u/Complete-Cake4640

hi! am silly trans girl looking to make friends to yap and game with :3 my fav games are dark souls, pokemon, borderlands and minecraft so if that sounds interesting id love to play any of these four with you <3 i also play cs2 and id love to find a fellow silly to duo q with solo q is boring and toxic blehhhh oh and i am in eu so if youre from a different region we prob cant play cs2 together bc of ping :( but time difference isnt a problem since my sleep schedule is a disaster so ill happily stay up to hang out! also i sound like a dude since voice training has been rough </3 21+ only pleaseeee tysm for reading take care!! <3

henlo, full time professional yapper trans girlie here looking to make friends! i love dark souls, pokemon, borderlands and minecraft so if youre a fan of any of the three id love to play any of them <3 i also play cs2 and having a duo would be really cool! but im in eu so if youre from a different region itll prob be difficult to play together due to ping :( time difference isnt much of a problem tho idm staying up late to hang out! am still pretransition and stuff so i sound like a guy </3 just thought i should mention it, also 21+ only pls

tysm for reading have a good day!! <3

Hi! I'm 28 years old, amab, and for some time now I've been bouncing between being convinced I'm a trans woman and feeling like I'm just non-binary instead, and I'm not really sure what to do in order to feel more certain of what my identity is. For context, I've been questioning my gender for about a year, and I've been consistently depressed for close to a decade and a half by now. My life has felt meaningless for a long time now but since I started imagining living as a woman I've been feeling an on and off sense of excitement for what the future could hold.

Some days I feel really sure that I'm a trans woman, or at least that I want to transition and give myself a chance to be a woman. Those days I feel jealous of the women I see, of that feminine energy that seems to come so natural to them, of how pretty they look and of how well all of the much prettier women's clothing options they have fit their feminine bodies. Also she/her pronouns and feminine compliments make me feel extremely euphoric and I long for feminine gender expression.

But some other days I just feel completely disconnected from femininity. I feel like I have no idea how to be a woman, like it's just something completely foreign and that living as a woman just won't fit me at all. It feels like I'm just idealizing femininity because I've always struggled with self-esteem and imagining myself as a woman will make me feel attractive and more confident because obviously I'll think women's bodies and presentation looks more attractive if I'm attracted to women and I'm not attracted to men. Then I start thinking how even if I try it's not like I'll really get anywhere with transitioning anyway. It feels like I'll be really lucky to just pass, let alone look pretty enough in order to feel happy and confident with my appearance. And on top of that there's all of the things that go into looking feminine outside of just the way the body looks, subtle things like feminine body language and mannerisms, things like makeup, styling and voice training to pass etc. and it feels like I'll never manage to be the woman I want to be.

And that feeling is just awful, it makes me feel so depressed and hopeless whenever it happens, I feel so alive when I feel that connection to femininity, like it just makes me so much more excited and motivated to do things when I'm in that headspace, and when I don't feel that connection I just feel empty and defeated, like living is bland and meaningless and there's nothing to look forward to in the future. And I just don't know how to stop this feeling from happening so frequently, it makes me feel so depressed, I hate it.

I also want to get into the sources of my dysphoria and my motivations for transitioning. I'd say my main reasons for wanting to transition are feeling confident in my body and having a more fulfilling social life.

First off, I just feel so disinterested in my body and my appearance in general, like it just doesn't give me any joy and it never really has, and it just feels like I'm missing out on a source of self-esteem that I've been missing my entire life. The only reason it took so long to notice is because I thought it's just normal for guys to just not feel any excitement from looking good, and it was such a no-brainer for me. Like of course guys don't get joy out of looking good, have you seen what women look like? It's just not possible to look so pretty as a guy for most people, so I figured most just don't care about appearance at all and simply build their self-esteem entirely off of other things like being physically capable or having a successful career. But yeah, I feel like my masculine body is just completely keeping me from accessing any sort of appearance based confidence. Like I'll see guys that I think look attractive, and not even necessarily in a masculine way, and I'll just think to myself, this person looks good, but I wouldn't want to look good in that way, it wouldn't be me. Similarly, on days when I'm in a good mental space I'll look at my body and think to myself that I could certainly make this body look more attractive by some masculine standard, but I feel like I would feel even more alienated from it like that. Like when I receive masculine compliments for my appearance or my body it just feels foreign.

