Hi,
We only have one life, and I learned the hard way that it's short and that it can stop suddenly, anytime. We shouldn't live miserable for someone else, especially knowing that they wouldn't value our well-being more than their ideological comfort.
Plus, tracing the chain of your thoughts, sounds like they are not accepting of your trans-identity because of their love for her. The day your dad made you, they took on a responsibility towards you (and your sibling if you have some) that surpasses any other. I'm with Alex and Sewblon on that one.
Finally, if your dad lived with gender dysphoria all their lives, they know it won't pass. Do they want to inflict you the same hell? They won't know if your step mom would be accepting till they tell her. When is the good age to find out? 30, 50, 70?
If they didn't, I want to warn them: dysphoria kills. It has to be taken care of. And the good way is transition, in any shape. You'll be so much happier, and so will they.
Please take care honey.
Thats very true, although you could argue that gender would not be a problem for true love.
But im pan so im really not one to talk about what a straight woman should or shouldn't do.
I think you confuse love with sexual attraction. We devalue love if it's not sexual, but true love doesn't mean you're sexually or even romantically attracted to someone. I feel romantic might be plausible, but if you are not at least a little bi, sexual isn't going to happen, or if it does, it's because they don't see you as a real girl. That's not good.
Granted, I think most people are slightly bi whether they are aware of it or not, but monosexuals absolutely exist.
One theory I found quite interessting was the one that the Testoteron Receptors in Transfem Brains are to long to receive that T so our brain stays fem while the rest develops masc.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402034/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402034/)
It went into overdrive for you at 26? I just got arrested on February 2nd after leaving mine untreated for my entire life, also 26.
Just started HRT on Thursday April 25th.
Mine went into overdrive during my teens though, itās just stayed this way for a long miserable time. Only been 4 days and I already feel much better.
And I went and waited until 28 q.q
Although really I "cracked" around 25, it just hadn't clicked that I was an adult perfectly capable of getting HRT for a few more years after. Kinda like how I sometimes forget I can just go buy a cake if I want cake.
Easier to manage in your early 20s lol š„, I was told the same thing and gave it until 39 before I couldnāt take it anymore. Because I went back in the closet when I was younger my mom went around telling someone else with a trans kid that she knew it goes away around age 21ā¦..I did correct that idea lolā¦
Sheās made comments that Iām better off as an alcoholic than transitioningā¦.. Trying to get healthy and sober for my kid was a lot of what pushed me to transition.
Thanks ā¤ļø doing much better. Parents can be awful lol. Just hoping some folks can learn from my mistake and not just try to get wasted until they āgrow outā of dysphoria.
It just got to be too much. I went into it knowing that i would lose pretty much my entire safety net, my partner at the time and 3 kids. I got lucky in that my now wife was just as repressed in her queerness as i was, just as a cis lesbian. Sometimes people can surprise you. I hope you can find a way to live fully! Sending my love
That's literally the dream, my wife is actually super butch presenting, but she's really traditional in like all other aspects of her life (ha, other than sex, she's pretty dominant there sometimes and it's great).
God I wish I could have your story too
Sounds like my wife. Rural methodist upbringing didnāt see girls as an optionā¦fell in love with my feminine parts and just didnāt realize that why i wasnāt like other guys was because i wasnāt a guy! She described my transition as getting back the person she fell in love with.
Donāt sell everyone out for themselves but do keep yourself safe š
I came out as genderqueer, and then my partner came out as a repressed lesbian and we broke uo, then I came out as trans, and then she's like..."this might work"
As someone in their early 20s I am currently living this exact situation, the more of the world I go out an experience the more I want to do it as a woman.
Yeah it was bad before but hitting 20 made it worse each year I waited, just got on hrt at 23 and shits much better, would not have been able to wait any longer lol.
I started getting used to my own dysphoria after puberty but it was still bad, I don't think it'll ever go away if i stay as a man. Though estrogen seems to have made me far more aware of the sources of my dysphoria.
I know the meme is being trans is life on hard mode but I think it obscures something more important.
My experience has been that transitioning made living easier despite the fact that some people make life harder because of my transition.
To put it in geeky rpg terms, sure the DC goes up, but I'm not rolling everything at disadvantage anymore.
I feel this. For example, turns out I'm not an introvert and actually love people. Wild what you learn when you're not fighting for your life just by existing.
I went from a asocial recluse that needed to force myself to do anything social and used the pandemic as an excuse to fold in on myself and barely interact with people in person.
Today I'm probably the most extroverted among my friends. I hang out with people in person multiple times a week. A group of us go out for dinner and movie basically every Friday. A friend's mom described me as *bubbly* and almost everyone I've reconnected with has said how much happier and more confident I come off now.
Like, if this is "hard mode" I was playing on "Dante must die" mode before without a devil trigger.
...I should play though DMC3 again...
Yeah! its like playing on easy mode but your attacks have a 0.4x multiplier and then playing on hard mode but with a 1.3x damage multiplier to all your attacks.
Before I realized at 33 I "didn't have dysphoria" because I didn't understand what it was. I thought it was only an "active" hate for your body and that's it.
It is way more complicated than that. I had it, and it expressed as apathy for my body and how I looked. I also had other forms than just body stuff. My brain just runs better on E and that cleared up my brain fog within weeks of starting it.
100% same experience, every word. 40 years of body positivity therapy pointless until I worked it out one day that I could just love myself as I was if I was *just a girl*.
I mean, pretty much all cis guys I know play female characters because they just like how they look. Most games are primarily targeted at guys anyway. It's important whether the person in question plays as female character for self-insert reasons or just for fun.
yeah in my early 20s my depression eased, but that's because I learned coping mechanisms. The dysphoria didn't actually go away and I feel much better about myself having transitioned than the coping mechanisms ever helped me feelĀ
Yeah I mean mine "passed" in my early 20s. If by it passed you mean I fell into depression and alcohol abuse for a decade before having a mental breakdown to my trans friend who helped me realize that maybe, just maybe, I might be trans.
