I'm p. sure I have gender dysphoria I've been questioning for over a decade now, how do I not be trans

By learning that Gender Dysphoria is a made up construct. What is more important is that the entire notion that these problems with your soul are actually "mental illnesses" is a farce. Our society only created the construct of mental illness for two reasons, the main reason is to control people who are out of the ordinary and keep them away from others. The second reason is that our society as a whole does not take problems of the heart and soul seriously and the only thing we care about are medical conditions so people created this construct in an attempt to get them taken seriously. The truth is it does not actually help at all in fact it makes it worse because none of these mental conflicts are actual illnesses at all. The symptoms are completely arbitrary and you could oscillate between supposed gender dysphoria or simply OCD or BPD at any moment. It is because they do not have any actual meaning in your real soul only in this idea of yourself that is constructed by psychologists and psychiatrists. Let go of the idea that your problems can only be taken serious if they are an "illness" Whatever you are feeling is hard and maybe you will need help but you will also need to be strong and resistant to these vultures. I hope what I am saying makes sense to you user. The main point I am making is that life is hard and problems of your soul are just as important if not even more important than a physical illness. Don't transition user, don't drink the koolaid, it is poisoned.

fair point. I just feel kinda in shock. I guess I shouldn't rush to label myself, either. Over the course of my life, though, everytime I've beeen in a position where I had the freedom to form my own identitt I've immediately begun to question my gender. I've always just shut it down with a simple ""No, you can't be trans, your life is hard enough, don't do that to yourself." A couple days ago I guess my egg finally cracked - the moment I allowed myself to actually entertain the thought it rapidly accelerated from "maybe you're not 100% cis" to "you're definitely not 100% cis" and finally "there's a high possibility you're a transwoman" as I connected the dots and since then I've just been falling apart.

Today at work I was trying to keep my mind off of it but at some point I decided to stop consciously forcing myself to speak in a deep voice like I usually do and allowed myself to talk with my natural pitch and inflection and it was like a weight off my shoulders but at the same time nerve-wracking, because it really made clear to me how much effort I'm always putting in to pass as a cismale... when i tried to force myself to speak in a masculine manner again it actually felt awkward and fake at first until i got used to it again - it still feels inauthentic. I also have to suppress aspects of my normal body language all the time, something I've long been highly aware of but always tried to tell myself it was nothing.

I'm feeling a bit better now because I realized that nothing has fundamentally changed, I'm still the same person that I was yesterday, but this is still new and scary and weird. I've always been an ally but I never accepted that *I* could be trans.

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I feel it's a lot simpler if you view it as a mental illness. Like, say somebody had a mental illness that made them believe a demon was in their arm or some shit. It might help their mental state if the arm was amputated, but that would be a major issue they have to deal with for the rest of their life, which could lead to further mental health problems.

So you have to figure out if you can live with that demon, or if it's worth the risks associated with getting rid of it. The support of your family is also very important, suicide rates are immensely high among transgender individuals with no support.

Like i said above I fully recognize that these are all constructs, but they're constructs because they're ultimately just tools for categorizing and understanding things. I don't really want to label myself but the construct does seem like an accurate description of what I'm struggling with.

I'm absolutely not in any rush to transition but now when I work to suppress feminine behaviors or mannerisms or aspects of my personality, it does feel like I'm lying to myself and I wonder if I'm going to spend the rest of my life feeling that way. Now that I've slipped even a little bit and allowed myself to entertain this, I also see how exhausted I am by the effort to present as a fully gender-conformant male.

Yeah... I guess it's about figurinf out what works for me. I don't have to conform to some particular masculine or feminine behavior but I do have to deal with the consequences lf whatever I express, figure out what works for me and what doesn't, and make the best of what I've got.

I'm under no illusion that I can just transition and magically become my True Self and everything would be peachy, even if everyone around me supported it.

Embrace it. Become happy in your skin

I've done a couple very subtle things.