But when imagining myself with a feminine body that just completely changes, being more curvy, having wide hips, having breasts, getting to wear all of the pretty clothes women get to wear and looking good in them, having softer and clearer skin and less body hair, having softer features, like I just can't see a world in which my confidence wouldn't skyrocket if I had access to all of that, I just can't imagine it. Why would I not want to feel confident with the way I look?

In terms of trying feminine gender expression, I've experimented with some easily accessible ways to see how femininity feels to me, like painting my nails and wearing various types of women's bracelets, and those make me feel happy, like it just looks and feels right and I really wish I felt the same way about the rest of my body. I haven't tried wearing women's clothes because I just know it'll hurt, I know it'll give me bad dysphoria and it'll make me depressed that my body is masculine and the clothes won't look as good on it as they would look on a woman's body. I don't get that feeling with my hands in particular because they don't look extremely masculine, so it doesn't make me feel dysphoric looking at them when I paint my nails and so on, they look feasibly feminine like that.

Socially speaking I've just always gotten along with women better, I always preferred being in friendships with them and I never really connected with guys in general, excluding guys who are more sensitive and well-educated regarding toxic masculinity etc. But I just enjoy being friends with women more overall, more comfortable, more warm and accepting, they're better at making conversation etc. just on average, of course ultimately it comes down to the person. But I just feel this need to feel accepted as a woman by other women, to be one of the girls. I can't quite put my finger on why that is, I know that theoretically my reasoning is based on some generalizations and that this feeling might not really be a good indication of whether or not I'm a trans woman, but it just feels right in a way that feels impossible to express with words.

So that's all well and good, but I just can't seem to feel convinced that I'm actually a trans woman. I think the biggest thing making me doubt if that really is who I am is that I really want to look at least somewhat attractive after I transition, and the idea of not achieving that makes me feel sad and demotivated even on days when I feel convinced I'm a trans woman. And if I transition but just don't manage to pass then I feel like I'll just want to go back to being closeted, I genuinely don't think I'd be able to live with the daily stress of being visibly trans and worrying about my safety all the time because of how hostile the world is to trans people. And really that's the part that makes me question whether or not I'm trans the most, because if you ask most trans people they'll say that there's no way they'd choose to be their agab again simply because living as their true gender eclipses any downsides. So I feel like I need to have that certainty, that it just doesn't matter whether or not I end up being attractive and whether or not I end up passing, that I'll be happy regardless. I feel like I can't really say I'm a trans woman without that certainty.

I feel like I might just be a person who has a really intense need for feminine gender expression, to the point where just outlets of feminine expression like crossdressing and roleplaying aren't enough and I just need to have the same ability to embody femininity seamlessly as women do by having a feminine body, feminine mannerisms etc. but without necessarily my gender identity being that of a woman, and I'm not really sure how I can know if that's just because I haven't experienced being a woman and as a result I don't have a way of knowing what having a female gender identity feels like, or if it's because my gender identity is simply not that of a woman. And it's not like this would make things any easier for me anyway, since in that case I still have the same goals I would have if I was a trans woman, which is transitioning medically and socially and just trying my best to pass and look as attractive as I can with what I have to work with.

So I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do to get out of this loop I'm stuck in. I know that female gender expression makes me feel euphoric, and I know that presenting fem online and she/her pronouns make me feel happy, but it feels like I've reached a state where I can't get any more data to better help me determine whether or not I'm a trans woman or if transitioning is right for me. I'm just still not really convinced that I actually am a woman, and I'd really like to be more confident in my identity before starting hrt and I'm not sure if there's a way to feel more certain. It feels like the only way out of this loop is to just take a leap of faith, start hrt and see how it goes.