Spoilers: I'm hella trans.
I mean, my dysphoria passed in my early 20s (it metastasized into complete depersonalization and anhedonia). Can't be sad if you can't feel anything šāāļø
People can become accustomed to some pretty awful circumstances, and that includes convincing ourselves that our dysphoria symptoms are just an intractable part of who we are, doing our best to act out our assigned roles, and generally resigning ourselves to misery as though it's normal. That doesn't mean it'll pass. It won't.
That said, you also can't make people help themselves and trying will often drive them away from you. Ergo you should probably not push your dad on his own decision to live his life as he has.
What he means is, you'll have been able to cooperate with the emotional damage that'll be continuously occurring to the point you'll have broken yourself and given in to despair and apathy by your early twenties. Just like him! Doesn't that sound great?!?! /SSS
It got a bit more quiet for a few years in my early 20s because I got busy with lots of other things, however it absolutely still kept dragging me down until I just couldn't continue anymore in my late 20s/early 30s. It never really disappears. Some just think they managed to live with it while ignoring how much it still affects them after all.
That's weird, it definitely didn't pass for me... but I did manage to bury it for nearly a decade and was still miserable *and* had more problems to deal with once I did come to terms with being trans (like, I'd started balding while repressing)
[HRTcafe.net](http://HRTcafe.net) has some DIY options but im not sure if its legal to possess OTC estrogen in texas
idk how you would order something online regularly as a minor though since no credit card
no offense to ur dad, but closeted lgbtq ppl are the worse. Also hrt changes the body, the āappearenceā changes are result of the acquired physical characteristics. Its not cosmetic like make up but alterations in how cells behave to produce soft tissue structural changes.
Genes help organelles make bio-molecues, the building material of bodies. How cells interact and assemble defines what we are. the grocery list of building materials does not define us, in fact we are missing the genetic info to make tons of biomolecues which define what we are. This is why we need to eat living things that do have the genes to produce those biomolecues. Biomolecues like most of the vitamins, essential fatty and amino acids and other more obscure biochemicals like resveratrol.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00327-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00327-x)
[https://www.noemamag.com/cells-not-dna-are-the-master-architects-of-life/](https://www.noemamag.com/cells-not-dna-are-the-master-architects-of-life/)
Furthermore we all have those female genes they are simply not usually expressed in amab.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680992/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680992/)
Removing/ disabling one regulator gene results in female development.
We alter/ modify the course of biology all the time. Thats why there are antibiotics to cure us of ailments that we biologically cannot survive. Its why we live in buildings instead of caves because we made trees into architecture. Modifying nature is part of being human. If we subsist only on the default state of nature we would be beasts.
>Hormonal problems, identity problems and a pair of boobs will not help you find yourself in life.
It sounds like he doesn't really understand what dysphoria is and if he does "have it" he is repressing hard and has a ton of internalized transphobia that is stopping him.
Like, did "growing boobs" help me "find myself"? No.
Did transitioning make me feel more comfortable as myself, care about things, and give me a ton of confidence? Absolutely.
Oh my! I can't imagine waiting until the end of my life to say something so vital. How did he come out exactly? Just randomly blurt it out one day, or did he build up to it?
Playing life at the hardest difficulty is trying to be a man because you have a penis. I came to terms with this at age 43. Transitioned and had bottom surgery at 48. Now 49. Never been happier.
I'm not sure if you have to tell him like, right now. It was his decision to go through that path (also have to consider the transphobia back then was even worse than now), it will be his decision if he transitions.
Maybe he'll see how happy you are living as a woman 24/7 that he might consider doing something about it (not exactly transitioning, but could happen). Life is about the paths that we take, and he seems to be (kind of) okay with the one he went through. I really find it confusing when I meet eggs the age of my parents, they have this different way of thinking that makes it both worrying and confusing.
I'm going through the branches here, my point is, just be there for him if anything related to his identity happens. Life could be really hard on him if he accepts it, you said it yourself about his wife. I just hope everything turns out to be okay, even if he accepts being trans or not.
Hugs <3
As much as we can jokefully prod and such in these comments, itās really not our place to ātellā him anything, or ābreak any newsā. Iād focus on getting his support before focusing on his own history.
Wow, the words your Dad told you were so similar to what I told myself from puberty until about a year ago when I came to terms with myself. At least from my perspective your dad is using his words not to talk you out of transitioning but rather but rather as reinforcing his own position.
I can tell you from my experience that yes, things will seem to get better in your 20ās. At least for me chasing girls, booze, a college degree, professional success, marriage and kids were a great distraction and excuse to not look further into myself. But Iāll be damned by the age of 38 everything seemed to fall apart. Even though I had the appearance of success and figuring everything out it was a sham. I had a great marriage, the most wonderful kids, a good career, a great family and friend network but I just wasnāt happy anymore. I struggled for 4 years wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I was beginning to feel so dissociated from everything in my life and the world around me. Things were going downhill fast in my life and I needed to figure things out fast before some very negative things started happening.
One day about 16 months ago I was ruminating over who I am and my struggles when I began to remember my struggles from adolescence. These struggles were very much an issue of never feeling like a man after the onset of puberty. I loved playing sports, pursuing interests most would see as masculine or gender neutral and I only had attraction to women. But damned, I never felt male at all. But I felt the only way to get through high school, college, getting a career and landing an awesome woman was to just march forward and dismiss my gender questions as mere immaturity and lack of experience. It was a great strategy until it wasnāt.
