By the way, JohnnyMac, good thread. I hope you don’t mind me jumping in.
If you had the choice, would have changed your brain to match the body you were born with, rather than the other way around?
That’s something I’ve always wondered. Since surgeries and treatments aren’t perfect, and some people simply aren’t satisfied with what they can do.
No. It feels to me like my brain is who I am. My body is just what I wear.
I wish I had them now. I wish my body was wholly masculine; larger hands, thinner hips, and then, of course, the obvious. I can’t say I wish I’d been born a man. I don’t think I’d half the person I am now, if I were. I think I’ve had a lot of good experiences as a result of being FtM, and gotten to know a lot about people I wouldn’t. I don’t want to have been born with man parts, I just want them now.
I don’t know how my life would have gone if I’d been born a man; since your experiences shape so much of who you are, I don’t think I’d be the same person at all.
Thanks, that’s sort of what I figured most people would answer, it makes sense to me.
No. I’d definitely change my body. As filling_pages said, your brain is who you are. If you change that…what happens to you?
Not at all :).
If no one wants to answer this question I understand it’s OK, it’s pretty personal. However, I’m sure a lot of us are curious.
Basically - how does a transman handle sex?
Now, I understand that every transman is different (just like every other category of human is composed of individuals) and it’s going to depend on transition, surgery (if any) and a whole lot of other stuff, but I think most of us know that creating a working penis for a FtM person is problematic.
So, if anyone feels like volunteering, I’d be interested to know how you handle intimate relations. If you’re dating a bisexual or pansexual perhaps it’s not such a huge issue (or maybe it is - I have not knowingly dated such a person so I’m not an authority on the dynamics involved), but how would you/do you deal with the lack of/inadequate penis issue? Obviously, I would hope you are fortunate enough to have sensitive partners willing to work around any difficulties that present themselves, but knowing the abundance of jerks in the world I expect that is all too frequently not happening in real life. If you look like a man with your clothes on but not when naked below the waist it seems to me that at some point you’re going to have to have a talk of some sort with your partner(s). Lemur866 asked similar question upthread as well.
SO’s of transmen please chime in as well.
So, any details you care to share would satisfy my curiosity, but as I said, if no one wants to talk about it (for any reason whatsoever) I completely understand.
Personally, I won’t be with someone who has a serious issue with my body. I may be unhappy with my dicklet, but I don’t want my partner to feel the same way. Quite honestly, I don’t want a partner who can “deal with it”, I want a partner that’s really attracted to me as I am.
…Sex-wise, a strap-on seems fine to me. I plan to get surgery, but at this point I haven’t, so…why not? I’d be happier with the real thing, but that’s not an option right now, and I think we’d both be happier with something rather than nothing (well, that depends on the partner).
I understand what you mean about how many jerks there are in the world, and how finding someone willing to work around the difficulties may be hard to do in real life…and you’re right, but I still wouldn’t be willing to date someone who wasn’t. One night stands, or casual sex, is different, but in a relationship I would want someone for whom it didn’t pose a problem (and there are enough of those out there that this isn’t too discriminatory a view to take).
The gay guys I had sex with who knew I was trans (since in some situations there is no need to tell, when it’s pretty much one-sided sex in cruising areas) were more than willing to “explore”, though I personnally wouldn’t employ the term cunnilingus to refer to this sex act toward me or when I ask for it, too associated with women in my mind.
It is not a generality though, some gay guys won’t want nothing to do with it, and for many trans men having sex with men, vaginal penetration is totally off limit, or they are top and not bottom.
And of course, the gay guys who turned me down for me being trans weren’t okay with all that 
Like the others said. Don’t mock the person, support them if they want to use another name or pronouns, don’t try to rigidify gender norms around them. They may do end up being trans, or not, or with a fluid understanding of their gender.
I viewed myself as gender-neutral. I was a tomboy, my heros were boys but I was adamant to say “I’m a girl” that one time I wore a dress for my 5th ou 6th birthday and some boy came up at me to ask if I was a boy or a girl.
When talking about my childhood, I always use gender-neutral forms. I don’t really remember what my parents use, but my mom still talks to me using feminine pronouns so I guess she uses that too for my childhood. Halloween wasn’t in vogue when I was a kid. My grand-parents still don’t know I’m trans so I’m still their “little girl who has so much grown!”
But I think we don’t really talk much about my childhood.
I cut ties with all my childhood friends or friends I had at school and university.
The change in pronouns/endings of words and adjectives will more vary along the situations. At my parents’ house I don’t care that much if they talk about me using the feminine form, but they are careful not to do it if people don’t know I’m trans or in front of my trans friends.
I would say life is good now that I’m post-transition, it’s when I was pre-transition and a teen that it sucked the worst. I was thinking I was the only one like that and that I would have to run away from my family and to a far away city to avoid them the shame of what I wanted to do.
