Just posting an update for those who care
Just posting an update for those who care
My post history has some context for people who are curious or just don't know what I'm talking about.
Recap TL;DR: I came out to my wife and she was afraid that if I transitioned she would stop being attracted to me. Since I was afraid of divorce, I decided I'd hold off on transitioning indefinitely.
Since then, my wife and I have been bouncing all over the map this week. She was freaked out initially, but then she flipped to being ok with me transitioning - with the caveat that she might not be attracted to me, but she'll always love me. With that in mind, I felt comfortable looking at what transitioning might really look like.
One reason I wouldn't transition start HRT* anytime soon is fertility. I want more kids. I love my child and I want 1-2 more (as was always my marriage's life plan). I know freezing sperm is an option, but in-vitro is so expensive I don't know if we would want to try it. I realize kids are far more expensive than in-vitro, but my wife and I have budgeted for kids - not kids + in-vitro. We have plans to fix up our house, retire early, etc. So I don't want to put undue stress on those plans. We are considering freezing sperm, but not very seriously.
Also, based on some messages I got from users, it seems like having kids prior to transitioning is a contentious concept? I didn't expect that, but some people (mostly in DMs) seemed angry that I didn't know I was trans until after I had my first kid. I think those perspectives are related to divorce since divorce does produce worse outcomes for kids (generally not always). I guess I'm inviting people to come here and elaborate on their thoughts about that.
Anyways, I struggled to hear the harsher words from some people, but I also think they were well-founded. They were a gut-punch that made me reorient my thinking away from selfish thoughts about myself and more about my family and how my choices impact them.
I built up transitioning in my mind. I was feeling a strong sense of dysphoria. I assumed my wife would be ok with it (since we are already inhabiting stereotypical reversed-gender roles in almost every aspect of life). I assumed it wouldn't impact my fertility so quickly/drastically. I thought I was a month or two away from starting HRT. But the more I research it, the more I think I could be years away.
As an attempt to take this slower and more seriously, I have an appointment with a therapist today to start. It really should have been my first course of action anyways. It's possible I could start transitioning with non-hormonal techniques and maybe that's enough for me. If so, that would be ideal. My male physique wouldn't change too much and my wife would be happy about that. Maybe my dysphoria would go away. I've tried that in the past, but I didn't go "all-in" on it. I felt ugly and manly which bummed me out back then, but maybe I just didn't really accept myself and that was hindering the experience.
Generally speaking, I think I was just moving way too fast and unmeasured. I'm assuming that's common in "TransLater communities" because there is a lot of fear that the biological clock is stripping away my opportunity to meet my goals before it's too late. But that doesn't mean it's the right mentality. Plenty of people transition much later than I was planning and it works out fine. So, maybe that'll be my experience. Or maybe I'll never transition start HRT* due to the aforementioned options, therapy, etc. Who knows. I'm probably still going to be active in this community, if that's ok. I sure hate that my whole experience is practically the only thing in this community lol It's a bit embarrassing in a way. Please drown out my posts with some more positive stuff!
Also, based on some messages I got from users
No, it's not.
Let me ask you a question. Is teaching a kid to repress and hide who they are for the sake of other people something you want to teach them? Especially if they're queer themselves? 'cause that's what hiding yourself teaches them.
I figured that would be the general consensus, but I received some pretty negative comments about having a family and then coming out trans. As someone in their 30's, internet hate shouldn't bum me out, but when it comes to my family it definitely hit me.
I don't really see myself as entirely hiding from my child. I plan on telling them my personal experiences, choices, etc. I might even start using she/her pronouns by the time she learns to talk. But I don't want to lose my fertility by going on HRT just yet. Plus, I'm going to therapy which might change my personal goals for transitioning. Frankly, I don't think it will. I think I will ultimately go on HRT, but I'm open to changing.
The person who posted that has been banned from this instance, because they were a transphobic troll. Notice how they didn't come in trying to talk to you or offer any empathy to your side? They just came out you aggressively, and framing you as awful and bad? That's because their goal wasn't to help you, it was to hurt you. That's why they were banned.
