Transitioning in my mid 20s with a BMI of 35 and dealing with cis people
I often read here that cis people arent attracted to trans women, dont really see us as women or that dating and having a normal social life is basically doomed.
I kinda expected that too.
I started transition in my mid 20s, BMI around 35, short hair and honestly pretty bad passing. Babytrans me did get some weird male harassment, mostly from some sketchy looking guys lol, but apart from that... people were surprisingly normal about me?
I started working out, forced myself to do cardio until I could start running, lost a lot of weight and eventually joined a running club. Met some girlies there and one of them took me to her dance school.
I've been dancing for around 2 years now and that changed a lot. I made a bunch of female friends, got invited to clubs and parties and just kinda ended up in female social circles. Going to the toilet stall together, talking shit about men, dating, clothes, whatever. A lot of them know I'm trans too, so its not like I stealth my way through this.
Dancing also helped me a lot with my style and how I carry myself. Dancers tend to dress pretty unique anyway and I slowly started understanding how clothes, hair, accessories and everything work together and what actually looks good on me.
We also usually record ourselves at the end of dance class and watching those videos helped me a lot. You immediately see what looks like shit, what looks good, how you have to move, pose or hold yourself to actually look good. After doing that over and over you kinda stop guessing how you look and actually know what works for you.
I get compliments on my outfits all the time now, especially from random women in club bathrooms 🥹 and I really notice myself how much of an impression style can make.
Dancing gave me a stupid amount of confidence in general. I'm not really scared of being in front of big crowds anymore either. I already danced in the halftime show of a pretty big regional sports game, so being watched by a bunch of people doesnt really scare me the way it used to.
And having people around me constantly telling me how much I've changed and basically that I turned into a baddie definitely didnt hurt either lol.
Dating was also way less horrible than I thought.
Even pre op I had some ONS and F+ with cis girls without actively looking for them, mostly at queer parties or through friends.
I also met a cis lesbian on Tinder who had never been with men before and we were together for around half a year. It ended because the distance got exhausting and both of us werent doing that great mentally at the time. Having to drive for hours all the time and basically reserve every weekend for the relationship so one of us could stay over at the other's place just got really annoying after a while. At some point it was simply too much.
At some point I also just started approaching women I found pretty. Basically "hey, you are so pretty 💅✨️ do you like girls? wanna exchange Instagram?"
One of them later turned out to be ace while I'm very much allo, so... thats just incompatibility. Not every rejection from a cis woman secretly has something to do with being trans.
One of the others became a really close friend. We do something basically every week, I met her parents and she is currently my test subject for a lapdance I'm learning lol. She told me she liked me touching her while dancing and at some point said "I was stupid to ever think I dont like women romantically" 🤭
Another girl initially told me she thought we were probably just friends. Fine by me. We still hung out, had picnics, watched Netflix, smoked some weed.
Then I asked her if I could practice the lapdance on her. She was really impressed and started flirting a bit. Later she complained about dating and how men often just want to put it in, finish and leave, and that women arent always much better either.
I told her that I actually really like pleasing women. Pre op I never enjoyed using my own genitals much anyway, so I usually focused a lot more on the woman I was with.
I flirted a little while telling her that and... one thing led to another. We had sex and now we have a F+ thing lol
I went to a drag night and got picked for a lipsync dance battle against another girl. We basically stopped competing halfway through and started dancing together and touching each other on stage. Afterwards they told us it was the best audience battle they ever had 🥹👉👈
I kept randomly running into her at other queer events after that. We talked and danced together a couple more times and eventually she invited me to hang out with her mostly cis lesbian friend group.
And I think that was one of the moments where I really noticed how different reality was from what I expected before transition.
They just treated me like any other lesbian girl there. We played truth or dare, I got dared to kiss some of the girls, everyone was joking and flirting around and there was never this weird feeling of me being "the trans girl" in the group.
At some point I told her I'm post op and we talked about my SRS. She got curious and asked if she could see it. I said sure, then told her she could touch it too if she wanted and... well, you can probably guess how that continues.
I think that whole thing stuck with me because this was literally a cis lesbian meeting me, liking me enough to invite me into her mostly cis lesbian circle and then everyone just treating me like one of them. They knew I'm trans. It wasnt some stealth thing and nobody suddenly acted differently when they knew.
Obviously I'm not saying transphobia isnt real or that everyone will have my experience.
But trans spaces sometimes make it sound like every cis person is waiting to clock you, reject you or secretly think you're a man.
That just really wasnt my experience.
I still get rejected, dates dont work out, sometimes theres no chemistry or you're just incompatible. Most of my dating problems honestly feel less like "trans dating problems" and more like... lesbian dating problems.
I started mid 20s, overweight, short hair, bad passing and convinced cis people would always see me as trans first and a woman second.
Now most of the time I'm just one of the girls.
Kinda annoying how much more normal real life turned out to be compared to all the doomposting I had read before.
TLDR: Mid 20s, BMI 35, bad passing and somehow I still became one of the girls.