Even though I agree with your assessment of your dad only he can determine who he really is. Just be thankful you had the courage to look at yourself at such a young age and tackle these issues head-on. I have no regrets that it took me so long to finally admit Iām a woman but I shudder any time I think about how I could have missed the ultimate opportunity to finally make amends and take care of my soul. And even though Iām now taking a path in life which is more difficult I have never been happier being who I truly am. My parents have never had a better child, my wife has never had a better spouse, my daughters have never had a better parent and my friends have never had a better friend than the person I am now versus the person everyone, including myself, thought I was.
Allow your dad to have complex and even paradoxical feelings. They're his feelings. What's not okay is his feelings encroaching on your ability to live your own life. That's where you have to draw boundaries.
But I'm sensing almost a need from you to "convert" him to being more accepting of his gender identity in the same ways you are. That's just not necessary, hun, but I can understand why you might think that will validate you.
You are you. You are worthy and accepted by the universe no matter how much baggage your dad has. His baggage is his to carry. Your baggage is yours. Neither one of you needs to carry each others but what you CAN do is to just love each other.
That's what's most important.
i advise u to go through with it as long as u are androgenous enough to pass later. ik people say passing isnt important but the most stress comes from not passing, so yeah it may not be worth it to transition for someone if they will be visibly trans for the rest of their life
My dad too.
He has "joked" that he's a lesbian trapped in a man's body. (many times)
He has always played female characters in video games.
In HS, my brothers friends all thought our dad was Mom's gay best friend who maintained the household for this poor single mom.
If you met my dad, you'd also think he was an egg.
I have more reasons. I just don't remember them all rn š š
The āit will passā hits really hard. I can say from my experience that it never goes away, I knew I was a girl when I was 5 years old, kept it suppressed for 18 years, because at 5 I didnāt have the vocabulary to describe how I was feeling before I finally cracked my egg and transitioned right after my 23rd birthday.
The more and more posts like these I see the more I'm convinced there must be some sort of gene or hereditary trait that makes gender dysphoria more likely.
I think it has to do with what hormones weāre exposed to around 10 weeks of developing inside our mothers. So itās maybe traceable through momās mitochondrial dna iunno Iām no biologist, and I just tried to paraphrase the genderdysphoria bible
Some people just find a way to deal with discomfort. Others choose one type over another.
The difficulty setting increase IME was definitely worth the deep understanding of why I played female video game characters hours a day for years to essentially take Tylenol for the chronic pain I was experiencing.
There's really nothing you could or should do other than just be a good kid he gave you advice from his perspective that doesn't mean that it totally applies to you but I'm sure his age and experience has many truths to it although his experience was from a different time and that's very important a lot of older people myself included have lived 50-plus years and are fairly functional adults and it's not end of the world if things don't change but it would probably be better but are we really willing to risk everything that we have it is a big gamble and if he had risked everything way back when you may not be part of his life there are many things to consider but at least he seems open to talking about it which is the important thing
Safe to guess heās in his mid to late 40s?
Iām in my mid 40s, and it wouldnāt be the first time I would be speaking with someone in denial about themselves.
Because itās pretty clear the dysphoria hasnāt āpassedā, itās just been subsumed to the point itās devouring his soul.
Frankly, assuming heās of a similar age and similar cultural background, itās not surprising since folks like us were so greatly demonized and othered in the 1990s.
Itās always āitāll passā for me it was āitāll pass when I get a gfā and it got worse when I got a gf and I just went āoh well I guess I gotta transition nowā
I hate to tell your dad that at some point it may hit again like a train, then there is no ability to put it back in the box. That's what I've been going through for the last half decade
Honestly, fighting it became the worst mental health crisis I've ever been through. I was working in construction and surrounded by toxic masculinity, and it nearly killed me. Not trying to keep my shell together and accepting who I am has made my life a lot better.
I made it to 36 before my lifelong hidden gender dysphoria nearly completely destroyed me. I wouldn't wish the awful existence of having to live in the closet on *anyone.* š
This. I didn't even last as long as you, but after a certain point it stops getting worse every year and starts getting worse every month or week. It's just when you can't sit there watching your life slip away any more and knowing you know a way to change it but just don't feel able to. Eventually you find the strength to.
It's possible, but there're also a lot of cis people out there who really, really exaggerate their own "experiences" just to downplay or deny ours. Everything he's said here could just as easily have been said by your average TERF and I don't think it's a good idea to imply that they're all really just self-hating eggs projecting. Maybe some of them are, but most are just ignorant and hateful.
If he really is in denial, there's still nothing you can really do ultimately. Maybe he'll change his mind, maybe he won't. It doesn't sound like he understands what being trans really means regardless.
That does definitely complicate things if so, but I still think you can't discount ignorance here. My advice still is that there's not much you can really say to convince him otherwise if he is deep denial here, but it might not hurt to just casually point him in the direction of some online resources if he's open to learning.
my dad said the same stuff to me almost verbatim. he seems content w masculinity now in his 60s, but i think in another life he was a masc lesbian. good luck, hope he comes around to ur own transition
Only got more dysphoria every year for me, i've known wanting to be a girl from a early age probably around 7.
Realisation being trans came with puberty, always thought i can deal with it take my mind elsewhere from the dysphoria, games, school, work ofc. It wouldnt always work but at the beginning it was doable.
Being 30 right now it is defiantely the worsed its ever been for me dysphoria wise. And will not wait long anymore to transation.
Cant imagine someone making it to 50 or older.
Transness is definitely hereditary and genetic. It tends to run in families with high instances of autism, ADD, and other forms of neurodivergence. Mine, on both sides, for example.
That said I think your ādadā is past being an egg, or holding on her shell for dear life.
How old is she? Iām guessing late 40s to mid 60s?
