Ask the transsexual! (FtM)

Nope, no one in my family ever got any acne from puberty, didn’t have zits while growing up and still didn’t have any when I began to take T. :cool:

There are trans people, usually post-transition but not always, who see themselves as cissexual, because their physical body now matches their gender identity, or as cisgender, because their gender identity matches their gender presentation.
Some folks, say, a post-transition femme trans man or a butch trans woman, might say they’re cissexual but transgendered because of their alternate gender presentation, not because of the original gender id/body mismatch.

So to be safe I stick to only using trans/non-trans, because I might have a hard time keeping all the terms straight otherwise and remembering the exact preferences of this or that person.
(Of course some people also don’t like non-trans because it poses trans as the norm.)

Pre-transition, how I was dressing had a huge impact on my self perception. Since my body was very female looking, clothes helped me mask a lot of it and I could then influence how other people view me. If I dressed very boring and andro/masculine looking, I could be seen as a boy. If I dressed more trendy and at the same shop that the local gay boys, I may be seen as a gay boy, but the odds were good I would be seen too as a girl.
Hanging out with boys instead of girls helped me too to feel more “right”, as well as immersing myself in gay male culture.

When I got top surgery, a couple of weeks after I went to the girliest clothing shops I knew and bought a handful of girly girly shirts I liked, knowing I could then wear them and not be seen as a girl, just enjoy the bright colors, the soft/thin materials and the tight fits.

The further I was along in my physical masculinization, the less I was thinking about my gender, to the point I even thought I was gender-neutral or neuter mentally, because I was just doing whatever I felt doing, but there weren’t any discordance between my internal view of myself and how others viewed me, or with me and my body. So I was like “wait, I do not see myself as a boy anymore?? I can’t “feel” it anymore!”
I had to work on myself to realize that it was ok to see myself as a boy and not necessary “feel” masculine most of the time.
Nowadays I dress masculine but do not live in an highly gendered way, do not have many many male friends, do not go to gay male oriented stuff nor keep close tabs on what happens in gay culture.

I would say my gender is also firmly rooted in my body, in how I wanted it to look. Something that reminds me of it is each time I shave my beard. I did it today and now I can’t bear to look at me in a mirror because I think I look ugly and kind like a girl. The feeling will subside in a few days.
I might have been able to deal with being seen as a girl, but being physically male, but I wouldn’t have liked staying with my body while other people would have seen me as a guy. I’m happy having both though.

The last post was only a couple weeks ago, so I hope this won’t count as a necro-bump.

My young friend who I referred to above just got the binding shirt and packing kit that he’d ordered in the mail, and later this week will be going in to get a boy’s haircut and will then be known as “Sebastian.”

Luckily for him, he goes to a “freaks & geeks magnet school” and doesn’t anticipate a lot of problems there.

He’s 15 now - assuming he decides that this is indeed his path, what is the youngest he’d be eligible to start taking T? Getting surgery?

Are there any resources you can recommend for those of us who are trying to be supportive but are still adjusting?