But, I’m not able to imagine who I would be if I had been male from the start, this is the only life I know. If I had been born male, I wouldn’t be me. It’s also why I wouldn’t have preferred to change my brain.
I do sometimes get a yearning for having born male, when I’m in gay male spaces, thinking sex would be simpler and less stressing, and I used to feel wholly inferior.
And also, I have insights about how it is to be trans, but since I viewed myself as a gay boy at a very young age (14yo tops), my brain didn’t register at all how it is to “live as a girl”, so all I know about this or sexism is from learning about feminism in my early twenties and some memories of a handful of girl chats about periods, boys we liked and having sex. And being forbidden to walk late at night in the streets.
The only time it happened is with my first boyfriend, when I was a teenager; we had met each other in the gay cruising area of a local public park, spent a nice time together but then he wanted to see me again…I refused but little did I know, he then spent the whole week coming again to the park each day to look for me and so I saw him again. I remember telling him in a trembling voice “but I’m a girl!” and him replying that it didn’t matter, that he was straight :smack: and that he somehow knew already I was female because I had held hands with him and was wearing a thin watchband. :rolleyes:
So yeah, I was really nervous.
I had an online relationship for a few weeks with a gay guy toward the end of this relationship, and when I couldn’t find more excuse not to meet him in real life (because although in pictures I was “passable”, my voice was high) I felt forced to spill the beans and it ended right there on the spot!
For my next boyfriends I meet them off the internet and they all knew beforehand I was trans because I was writing it, like, in bold and in details. I met my current lover because we hung out in the same LGBT actions/events and had friends in common, and he knew I was trans from the beginning too.
This will be long.
All my boyfriends so far, save for my current partner, have been het/slighty bi-curious men who love masculine/boyish/butch women. All relationships failed in most part because they were opposed to masculinizing body modifications and to be seen with a guy.
Sex-wise, besides plenty of anonymous one-sided sex in gay cruising areas in my teen years, I’ve been with men of all sexual orientations and a couple of trans men.
When I was pursuing het men on the internet, I was thinking this: there are way more of them and many many are horny, and since butch het girls are uncommon, I would get plenty of sex, since hey, they have nothing against vaginas, right?!
Which was true in theory, but in pratice it was hard on my mind to be feminized when they were speaking to me, whether they knew I was trans or not.
And although often butch-loving men don’t mind a little body hair, with testosterone, a little body hair became plenty of hairs on my stomach, thighs and chest, and it became a bit too much for most het men, and once I no longer had boobs…hum…having a vagina wasn’t enough 
It’s in the course of all that that I met my most recent boyfriends, because while strickly looking for casual sex, I wasn’t planning to fall in love with some of the guys and the same went for them.
So, once pretty much post-transition, I tried to hook up with gay and bi men online, but it was hit or miss, either they were really down with it and not fazed at all by my genitals, either it was a total turn off. And then we had to be compatible looks wise, since I’m not slim and toned, yet not fitting a “bear” image. But I rarely had a guy who would be like…“hum no, wait maybe, let me think about it”, it was either yes or no from the beginning.
The worst I had are the kind of bi guys for whom you’re a way to fuck a guy without feeling “gay” because there is no dick.
I’m a bottom and use all my parts so I don’t need to discuss with guys what is ok or not, sex acts wise. And, except for meeting guys in the first place, I guess this is why not having your average dick hasn’t been that much of a problem in my sex life.
As a teen/young adult, I was objecting to any activity seen as feminizing (having my genitals touched, being bare-chested, having my breast touched, removing my breast binder, being penetrated vaginally) and would stay mostly clothed for sex. I would explain it at the very beginning or just divert hands or just say no and don’t explain. This is complicated to explain for me because at that time it was a mix of some of my partners knowing I was trans (and seeing me as a girl), and some others thinking I was a random gay teen boy.
This all changed with taking testosterone and feeling my whole body discovering feeling good when touched sexually and even beginning to have orgasms.
A biggest problem has been not using condoms most of the time. I was so sure no one would ever be attracted to me, and it feels so good to have sex and/or to be seen as a boy, that if the guy I was with if didn’t use a condom, I would rarely ask for one. This was true whatever the sexual orientations of the guys was.
It was only when I was a teen that I would always use condoms, because my mind was not in synch with my body so all my sexual pleasure was mental. Then when I went on testosterone my body began to feel good to use it sexually and I began to take bad decisions in sex, even more so since testosterone upped my libido a hell lot.
My current lover (and for a long time I hope, knock on wood! been together for 3 years) sees my body as the most beautiful type of body on earth (or something). He’s intersex, male-assigned, so it’s a kind of body that talks to him. He made me discover that my body can be beautiful as a whole, that it’s not just some ugly gender mismatch.