I have a fairly popular twitter account not associated in any way with my IRL identity except for one close friend who knows about it, a couple days ago when I started seriously questioning this, I tried changing the pronouns in my bio to "She/Her" (I already had male pronouns in there), it made me sad to change them back or delete them so I will probably just leave it that way. I'm very careful not to post identifiable information so no harm done either way...

After my experiences today (e.g. with my voice as discussed above) I'm probably going to just start letting go of the self-monitoring of my speech and body language in a lot of situations, and allow myself to have whatever affectations come naturally even if they're not gender conformant. I'm so tired of pretending!

There are lots of people with anorexia who don't eat enough food because they falsely believe that they are too fat. Likewise there have been people who believe that they can still feel a certain part of their body after it has been removed. The key thing to realize is that the way you feel is not necessarily a reflection of the truth. Gender dysphoria is the same way. You "feel" a certain way, but you have know way of knowing whether that feeling is justified (a belief based on truth) or not (a delusion). How would a person born as a man know what it "feels" like to be a woman? His only experience and frame of reference is from a male perspective and a male body and a male mind. It is primarily a disorder of belief.

There's nothing wrong with simply changing how you act. People who give you shit for "not being a man" can piss off. Trying to force every male to be a manly man is one of the biggest causes of the mental health crisis going on. If it helps your mental stability, do whatever you please. Just give long and serious thought regarding any permanent body modifications, and whether or not they'll actually help you.

It's not really that I "feel like a woman inside", it's far more concrete than that.

1. I had some difficulty assimilating to a male gender role in early childhood. I wasn't "obviously trans" but I do remember things like in kindergarten being able to innately pick up on some aspects of girls' social roles while struggling to understand "how to be a boy."

2. Almost all close friendships I've had going back to early childhood have been with women; of the small handful of male friendships I've had, several later came out as trans. I'm not ostracized from male friendships and am popular and socially successful on the whole - other men want to spend time with *me* - but on my end I've always found it far more difficult to connect to men and felt like I "don't know how to hang out" whereas with women it comes naturally and I don't have to think about it at all.

3. I have to work hard at it to stop myself from expressing femininity in behavior and thought, including speech, body language, habits and small mannerisms, and even sometimes ways of thinking. At one point I thought I might be gay cause of this.

3. Speaking of gfs, I have a tendency tp live vicariously through them.

4. I've always been jealous of how women's clothes get all the pretty patterns and ornate details and always dressed as colorfully as I could without crossing the binary - "you can always pass as hippie/goth/raver" I've always preferred long hair and wish I could get away with makeup because I love the idea of painting my face each morning... working in a thrift shop I always catch myself staring wistfully at girls' shoes, clothes, and accessories and wishing that I could wear them.

5. The desire to be a woman never goes away. This has been the case my whole adult life even though i couldn't always say why. When I tried the female filter I cried bc I normally hate how I look in photos even though I'm p. handsome, but I looked so much like my mom and for once I liked how I looked.

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just realized i have two #3's here goddamnit, oh well it gets the point across.

stop fapping

I don't fap to the idea of being a girl and I'm not into tgirl porn, nor have I touched my dick over the last 72 hours as I've chewed this stuff over. I also normally work out a *LOT* and am pretty muscular so I probably have fairly high testosterone - though I've been so overwhelmed by this I did skip my workout for the last two days.

None of these are evidence of what you say, in my estimation. Gender stereotypes are just that, stereotypes. Many black men play basketball. Is a black man who doesn't play basketball not a black man? No. In previous decades a girl who did things that a boy normally would do would be called a tomboy. You're applying your own standards to what it means to be a woman, then since you like those things, incorrectly deduce that you must be a woman. Women are generally more attractive than men, but that doesn't mean men should aspire to be women.

oh jeez am I transmasc? I associate so heavily with this but the other way around. I just thought figuring out how to be a chick was hard for everyone

Actually going on hormones or getting surgery feels like *way* too big of a step right now - although if presented with The Button, I absolutely 100% would push it, with barely any hesitation.

I'm speaking of socialization and roles in relation to others, the facets of social interaction, though I get what you're saying about tomboys (tomgirls?)

