r/asktransgender

Please read the post once before commenting 🙏

I met this amazing guy at a friend’s wedding about three years ago. He’s hilarious, cultured, sharp, and just an A+ person. We hit it off almost immediately and have been close friends since.

Our friendship has always had very normal dude energy. We make inappropriate jokes, roast each other, and generally don’t take ourselves too seriously. He and his wife are DINKs, he’s on the shorter side, so we’d joke about him being a short king and me being a fat jester. He was also part of the groom’s side at my wedding.

Recently, I learned from someone else that he is trans. He never told me this himself, and I want to be clear that I don’t think he owed me that information. His past is his business. I actually feel uncomfortable that I know something so personal about him without him choosing to tell me.

There were a couple of moments from the past that suddenly felt different in hindsight.

When we first met, he mentioned needing to keep some injections refrigerated. I asked what they were for, and he clearly did not want to share, so I dropped it and never pushed. At the time I just assumed it was hemorrhoids or something.

There was also a pool party once where he seemed uncomfortable taking his shirt off. At the time, I told him my moobs are bigger than him and he was comfortable after it. I did not know there might be a deeper reason.

Now that I know, those memories make me feel weirdly guilty, even though I know I did not mean anything by them and he never told me anything was wrong. I think part of my anxiety is that I am retroactively rereading old interactions and worrying that I might have accidentally stepped on something private.

The problem is not that I see him differently in terms of his gender. I knew him as a man before, I know him as a man now. Nothing about that has changed.

The problem is that now, before every interaction, my brain adds this annoying mental filter of "Make sure he feels comfortable. Make sure he doesn’t feel like he doesn’t belong."

And I hate that. I already treated him normally before I knew. He was just my friend. He is still just my friend.

I think what’s bothering me is that this new information has made me self-conscious and weirdly overprotective in my own head, even though I know treating him delicately or differently would probably be the opposite of respectful.

He has always been a crass, funny, confident dude with me, and I don’t want to start mentally handling him like he is fragile.

I also feel sad thinking about what he may have gone through, but again, he did not choose to share that with me, and I don’t want to project a tragic backstory onto him or make his life about hardship in my head.

I don’t plan to bring it up with him unless he ever chooses to.

I don’t want to ask questions, make it about me, or make him feel like anything has changed. He is still my bougie friend, who thinks a Dabeli is a fucking smash burger.

I guess my question is, how do I make this voice go away and just go back to treating him exactly like the friend I have always known?

Hi everyone,

Im debating whether to refer to myself as Bi or Pan, and Ive read some posts that suggest that the term pansexual is offensive to trans people.

FYI gender doesn’t even enter the equation for me at all. I just see everyone as individuals that Im either attracted to or not.

I don’t want to offend anyone, nor do I want to be viewed as transphobic or biphobic simply because I chose the wrong term.

What term would you prefer I use, and why?

I am 17f and have an online friend I'll call her sammy she's trans her gender was a he and now she prefers we call her a she I don't mind that at all. Sammy sends me her pic in dresses I think she looks cute but then she sent me a pic of her in underwear and bra it freaked me out and she hasn't transformed yet I moved past it even though it was a bit uncomfortable then the pics got worse so I told her not to send me any but she did not listen so I ghosted her and deleted my account (I know what I did was bad) then created a new account and she followed me there too and we are friends now again.

So my parents are super religious and hate online friends concepts. I was on a call with sammy when my mom heard her voice it was still a bit manly so later she asked who it was, rather telling her it was a friend from my uni I told her it was my online friend and since she heard her voice she went bonkers to save myself I told her my irl friend introduced me to her (which is true) and they lost faith in her

Now sammy is coming to my town and I don't know how to meet her she hasn't transformed yet so she still looks like a guy and my parents hate when I meet with guys and my real life friend will be there too who they don't trust so I don't know what to do and how to meet her and since all of this is so stressful i just feel like I should just not meet her (btw I still live under my parents roof so I can't disobey them yet) (am I transphobic for not wanting to meet her?)