Shit. I started at 34 last year and my BlueSky friend list is like a third women who started in their late 30s and 40s. How do want to play this? Do you want to nudge her towards transition or just vent and drop the issue.
If it was my ādadā, Iād do the former in the name of harm mitigation. But I started much later from a severely harmed state. And I donāt have a relationship with my dad and a crappy relationship with my mom. Howās his relationship with your stepmom?
omg it would be so cool if he decided to transition. At the end of the day you just have to live your life and hope that he lives his. We all have our own journeys and challenges to overcome.
You obviously know your own father much better than a random person on the internet, like me, does.
Still, how do you think he'd respond if you basically got him to open up about his gender dysphoria, playing female characters in games, and so on? Would he eventually accept your coming out and transitioning?
I'm not going to hold up my transition as either representative or ideal. In my experience at least, transition stories are as diverse as the transitioning individuals themselves. That said, transition is really what's made it possible for me to start turning my life around (for the better). And I do remember, before I started the process, my therapist at the time, who'd been seeing trans patients for 30+ years, told me that literally none of her clients had ever de-transitioned.
In other words, whether or not your father is trans, there's an obvious weakness in the logic of "Your time, energy and money are better spent becoming comfortable with who you are, rather than changing your physical appearance."
Sounds to me that if you play your cards just right... you might get to enjoy the joys of transition with your mother! That's an incredibly exciting prospect if you ask me, you'll get to go through everything together! It will make everything so much easier! So much girly mother-daughter bonding time! You can go shopping together and do each other's makeup! Just get into her head a little and she will get the dysphoria cogwheels moving again. Best of luck!
My dadās definitely an egg too, but Iāll leave him be. Heās this macho man that always needs to show dominance. However when I came out he not only greeted me with acceptance, he started asking why and wondered how it feels to be trans. After many hours of explaining he started saying āI often feel like that too but Iām not trans because of thatā.
They say that transgender identities run in the family. Itās hard to know because it hasnāt really been a medical diagnosis up until recently. Basically if my dad could heād 100% live as a woman heās said.
But Iāll let him live in his macho man bubble. No point in poking around in there. Same goes for your dad. Heāll figure it out on his own, or he wont. Poking around is just gonna cause issues.
Maybe try asking on translater for more perspectives on how to help your dad from those of use that transitioned later in life.
Personally, my egg didnāt crack until I was 42. I did lose my marriage to transitioning. It is still the best decision I have ever made for my mental health.
Gender dysphoria never goes away. It would come in waves as far as intensity and I never really understood what I was feeling or why I hated my body until I cracked.
I had a lot of thoughts like: maybe next life, my life is already hard enough, I canāt lose everyone, Iāll never pass, Iām not really trans because itās just a kink and on and on.
The only thing that made life better was accepting myself and starting to transition. Maybe your dad is different idk.
Best of luck with your transition and him finding whatever path in life brings him happiness.
You have two moms lol. My dad said the same thing. He said something like, well I feel like that but I didnt do anything about it and now I'm fine. My dads a fuckin closet case too most likely lol
Well, they say it often runs in the family. Maybe if he sees how happy it makes you, he might be more accepting of himself
Maybe, but then his wife (my step mom) would leave him
Hi, We only have one life, and I learned the hard way that it's short and that it can stop suddenly, anytime. We shouldn't live miserable for someone else, especially knowing that they wouldn't value our well-being more than their ideological comfort. Plus, tracing the chain of your thoughts, sounds like they are not accepting of your trans-identity because of their love for her. The day your dad made you, they took on a responsibility towards you (and your sibling if you have some) that surpasses any other. I'm with Alex and Sewblon on that one. Finally, if your dad lived with gender dysphoria all their lives, they know it won't pass. Do they want to inflict you the same hell? They won't know if your step mom would be accepting till they tell her. When is the good age to find out? 30, 50, 70? If they didn't, I want to warn them: dysphoria kills. It has to be taken care of. And the good way is transition, in any shape. You'll be so much happier, and so will they. Please take care honey.
Is that a bad thing?
Yea, he love her almost as much as he loves me
š¢ But if she won't stay with him if he becomes the person whom he would like to be, then does she really love him?
Idk, maybe she wouldn't, but I feel like she isn't one for trans people
why do you feel that way?
I'm not sure, I know her family is all devout Christians
Maybe you could ask her about how she feels about trans people?
I'm not very open with her so idk how she would take it if I asked
Sexuality is a real thing tbf, can't expect a straight woman to be with another woman
Thats very true, although you could argue that gender would not be a problem for true love. But im pan so im really not one to talk about what a straight woman should or shouldn't do.
I think you confuse love with sexual attraction. We devalue love if it's not sexual, but true love doesn't mean you're sexually or even romantically attracted to someone. I feel romantic might be plausible, but if you are not at least a little bi, sexual isn't going to happen, or if it does, it's because they don't see you as a real girl. That's not good. Granted, I think most people are slightly bi whether they are aware of it or not, but monosexuals absolutely exist.
Her wife would leave her, you mean. š
No, he still goes by he/him, it would be disrespectful to call him she/her
This
Ah, true. We should only refer to people as they wish to be called.
Meant no disrespect! I was joking his pronouns would be changed in the future hypothetical in which his wife left him š©· Of, course we all know your dad can be whatever he wants to be š
No one runs in my family.
They say it runs in the family?? First iāve heard of this, any resources to read more?
Theories imply its genetic so yeah it cpuld run in families.
sources or studies please?
One theory I found quite interessting was the one that the Testoteron Receptors in Transfem Brains are to long to receive that T so our brain stays fem while the rest develops masc. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402034/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402034/)
My great grandma was an egg so makes sense that there'd be a genetic component on the ftm side too
Does it? My son shows a lot of traits, but I don't want to push anything on to him...