I also don't really "aspire to be a woman." As I keep saying, I have no intention of rushing into transition.

Maybe? idk? None of these things are really new to me, but allowing myself to actually think "what if all of that means you *aren't really cis*" is new and scary but also seems to fit.

>I also don't really "aspire to be a woman."
The whole part where you said above that you are jealous of women, live vicariously through them, desiring to be a woman, finding women more attractive than men.

Have you heard of the reverse button challenge?
>Imagine you magically wake up tomorrow as [the gender you're questioning about]. It's just like you pressed the button in the original button test--you were born as your gender of choice, everyone regards you as that gender, and you look at yourself in the mirror and beyond a shadow of a doubt think "Wow yes I am [that gender]." It does not matter how strongly you feel about this--it could be a lot of feelings or almost no feelings. Now, imagine a different magic button presents itself. If you press THIS button, you go back to being the gender you were assigned at birth. It'll be as if nothing ever happened. For example, if you were AMAB and woke up a cis woman, pressing this button would make you a man again, no going back. Pressing this button would mean everyone perceives you as your birth gender, and you see yourself in the mirror as your birth gender forever. Would you press that take-backsies button?
I fail the button test (I don't press the button to change) but I pass the reverse test (I don't press the button to change back). I thought I was trans all through puberty, before I even knew it was actually a thing, but it's mellowed out as I've gotten older. Reading your list was pretty heavy tho.

IMO aspiration implies belief in possibility, whereas I fully understand my limitations in this respect. idk what you mean about "finding women more attractive than men." I'm certainly sexually attracted to women, but that's not really what it's about. As it stands, I am quite handsome as a man.

I can't even follow this train of thought, too many cultural buzzwords. It sounds like you are very confused.

OP here, it's pretty straightforward - forget all the bullshit that comes with transition, if you could press a button that magically turned you from a man to a woman or v.v., with everyone else being unaware of it and remembering you as always having your new gender and not being aware you were transformed into it, would you do it? Even if you only get to use it once, and the change is permanent?

What if there was a second button you could press to take it back, and also get rid of any desire to switch - but again, only once?

Anyway, I would definitely press the first button, and probably not the second (why would I ever want to go back?).

Now imagine a third button, which magically "cures dysphoria." Would you press it? idk 50/50 - given the option I would choose the first button over the "cure" button, but presented with the cure button only I would strongly consider pressing it. But unlike the first button, I would hesitate, because what would that really mean? How much of myself would. I have to get rid of? I'd be tempted to press it because I don't really want to feel all these things, but I'd also be tempted not to because it feels like I would have to erase large parts of my personality for it to work, like it would constitute an interior change far larger than the exterior change of the first button, like I was killing myseld and becoming a different person.

Why is what you "want" so important? Children want to eat candy and cake for breakfast, but good parents don't let them because they care about what is good for them rather than what they want. Or consider a person who wants to commit a murder. It doesn't matter how much he wants to do it or how justified he thinks that he is in doing it, it is still illegal and immoral. Many people want to do nothing but lay in bed all day because they don't feel like working, is that a viable alternative lifestyle?

so in answer to this no, it's pretty doubtful I'd push the take-backsies button. I would maybe slightly think about it but if I've already pushed the first button why would I want to go back?

I would *most likely* press the cure button in isolation, but out of the three it's the one I would hesitate most about. How much of myself would vanish? I would probably press it since I know I wouldn't mind afterwards and I guess I'd feel better compared to how I am now, but it's the only one that's actually kind of scary because it feels like I am deleting myself and being replaces by a new person.

Want is really the only consideration in these questions because they are intended to probe certain aspects of your personality - we all know none of the buttons will ever actually exist, just like we can't actually just lay in bed all day forever, and just because you'd press the first button doesn't mean you should run out and chop your cock off, but wouldn't you concede that there's a difference in personality between someone who, given the choice, would lay in bed all day, versus someone who really likes to engross themselves in work and feel productive?

