tzone

m87 · Joined: 10 Oct 2007 Posts: 1

do many people change from time to time?

i'd never take hormones or any sort of surgery, because fifty percent of the time i do feel female. this is more on a year-by-year than day-by-day basis. i'm still young (20) and very confused, i guess. i've gone through extreme transitions since i was fifteen -- starting from a year-or-two-long conviction that i was a gay male trapped inside a female's body, often dressing like a boy when i went out, breast binding, short hair, to becomng attracted to girls and converting my look and identity (fairly easily) into butch dyke, to falling in love with a boy when i was 18 and having a complete personality change, becoming a vulnerable little girl, falling into the stereotypical crying-wife character who he left because i drove him crazy... after which i decided to sculpt myself into the alluring female siren as a kind of fuck-you, but i never truly felt like it was me. i objectified my own body and used it like it was someone else's, worked as a stripper, collected brownie points in my mind for being the normal hot girl i'd never managed to be when i was younger.

anyway -- i stopped that a year ago, and i get the feeling i'm heading in the male direction again. maybe it's just looks-wise, i don't really know. it frightens me to look in the mirror and see these monstrous tits and hips, that i've turned into this thing called woman, now that i'm not flaunting it and using it for cash onstage anymore. now that my body's just part of me, apparently, that goes to the supermarket with me and reads newspapers at home. it doesn't seem right. i'd never be exactly like a guy, but i'm never really a girl, either. at the moment, i want to have a man's body, at least dress like one, knowing it'll probably change again eventually.

is it common for people to change all the time like this?

Stella Maru · Joined: 11 Feb 2007 Posts: 2248 Location: Brighton

Yes, gender dysphoria can, and sometimes does, vary in intensity over the course of a person's lifetime.

It is not uncommon to meet older trans people who have lived different phases of their lives in alternate gender identities.

Claudia · Tzoner Joined: 09 Feb 2007 Posts: 227

It's interesting...some people just cannot live in a fluid state and need to transition from one gender to another, while some people's very way of being is to be fluid, and this can be done in any combination, so I would say its quite normal. I would say my general impression is that you seem more male, and that the female side seems like some kind of "rebellion", but that's just my guess and not really indicative of anything.

_________________
It's never too late to be who you might have been. - Mary Ann Evans

Kenneth · Tzoner Joined: 08 Feb 2007 Posts: 453 Location: UK

m87 wrote:

it doesn't seem right. i'd never be exactly like a guy, but i'm never really a girl, either. at the moment, i want to have a man's body, at least dress like one, knowing it'll probably change again eventually.

That's very much like me at the moment.

I feel like I have been a pendulum - I keep swinging from one to the other (but it never reaches the same level on the female side that it does on the male side), but I am slowing down and know that eventually I will fall somewhere in the middle on 'person'. Well, actually, I know it will never settle, it will keep swinging, and someone may come along and set it going again.

I think I have bee like this:

1. Want to be a boy
2. Tried to behave like a girl. Hated it, but liked the fact I was trying to be 'normal'
3. Realised that I definitely felt masculine and wantd a male body and to be seen as male.
4. Slowly started becoming slightly more comfortable being seen as a girl. Still very uncomfortable in body.
5. Hated my body, desperate to be male and seen as such.
6. At the moment, I feel most of the time like I am in the centre. I rarely get called male or female, so I don't know how I pass, and I don't mind too much, because I know that male or female, I am both masculine and feminine. I don't need to be an extreme. I don't need to be in a category. I am a person. People don't seem to have much of a problem with it. Even if they know I'm not a boy, they can see I'm not a typical girl. They know I my vulnerabilities, but they can see I'm strong. I like being able be both feminine and masculine. I can get on well with men, I can get on with women. I have both as good friends. I don't feel my relationships with people are too affected by my sex/gender. I might look butch or just tomboyish. I might look like a feminine boy and I just don't care. I am still uncomfortable in my body, but overall, I'm pretty darn happy Wink

_________________
Teenager. FTM gender dysphoric 'transgender tomboy'
Now not transitioning after re-discovering God.

http://www.myspace.com/124369317
Reality has a nasty habit of slapping you in the face when you least expect it.
Depression (n) - the state of seeing the world for what it really is.

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do you love it · Joined: 26 Jan 2008 Posts: 4

I have times when I am extremely femme, sometimes it's like I'm 'in drag' when I'm being girly, others times I just feel like being girly.
Then other times I'm butch/drag king and sometimes it feels like I'm 'in drag' then too. Lots of times it's like I'm in character of someone who isn't necessarily me. I guess I spend most of the time somewhere in between and until I read this thread I hadn't really given my gender bending much thought. As far as I'm concerned it's perfectly normal for me to play with my sexuality and gender and I just go with the flow.

Queen_Dennis · Joined: 07 Dec 2007 Posts: 154 Location: Manchester

yeah I am at the moment more at this 'all gender is drag' feeling at the moment.

Karif · Joined: 08 Apr 2007 Posts: 15 Location: Alberta, Canada

I think everyone has feelings of being either gender, a combination of both, or a lack thereof. Personally, i've been shifting more and more over the years, going from slightly feminine to very feminine, and then to androgynous, for the most part.

I don't think you should identify yourself as any gender, really; if you put a label on it, then you might feel obligated to follow what that label is.