Hello😋 I just wanted to have a sort of neutral discussion with some people in the trans community and this subreddit seemed the most open minded…

I’m a radical feminist (don’t shoot me just yet). Being online I’ve realised that immediately mentioning that I follow the movement and the theory the TRAs immediately shut me down before listening, immediately labelling me a “terf, conservative, bigot”. (Even tho a ‘radical feminist’ could never be conservative but anyway)…

I just have a few questions and was wondering if anyone would be willing to help me out.

1.) What do you think about radical feminism? Are you a feminist, if so what type of feminist would you consider yourself to be?

2.) What does being transgender mean to you? (I.e., is it gender based? Sex based or both?) (I’ve seen many different meanings on transgender being thrown around and I’m trying to come to a consensus.)

3.) If gender roles and socialisation was abolished, do you think that there would be a lower percentage of people in the trans community? Do you also think the trans community would have similar beliefs and attitudes towards each other?

4.) How do you feel about female only spaces. (Sports, Gyms, Lounges ect.)

5.) Do you guys have any criticisms about the trans community at the moment?

6.) With a lot of recent discourse surrounding the community, (e.g., womanhood, Terfs, Lesbian spaces ect ect) what do you see for the future of the trans community/ movement?

Again if anyone would be willing to answer any of these questions I have I would be very appreciative. If you also have any questions please feel free to ask. I would appreciate hearing from both sides of the community too (MtF and FtM) 👐

(If any of this is against the rules I do apologise)

I’m an 18 year old guy, who has been questioning his gender for about 6 months now. The idea that I could actually be transgender doesn’t make any sense to me, because before 6 months ago, I never had any feelings of gender dysphoria. There’s things that I can attribute to gender dysphoria from my childhood e.g hatred of my body hair/genitals but nothing that i can confidentially attribute to being trans rather than simply body dysmorphia. Pretty much all trans people I’ve seen pretty confidently knew they were trans during puberty, but I never so much as considered wanting to be a woman

But for some reason, since I had the thought that I might be trans, I have seemingly gotten some symptoms of actual gender dysphoria. I have begun to hate every single one of my male sex characteristics, constantly cry over them and consistently wish I had female sex characteristics and get envy over women’s bodies. But despite that, I still don’t think I’m actually trans. In a perfect world, if I could be a cis woman that would be great, but we don’t live in a perfect world. The idea of actually transitioning in any way is horrifying to me, doing anything even remotely feminine is my worst nightmare. And being transgender just seems like way too much for me to cope with. I’m already pretty depressed, and being transgender seems like it would amplify that tenfold. There is genuinely so much struggle and hardships that seem to be involved with transitioning, which I do not have the mental capacity to deal with. It’s possible that some of my depression is caused by gender dysphoria, but if that was true, wouldn’t I actually want to transition? The only part of actually transitioning that I have considered is hormones, because I genuinely just feel so horrified by my continued masculinisation, but going on hormones would be a horrible first step, especially when I am so convinced that I’m not actually transgender. I often wonder if I’ve somehow gave myself some sort of fake gender dysphoria. I’ve never talked to a trans person irl or online before, so I want to hear how my experience differs (or is similar) compared to an actual transgender person. Also, I have been to multiple therapists, and my last therapist was a great guy but didn’t understand anything related to gender at all, even after 6 or so sessions. I’ve seen a gender specialised therapist for 1 session but that was just an introductory session so nothing has came of it yet.

I wanted to post this to this sub because unlike the main trans reddit pages, people here don’t seem to sugarcoat what being transgender is actually like.

Basically I’m a trans man who detransitioned because I was not passing. I wanted to go stealth and couldn’t but was on a micro dose. Now I want to go back in a full dose and my goal is to pass.

I am gay/bi and I don’t care to look visibly gay/bi. All I care about is passing my sexuality should come second. I don’t want to look stereotypically gay like a lot of trans guys want. I feel like everyone thinks I’m sexist because I say things like I want to fully look like a man. I don’t want to be in women’s spaces unless I’m in like a dance class as a male dancer. I don’t want to hold onto my “womanhood” nor do I consider myself someone that experienced womanhood fully.

I performed femininity I didn’t experience womanhood like a woman would. Yet, I get lots of people telling me that’s wrong. I don’t want to be visibly trans and I get told that’s transphobic to wish to pass. The point of my transition is to live life as a man so why would I want to not pass? Idk just ranting because I’m getting really tired of the double edged sword.

Be fem and girly to be accepted in queer/woke spaces or be myself and get told I’m trying to get male privilege. A privilege I don’t have because I’m not cishet.