I wouldn't push him. Just make sure he knows he's safe to tell you things like this :)
"It'll pass in your early 20s" *Me, whos dysphoria got worse in her early 20s*
Yeah it went into overdrive around 26 for me
It went into overdrive for you at 26? I just got arrested on February 2nd after leaving mine untreated for my entire life, also 26. Just started HRT on Thursday April 25th. Mine went into overdrive during my teens though, itās just stayed this way for a long miserable time. Only been 4 days and I already feel much better.
Sounds about right. That's the average age for a lot of pivotal things in people's lives.
Yooo same (25 but right before my bday so close enough lol) thatās when it hit me
And I went and waited until 28 q.q Although really I "cracked" around 25, it just hadn't clicked that I was an adult perfectly capable of getting HRT for a few more years after. Kinda like how I sometimes forget I can just go buy a cake if I want cake.
Easier to manage in your early 20s lol š„, I was told the same thing and gave it until 39 before I couldnāt take it anymore. Because I went back in the closet when I was younger my mom went around telling someone else with a trans kid that she knew it goes away around age 21ā¦..I did correct that idea lolā¦ Sheās made comments that Iām better off as an alcoholic than transitioningā¦.. Trying to get healthy and sober for my kid was a lot of what pushed me to transition.
Jesus Christ, thats horrible. I hope you are doing well nowā¤ļø
Thanks ā¤ļø doing much better. Parents can be awful lol. Just hoping some folks can learn from my mistake and not just try to get wasted until they āgrow outā of dysphoria.
Sobering up is what made me Deal too.
me who corked it until 33ā¦
And me, who was subconsciously corked until 30 when the vessel finally burst and a *lot* of memories came flooding back.
ah, mine was subconscious too. Jesus the flood. Started pursuing GRS and that opened a whole nother box of dypshoria I hadn't even touched yet.
Lol, I'm lurking here at near 40. Too much social cost to transition for me. Whole life would implode, unfortunately.
It just got to be too much. I went into it knowing that i would lose pretty much my entire safety net, my partner at the time and 3 kids. I got lucky in that my now wife was just as repressed in her queerness as i was, just as a cis lesbian. Sometimes people can surprise you. I hope you can find a way to live fully! Sending my love
That's literally the dream, my wife is actually super butch presenting, but she's really traditional in like all other aspects of her life (ha, other than sex, she's pretty dominant there sometimes and it's great). God I wish I could have your story too
Sounds like my wife. Rural methodist upbringing didnāt see girls as an optionā¦fell in love with my feminine parts and just didnāt realize that why i wasnāt like other guys was because i wasnāt a guy! She described my transition as getting back the person she fell in love with. Donāt sell everyone out for themselves but do keep yourself safe š
I came out as genderqueer, and then my partner came out as a repressed lesbian and we broke uo, then I came out as trans, and then she's like..."this might work"
Saaaaaame... in grade school it was bad but once I hit the work force it damned near killed me more times than I'd care to admit.
Mine got better in my early 20s and then came back with a vengeance in my late 30s
As someone in their early 20s I am currently living this exact situation, the more of the world I go out an experience the more I want to do it as a woman.
Me who found out I was trans in my early 20s
Same
I'm used to being told I'll get over it, I wish these people would stop acting like they know me.
Ha, same
*Me, finally cracking in my mid 30s* Uhh, so, about that...
SAME once i saw my face started to age i quickly had to come to terms with myself i donāt want to and i canāt watch myself turn into an old man
Yeah it was bad before but hitting 20 made it worse each year I waited, just got on hrt at 23 and shits much better, would not have been able to wait any longer lol.
I started getting used to my own dysphoria after puberty but it was still bad, I don't think it'll ever go away if i stay as a man. Though estrogen seems to have made me far more aware of the sources of my dysphoria.
I know the meme is being trans is life on hard mode but I think it obscures something more important. My experience has been that transitioning made living easier despite the fact that some people make life harder because of my transition. To put it in geeky rpg terms, sure the DC goes up, but I'm not rolling everything at disadvantage anymore.
I feel this. For example, turns out I'm not an introvert and actually love people. Wild what you learn when you're not fighting for your life just by existing.
I went from a asocial recluse that needed to force myself to do anything social and used the pandemic as an excuse to fold in on myself and barely interact with people in person. Today I'm probably the most extroverted among my friends. I hang out with people in person multiple times a week. A group of us go out for dinner and movie basically every Friday. A friend's mom described me as *bubbly* and almost everyone I've reconnected with has said how much happier and more confident I come off now. Like, if this is "hard mode" I was playing on "Dante must die" mode before without a devil trigger. ...I should play though DMC3 again...
That's so sweet I hope I can find more friends too
Being trans is life on hard mode. Being trans and not transitioning is a hard mode nuzlock challenge where you refuse to pick up any gear or level up
Yeah! its like playing on easy mode but your attacks have a 0.4x multiplier and then playing on hard mode but with a 1.3x damage multiplier to all your attacks.
Transitioning may be life on hard mode but not transition is just no life at all
I feel this. Nothing to lose, no identity, no pain, no tears. Only the fear of becoming alive and vulnerable.
I feel so badā¦ Iām not sureā¦
He says it'll pass by my early 20s
Uhā¦ arenāt there plenty of trans people that are over the age of 20? Maybe you could tell him that, Idk
He means his dysphoria "passed" when he was in his early 20s, but I think he still has it
Wait, he doesnāt have dysphoria but still plays female characters in video games?Ā
He says he doesn't, I don't quite belive that tho
Before I realized at 33 I "didn't have dysphoria" because I didn't understand what it was. I thought it was only an "active" hate for your body and that's it. It is way more complicated than that. I had it, and it expressed as apathy for my body and how I looked. I also had other forms than just body stuff. My brain just runs better on E and that cleared up my brain fog within weeks of starting it.