Hello,

I am a 37-year-old trans woman (MTF). For as long as I can remember, I have rejected being a man. I have always felt much more comfortable around women than men, and I have struggled with mental health issues since puberty.

For many years, I wondered what changed in me after puberty. However, I didn’t seriously consider transitioning until about a year ago. Even now, I don’t feel 100% like a woman, but I do feel much more like a woman than a man—and that difference causes me significant dysphoria.

With my therapist, I decided to try hormone therapy. After only three weeks on estradiol, I am amazed by how much my mental health has improved. Before starting, I experienced panic attacks almost every day. They were especially intense when I dressed in a more feminine way or allowed myself not to perform masculinity.

Since starting hormones, I feel like I am recovering the brain I used to have before puberty. My mind feels clearer, with less brain fog, anxiety, and irritability.

I still have moments of panic where I wonder if I am making a mistake. Part of this fear comes from my situation: I am a lawyer in a very conservative city (even though my country is generally progressive), and my family does not support me. It feels like I am risking everything on one decision.

However, I am also noticing very real improvements. For example, today I went to court without the usual symptoms I always had before a trial—no dry mouth, no shaking. I just felt… normal. Not perfect, maybe a bit nervous, but in a healthy and manageable way.

I am also sleeping better and functioning well even with a lower dosage of my ADHD medication.

At the same time, I feel pressure from people who warn me about the risks of hormone therapy, like blood clots. This scares me. My blood pressure has always been high, but now it is going down, and I am not used to feeling this… calm and stable.

Another source of uncertainty is the physical changes. I like having less body hair, and I’m happy with my facial laser treatment. But I’m not sure how I feel about breast development.

What scares me the most is the possibility of being wrong and “ruining” my life. Right now, I feel more normal than I ever have—I am not in survival mode for the first time in my life. But continuing hormone therapy feels like choosing between two difficult paths:

• Being happier and mentally stable, but potentially losing my career and financial security
• Or keeping my career, but continuing to struggle with my mental health

So I wanted to ask:
Has anyone else experienced something like this—where the dysphoria feels more “chemical” or mental than physical?

Warning, this may trigger dysphoria. It did for me when I had the argument and it sucked. I'm only posting about it now because I want to improve my rhetoric for if the topic ever comes up again.

I was talking with an EMT dude at a queer bar and he went off about how it frustrated him that trans women objected to being called "biologically male" when he was treating them. He also claimed that trans women will show the same heart attack symptoms as cis men. Disclaimer, I was like 4 drinks deep at this point so I'm not sure I did the best job arguing my point. The guy also just stressed me the fuck out and I smoked like 3 cigarettes over the course of our conversation lol.

I went back and forth with him for a frustrating amount of time about the first part, trying to get it through his thick skull that "biological male" is a phrase used by transphobes and isn't even scientifically accurate. I told him that asking what gender someone was assigned at birth is the better way of getting that information (lmk what you think, how would you like to be asked?) He finally agreed only after I made the point that, if his goal is to save a trans patient's life as quickly as possible, then using the proper language is going to save time by not upsetting the patient. When I mentioned that this is why sensitivity training is important, his excuse was that he would have to do it in his free time.

Anyway regarding the second point, has there actually been any studies done on how heart attacks present in trans individuals? He insisted it was true and I didn't argue because I don't know shit about that. Instead I made the broader point that trans medicine is largely unresearched, and because of that trans people have worse outcomes in the medical system.

This is actually my first Reddit post ever, especially about transitioning lol.

I started HRT a month ago and I’m currently on:

12.5 mg Androcur daily
4 sprays of Lenzetto per day (2 at noon + 2 at midnight)

I currently live in Montenegro (Balkans), and access to trans healthcare here is honestly really difficult, especially as a foreigner, so I’ve basically had to figure everything out myself.

I did full bloodwork before starting HRT:

Testosterone: 26.2 nmol/L
Free testosterone: 32.8 pg/mL
Estradiol: 112 pmol/L
SHBG: 55.46 nmol/L

Honestly, the spray routine is starting to drive me insane 😭

Doing it twice a day every single day and constantly worrying whether absorption is even good enough is getting mentally exhausting.