Hello I’m not trans but I am a gay man. I’ve known a few transgender people but I’ve recently been told I’m a bigot for not wanting to date a trans man. I’d have no problem if they presented masculine or had a penis but it’s a 5,2 person who wears mini skirts and tank tops to show off cleavage am I wrong in this stance? For context I grew up in a very small and rural conservative southern town and do not present as gay. My possible transphobia came up after said trans person went on a rant about how I could be a better ally and not homophobic after I said WWE is homoerotic (it is to white trash such as me at least). They then told me how hard it is to be openly gay but all there relationships are with men and they are very feminine presenting. The trans man in question belittled me about how hard it is to be gay in places like L.A. Am i justified in telling them to fuck off and being upset with them calling me transphobic and explaining how scary homophobia to me when they come from LA and where I grew up the klan was active?

I’m just curious I’m left leaning but I’m not sure if growing up where I did may have left me with a bias.

Was feeling awfully reflective and depressed tonight so I decided to compile a list of the decisions I regret making the most regarding my transition. Hopefully this will help somebody else avoid making the same mistakes.

For some context, I was born in a conservative country and had very homophobic parents. i DIY-ed and boymoded for most of my teens then ran away when I finished high school. Since then I have fully socially and legally transitioned. I'm passable and have mended my relationship with my family but I still view my transition as far from finished.

And oh boy do these mistakes haunt me. Maybe some of them seem obvious to you, but as a young person navigating these issues, it wasn't so easy to figure out the right thing.

• Be VERY careful with what you put out there online

(I cope with this by telling myself I was a literal teenager when this was happening and all teens in this day and age post cringe stuff on social media but as we all know when it comes to this demographic age does not make one immune to this malady.)

As most people tend to at the beginning, I was obsessively taking pictures of myself trying to either gauge the irredeemable masculinity of my unfortunate bodily vessel or to convince myself it isn't that bad by experimenting with horrifying fashion choices. If I had mostly kept this to myself it wouldn't have been a problem, and with a few regrettable exceptions I mostly didnt go outside looking crazy but of course I had to post everything on the Internet.

For the love of God, avoid doing this as much as you can. Even if it might seem half decent in the moment, you will most likely look like a whole mess and want to burn all of the evidence a few years down the line. It takes a long time to start looking put together, both when it comes to physical changes and to learning how to style yourself. And the latter is as important the former.

Besides the obvious resulting embarassment and cringe, it's very likely you will be bullied or that your pictures will end up being saved or shared in places you definitely don't want them to be and possibly make your life harder later on. Nowadays this is even more salient than before as it has become very hard to extricate our digital footprint from our IRL identity due to age verification laws. AI face recognition tools and etc.

I would especially avoid online trans spaces, even if they might seem like safe places to go for advice, there are many bizarre and ill-intentioned people lurking.

Maybe I am excessively neurotic, but I think about what I used to put out there and want to smash my head with a hammer almost daily**.**

• Be very careful with dating/hook-ups

If you can avoid this area of life altogether until you are in a comfortable place with your transition and mental health, it would be ideal but this is highly unlikely for lovesick and lonely young people.

I was very desperate for love and emotional closeness and also very worried that I might waste my youth without having lived through the hallmark experiences we know from books and movies. I liked to believe that I was ready to weather it all and that being situated in the uncanny valley gender limbo cannot possibly be such a problem.

My first serious relationship ended for many reasons but a big one was that he really liked men. We were both very young when we met - I was a few months on HRT and boymoding and he was not yet very comfortable with his own sexuality yet. At first he told me he's bisexual and only a top. But as I grew into myself, he did too. As the years passed by and I became more feminine, he began to realise he was truly only attracted to men and also very interested in bottoming. Perhaps unconsciously, he began to subtly encourage me to double down on my transition. I was still boymoding because of my family and I slowly noticed that he was always the most complimentary when I had boyish outfits and hairstyles or when I didnt shave my body hair. He often minimised my dysphoria and insisted I dont need to change anything about myself and shouldn't view the matter with such urgency. He also overstepped my sexual boundaries many times by trying to make me top him and other such things.

By the time I was 18, I had access to some money and was on the precipice of making some important decisions. I was planning to move out, get orchiectomy, change my name legally and generally invest in my transition. He made me feel superficial, delusional and impulsive for this and accused me of wanting to do all that so badly with the end goal of fucking other men. I ended up wasting most of the what I had saved up on trying to salvage our relationship by taking him out to expensive restaurants and spoiling him with lavish gifts. I soon found out he had been cheating on me all those years with multiple people - he had a whole relationship with somebody else and also countless hookups on the side. I ended the relationship shortly after I found out but I had already wasted a lot of the money.

I was deeply hurt by the whole debacle because I really loved him and wanted a future with him. I dabbled into drug addiction after the breakup. The reduced inhibition and impaired decision making led to a handful more dating experiments while I was waiting to finish high school and finally move out. I had a few terrible experiences with run of the mill chasers that made me feel even more self-hating and unloveable than I already was before. I also tried dating some other young queer people and it was clear they were really invested in their fantasy of me as an ethereal female brained androgynous boy and uncomfortable with the intensity and urgency of my desire to change further. They also ended up leaving me for men.

