agressive to lifestyles as this, but also to binir lifestyle of people who aren't islamitic, this problem grows, but now day's life is good