The way I understand my feelings and experiences has changed so much pre vs post transition.
I wanted to see what other small misconceptions you all had from pre-transition that you see differently now, or that maybe you wish you had understood before.
There are so many to choose from, but I'll start:
Probably as a coping mechanism I never saw the gendered components to my self-loathing.
For example, I hated my breasts because they were malformed-looking, to me. I would sometimes think, if I were a woman it would be worse (like the same, but larger), but I never once thought having a flat chest would be better. Instead I seemed to need to feel having female breasts would be worse, so I could feel better about my situation.
Or how I always loved how little hair was on my body, but never thought that was abnormal. I never got back hair and only had thin hair on my belly and a small, thin strip on my sternum. I never thought of this in terms of gender, I never thought about how my body ideal was curvy and hairless, or feminine. It bothered me when I was compared to male beauty icons, but I never could quite be honest with myself as to why.
I ignored (or repressed) the gender in everything, but it was still there.
So my misconception was about gender itself, I thought of it as primarily social and malleable, and thus was some great social evil, gender was The Enemy or The Problem.
Now gender is extremely important to me, but before I would say being a man was irrelevant to me, or even obviously unwanted - it was a moral choice, to be a woman was to be a better person in my mind, to abandon a toxic social role in favor of an enlightened one.
Now I think you can't really choose, that we have these implicit gendered feelings that we can't really change, and so being a woman feels good to me because of what I am, and now being a woman is just a precious gift, rather than a moral imperative.
I totally botched this post, I wanted this to be succinct and lost my sense of purpose and have rambled along.
Looking forward to hearing from you all. 💚
Right now I'm at where you both were. Other people transition, not me. It's impossible. My body is too masculine and I'd be a terrible woman. I should just forget about it and yet I don't. There has been significant cracking in my defenses in the past year, and I have no idea where I'll be a year from now.
FWIW, i had similar thoughts, until i thought about how i would feel if I was a big muscle-y woman: that thought was significantly less distressing (practically encouraging tbh) than being a big muscle-y dude.
Yes, that is exactly how I felt. Looking back it’s obvious I was just exceptionally good at playing the role I felt I had to though. I was good at it because it was all I knew how to be. I had practiced it forever, it was what had become comfortable for me.
What I didn’t realize was that wasn’t normal to have to try that hard. I was great at pretending to be a man, at acting like people expected me to, at playing the role.
I thought that’s how transitioning would feel, that I would have to learn how to pretend to be female. Except I didn’t, and it was much more about accepting myself and dropping the act than it was learning how to be someone else.
I am just me now. I’m not pretending to be anything, I’m not trying to be what anyone else wants. It doesn’t matter if anyone thinks I make a “good” or a “bad” woman anymore. It matters that I love who I am, I’m comfortable in my body, and I have hope for the future.
I think I needed to hear that, thank you. One of my big anxieties when I think about transitioning is learning how to be a woman. It makes me think about how hard it was to grow up and be the person I present as today, and I don't want to go through such a long painful process again so late in life.
That kind of thing is odd though because generally it doesn't feel like I'm pretending to be a man. That's how ingrained it is.
The thought of just being myself without any act or pretending is comforting.