And honestly, you have the right approach here. This is all new, and you're navigating a complex situation. This isn't about getting on to HRT, or giving yourself timelines and deadlines. This is about navigating a situation that helps you get to the point where you need to be, whilst considering your families needs as you do.
If it's ever about repressing your own needs completely, or hiding the truth of who you are from your family, you've got the balance wrong. If you are doing things without considering your family at all, you've got the balance wrong. The balance is doing things that take you closer to where you need to be, and bringing your family along with you as you do. And sometimes that means going slowly. And sometimes it doesn't. That's the part only you and they can know.
And for what it's worth, I transitioned at 41, with an 11 year old. I was told lots of scary stories. Even my mother, who is otherwise super accepting, worried about the "lack of a father figure" and whether they would be teased or harassed at school. But I was always angry. I was living on top of this simmering anger that just impacted everything. And that anger came from repression. The truth was, if I didn't address that, I wasn't going to have a relationship with my kid, because my repression was going to fuck it up with 100% certainty.
Since coming out, my kiddo has come out as gay and then as gender diverse themselves. They were teased at school, but not about me, but they also became the leader of the schools LGBT group, and formed many lasting friendships. They're turning 20 in a couple of weeks time, and I have a relationship with them that wouldn't have been possible if I'd have remained closed off and angry.
I know this is a lot, but in general, cis people talking about this, without direct experience, rarely know what they're talking about, because all they have to go in are the stories they encountered growing up in a transphobic society. That includes your wife and the rest of your family! The difference between your wife and family and everyone else, is that you can be part of the process of changing their perspectives, because you can show them just what difference it makes when you can get repressing out of your life, and live honestly.
Take it as slowly as you need, and get all the help you can on the way! And whatever you do, make sure you're doing it honestly and authentically!
some people (mostly in DMs) seemed angry that I didn’t know I was trans until after I had my first kid. ...
Anyways, I struggled to hear the harsher words from some people, but I also think they were well-founded. They were a gut-punch that made me reorient my thinking away from selfish thoughts about myself and more about my family and how my choices impact them.
I don't know who is angry you had kids before realizing you are trans, but how were you supposed to know you were trans? This isn't your fault. Lots of people don't realize they are trans, and part of that is because we live in a society that deprives trans people of the ability to interpret their experiences, to know they are trans.
A similar thing happens to women, for example it wasn't until the 1970s that the concept of sexual harassment existed and before then society deprived women of the concepts and words to help understand and explain what was happening to them.
In the past, the idea that sexual assault causes trauma was not understood at all, and when the victim behaved like a traumatized person afterwards, clinicians created the concept of "hysteria" to explain why women so often behaved that way. We of course know now that it's trauma, not some inherent irrationality that only women experience, and that it is caused by the way women are oppressed and mistreated in society. (See Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery, particularly "The Heroic Age of Hysteria" in the first chapter for more.)
This concept is called "hermeneutical injustice". "Hermeneutic" is basically a fancy word that means interpretation, and the term refers to when people aren't able to understand the experiences of themselves or others because they don't fit the concepts or language available to them, usually due to exclusion or oppression (like when the exclusion of women from education and thus the ability to become doctors results in only male doctors being involved in the treatment and theorizing about female psychiatric patients).
Being angry that you realized you are trans after having kids is basically just victim blaming as far as I can tell. You didn't know you were trans, you can't be responsible if you didn't know.
Now that you do know you are trans, however, you do have a responsibility to make good choices. But ironically I think the right choice is in the opposite direction you are heading.
You basically found out you have a serious medical condition and your response is to refuse treatment because it is socially stigmatized and makes your wife uncomfortable.
In my experience, and I think this might generalize to many of our experiences, when you refuse to transition for other people, you usually aren't doing them any favors in the end. To my mind, refusing to transition is the most irresponsible thing you can do because it is the thing that compromises your well-being the most, creates the most liability, and burdens others in your life the most.