Hi! I'm 28 years old, amab, and for some time now I've been bouncing between being convinced I'm a trans woman and feeling like I'm just non-binary instead, and I'm not really sure what to do in order to feel more certain of what my identity is. For context, I've been questioning my gender for about a year, and I've been consistently depressed for close to a decade and a half by now. My life has felt meaningless for a long time and it wasn't until I started imagining living as a woman in the future that gave me any sort of excitement about what my future might look like.

Some days I feel really sure that I'm a trans woman, or at least that I want to transition and give myself a chance to be a woman, I feel jealous when I see women with a style I like, and she/her pronouns and feminine compliments genuinely make me feel really euphoric.

But some other days I just feel completely disconnected from femininity, I keep thinking of how unlikely it is that I'll be able to pass and look pretty enough to feel happy and confident with my appearance, how difficult it'll be to transition, how I'll never manage to get my voice to pass either, how I stand no chance and will never manage to learn all the stuff that I like about women and aspire to embody like moving in a feminine way and having feminine mannerisms, and that I'll just never manage to be the woman I want to be.

And that feeling is just awful and I just don't know how to keep it from happening so much, that disconnect from femininity, the thought of my body just remaining masculine and just never seeing what it feels like to be a woman feels so empty and depressing, it just feels like nothing I'll ever try to do to feel better will make up for the fact that I just want to feel confident in my body and my appearance but just have never been able to feel that with a masculine body. On days when I'm in a good mental space I look at my body and I think that it's certainly possible to take better care of it and shape it so it looks attractive by some masculine standard, but that just doesn't feel like what I want my body to look like. I want to feel confident in my body, I want to feel attractive, I want to feel like I'm excited to take care of my appearance but a masculine body won't allow me to feel these things and I feel like I'm just sorely missing them.

I've tried some easily accessible forms of feminine gender expression like painting my nails and wearing various types of women's bracelets and those make me feel really happy, they just look right, but I know that's because my hands aren't particularly masculine so nothing sticks out, I can think of my hands as feminine while doing those things and it feels right and I just want to feel the same way about the rest of my body so bad. Most people suggest trying women's clothing but I haven't done that because I just know it'll hurt, I just know it'll give me bad dysphoria when I look in the mirror because the clothes just won't look the way they do on a woman's body and I'll just feel depressed.

At the same time, I really want to look at least somewhat attractive after I transition, and the idea of not achieving that makes me feel sad and demotivated even on days when I feel convinced I'm a trans woman. And if I transition but just don't manage to pass then I feel like I'll just want to go back to being closeted, I genuinely don't think I'd be able to live with the daily stress of being visibly trans and worrying about my safety all the time because of how hostile the world is to trans people.

That's the part that makes me question whether or not I'm trans the most really, because if you ask most trans people they'll say that there's no way they'd choose to be their agab again simply because living as their true gender eclipses any downsides. So I feel like I need to have that certainty, that it just doesn't matter whether or not I end up being attractive and whether or not I end up being able to pass, that I'll be happy anyway. I feel like I can't really say I'm a trans woman without that certainty.

I feel like I might just be a person who has a really intense need for feminine gender expression, to the point where just outlets of feminine expression like crossdressing and roleplaying aren't enough and I just need to have the same ability to embody femininity seamlessly as women do, but without necessarily my gender identity being that of a woman, but that wouldn't even make anything easier really since in that case I have the same goals I would have if I was a trans woman.

So I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do to get out of this loop I'm stuck in. My masculine body sort of ruins any gender expression based experimentation with the dysphoria overshadowing any positive feelings. I know that gender expression focused on body parts that don't look masculine enough to cause dysphoria makes me happy, and I know that presenting fem online and she/her pronouns make me feel happy, but in terms of experimentation it feels like there isn't much more I can do in order to get more data to help me determine my gender identity and I just don't know how to get unstuck. It really feels like the only way to know for sure is to start hrt and see how it goes.