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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Sounds like the most thought out response. I sometimes wonder how many cis folk are cis because they have a gender identity solidly planted in the cultural and phenotypic sex of their body and how many are cis because they really don't have a strong underlying preference so whatever their body is it would not cause them any real discomforts.
I definitely know folk who I suspect fit both of these models. Those cis folk who experience gender euphoria are sometimes not very subtle about it.
I'm cis woman, not a hyper-feminine sort but SO into being female-bodied, loved being pregnant and nursing kids, love sex as a woman. The actual biological woman-ness I identify with so strongly. Cultural ideas of femininity or masculinity can fuck right off, and anyone should be whoever they are, and clothing wise I stay more neutral usually, never dresses. But personally I'd have utter dismay if I woke up in a male body.
Commiserate with all of this. When I first came out I felt like I had to scream "femme" every waking moment with dresses. Nowadays I've just been wearing a flannel and jeans. I have long hair now that I'm debating on cutting short (since everyone else in roller derby has). Definitely wishing I could have been pregnant. Still debating on inducing lactation just to see what it feels like. Just grateful I have a woman's body now.
If you are planning on having somehow a baby that will be a newborn, nursing is the best. Free food for the baby, bonding, closeness, magic. Even if you can't make enough to feed them, giving them what you do have is good for their development, nursing gives them more than food. But it tanked my sex drive something awful, I would not do it, personally, unless it was to feed someone.
And congratulations on your transition:)
Definitely what I am talking about! A lot of trans folk aren't really all that enamored with the cultural trappings of masculinity or femininity either. It's just a tool to allow us to be recognized by others and maybe emphasize what we may be lacking. A lot of the late transition folk I know find a solid measure of that euphoria.
I feel like under the hood gender is really interesting and a lot of cis folk just never really think about what it actually means to them? Operating at a deficit or discovering your joy in a non-standard presentation definitely forces you to think about it. I feel like binary trans folk just experience what you feel but under the reverse of circumstance. It's harder I think for folk who don't have direct match to empathize with the binary trans experience...
The other side of things seems sort of closer to a non-binary situation but where the rewards are not really strong enough to act. The path of least resistance just works well enough. Holding up a mirror to cis-ness I feel like is something we as a society don't really do. We skirt it tentitivly when we ask these pop culture questions of "what if you woke up as the opposite sex? " But most people's take goes no deeper than "lol BOOBS!"
Yes I had this debate with the husband. I am sure if I'd been born in a male body it would have caused me distress, I've always known I was, well, female, it fits and I didn't grow up in a gender-divded household, kids were just kids, my mom made us all do the same things, she didn't really enculturate us. He thinks that it's just because I did have a girl body and if I had been a boy I'd have been happy with that but I don't think so.
One of our (many) kids is F-to-M, presents boy, wants to be a man when adult not a woman. I was honestly surprised when he told me because my conception of womanhood is so broad I had just thought they basically had the fashion sense of a styleless 40 year old lesbian. Both the youngest ones preferred to bind rather than bra, and the older of them is girl still so that didn't raise any sort of flag either.
But anyway - I have had plenty of opportunity in my life to think about this stuff, in a lot of ways. It's all been brought to the surface.
It's pretty easy for transmasc folk to fly under the wire because a lot of the cultural stuff on the girl side of things have been broken wide open. It's more widely regarded as sexist to try and force women to conform to all the trappings of traditional womanhood than it nessisarily is the other way around. I know a lot of binary trans women who wish they could just wear shlumpy hoodies and jeans and go out without a full face of makeup and have short easy to manage hair like cis women do but then everybody who doesn't know them doesn't pick up on the visual cues they need to make the assumptions to take the steps to gender them properly.
I feel like the concept of gender being wholly performative is really bullshit. You can see it a bit in the specific way misgendering stings? It's like it's the verbal equivalent of someone pointing our some sort of injury or a deformity that you've learned to live with. You can forget it yourself most of the time by just focusing on things if other people aren't constantly pointing it out but it's such a bloody drag when you realize people are noticing and focusing on that. The performance aspects of gender are just the protective shell of that innate feeling rather than the sorce of the feeling itself.
I agree with this. But there are only those three layers, right? The mind, your inner self; the body and the masculinity/femininity performance outward part.