I’m sorry that I don’t have any questions, or really anything to add except thanks for making this thread. I’ve never known (to the best of my knowledge) any transgendered people, and I have to admit to a certain curiosity, and definitely much ignorance of the topic.
So to JohnnyMac and the others, thanks for helping me understand a little better.
Thanks for all the insight so far.
I have another question that I’m not exactly sure how to articulate. But… what defines your gender for you? For example, I think of myself as a woman. But nothing about my clothing or hair really impacts my perception of myself as a woman. I can wear anything from a sexy dress to oversize men’s jeans and still feel like a woman. I can nearly buzz my hair bald or grow it out long and I still feel like a woman. This is not true of some of my transgendered friends, however. What they wear does have an impact on their own perception of being true to their gender, according to what they’ve told me.
For me, what makes me physically a woman is a much more subtle mix of things like shape, movement, muscle tone. What makes me a woman in psychological and emotional ways has to do with a whole series of life experiences that I haven’t really untangled. It’s certainly not about playing the traditional gender role of a woman. I’d as soon go build something or mow the lawn as bake a cake or dust the living room.
But, I imagine, as a transgendered person, those distinctions would come up – and questions about what makes a person one gender or another become quite pertinent. So, what do you think?
When I started transitioning, there was no way I’d dress or act femme. I’d feel very uncomfortable, wrong, and clumsy, if I wore anything remotely feminine. But as I began to pass more and more, those things became less important. For me, I see my gender the same way you do, it’s a whole lot of subtle things about me, ways I interact, psychology, emotion, how I relate to the world.
When I started transitioning, I had to get rid of a whole lot of expectations and hang-ups that society had about gender, and that I had about my gender. And for me, that meant I had to really establish myself as male. How people treat you and interact with you makes up a large part of your self-identity, however independent-minded you are (and I am). It’s a huge part of your life. It was very important to me that I was seen and treated as male, and being sensitive to that meant that what I wore had a huge impact on how I felt (whether there were others around or not).
Now, I don’t worry about that sort of thing. It’s largely because since I’ve grown my goatee, there’s no way anyone’s going to mistake me for a woman. That one clear gender-marker makes me feel free to not follow the traditional gender roles. At this point I feel free to act as feminine as I like; I’ve even done half-drag: the over-the-top boots, the make up, a girl’s shirt…but my breasts were still bound, I still had facial hair, and I was unequivocally taken as a man in drag. It was a blast, I had great fun and I was perfectly comfortable dressed that way. But I wouldn’t have been comfortable at all if I didn’t know that when people looked at me, what they were seeing was a man in drag.
I think it’s the other way around - in MtF surgery, the penis could be used as a ‘vaginal pouch.’
I have an inlaw (brother of a brother-in-law) who went through FtM transitioning decades ago. These days he’s in his late 40s/early 50s, married to a bio-/cissexual woman, with adopted kids. I’m a bit disturbed that one of our twenty-something nieces doesn’t know anything about the fact, and that an older sibling of hers was only told in adulthood. They’re still withholding the info from this niece because they think she’ll take it poorly, but I can’t imagine she’d take it well if she finds out accidentally. He looks just like his brother, they could be fraternal twins, so there was never any chance that she could just think something wasn’t quite right just by looking at him.
See, I don’t understand this “we have to protect the children from this” attitude. I have two sisters who are lesbian, and my kids have never been shielded from that fact. To me, if the kid is raised with it just, well, being what it is, then they’re unlikely to question it or think it’s “weird”. If it’s something you keep ‘under the rug’ until the kid is much older, they may start to wonder “Hmmmm; I wonder what’s wrong with that, that they couldn’t tell me until I was grown up?”
To me, having a trans in the family wouldn’t be any more conversation-worthy than having a family member who had an artificial limb or something. It would be introduced to the kids as “just the way Aunt Sam is”, or whatever.
Not only does it make for less trauma all around, but I think it encourages kids, at an early age, to accept the idea that people don’t just fit into a few pre-defined molds.
Not to intrude, but since I"m both physically and mentally male does that mean I’m cis-sexual? (I’m not really up on all the terms these days)
Yep, that’s it exactly :).
trans - on the opposite side (across/beyond)
cis - on the same side.
Ah thanks. Thanks for the thread, I have a number of acquantainces that are transsexual, mostly MtF but a couple of FtM and it really just didn’t seem appropriate to ask the kind of questions that have come up here in this thread. The education is appreciated.
I know. I wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek comment about “remember the good old days when there was just gay and straight and maybe bi?” but I’d like to emphasize that my participation in this and the thread from which it spun off shows nothing but respect on my part. In other words, just a joke. The new terms are confusing, but I guess it’s good that we have more accurate descriptors for a wider range of possibilities.
When you started hormones, did you get any zits, and if so, do you have any good pimple stories to share?