Brainwash yourself

>wouldn't you concede that there's a difference in personality between someone who, given the choice, would lay in bed all day, versus someone who really likes to engross themselves in work and feel productive?
You think most people get up at 6 AM and go to work because they find it enjoyable?

No, but I do think a lot of people wouldn't exactly find the NEET lifestyle to be a good fit either, even if they had the financial support to live as such indefinitely.

If I didn't have to work, rather than lying around all day I would probably occupy myself with getting decent at violin again, or writing.

My point is that the universe and the laws of nature probably don't place as much important on your feelings as you seem to. The law of gravity applies whether I like it or not. Just because I feel like I can fly doesn't mean I should jump out a window (even if I fantasize about jumping out of windows). You're basing your understanding of yourself and the world on your feelings, rather than conforming your feelings to that which is true. In other words, you are delusional. It makes no sense to ask a person with a warped view of the world what their opinion of it is, because their opinion is also warped.

You seem to be under the impression that I've decided transition would solve my problems, when I've reached no such conclusion, only come to the recognition that I'm probably never going to fit neatly into my category and begun to stop trying.

It didn't seem that way based on the original question and the information provided. Wanting to do things that you associate with female stereotypes is a different subject from gender dysphoria.

Did you read the whole thread? The clincher isn't that I "want to do things I associate with female stereotypes," the things I listed are like puzzle pieces I put together once I had already started to entertain the idea I might not be cis. The clincher is really the recognition of how much effort I've been putting in to appear cis (to myself *and* others) and how much I'm faking it.

Like I've been censoring my voice and body language for so long, I've been trying so hard to be able to have the kind of deep friendships with men that I've always had with women, and it's all a lie.

Yes, sure, it also kinda hurts knowing I'll never exactly be the woman I saw looking back at me through the filter no matter how much it feels like me, but that's not even really the point, it's just another little thing that made me go "fuck... you really *aren't* cis are you?"

If it's difficult for me to be a good person, yet everyday I do things that good people do and do my best to not be evil, am I actually a good person or am I really just a bad person who is "faking" being good?

I think it's nuanced and there's some truth in both answers - but I think the question here would be, do you think you can keep "pretending to be good" for the rest of your life?

Because I don't think I can keep pretending, and knowing that, I'm not sure if I want to anymore, either.

In most cases what's "good" and what's "easy" are diametrically opposed. Just because one way of doing something is easier doesn't mean that it is better. Going to the gym to exercise is difficult and requires willpower and effort. Although it is tempting to think "Wouldn't it be easier if I just stopped caring?", I know that I have to go even if I don't want to if I care about my long term health. And that doesn't mean that I'm "supposed" to be unhealthy and that I'm just "faking" being a healthy person.

if you stay the way you are now, you might be able to appear as a better person to some of your peers or just some random people, but you'll have to deal with your personal issues, maybe for a short period or maybe forever... However, if you decide to change sex, you'll have to deal with the people around you and is not easy.
Maybe you'll consider changing social circles, depending on your circumstances. Either way, before you decide anything, talk to people who you trust or that can emphasize. Try to talk to a psychologist who can help you seek for solutions from all points of view.
Personally I don't judge, people make choices, just don't cause harm to others.

I used to have gender dysphoria but it went away for the most part. I came to realize that as long as I have the love and acceptance of my family, friends and God, I don't really have to change anything on the outside but I should just strive to become a better person on the inside. Sure I wish I could be prettier and more like a woman, because I enjoy being kind and cute, which are weird if you're a guy, but in a way this makes me truly unique and God made me a man so that I can truly be someone special by having these traits.

And to be fair, Im really happy and blessed because even though I wish I could be a woman, I have always been exclusively attracted to women. If I was a woman I would have never found the love of my life.

Accept yourself as you are and work on your inner being. Its cheaper and more rewarding than reshaping an arbitrary set of bodyparts.

bump

I'm probably just going to like, stop disallowing myself to be feminine.

*If* I was to consider transition, it's something that would be a long way off.

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You should probably consider a DIY orchiectomy with a sharpened rusty spoon. Remember not to use anesthetic!

Thx bb. Going to kitchen brb.