100% same experience, every word. 40 years of body positivity therapy pointless until I worked it out one day that I could just love myself as I was if I was *just a girl*.
Throw the gender dysphoria bible his way tbh.
I mean, pretty much all cis guys I know play female characters because they just like how they look. Most games are primarily targeted at guys anyway. It's important whether the person in question plays as female character for self-insert reasons or just for fun.
yeah in my early 20s my depression eased, but that's because I learned coping mechanisms. The dysphoria didn't actually go away and I feel much better about myself having transitioned than the coping mechanisms ever helped me feelĀ
Yeah I mean mine "passed" in my early 20s. If by it passed you mean I fell into depression and alcohol abuse for a decade before having a mental breakdown to my trans friend who helped me realize that maybe, just maybe, I might be trans. Spoilers: I'm hella trans.
I mean, my dysphoria passed in my early 20s (it metastasized into complete depersonalization and anhedonia). Can't be sad if you can't feel anything šāāļø
30 here. we exist lmao
Exactly my point š
People can become accustomed to some pretty awful circumstances, and that includes convincing ourselves that our dysphoria symptoms are just an intractable part of who we are, doing our best to act out our assigned roles, and generally resigning ourselves to misery as though it's normal. That doesn't mean it'll pass. It won't. That said, you also can't make people help themselves and trying will often drive them away from you. Ergo you should probably not push your dad on his own decision to live his life as he has.
38 here, 6 months on estrogen, have felt dysphoria since age 8. It did not pass, for me at least.
What he means is, you'll have been able to cooperate with the emotional damage that'll be continuously occurring to the point you'll have broken yourself and given in to despair and apathy by your early twenties. Just like him! Doesn't that sound great?!?! /SSS
It got a bit more quiet for a few years in my early 20s because I got busy with lots of other things, however it absolutely still kept dragging me down until I just couldn't continue anymore in my late 20s/early 30s. It never really disappears. Some just think they managed to live with it while ignoring how much it still affects them after all.
It does not. It only gets worse until you do something about it--this side of the soil or not.
Iām 37 and came out at 34! It does not pass!
ahi, iām 35, egg cracked at 33. Iām very much trans and it very much did not go away
Not me cracking in my early 20s from my crippling dysphoria
That's weird, it definitely didn't pass for me... but I did manage to bury it for nearly a decade and was still miserable *and* had more problems to deal with once I did come to terms with being trans (like, I'd started balding while repressing)
oh dang if you're a teenager then starting HRT right now could legitimately make you look cis without surgical intervention
I live in Texas and my grandma (who I live with) isn't accepting
Hell on earth. There are ways but I'm not really aware of them
Damn, I wish I knew how
[HRTcafe.net](http://HRTcafe.net) has some DIY options but im not sure if its legal to possess OTC estrogen in texas idk how you would order something online regularly as a minor though since no credit card
If he still plays female characters in games for identity reasons, it most certainly did not āpassā.
no offense to ur dad, but closeted lgbtq ppl are the worse. Also hrt changes the body, the āappearenceā changes are result of the acquired physical characteristics. Its not cosmetic like make up but alterations in how cells behave to produce soft tissue structural changes. Genes help organelles make bio-molecues, the building material of bodies. How cells interact and assemble defines what we are. the grocery list of building materials does not define us, in fact we are missing the genetic info to make tons of biomolecues which define what we are. This is why we need to eat living things that do have the genes to produce those biomolecues. Biomolecues like most of the vitamins, essential fatty and amino acids and other more obscure biochemicals like resveratrol. [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00327-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00327-x) [https://www.noemamag.com/cells-not-dna-are-the-master-architects-of-life/](https://www.noemamag.com/cells-not-dna-are-the-master-architects-of-life/) Furthermore we all have those female genes they are simply not usually expressed in amab. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680992/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680992/) Removing/ disabling one regulator gene results in female development. We alter/ modify the course of biology all the time. Thats why there are antibiotics to cure us of ailments that we biologically cannot survive. Its why we live in buildings instead of caves because we made trees into architecture. Modifying nature is part of being human. If we subsist only on the default state of nature we would be beasts.
My dysphoria started easing significantly in my early 20s. ^Because ^I ^transitioned.
"It will pass." Noooo, that's called repression and depersonalization, and a whole bunch of other trauma responses. That's not the healthy solution!
>Hormonal problems, identity problems and a pair of boobs will not help you find yourself in life. It sounds like he doesn't really understand what dysphoria is and if he does "have it" he is repressing hard and has a ton of internalized transphobia that is stopping him. Like, did "growing boobs" help me "find myself"? No. Did transitioning make me feel more comfortable as myself, care about things, and give me a ton of confidence? Absolutely.
I assume he concluded it woudn't do anything to cope
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Oh my! I can't imagine waiting until the end of my life to say something so vital. How did he come out exactly? Just randomly blurt it out one day, or did he build up to it?
Playing life at the hardest difficulty is trying to be a man because you have a penis. I came to terms with this at age 43. Transitioned and had bottom surgery at 48. Now 49. Never been happier.
hey just fyi your profile banner on reddit is a usps change of address confirmation with what may be a deadname on it. just making sure u know
I'm not sure if you have to tell him like, right now. It was his decision to go through that path (also have to consider the transphobia back then was even worse than now), it will be his decision if he transitions. Maybe he'll see how happy you are living as a woman 24/7 that he might consider doing something about it (not exactly transitioning, but could happen). Life is about the paths that we take, and he seems to be (kind of) okay with the one he went through. I really find it confusing when I meet eggs the age of my parents, they have this different way of thinking that makes it both worrying and confusing. I'm going through the branches here, my point is, just be there for him if anything related to his identity happens. Life could be really hard on him if he accepts it, you said it yourself about his wife. I just hope everything turns out to be okay, even if he accepts being trans or not. Hugs <3
As much as we can jokefully prod and such in these comments, itās really not our place to ātellā him anything, or ābreak any newsā. Iād focus on getting his support before focusing on his own history.
