u/LukeGuyFrotter

Hey bros. 22TM here, going through a really rough time right now. Been on testosterone over 5 years, post top surgery and total hysto and still struggle to pass. I started looking into facial masculinization surgery to help me pass. After asking the surgeon who performed my top surgery if they also do FMS, he said yes, but that it wouldn't benefit me much.

He said this was because my issues with passing as male lie in being 5'4, and particularly petite, not because of my face. It was hard to hear, because it was an idea I'd been degrading myself with for years. I just don't even know what to do anymore, it feels hopeless.

It's not even like I can pass as a short man, because apparently the combination of my face and body can only ever read as a woman, and there's just no fixing it. I'll be seen as a tiny woman forever. If I could get height surgery I'd give up running forever just to be seen as who I am, I wouldn't care. I feel like I'm built like a bird. I feel like I was born weak and scrawny and being neglected/abused as a child had permanent effects on my body and there's nothing I can do about it. I don't make nearly enough to afford going to the gym, but I also have no home equipment. Neither of those sentences even matter because I never learned how to properly work out anyways, so even if I did have access I'd be a fish out of water.

It feels like I'm going to be like this forever, just some small ugly not-woman-thing. I feel like testosterone is uniquely ineffective on me. I feel like how I look now is the farthest I'll ever get. I feel like now I experience all the worst parts of being a woman on top of all of the worst parts of being a man. But I'm a man regardless, so there's nothing I can do.

Repressing and detransitioning has never been an option, so I just have to exist miserably. I feel ashamed to go out in public, my dysphoria only tripled after my surgeon told me I'll essentially never be seen as a man. I've been too depressed to do anything, I've become miserable to be around. It's eating me alive, and I don't know what to do. It feels like there's literally no options for me, I just don't know where to go from here. What do you even do when a medical professional tells you that your transition was useless??

I'm a trans man, and I've been on testosterone since I was 18, I'm 22 now. I just recently learned that the dose I've been taking has been way too high and that my extra testosterone has most likely been converting into estrogen and further feminizing me/slowing the masculinization process.

I've been unhappy with my transition progress since I started, feeling like I'm falling way behind others and I'm reminded of it every day of my life. I can't stop agonizing over the fact that I might've been able to pass after 5 years on testosterone if only I'd questioned my doctors more (they insisted my levels were "my normal"). It's making me feel like I wasted important developmental years of my life and ruined my chance to ever visibly pass as a man.

This is all I've been able to think about, all day every day since I found out about my levels. It's keeping me from engaging with my life because I can't stand being perceived as an androgynous woman at best. I can't leave my house unless I'm going to work, I'm borderline agoraphobic at this point. I don't know how to exist anymore now that I've realized I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be in my transition, or I guess that my goals were always unobtainable to begin with?

I guess what I'm looking for is advice to get out of my own head and stop constantly thinking about what I look like or what I could change about myself. I'm sick of it controlling my entire life but

EDIT: I can't respond to everyone currently but I wanted to know I've read the comments and I really appreciate the support from everyone, thank you if you took the time to leave a message for me :)

I know there isn't such thing as a "white" voice but holy shit I'm so sick of being told I "sound white". I don't know how to achieve the goals I want. My voice is already deep, I just struggle with sounding like I work at a damn call center.

Ideally I'd love a softer more soothing voice like Daniel Kaluuya or Miles Caton, but more realistically I would set my goal for like, Lil Uzi lol.

My question is, are there any voice training videos out there by black men for black men???

Before I vent, I want to explicitly state I do not support trans medicalist bullshit. I just need to know if anyone else has dealt with this. Whenever I post photos of myself online or meet other trans people in person, they- specifically nonbinary and transfeminine people- flock to me to tell me they wish they looked like me, that I'm very androgynous, etc. I identify as a man and am 100% binary in my identity and this feels so invalidating. I literally had a trans woman tell me I was gender envy for her. Another trans woman told me after hooking up that I was one of the "good men" because it takes a woman to be a real man.

Why does nobody see a problem with this? I explicitly state that I'm a trans man and yet people assume I'm a transmasc nonbinary person or a he/him lesbian at most. I'm literally sick of it, it makes me so dysphoric I want to rip my skin off.

I hate the way other people perceive me. Am I just doomed to never be seen as a real man?? What's even the point of transitioning and losing my entire family, life, friends, and opportunities, if the community I thought was going to be there to lean back on doesn't even see me as what I am?? This is turning me bitter and hateful and I'm trying so hard to be okay about it but there is genuinely nothing more frustrating than the constant reminder that I'll never be seen as a man, and knowing that the more frequently I have to point this out, the more hostile/conservative people will perceive me.