So lately I’ve been seriously considering switching to injections, but there’s SO much conflicting information online that I feel both informed and completely lost at the same time.

Main questions:

1.Are injections actually “better” than gel/spray, or is it mostly preference assuming hormone levels are good?
2 Is feminization noticeably different between injections / transdermal / pills?
3 Which ester do people usually prefer and why?
(EV vs EEn vs Undecylate)
How long are vials realistically usable after opening?
IM vs SubQ — what do most people prefer?

Also, if I switch to injections, should I stop taking Androcur/CPA or not? I already bought like a year supply 😅
Would genuinely appreciate every single person who takes the time to answer any of this. Seriously, thank you a lot 🙏

Hi everyone,

I'm coming here looking for answers, or for people who've had a similar experience to mine when it comes to transition.

Quick note before I start: I use she/her to talk about myself, even though I'm describing a life that was lived as male for a long time. It reflects where I am today.

I was born AMAB. As far as I know, I always lived my life as a boy , I mean, I never wanted to dress as a girl (except once to try it at age 8), I never played with "girl toys," my friends were mostly boys, even though to be honest I always had a hard time connecting with others throughout my life because I was seen as very different... (who knows, maybe a neurodivergent thing? I can't really tell.)

However, from a very young age (well before adolescence), I had this feeling of seeing girls as superior to boys. To me, they had this luck of being girls , something I couldn't have because life had decided I was born a boy. In my head, I had a lot of frustration about it, but at the same time I accepted it because that's life and I had to be a boy like everyone else. Being a girl wasn't something I was allowed to be since it wasn't my birth sex.

But on the other hand, I was attracted to girls. I was always a "straight boy." But there was always something that made it hard for me to date girls or even build friendships with them: I was attracted to girls, but at the same time I dreamed of being like them...

Sometimes I'd also see cartoons on TV where characters would transform, and I loved watching that from a very young age. I'd imagine what if it suddenly happened to me too and I ended up transforming into a girl... (Is that a fantasy? A fetish? Or really something else?)

As I grew up, I accepted this thought of loving women + wanting to be them at the same time. I told myself that maybe I wasn't the only one thinking like this, that other boys might also have these thoughts of wanting to be a girl, so I learned to live with it and never talked to anyone about it because it was way too personal. I was too afraid of being judged if I brought it up. Instead, I tried to perform , having romantic relationships with girls and/or getting socially accepted , which was already something very difficult for me.

I grew up in a Catholic family that tried to "protect me" from the non-heteronormative aspects of society. You especially had to avoid talking to a trans person, because for them they were "transsexuals" and it was associated with sexual perversion. Homosexuality was against nature in their eyes, and people who cross-dressed weren't normal people in their minds.

These are not my own thoughts, but that's how I was raised. So naturally, I think it reinforced my belief that I couldn't be anything other than a boy. When you're little, I think you try to align with what your parents tell you is normal , especially when you already struggle to be accepted by others socially.

As I grew up, I was more focused on pleasing others than pleasing myself. I was overweight for a long time, but when I eventually lost a lot of weight, I took care of my appearance and had a physique that was quite attractive to women.

Around 20, I came across a video of Kim Petras, the singer, who at the time was making a lot of noise / controversy because she was the first girl to transition that early, at 13, so she'd gotten a lot of media attention. And that's when I understood there was a side completely opposite to what my parents had taught me: that this girl had always known she was a girl inside, and that it was very far from the "perversion" angle my parents had taught.

From that moment on, I became almost obsessed with trans identity. I spent hours looking at transition timelines, personal stories, existing treatments, dosages, risks... to the point of knowing the subject inside out without ever daring to take the leap. I was also too ashamed to accept it myself and to talk to anyone about it, so I internalized it as a private thought.

I kept seeing this disconnect: "I dream of being a woman too, but not like this , I would have wanted to be born a woman... So I'm not a woman?! But inside I feel like I am. But I can't allow myself such a thought because I was biologically born male and on top of that I'm a 'straight guy,' I'm only attracted to women and I have zero feminine traits in my daily life, socially I've always lived as a boy with no visible signs..." It was 15 years of mental torture and indecision since I was 20, to be honest.

