u/Actual_Barnacle

https://preview.redd.it/frv1w4sal3bh1.png?width=1614&format=png&auto=webp&s=65ebbabf16ed46356fbd7358e2f76bd35a8cbd88

I'm flying from Portland to Montreal. I didn't see any notifications that this route isn't eligible to use aeroplan points... Does anyone know why I can't use them?

CW: some discussion of weight. And age, I guess!

So, I'm in my early 40s, and in the past 5-7ish years, I've started to feel more and more gender-questioning feelings, and also unhappiness with my body. I present as masc (and have in some form or another since my 20s).

It's feeling difficult for me to parse my gender feelings and separate them from feelings of "I miss my more youthful body," which I assume are pretty common among cis people as well.

I was always a pretty skinny person with a small chest. I never wore a bra and didn't bind and didn't obsess about my gender identity. Exhibit A: some photos of me from 10 years ago

I've gained probably 30 pounds in the last 5 years. I think it's mostly just genetic/age. I am medically a healthy and a pretty normal weight for my height. But my chest and hips are bigger. And I have a lot of feelings about it. I hate my hips and have complex feelings about my chest. I bind sometimes and I really really like how it looks, but of course, it's very uncomfortable. Naked, I mind my chest less, but I hate how it looks in clothes. In many ways, I don't mind being less small, and I like being less frail, but... I wish I was more of a block and less of a...whatever I am.

I know I don't want to be "a man" or pass as AMAB or anything like that. But I do feel very drawn towards the "nonbinary transition" or how people look in early transition. My gender North Star is JD Samson (who ironically has not done any medical transition that I'm aware of). A few times every year I go down these rabbit holes of looking up top surgery photos and thinking about it a lot. I also then obsess about the idea of taking low-dose T for a short time, just to lower my voice a semitone or two. The obsessive googling usually fades after a while. Till next time.

I often wonder, if I still looked the way I did 10 years ago, would I contemplate this stuff so hard? Do I just hate weight gain? Am I just feeling irrelevant as I age and wanting to change in a way that feels vital and new? I really don't want to make any decisions that I regret or aren't rooted in my authentic identity. But I'm also getting really sick of my little 2:00-a.m. gender-questioning sessions and wondering if I should, like, do something.

Odd side note: I already have to take hormone therapy (estrogen and progesterone) because my ovaries failed in my 30s, and that also brought a lot of weird gender feelings. I could no longer let my body just make the hormones it wanted to, but had to choose a gendered HRT.

EDIT: I just want to say these are some of the nicest and most "meeting me where I'm at" Reddit comments I've ever received. I really appreciate it. Also, I didn't realize my link would cause that image to display, and for the record, those medals are NOT mine. I just thought it'd be funny to put them all on.

A quick rundown of me: I'm a masc lesbian, I guess? I often wistfully think about wanting a slightly deeper voice, a flatter chest, a more straight-line body. I do not feel I'm a man, and i don't personally want to become hypermasculine, big and muscular, bearded and hairy (but I envy those little early-transition transmasc mustache wisps).

I'm trapped in a cycle: Once a year or so, I go down a rabbit hole of thinking about top surgery or low-dose T. Then I somehow end up on the truscum subreddits that basically mock people who feel the way I do. And sometimes I think they have a point: i don't experience dysphoria the way that a lot of them do. If I pursued these transitional treatments, maybe I'd be using the medical system for my own kind of vanity project or goals. I don't need transition to save my life. I just want to look more boylike, and sometimes that feeling is quite intense. I've gotten very close a few times to starting to seek a path towards top surgery.

I have a lot of fears about change. Whenever I think about top surgery, I think about how much I would not want to lose sensation in my nipples. When I think about having a lower voice, I worry about getting that T nasal quality, or that I wouldn't feel like myself.

When the fears arise, I think that probably someone who *really* wanted the flatter chest and the deeper voice wouldn't be discouraged by the fears. So I do nothing. And then, months or a year later, something triggers another round of curiosity and questioning or wishing I looked more masculine, and I'm back on Reddit looking at the before-and-after photos, back to researching top surgery methods and natural ways to get a deeper voice. I put on my binder and I think about how much more attractive I'd feel in my clothes if that's how I looked. Then i wonder how this sense of what is "attractive" connects to gender, and where gender identity ends and vanity begins.

I know there are lots of people out there with "you are trans enough" messages, and that's cool, but I'm not sure it convinces me I'm actually a candidate for these interventions. I feel very much in a muddy place, wanting some things, not others, and not sure where the line is around acceptance that your body isn't always exactly how you want it to be.

I'm someone who struggles a lot with making choices and feeling like I'm "driving" my own life. I'm not young, I'm over 40, though admittedly I still have a pretty youthful life and outlook. So how do I make big and irreversible decisions about my body?