I strongly agree it's easier for me to be sort of androgynous in the outward aspect and still be mostly seen as who I am, simply because my mind and body are aligned womanly. I can not give a shit about being feminine and still be seen as womanly (though I am old enough to remember when that wasn't true, and got bullied plenty for not presenting feminine). That is so (and still) much harder for men. So much harder. And yes I understand so much harder than that for trans women. If a male bodied person who is a woman isn't doing the dance of femininity I don't see a woman, unless I know them, right?
Still would say honestly that it's the biological nature of being a woman I enjoy about being me. Living in the body that gave birth to other people, and the sexual response. Beyond being physically embodied at all, which is obviously lucky. Even if I had to be a guy I'd want a female body. My trans son doesn't seem to mind having a female body either, periods and all, it's more about the outside to him I guess.
It's a little different for everyone. Sometimes it's more based in joy than pain or if things don't get in your way or you have active plans to change it's easier to live with them as a temporary nuisance. Sexual organs are often fairly low on the priority list because the surgeries around them can be a bit scary given the recovery regimen and with ftm bottom surgery you have to decide on what you specifically value in regards to function because nothing is perfect and it's a little more difficult to be enthusiastic about something that feels like a compromise. It's also scary in the way you could potentially make a choice out of the ones available and later on potentially wish you chose a different surgery option.
With hysterectomy as well if you aren't fantastically rich and can afford suragacy you have to give up on the idea of kids. So a lot of the biological concerns are very wrapped up in practicality and once you have a strong sense of where your values and what your overall life planning are the compromises make sense and become tolerable.
The HRT aspects are usually the bits that folk find relieving on the FTM side of things because you get more of the trappings you get to see and experience while you are out walking the world. The deep voice, the facial hair and the way fat redistributes itself on the body. A lot of people find that feeling of revelling in the things they enjoy about being in their body which allows you to focus on the good and dismiss the stuff you don't like.
I believe I'm the latter in this unauthorized and unofficial poll.
I'm a lot more attached to my sexuality than my gender. I am definitely attracted to women. I am a man because it's more convenient for me to be a man however. I have thought about whether I'm NB due to my indifference, but then I rethink my thoughts and notice
and just decide to stop there, I don't have to care about the "because". I'm a keep it simple stupid kinda person.
It's valid. Being non-binary trans being treated as my birth sex causes me all kinds of underlying social anxiety and makes me hate being around people the same way I hate looking in mirrors. I assume the inconvenience of having to educate people on my specific needs because the burden of doing so is more often lesser than the discomfort of not doing so.
If I don't bother to correct someone's assumptions in a social setting it's usually because either I expect to deal with the person only very rarely and I do not give much weight at all to how they think of me... But the interaction does still remind me of everything I don't like about my experience and makes me self conscious in a harmful way.
If it were something based out of a lack of feeling rather than a surfit it would probably be a fairly innert part of the way I express myself.
I obviously don't know what it would have been like if I were born female, maybe I would still be a man. As of right now though, I wear men's clothes because I always have, wear a man's hairstyle because I have always have, use he/him because I always have... It feels more like inertia than a part of me, along with just being easier to conform to something I don't particularly care about, so if the ball had started off rolling the otherway... I dunno though. I suppose another explaination is that I'm just really secure in my "manness" I don't feel any need to convince myself that I am man, I just am one. Probably why I don't care about the "because" I just don't need it.
My answer to the initial question would depend on how much it upended my life I suspect. If I woke up, I was a woman and everyone remembered me as always being a woman, my wardrobe filled with skirts and I could slot right in, I think I'd just keep on trucking after some initial shock. But, if I had to explain that "I'm a woman now", buy new clothes, and all that nonsense, I think my answer would more closely resemble the parent comment.
That's an interesting thought.
Back when I was five or seven if I suddenly one day woke up as a girl I probably would have had a massive panic attack and freaked out for a day and after some therapy and time to process I would have just been like, "oh okay well I guess I'm a girl now".
Nowadays other than the fact that it would cause ripple effects throughout my life that I can't even possibly predict, i wouldn't even care that much. Oh shit, dick fell off.
I mean for a lot of us the horror doesn't kick in til puberty. When you are a kid all it takes for someone to clock you as another gender is changing your clothes and whatever you have in your pants doesn't really matter so much. You might have been more okay than you think at age five or seven.