there is an anxiety in my trans circles that the future might become worse, that access to surgery, new passports and stuff might become harder. i feel like i should hurry to get shit done.
but i can’t. it took sooo long until i knew for sure, i wanted to go on hrt. i am now and it’s great. not for the reasons i imagined, but for all the small things i never thought about. yet i don’t know what i want my name to be. it is such a hard question for me. i start to rethink sexuality aswell esp. since my libido seems to have vanished under estrogen. this i like also. but what does it say about my sexual identity? or my gender identity? will there be a point at which i want a bottom surgery? there are so many questions that i can’t answer (yet).
meanwhile the whole world seems to demand these answers and wants them to align with their cis-het assumptions. health care wants me to display a binary persona for access to hrt (i played the part), and surgery. my aunt immediately fantasized about me “certainly” looking for a man to have a family with. everyone really wats to have an update on how to handle me. no ambiguity.
i realised that in my trans specific therapy group i get quiet and anxious when they are all discussing hospitals, doctors, procedures and all the technicalities. i feel like i am behind. always behind. i haven’t done my homework. i didn’t know forever that i was a girl. i don’t know today. i’m just starting to get a sense of self. something that was shattered and buried through thorough suppression. i am putting together fragments like an archeologist. but being trans is in a way still just a working hypothesis. it’s highly plausible, but i can’t see the bigger picture yet.
i am afraid, that all of this will take me too long, that i will have to jump over new hurdles, or old ones, like when the rubber stamps from my therapist will be too old. i feel like i have to figure out myself now. i feel alone with that. even in self help, and therapy groups everyone is always so sure about themselves. just not me. i should seek out enby groups maybe? plz hit me up, if you ever felt this way too. 😥
I’ve also struggled like OP to come to terms with whether I’m trans, whether I’m non-binary or a binary woman, whether I want surgery, etc. When my egg cracked I didn’t think I had experienced any real dysphoria, I was pretty certain I had no bottom dysphoria and would not want bottom surgery, and all I knew was the evidence was mounting that I was probably trans and should take steps to transition for my mental well-being.
Within a few months my repression and coping strategies like dissociation were diminished by social transition and I realized I had significant and severe dysphoria, and had suffered it most of my life. I went from thinking I had no awareness growing up I was a woman to realizing that some of my earliest memories would count as awareness of my gender identity (and even are common tropes), and that I had basically been trying to variably reconcile and repress this fact my whole life.
Since then I have had to acknowledge that my repression has left me ill equipped to be “in touch” with myself about what is best for me, and that even when I can’t tell if I would like something (e.g. before HRT I worried I wouldn’t like having breasts, I couldn’t tell beforehand), that I should probably take the steps I can.
So far that has worked well for me - and I think in the end I’m realizing I’m not non-binary like I originally thought. Like you, I went through a phase of denial that took the shape of identifying as non-binary, because it made it easier to rationalize not transitioning or admitting I was “trans” enough.
What helped orient me was to realize that there was no part of being a man that I wanted to be or keep. A beard was the opposite of me. My penis felt like a silly and foreign object, particularly when erect. My testes and scrotum made me nauseous. I had become good at ignoring or rationalizing away signs like the pervasive and intrusive genital mutilation ideation that came up for me, and lo and behold since bottom surgery I haven’t had any genital mutilation thoughts! In retrospect it all seems obvious and easy to discern. On the other side from a place of repression, it can feel very ambiguous and uncertain.
I think most people advise to be slow and cautious, and this aligns with cis society’s fear of transition as well: insurance companies and governments enforce long wait times to have access to care, despite clinical evidence showing this is harmful. So I tend to take the opposite tact: don’t gatekeep yourself and seek access to care ASAP. It’s nice to be able to go slow, but the system will force you to go slow anyway. Get on the waitlists now, make the appointments now, etc. Even if there weren’t an anti-trans campaign threatening to take options off the table in the future, there is also just the reality of your well-being and how long transition takes. You want to get through it so you are healthy and happy sooner, and so you reduce the risks that come with delayed access to care.
yes i heared that one too. i even said it to others: ‘go to surgeons/endos, let them inform you in detail. you can still say no after that.’ but all of these appointments are a lot of stress and at the moment i don’t feel that strongly like you reported. i think.
the only harmfull (or at least world-denying) ideation i had was that of being impaled by some angelic being (think of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa or if you like Alucard vs Incognito). being pinned down, or picked out of the world, giving up all responsibilities and ties for and to it.
a few month/years ago i recognized that this ideation went away slowly. after i started hrt it shifted further. in those situations in which i would flee into this fantasy, i started to imagine spreading my wings instead.
that’s super corny but i guess there is a self somewhere that started breathing again. i wish it would talk to me more often and openly. this would be my motivation to do stuff. wether it told me through nausea or happiness, doesn’t matter i want this person to say something. i need that to motivate myself (the ego) throughout the stress and pain of surgeries.
you commented on my kind of genital dysphoria, that is a helpful comment. thanks alot, again. but phenomenologically its just that i don’t find particular pleasure in people doing things to my genitals. it’s rather boring. i feel like i miss data, in this respect.
ps: yes, i grew up within (liberal/leftist) catholicism. some motives of catholicism will be with me forever, i guess.
I do not recommend letting the surgeons or endos inform you in detail, in general my advice on that is to know more than your doctors.
I know you mentioned you felt you hadn’t done your homework, and I think this communicates both that you feel overwhelmed and like you’ve started this process that demands so much more knowledge than you feel you have, but also that you might feel like you don’t have the level of certainty or clarity about your own dysphoria or needs to direct the transition.
Both are aspects I struggled with in my transition, and the first 3 - 6 months after my egg cracked and I realized I was trans, I read quite a few books, articles, etc. to educate myself while I was also going through the earliest stages of social and medical transition.
You can absolutely educate yourself assuming you have the time and opportunity to read.
Regarding the uncertainty about dysphoria and imposter syndrome (wondering you’re really trans, whether you really suffer from dysphoria, etc.) - that has basically never gone away for me, it’s just a question that becomes less relevant as I get on the other side of major transition milestones.
Even now I still wonder if I’m somehow secretly a cis man who tricked myself into transitioning. Such thoughts I now realize mostly come from a combination of irrational fears and internalized transphobia - I am older and grew up during a very transphobic time, so on some basic level I don’t really emotionally accept the medical establishment’s claims about gender dysphoria, and I worry someday I’ll wake up and feel differently … that said, I’ve wished I was born a woman my whole life, so now that I live as a woman it’s never an issue for me, and objectively I’m much healthier and happier now. So everything objective and concrete makes it clear transition was worth it, the fears are genuinely irrational.
So, given what I know about my fears, I took transition steps with the understanding that I was probably a binary trans woman and it’s safe to take every measure to help me live as a woman, and so far that has worked out perfectly for me even when I wasn’t sure beforehand. I even had bottom surgery without feeling certain about it, and I’m glad I did.
im crying. thank you for caring so much and for your reccommendations!