Am I Trans?
I think I was around 12 or 13 years old. Until then, I’d lived like any ordinary boy. But back then, “femboy” (or more precisely, “男の娘”) was all the rage at my school. It could have been a sexual thing, and maybe it wasn’t. The other kids just laughed it off, but after that, I started thinking about it a bit. I wanted to try wearing girls’ clothes. Compared to typical boys’ clothes, they looked prettier and more attractive. I also wanted to grow my hair long like a girl. I tried to sound like a girl (even though I failed) and even tried dressing up as one. I always failed and got scolded by my parents, though. Gradually, I started to hate being a boy. Every night, I’d lie in bed, sighing and agonizing. Why wasn’t I a girl? I wondered if I just hated myself, or if I hated myself because I was a boy.
Was this a sign that I was transgender? Or was it just a sexual issue typical of a teenage boy? I’m a 17-year-old high school student now, and no matter how much I think about it, I don’t feel like a man. I hate my facial hair, and I hate everything that identifies me as a man. I live in a country in Northeast Asia that’s quite sexually conservative, so I know neither my family nor my friends will support me. And even if I had surgery or took hormone therapy, I wouldn’t actually become a woman.