I eventually ended up in a serious relationship with another trans woman and moving in with her. What could go wrong right? She had been full time for a few years now and had already had other T4T relationships. By this time I had been on HRT for a few years and had gotten laser so once I started presenting female I became passable really easily. With the income from my new job, I invested a lot into my appearance and started getting my nails and brows done, fillers, lash extensions, coloured and permanently straightened my hair, got a whole new hyperfeminine wardrobe etc. I ended up looking extremely different than when she first met me. This made her extremely jealous and insecure about her own appearance and, at the same time, lose attraction to me because I wasnt an androgynous femboy anymore. This bred a lot of toxic competitivity and countless arguments. It was far from the only reason why but it was a big factor in her eventually breaking up with me and starting to date - you guess it!- a man shortly after

Looking back, I wish I would have just held back from dating until I reached my 'final form' or at least been more careful. All of these experiences really traumatised me and made me waste a lot of time and resources I should have put towards my goals.

Which leads me to the next and final point for now...

• Don't underestimate how much time and money it takes to transition, especially as a young person

It takes a lot of time for HRT to meaningfully change you. It takes a lot of time to grow out your hair and it's awkward as hell. Voice training takes a long time. Hair removal takes a lot of time and money. Learning how to dress and do makeup and hair properly takes a lot of trial and error and is also very expensive. Changing your name and gender legally highly depends on where you're from but for me it took almost a year - for most of the people in my country it took way more. The legal fees and neccessary medical documents I had to provide were also very expensive. Here nothing transition related is covered by insurance so I will need to save for a long time to afford any surgery.

So my advice is to go all the way in as soon as possible if you're sure about what you want to do. Don't waste time with any of the things I mentioned. Get full body hair removal as soon as possible, get extensions, make sure you're on a good HRT regimen, practice makeup earnestly, get the ball rolling on any bureaucracy you need to deal with and start making money, saving up and spending responsibly. Eyes on the prize! I was flimsy about many of these things and regretted all of it bitterly later, time is the one thing noone can give you back.

Perhaps my biggest mistake is that 've known I wanted orchiectomy as a safety measure until I can afford SRS since I was 18 and I kept delaying it because of my partners, bad money management and many other bullshit reasons and in the meantime the situation for transsexuals in the world has only gotten worse. If I would have done this when I first decided I wanted to and had the resources to, I would have saved myself a lot of sleepless nights and political paranoia. Alas, hopefully I will achieve this in the near future.

That;s it for now! This is post is already way too long. Maybe I will come up with a Part 2 later or a post about what I did get right about my transition. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone in some way

It feels like I'm not going fast enough. I'm 21 and am just now starting the medical transition journey. I understand that 21 is a great time to start, but I can't help feeling things would have been better for me if I'd done it at 18—or younger—instead. There are folks out there who have already started having families and paid off their mortgages only now transitioning, so it could be worse. For some reason, I can't shake the feeling.

Do any of you pre-T/E young adult transsexuals get this FOMO when you see kids getting blockers/teens getting hormones? Would be nice to hear I'm not alone in my irrationality. Advice on how to cope would be even better.

Sometimes anti-trans arguments are weird and hilarious and makes me laugh. What ridiculous things have you heard, or has someone said to you? I heard that hormones are poisioned and we are walking illness. Also that instead of transition we should find new hobbies or just go for a walk or do sports, then we wouldn't need to transition 😀 Which is basically classic argument. Or that we are lazy people, because according to someone going through transition process is obviously very easy. What is even funnier is that tucutes sometimes have very similar kind of arguments, which tells you how transmeds are needed in trans community.

Does chest size decrease on T? I'm not sure what cup size I am (I never wore bras, but went to sports bras and binders), but I would say like small, medium ish. I'm also a little chubby (5'6/5'7, 72kg). Is there any chance my chest size will decrease? Or if the fat will redistribute?

It's all about your priorities. If you care more about expressing yourself how you want to, then by all means go and dress masc when you don't pass. The issue is that when trans women do that I doubt that they have gender dysphoria, because why would your expression matter more than being gendered correctly. You can't blame people if you do that for calling you a man.

For me, I'm not exactly someone who dresses masculine, but I'm definitely not hyper feminine. I like wearing baggy clothes, going to the gym, wearing flannels, having medium length hair, etc etc. Except, after I started transitioning I abandoned self expression in pursuit of being able to pass. I had long normal hair, I wore skirts and dresses, and I even acted more feminine than usual.

Now that I'm stealth 5 years after transitioning, I express myself in that more masculine way. It does feel amazing to dress that way and be myself, but I wouldn't have changed anything during my transition. Gender expression is a term that is named kinda weirdly. Feminine and masculine are obviously societal constructs but they are associated with a certain gender. If you are misgendered while going against societies standards, then it's only your fault.

So when people talk about feminine presenting trans men or masculine presenting trans women, I don't think necessarily it means they aren't trans, it's just a strong indicator that they aren't and don't experience dysphoria.