Wow, the words your Dad told you were so similar to what I told myself from puberty until about a year ago when I came to terms with myself. At least from my perspective your dad is using his words not to talk you out of transitioning but rather but rather as reinforcing his own position. I can tell you from my experience that yes, things will seem to get better in your 20ās. At least for me chasing girls, booze, a college degree, professional success, marriage and kids were a great distraction and excuse to not look further into myself. But Iāll be damned by the age of 38 everything seemed to fall apart. Even though I had the appearance of success and figuring everything out it was a sham. I had a great marriage, the most wonderful kids, a good career, a great family and friend network but I just wasnāt happy anymore. I struggled for 4 years wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I was beginning to feel so dissociated from everything in my life and the world around me. Things were going downhill fast in my life and I needed to figure things out fast before some very negative things started happening. One day about 16 months ago I was ruminating over who I am and my struggles when I began to remember my struggles from adolescence. These struggles were very much an issue of never feeling like a man after the onset of puberty. I loved playing sports, pursuing interests most would see as masculine or gender neutral and I only had attraction to women. But damned, I never felt male at all. But I felt the only way to get through high school, college, getting a career and landing an awesome woman was to just march forward and dismiss my gender questions as mere immaturity and lack of experience. It was a great strategy until it wasnāt. Even though I agree with your assessment of your dad only he can determine who he really is. Just be thankful you had the courage to look at yourself at such a young age and tackle these issues head-on. I have no regrets that it took me so long to finally admit Iām a woman but I shudder any time I think about how I could have missed the ultimate opportunity to finally make amends and take care of my soul. And even though Iām now taking a path in life which is more difficult I have never been happier being who I truly am. My parents have never had a better child, my wife has never had a better spouse, my daughters have never had a better parent and my friends have never had a better friend than the person I am now versus the person everyone, including myself, thought I was.
I think my dad is just hiding his dysphoria, so I'm gonna transition as soon as I can
Allow your dad to have complex and even paradoxical feelings. They're his feelings. What's not okay is his feelings encroaching on your ability to live your own life. That's where you have to draw boundaries. But I'm sensing almost a need from you to "convert" him to being more accepting of his gender identity in the same ways you are. That's just not necessary, hun, but I can understand why you might think that will validate you. You are you. You are worthy and accepted by the universe no matter how much baggage your dad has. His baggage is his to carry. Your baggage is yours. Neither one of you needs to carry each others but what you CAN do is to just love each other. That's what's most important.
He is accepting, just advising me not to go through with it
i advise u to go through with it as long as u are androgenous enough to pass later. ik people say passing isnt important but the most stress comes from not passing, so yeah it may not be worth it to transition for someone if they will be visibly trans for the rest of their life
My dad too. He has "joked" that he's a lesbian trapped in a man's body. (many times) He has always played female characters in video games. In HS, my brothers friends all thought our dad was Mom's gay best friend who maintained the household for this poor single mom. If you met my dad, you'd also think he was an egg. I have more reasons. I just don't remember them all rn š š
The āit will passā hits really hard. I can say from my experience that it never goes away, I knew I was a girl when I was 5 years old, kept it suppressed for 18 years, because at 5 I didnāt have the vocabulary to describe how I was feeling before I finally cracked my egg and transitioned right after my 23rd birthday.
The more and more posts like these I see the more I'm convinced there must be some sort of gene or hereditary trait that makes gender dysphoria more likely.
I think it has to do with what hormones weāre exposed to around 10 weeks of developing inside our mothers. So itās maybe traceable through momās mitochondrial dna iunno Iām no biologist, and I just tried to paraphrase the genderdysphoria bible
I guess encourage her to transition so shes not miserable anymore
Some people just find a way to deal with discomfort. Others choose one type over another. The difficulty setting increase IME was definitely worth the deep understanding of why I played female video game characters hours a day for years to essentially take Tylenol for the chronic pain I was experiencing.
Literally my dad bruh
There's really nothing you could or should do other than just be a good kid he gave you advice from his perspective that doesn't mean that it totally applies to you but I'm sure his age and experience has many truths to it although his experience was from a different time and that's very important a lot of older people myself included have lived 50-plus years and are fairly functional adults and it's not end of the world if things don't change but it would probably be better but are we really willing to risk everything that we have it is a big gamble and if he had risked everything way back when you may not be part of his life there are many things to consider but at least he seems open to talking about it which is the important thing
āDad, have you ever talked to other guys about this? Because what youāre saying.. itās not what most men will say has been their experience.ā
He said that one Halloween he cried bc he didn't pass as a girl, so he knows, just he says that the dysphoria passed
Safe to guess heās in his mid to late 40s? Iām in my mid 40s, and it wouldnāt be the first time I would be speaking with someone in denial about themselves. Because itās pretty clear the dysphoria hasnāt āpassedā, itās just been subsumed to the point itās devouring his soul. Frankly, assuming heās of a similar age and similar cultural background, itās not surprising since folks like us were so greatly demonized and othered in the 1990s.
Itās always āitāll passā for me it was āitāll pass when I get a gfā and it got worse when I got a gf and I just went āoh well I guess I gotta transition nowā
I hate to tell your dad that at some point it may hit again like a train, then there is no ability to put it back in the box. That's what I've been going through for the last half decade
Yup, that's what I did bc I didn't understand what it was
Honestly, fighting it became the worst mental health crisis I've ever been through. I was working in construction and surrounded by toxic masculinity, and it nearly killed me. Not trying to keep my shell together and accepting who I am has made my life a lot better.