I even tried getting into fitness to try to like myself better. It worked because I got really fit and was very attractive to girls, I was surrounded by friends, but deep down it only kept my mind busy enough to stop thinking about the wish to be a woman.

For years, I did DIY hormones but only for very short periods , a few weeks to one month each time. It was quite compulsive but it was linked to mental saturation and major bouts of depression and frustration. I always stopped for the same reasons: guilt, shame, fear of making a mistake, fear that the whole life I'd built would collapse.

And finally, in 2024, I started hormones again but this time in a thoughtful and deliberate way, and all my mental saturation disappeared within a few months. It's now 2026 and that mental fog has never come back since the beginning, so I'm aware that estrogen was probably the best thing for me.

On the other hand, I've never had feminine social codes and I've never rejected my life as a man either. I don't know what it means to behave "like a woman." I feel like coming from me, it would be performing a feminine social role (in voice, mannerisms, clothes, makeup) that doesn't belong to me.

So even now, after 2 years on hormones, I still go by "he" in daily life, I live socially as a man, I dress like a man. However, I don't hide my transition from anyone anymore and I talk about it openly with the people around me (work, friends, family...) and I am taking steps to change: I'm growing my hair out, I've done laser hair removal, and honestly even after 2 years people absolutely do not see a woman when they look at me. I think that partly blocks me from going further with my appearance. I've recently started booking consultations with surgeons for FFS.

But what really strikes me today, and where I feel very alone, is that my transition journey seems very opposite to the experiences of many other trans women I've listened to.

They had signs from childhood of feminine gender expression (wanting to wear makeup, wanting to be treated as girls, playing with dolls or girl games, romantic attraction toward boys because they already felt like women deep down), and I didn't experience any of that...

And I know the trans community can be pretty harsh sometimes within itself. I've already seen TikTok lives where trans women judge each other as soon as you don't fit their vision of trans identity, so I don't really know where to talk about all this without getting judged , hence coming here, a message in a bottle...

My view on trans identity is: we say we're transgender in society, but gender is a social construct. If I can't embrace the social aspect of being trans, then am I not legitimately a trans woman? But still, I have this deep pain of not being born female, just like the trans community in general. So what makes me different from them? Is my experience less valid because it doesn't fit the classic narrative?

I've read many scientific studies suggesting that trans identity has a biological component, including differences at the brain level. Personally, that's how I experience it in my case: something deeply rooted, biological, not just social. The feeling of being born female inside, in a body that doesn't match, without necessarily expressing it socially...

I hope I'm not being too clumsy with my words and that I won't be burned at the stake 🤣. I absolutely don't want to offend anyone , I'm trying to be as precise as possible about my thoughts to get genuinely constructive answers.

Thank you 🙏

is this a common trans experience, or is it not worth giving much thought to?
i don’t feel particularly connected to being a girl, but that may just be because i don’t look very feminine. that said, if i were to think of my ‘ideal self’, which could be a very feminine girl… it still usually ends up being a male version of myself.
i’m worried it’s just like internalised misogyny or something, since i don’t feel like i want or need to transition.

They won't stop Meowing and Purring at me, all of my trans friends are doing it, what does it mean? Is their a guide on understanding them?

I remember as a kid playing 'house' with other kids my age (about 6 years old) and I never wanted to be the guy figure, I always wanted to be the mom or the sister and I remember being called out for it as a kid and I think that is where I really started to wonder. I also remember going to book fair and buying the notebook that had a lipgloss with it because I wanted my lips pink and hiding from my parents to put it on (i got caught lol).

Later on in life around age 12 I started to play this game on the computer where I would dress up my girl character and I was obsessed with this game. Every day I would make adjustments to the outfit and it just was so special to me being able to dress the character up how I wanted and longed to dress up.

In High school I didn't really dress up or stick out in any way and I recall being self-conscious about how I dressed even though I had full control over my wardrobe, I guess I was just trying to fit in. It wasn't until college and after college and after that I feel like I have expressed more feminine traits. People always say now that I look androgynous and it brings me comfort in a way.