Before transitioning I was obsessed with my sense of responsibility to others - I was burning with a sense of guilt and shame that led me to extreme behaviors. I never gave transitioning a second thought because I believed it was a selfish act, basically a way for me to wear dresses in public and indulge in my bizarre preferences - embarrassing socially, but also burdensome on others. I would have to ask people to call me a different name, it would compromise my relationships with people I loved, and so on.
So of course at the time I thought not transitioning was the most responsible thing to do, so much so that I never even gave much thought to whether I was trans, I just would read the DSM-V definition and claim whatever feelings I had didn't amount to anything like real dysphoria.
But not transitioning also led me to not take care of myself, I gained >100 lbs and was morbidly obese and I basically didn't care. I hated my body, sure - but it was my body and so it didn't matter. What mattered was other people, not me. I made huge sacrifices - I obsessively recycled and composted all waste that I could. I stopped using my car and began to bicycle instead out of a burning sense of responsibility for the harm caused by driving (climate, geopolitical, etc.). This led to being hit by cars several times, and again I didn't care. I got brain injuries from accidents, I caused permanent damage to my body. Again, indifferent on my end. But my partner? Every time I had to go to the ER, I put her in extreme distress. Every time the doctor was explaining how bad off I was, my partner was there and was very much not indifferent.
By being responsible and prioritizing everyone but myself, I had become a burden.
I'll let other trans women share their pre-transition stories, but I am confident I'm not the only person who was causing suffering for others in their life because they didn't transition.
Personally, I look back and think my whole concept of transition was wrong, and now I see that transitioning is the responsible thing to do, for myself and for others.
(It's hard to believe until you start HRT, I know pre-HRT me wouldn't have taken these kinds of comments seriously.)
It’s possible I could start transitioning with non-hormonal techniques and maybe that’s enough for me. If so, that would be ideal. My male physique wouldn’t change too much and my wife would be happy about that. Maybe my dysphoria would go away. I’ve tried that in the past, but I didn’t go “all-in” on it. I felt ugly and manly which bummed me out back then, but maybe I just didn’t really accept myself and that was hindering the experience.
I socially transitioned before I medically transitioned, and both pre-transition and during social transition, whenever I tried to feminize by wearing women's clothing or trying on makeup, I was hit with the dual feeling of excitement and dread. By caring about my appearance or dress, and especially by being in a female framing, my attention was drawn more towards my male body.
Before transition I didn't even realize what I hated was specifically that the qualities were male, only later did I realize the gendered aspect to my distress. The way a dress looked on me made me want to die, I thought because I was ugly and overweight, but when I imagined being an overweight woman I realized it was the male pattern of fat distribution that disturbed me more than merely the fact of being overweight. In fact, at some point I realized that I liked having some fat precisely because it made me feel more feminine.
All this to say, social transition made my dysphoria so much worse because I started paying attention to my body and making an effort to alleviate my dysphoria was the opposite approach from the dissociation I used to cope previously. It was better, in some sense, to not think about or care about my clothes, how I dressed, etc.
Who knows what your experiences will be, but if you are anything like the average, it isn't because you failed to accept yourself enough that social transition steps like wearing dresses weren't enough or made you feel ugly and manly, it's because you're dysphoric and you haven't taken the only proven treatment to alleviate your dysphoria.
Generally speaking, I think I was just moving way too fast and unmeasured. I’m assuming that’s common in “TransLater communities” because there is a lot of fear that the biological clock is stripping away my opportunity to meet my goals before it’s too late. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right mentality. Plenty of people transition much later than I was planning and it works out fine. So, maybe that’ll be my experience.
I think it's more common for people to struggle to ever transition, especially later in life, than it is to "go too fast". It's actually difficult to transition "too quickly" because the medical gatekeeping ensures the process takes years to occur.
There are so many cross-dressing support groups and so on. Lots and lots of people never get to the point of recognizing they are trans, let alone to the point of transitioning.