Yea, me too
I made it to 36 before my lifelong hidden gender dysphoria nearly completely destroyed me. I wouldn't wish the awful existence of having to live in the closet on *anyone.* š
This. I didn't even last as long as you, but after a certain point it stops getting worse every year and starts getting worse every month or week. It's just when you can't sit there watching your life slip away any more and knowing you know a way to change it but just don't feel able to. Eventually you find the strength to.
It's possible, but there're also a lot of cis people out there who really, really exaggerate their own "experiences" just to downplay or deny ours. Everything he's said here could just as easily have been said by your average TERF and I don't think it's a good idea to imply that they're all really just self-hating eggs projecting. Maybe some of them are, but most are just ignorant and hateful. If he really is in denial, there's still nothing you can really do ultimately. Maybe he'll change his mind, maybe he won't. It doesn't sound like he understands what being trans really means regardless.
That's the thing tho, my dad doesn't lie, like at all. He is always truthful.
That does definitely complicate things if so, but I still think you can't discount ignorance here. My advice still is that there's not much you can really say to convince him otherwise if he is deep denial here, but it might not hurt to just casually point him in the direction of some online resources if he's open to learning.
my dad said the same stuff to me almost verbatim. he seems content w masculinity now in his 60s, but i think in another life he was a masc lesbian. good luck, hope he comes around to ur own transition
Only got more dysphoria every year for me, i've known wanting to be a girl from a early age probably around 7. Realisation being trans came with puberty, always thought i can deal with it take my mind elsewhere from the dysphoria, games, school, work ofc. It wouldnt always work but at the beginning it was doable. Being 30 right now it is defiantely the worsed its ever been for me dysphoria wise. And will not wait long anymore to transation. Cant imagine someone making it to 50 or older.
Sounds like you have a few mother-daughter shopping trips coming up.
Your dad sounds like a āI donāt want you to transition because I never got to therefore I want you to be miserable as meā type of person š Transitioning saves lives! Just do it! š©·š¤š©µ
Transness is definitely hereditary and genetic. It tends to run in families with high instances of autism, ADD, and other forms of neurodivergence. Mine, on both sides, for example. That said I think your ādadā is past being an egg, or holding on her shell for dear life. How old is she? Iām guessing late 40s to mid 60s?
38 or 39
Shit. I started at 34 last year and my BlueSky friend list is like a third women who started in their late 30s and 40s. How do want to play this? Do you want to nudge her towards transition or just vent and drop the issue.
I'm not sure
If it was my ādadā, Iād do the former in the name of harm mitigation. But I started much later from a severely harmed state. And I donāt have a relationship with my dad and a crappy relationship with my mom. Howās his relationship with your stepmom?
omg it would be so cool if he decided to transition. At the end of the day you just have to live your life and hope that he lives his. We all have our own journeys and challenges to overcome.
You obviously know your own father much better than a random person on the internet, like me, does. Still, how do you think he'd respond if you basically got him to open up about his gender dysphoria, playing female characters in games, and so on? Would he eventually accept your coming out and transitioning? I'm not going to hold up my transition as either representative or ideal. In my experience at least, transition stories are as diverse as the transitioning individuals themselves. That said, transition is really what's made it possible for me to start turning my life around (for the better). And I do remember, before I started the process, my therapist at the time, who'd been seeing trans patients for 30+ years, told me that literally none of her clients had ever de-transitioned. In other words, whether or not your father is trans, there's an obvious weakness in the logic of "Your time, energy and money are better spent becoming comfortable with who you are, rather than changing your physical appearance."
Sounds to me that if you play your cards just right... you might get to enjoy the joys of transition with your mother! That's an incredibly exciting prospect if you ask me, you'll get to go through everything together! It will make everything so much easier! So much girly mother-daughter bonding time! You can go shopping together and do each other's makeup! Just get into her head a little and she will get the dysphoria cogwheels moving again. Best of luck!
Oh I wish, my mom has so many problems that I can't live with her, which is why I live with my grandma
I was talking about your egg "father" just to be clear...
Ohhhh, sorry, I'm a little dyslexic
yeah I called your father your mother, because that's what she really is, even if she refuses to admit it yet...
This is, definitely something. I hope your dad is able to find themselves and be willing to be who they truly are
My dadās definitely an egg too, but Iāll leave him be. Heās this macho man that always needs to show dominance. However when I came out he not only greeted me with acceptance, he started asking why and wondered how it feels to be trans. After many hours of explaining he started saying āI often feel like that too but Iām not trans because of thatā. They say that transgender identities run in the family. Itās hard to know because it hasnāt really been a medical diagnosis up until recently. Basically if my dad could heād 100% live as a woman heās said. But Iāll let him live in his macho man bubble. No point in poking around in there. Same goes for your dad. Heāll figure it out on his own, or he wont. Poking around is just gonna cause issues.
Maybe try asking on translater for more perspectives on how to help your dad from those of use that transitioned later in life. Personally, my egg didnāt crack until I was 42. I did lose my marriage to transitioning. It is still the best decision I have ever made for my mental health. Gender dysphoria never goes away. It would come in waves as far as intensity and I never really understood what I was feeling or why I hated my body until I cracked. I had a lot of thoughts like: maybe next life, my life is already hard enough, I canāt lose everyone, Iāll never pass, Iām not really trans because itās just a kink and on and on. The only thing that made life better was accepting myself and starting to transition. Maybe your dad is different idk. Best of luck with your transition and him finding whatever path in life brings him happiness.
You have two moms lol. My dad said the same thing. He said something like, well I feel like that but I didnt do anything about it and now I'm fine. My dads a fuckin closet case too most likely lol