At one point, at age 20 I asked my (lesbian) sister 'do you ever wish you had just been born a man' to which she responded 'like i guess.' It was mildly comforting to hear her express a similar feeling but I don't think she was as passionate as I was about the subject.

All this to say, I feel like now it would be too late to transition. I know that is probably a common feeling but I just can't get over the hurdle that I have made my life leading up to this point as a guy and I've started my career so it feels like it would be such a challenge to transition at this point. I think the other hurdle is I never want to not be passing which inevitably would be the case in starting treatment. Any advice?

Comment I wrote on another post that I’m thinking maybe I should post and ask for input on.

When I first started HRT (MtF) close to 12 years ago I had some quite rapid changes. I was still identifying as genderfluid at the time, and trialing HRT to see how it affected me/see if I got the kind of changes I wanted at the time.

One 2mg tablet/day was pushing my T down to ‘between male and female ranges’ and putting my E in the low end of female range, and I developed breast buds almost immediately.

Unfortunately this kind of freaked me out and I stopped taking it for a while, I just wasn’t ready for everything. I even trialed a low dose again a while later, just to try and keep things a bit elevated.
I finally started proper transition a few years later, once I just couldn’t put up with fear-induced half measures any more.

And now, seven years later…. My breasts haven’t grown any further, I’ve got nothing on my hips or butt, and zero curves.
Facially it’s done pretty well for me, but I’ve got nothing else.

Early on my E levels were pretty good, up around 700 pmol/L (tablets monotherapy), once spiking to 900 when I lost weight, but I needed to slowly increase the dosages of HRT, and then add a T-blocker, but my levels declined anyway, dwindling down to the 350-400 pmol/L range.

I tried gel but August/September 2024 but that dropped my levels to barely over 100, so I went back to tablets.

I hovered in the 350-370 range from there, then had bottom surgery in August 2025. It made basically no difference to my levels.

I had two 100mg implants inserted in December 2025, hoping a different delivery method would help. Six weeks later my levels were at 340 pmol/L.

I wanted higher, obviously, but we waited another month because my GP wanted to see if my results remained steady, or fluctuated.

March 2026 and I was at 250pmol/L

April I had another pair of implants inserted, and I’m not quite two weeks away from my next levels check-in appointment, and I have no idea what I’ll do if my levels don’t massively improve (injections aren’t really a thing over here unless you DIY) :(

For background, I’d had my T levels tested a couple of times (just incidentally, for things like sleep/energy issues) and they were normal.

Puberty didn’t hit me overly hard. I never developed an Adams Apple, though I did get a sizeable rib cage. I was a bit of a late bloomer, and quite short compared to my peers until late high school. I eventually topped out at 5’8, but didn’t stop growing until I was 20.

I’ve always taken really strongly after my mum, facial features wise, and often got read as female when I was 19/20/21 kind of age (hell, there’s a photo of me at.. 19/20, and when I randomly found it a while ago, I went ‘I know the girl on the left, who is the other one?’, then ten minutes went ‘wait, the one on the right is me!’).

So… yeah… is randomly developing resistance to HRT in your.. late 30s… like, a thing?? Has anyone heard something like this before??

I am a 48 yo male who has crossdressed since high school, and have had thoughts of "what would it be like to be a girl" since ~8 yo. Crossdressing has always filled me with such joy and warmth to see "her" staring back in the mirror. I never smile bigger than I do in those moments. But I never really considered myself trans, as I feel comfortable in my male body, and enjoy my life as a man too. I was "just a crossdresser". I like feeling girly sometimes, and being called pretty makes my heart sing. But I don't feel like I can't keep living my life as a man, nor do I feel like I'm wearing a costume when I go out into the world as a man.