In my experience, lots of people are uncomfortable with trans people and transitioning, so it is treated as some kind of extremely dangerous or likely to be regretted. But this is not the truth, we have actual evidence that it is the opposite: transitioning is life-saving (and not transitioning is extremely dangerous), and transitioning has one of the lowest regret rates of any medical treatment.
And of that 1% who detransition, the vast majority only do so because they were not supported by family, friends, and work so transitioning was not feasible for them anymore. Many of those people go on to transition again later.
Cis people do not try to take cross-sex hormones, the risks that you or other trans people are going too fast and will accidentally transition when you shouldn't are frankly a myth concocted by the fears and prejudices cis people have.
I’m probably still going to be active in this community, if that’s ok. I sure hate that my whole experience is practically the only thing in this community lol It’s a bit embarrassing in a way.
Why wouldn't it be OK? Ironically I can't think of a more stereotypical TransLater story anyway, your experience might as well stand-in for many of us and it is good for others to see it. You won't be the only one.
No matter what you decide, you are welcome here. I hope I am speaking for everyone when I say we love you and are here for you. ❤️
FWIW this was the negative comment I got:
You fucked your wife for fun, and now you’re going to be a dad? For the first time? And you’re dropping this on her and your child(ren)?
It was much longer and had a lot more context but it was pretty rough.
Don't listen to the transphobes 🫂
I don't really understand their comment, but it doesn't seem related to transitioning ... Either way, to parrot @will_steal_your_username@lemmy.blahaj.zone, don't listen to abusive people.
Trans people get random hate from strangers, it's unfortunate. That's part of why Blahaj as an instance has zero tolerance for transphobes, it's one of the few places that actually takes seriously the need to have a space free of that kind of harassment.
I really appreciate your comment. I edited my post (probably as you were typing this out) to indicate that I'm not exactly opposed to transitioning at this point. I'm more opposed to HRT. And it's almost entirely rooted in my fertility. I just want to be able to have more kids. Everything I've read online indicates that - if I want kids - I should assume HRT will cause infertility. I think I'm ready to start taking smaller steps to transitioning, but I fully acknowledge that they will likely not be enough in the long term. I just don't know what to do since my wife and I have been planning on having 2-3 kids by the time we were done.
That's mostly why I'm going to go to therapy. I don't want to go to "conversion therapy" or anything like that. I'm not trying to stop this process. I'm just trying to find a way to have my cake and eat it too. I want to be able to have kids and a wife and transition. My wife indicates that she's fine with me transitioning but she still wants more kids. Obviously, that has a lot of things wrapped up in it. But generally speaking, it seems like - if HRT didn't cause infertility - I'd be able to start as soon as possible. I'm hoping therapy can clarify what my goals are. I might find out that I want to go on HRT quite quickly. But I might also find out I'm comfortable with waiting. Right now, I feel this strong urge to just start. I feel like I'm losing time to be who I want to be. But I also feel compelled to have a bigger family because I, personally, benefited from having siblings who have been a source of strength and comfort when I needed it most. I want my daughter to have that too.
So, I guess I'm just waiting to see how therapy goes. In the meantime, I'm going to start all the other things I can do to reach my goals. Diet, exercise, hair care, skin care, etc. I had no idea that HRT was considered - essentially - the only effective treatment for dysphoria. That definitely changes my perspective on it, but I just feel stuck due to those fertility issues! Even as I'm typing this out I feel like I'm bouncing back and forth. HRT, wife, kids. The constant mental cycle just feels unclear. I just think a qualified therapist will get me some clarity before I make any choices.
Trans people have kids all the time. The current attitude is to assume HRT will make you infertile because that's a good best practice, but the evidence currently points to higher probability that you regain fertility when you pause HRT than not. (It's actually a common misunderstanding that HRT permanently kills fertility, some doctors don't even realize fertility can come back, let alone that it is probable.)