As I've gotten older, life keeps getting in the way of having a chance to dress (family, job, money, etc). Basically once a year my wife and I give each other a weekend get-away as a gift, and I use mine for "Camille time". It's a blessed time (some pics from a recent post), but far too long in-between those opportunities. I'd say in the past 18 months or so I've been feeling what I can only describe as a deep longing and deep-rooted sense of sadness the longer it's been since I've had that time. The more I felt it, the more I kept looking for answers to what the cause could be. So recently I met with a well respected gender therapist online, and described my history and how I don't feel any dislike towards my male body. It's more that I want to also been seen in the world as Camille too, and live life as her sometimes (whatever that would look like). After listening to me babble for an hour, she told me that she doesn't think I'm a trans woman b/c I don't display any signs of physical dysphoria. Rather, she thinks that I'm bi-gender or gender-fluid.

But as I sit here with this deeply rooted feeling of sadness, almost like a background noise, and which I know is coming from "her" inside me, I do wonder if I have some sort of dysphoria nonetheless. And I wonder if perhaps the therapist’s label of "bi-gender" was hasty, and there is more going on here. Why else would I find myself feeling jealous at times of women I see just being their beautiful selves out in the world, free to present any way they want to? And why else do I often scroll the "trans timelines" sub-reddit thinking,"I wonder what would I look like after X years of HRT?". Perhaps this is all just my femme side trying to "get out" a bit more, and it would all even-out if I could dress-up more than once per year? Or is this feeling something more than just that?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts or advice. ❤️

Camille see

ive looked all over the internet and i cant find anything helpful until a friend of mine (mtf) told me to ask for help here about it.

long story short i (MTF) been on hrt for about 2 years now and while the hormones helped shape my body to be more of what i wanted ive kept a bit of a big belly

is there any at home workout routines i can do to help get rid of or atleast shrink it down while also helping shape my body to be more femenine? any help would be greatly appreciated

i also might try going to the gym if possible but im still trying to figure out how to fit that into my work schedule

Hey, people that are reading this. I am a cis gender man. I have been trying to be more in touch with the LGBTQA+. And I am wondering what's the best affirming thing someone can do or say? for you personally!

I recently started T and noticed libido changes. Particularly.... why do I want to have sex with everyone?!

I got slightly tipsy at a bar and started thinking about how everyone around me was super hot and attractive. I don't actually want to​ be with them at all, it's just like an instinctive thought. Is this how people usually feel???

I came into this thinking I would need more me time, but I don't feel the desire to jork it 24/7. Its more people seem more attractive to me now.

I identify (and still do) on the aspec, so this is new to me. Can anyone else relate to this?

For most of my memorable life, I’ve had an invisible set of steps keeping stuff tolerable. Things like growing my leg hair out, playing male characters in video games and TTRPGS, using male names online/in anonymous settings, taping down my chest or hiding my body when alone. For a while, this wasn’t conscious. It was just… my life, what I gravitated towards. Without getting too much into it, other parts of my childhood/adolescence caused extreme, near-constant dissociation. I was out of my body and coping in whatever way I could. I didn’t overthink these rituals because there were so many small things that kept me a bit connected to my mind, my body, whatever. I thought I’d keep doing them every once in a while and it would be enough.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been doing them more as of late. Today, it happened that one of my friends used a lot of gendered language to refer to me. It was related to a joke - they were fake proposing because I got them a favorite food item from the dining hall (uni). Like, a really stupid, casual joke. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since, cause it was sort of a parallel to how I refer to myself in those little moments, the ones that bring me back to a sense of self. But those are just moments. And this is, what, the rest of my life? If I switched the frequency of the parallels, would living feel clear and connected instead of foggy and meaningless?

I guess it made me realize that these aren’t like mechanisms that sustain my world and make it better, they’re ones that keep me alive in spite of how awful normalcy has always felt. And they are not, like I thought, small. I spend what should be the ‘big’ parts of my time waiting for them. If I need to do this only in doses for the rest of my life? That's not possible. I think I‘ll die. Or I’ll fade into a walking corpse, basically. That realization terrifies me. These felt so tiny a second ago. They could be brushed off as coping strategies or odd behaviors. Now they‘ve snowballed. But now that I feel their weight, moving away from it feels impossible. I’m so, so scared.

I don’t know. Has anybody had a similar experience in terms of sorting this stuff out?