I understand the concern about costs, but if you are thinking you can afford to have kids or transition at all, you can certainly afford fertility treatment. Based on what I've read, it's a thousand up-front and a few hundred per year afterwards. Kids are much more expensive, as I'm sure you know, and transition itself is usually more expensive (hormones are cheap, but the surgeries, hair removal, etc. all cost more than freezing sperm).
Another option of course is adoption, if what is important to you is that your daughter have siblings.
I do think therapy is a great idea, given the therapist is trans-affirming and has experience working with trans patients (and has a PhD and is qualified, like you said).
To my perspective, there are plenty of options for having more kids and it is essentially not a blocker to transition, especially given the significance and importance of alleviating dysphoria.
If you knew a dormant cancer was on your testes, that this cancer doubles your risk of dying and will make your life miserable, and that treatment is proven to make you much happier and significantly decreases your risk of dying but might make you infertile, would you remove the tumor? Would you listen to your wife if she told you not to remove the cancer because she wants to have more kids (or because she's afraid she won't be attracted to you anymore without those genitals)? Relevant to this thought experiment is also that the fertility treatments to store your sperm will cost a fraction of the larger costs of having the tumor removed, and of having more kids.
I can't help but feel it is only because we live in a society where transitioning is not accepted, where trans people are not well understood and are stigmatized, that it seems reasonable to delay treatment and accept the increased risk of mortality to appease others' anxieties about the treatment.
That's why it's not surprising to learn that trans people have double the mortality rate of cis people and have a median life expectancy seven years shorter than cis people.
Even as I’m typing this out I feel like I’m bouncing back and forth. HRT, wife, kids. The constant mental cycle just feels unclear.
It feels unclear because you are not in a neutral or supportive environment (and your needs and well-being are not being taken seriously). We all go through this, I went through this. As a result, you may not transition this time, or you might not ever transition. Looking back, I've been trying to get people to let me transition since I was 3, even without awareness. I've tried over and over and over again - the environment was never supportive until now. I only transitioned when my spouse wanted me to transition, and when it was finally clear to me that this was also what I needed to do so I can be a healthy, responsible person in the world. It doesn't happen for everyone, I suspect it doesn't happen for most of us.
I had no idea that HRT was considered - essentially - the only effective treatment for dysphoria. That definitely changes my perspective on it, but I just feel stuck due to those fertility issues!
The studies found gender transition is the only effective treatment, not just HRT (the studies looked at improvement of well-being from socially and medically transitioning, including effects from gender-affirming surgeries).
No therapy or drugs have been found that eliminate gender dysphoria (and boy have they tried - the conservative, transphobic medical establishment did not exactly start with gender transition as a solution). Some anti-depressants have shown to mildly improve some of the symptoms of dysphoria, but this is not really comparable to the changes seen with medical transition.
I consider any therapy designed to help trans people live without transitioning (i.e. to "live in their assigned gender") a form of conversion therapy. A lot of people don't understand that conversion therapy is not just when they torture you, it's also when talk therapy is used to treat dysphoria.
Good luck in therapy - I'm rooting for you ❤️
Please report those DMs btw by sending the usernames to @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Edit: Oh I see you are from .world. It might be possible for you to use the regular report function then
Will do. I don't really know the meta stuff about instances so hopefully .world isn't considered toxic. I joined 2 years ago and I have a bit of a history with the account that I don't want to lose.
Fwiw, you can export some things (block lists and subscriptions iirc), and likely should do so regularly just as a backup for if an instance dies.
Same with any important comments you've made. It's impossible to back up everything, but the important stuff isn't too big a task if you do a little at a time. I have something like 3 or 4 accounts with this same username across multiple instances just in case. A lot of people do that. Part of the benefit of the fediverse is not being limited to a single site that contains everything you have/do.
I don't venture out beyond blåhaj much, but it's neither considered terrible nor good. It could stand to remove more transphobia is my experience
I edited my post because I was incorrectly using "transition" as a stand-in for HRT, which is way off.