Hi! This is actually my first time seriously using Reddit, I usually browsed without an account just to read some posts, but I felt the need to create one to ask this, so I’m sorry if this post is awkward or badly formatted…

I’I’ve been feeling really confused lately and I wanted to ask to trans people how they realized they were trans, and what that felt like for them.

Recently I was talking with a friend from the LGBT community, and he pointed out something I had honestly never thought much about before: in basically every videogame or TTRPG, I always create female characters. I told him it’s because female characters feel easier and more comfortable for me to roleplay, while male characters feels... strange? I don’t really know how to explain it properly. They just feels wrong in a way I can’t fully describe

The thing is, this goes back to when I was a kid. I remember on Club Penguin and other online games, I used to dress my character as a girl and introduce myself as one to other people online. I think part of it was that nobody could see me, so nobody would question it i guess.

After talking more deeply with my friend, he told me that maybe I should explore the possibility that I could be trans. Before this conversation, I honestly didn’t know much about gender identity at all. I’m not very involved in LGBT spaces or discussions, and a lot of these concepts are still very new to me

But ever since that conversation, I can’t stop thinking about it. I realized that, deep down, I think I really wish I had been born a girl. And now I feel extremely confused, because I don’t know what that means or what I’m supposed to do with these feelings

So I guess my main question is: how did you know you were trans? What did it feel like for you in the beginning? How do you tell the difference between curiosity, escapism, and actually being trans?

I’m sorry if any of this sounds ignorant. I’m genuinely trying to understand myself better!

————————————

P.S. I think part of why this is all so terrifying to me is because my parents are extremely conservative and openly hostile toward LGBT people. I genuinely think they could kick me out of the house, or worse, if I turned out to be trans. I don’t think I would be safe telling them about any of this, which makes these feelings even harder to process and I am scared :(

Okay I grew up in some small ass Christian town where everyone was shitting on LGBTQ+ people so I started doing the same until I was 17 and realized that it was really wrong and stoped but I never bothered to really look into it. I’m 21 now and I have a little sister who’s 16, in February told our family he would feel more comfortable as a girl and he wants to identify as one . My parents were skeptical but weren’t against, I supported her and told her I was happy for her.
But now I’m kinda confused on how to answer her question and give advice. I’m in the marines so I live far from home so it’s not like I can really talk to her. The other day she asked me about the contact information about a MMA class I was in because she wants to join, but now I’m confused. She isn’t fully transitioned, she just dresses more feminine and goes my she/her. So would she be put with the guys or the girls? Also she asked me for advice on this guy she likes and I was kinda confused because do I give her my advice as a straight guy or do I put myself in her shoes.
I’m kinda lost I really want to learn more about all of this because I’ve never really been able to be close to her cuz of our age gap and I’m almost never home. I wanna be a reliable person.

I was very close to my father, and came out, 6 days ago, and told my mother 7 days ago. It's been difficult, although my mother says she accepts it, she wishes it wasn't real, and although she talks to me, I still don't feel happy. On the other hand, my father said it didn't matter when I told him, but I've been ignored or spoken to harshly for at least 4 days. The funniest thing is that although I know who I am and what I want, and I've tried to transition socially, at least with clothes and my own money, they try to make it seem like I'm to blame for not reinforcing it before, justifying that they gave me space, but I don't feel safe now and I never have, and I simply feel a lot of emotional pain and I don't know how to stop it. My mother said that my father feels betrayed because I didn't tell him and talked to AI or people from the trans forum. Well, today I asked him how long he would still be like this with me without me doing anything, and he answered: until I die.

Then I went to my room and tried to kill myself, but unfortunately the wire I used came loose, and now I'm here crying and writing this post on Reddit. There are so many things I'd like to do and moments I'd like to live. But it's all unreal for me. I feel this pain in my chest in the most constant and intense way possible... I'm sorry to vent here, so I wish someone would listen to me or see me... I really want answers or just to talk, because this is difficult.

So I’ve seen on many posts that the skin on the thingy will get thinner with hrt. And fragile. But. What does that mean exactly? What can happen? Curious because if I did start hrt I would want to keep my thingy for with my wife.