So. This is something I’ve never talked to anyone in my real life about, but for whatever reason I’m more comfortable asking a bunch of strangers on the internet for advice. Deep breath.
I am coming up on 40yo, and since I was 16 I’ve mostly been in dedicated heterosexual relationships. I have always considered myself a cis male and maybe a little bi but things are… changing rapidly, I guess. I am single for the first time in years all this freedom and time means I’m doing some long overdue introspection. I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly happy with my body or my gender. I am finding myself much more attracted to people with penises, and more importantly, I am finding myself wanting to play a different, more submissive maybe, role in the bedroom. I finally have an opportunity to try new and different things with all sorts of different people, and that’s sort of exciting, but I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing or even what I’m feeling.
I see a lot of trans folks self-actualizing and I’m super happy for them. I envy them for knowing what they want. I don’t know what I want and it’s driving me a little crazy lately. I would kill to have that level of knowledge of who I wanted to be. I am not a particularly masculine man, but I don’t think I feel like I would be more comfortable being more traditionally feminine, though that doesn’t necessarily repulse me, either. I would certainly be happier with less body hair. When I was I kid I wanted to be a robot. Now as an adult I maybe just want to be a robot who fucks occasionally, gender irrelevant. Fully functional, you might say. I don’t really know what to do with that feeling, though.
Any advice on how to navigate literally any of this would be awesome. I feel like a teenager again, no idea how any of this works or where to even begin. I don’t have the knowledge or the language to talk coherently about any of this stuff, and certainly no experience. I am doing my best you guys but all of this is confusing as fuck.
Probably the best answer is: talk to a therapist.
Having said that, I didn’t. But you should know that it’s really easy to convince yourself that everything is fine when it isn’t, and difficult to figure out what’s actually wrong. (And then in my case, realize I actually did know all along, and was just suppressing it).
A couple of resources that may help you figure out your gender are:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible
- How To Figure Out If You’re Trans
- Also egg_irl, either here or on Reddit
I’m actually powering through the Gender Dysphoria Bible and egg_irl right now, lol. Talking to a therapist is good advice, honestly. I will make that a priority. Thanks, sincerely.
Also, as an aside, adhd memes got me to get fucking diagnosed, I feel like egg_irl will serve a similar purpose. Memes are surprisingly helpful.
Totally. The “haha, memes” -> “wait, that’s a bit too relatable” -> “oh noooooo” pipeline is real!
Nonbinary identities are a thing. You don’t have to fit into being traditionally masculine nor feminine. You can even reject the idea of gender for yourself and just say I am “me” or you can be multiple genders at a time or evwn feel like one at a time and feel like the other another day. All that matters is that you are comfortable in your body. Like the others said a gender therapist might be able tp help you explore understand this part of yourself.
A gender therapist is a good suggestion.
On the one hand, there is so much social pressure to not live as a non-binary person, and to conform to binary notions of gender, there are probably many enbies who feel they need to conceive of themselves in binary ways and to follow typical gender roles.
But on the other hand, I used a non-binary identity to rationalize away my binary gender feelings and dismiss the need to medically transition because it was more comfortable to just say I was in-between and keep living as a man even if I was “technically not a man” in some sense, causing a lot of downstream harm later by not stopping androgenization of my body. I used similar rejections of gender and “just being me” as a way to deny myself from transitioning.
It’s hard when trans people are victims of epistemic injustice, it’s hard to even describe your own experiences and know what you’re feeling and the denial and repression is so extreme that it can be difficult to have transparency and self-awareness (let alone to then turn that awareness into words or thoughts). This is admittedly worse for enbies, who have even less support in terms of interpreting their experiences than binary trans people.
All the more reason to work on it with a therapist (though my therapists have been mostly useless, there are good ones out there I hear, lol).
(though my therapists have been mostly useless, there are good ones out there I hear, lol)
This has always been my experience, except for one guy, who was great. He unfortunately retired a few years ago. Still working on finding another good one.
The Transition Channel videos really helped me finally face that I was trans, maybe they will help you evaluate whether it applies or not?
Other resources:
- https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/
- https://medium.com/gender-from-the-trenches/gender-dysphoria-isnt-what-you-think-6fdc7ae3ac85
- https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-11-15_6191b0774ce6e_YOUANDYOURGENDERIDENTITY.pdf
That last one is a PDF with a workbook to guide gender exploration, it is probably the most structured approach to walking through things, the rest is mostly informational.
I transitioned later in life (in my 30s) after also being just a little bi and being in a hetero-passing relationship for most of my life.
Feel free to reach out if you want to talk ❤️
I’m paging through “You and Your Gender Identity” and this is pretty great. Looking forward to working my way through it. Thanks!
Being trans and/or nonbinary can lead to sexual confusion before transition (it did for me), so it’s possible to start your trans discovery through sexual discovery.
Best advice I can give is to just do the things that you’d like. If you have a desire to dress more feminine/find a dom partner/shave your body do that. They might lead more desires and you might experience gender euphoria, but it’s not necessary. It’s also not harmful to try.
Also Fyi: saying you’re mostly attracted to ‘people with penises’ is a bit derogatory. Penis does not imply dominance and penises are also not needed for dominance in the bedroom. Some people do not like having/using their penis and other people exclusively have sex with a strap on because that’s what they like.
If there is an attraction to the penis itself, shouldn’t that be not any more derogatory than liking long or short people, breasts, brown hair etc?
I’m seriously curious because I have felt that vibe in some trans circles, like if you do like the penis of a mtf then you are some bad person.
I obviously mean liking in a normal way, not hyper sexualize or being a perv etc etc etc. That is always wrong be it over penises or brown hair color or whatever IMO.
Sorry if I come off wrong here, I’m just trying to learn.
It’s a very slippery slope and most people who say that are either fetishising trans women, being transphobic or both. There was no reason for OP to add that part because it has nothing to do with their own self discovery. A lot of conversation about trans people eventually leads to talk about our genitalia, and I think that part of me is just not anyone’s business and it’s creepy how many people are obsessed about it.
Also, a lot of the time when people say they prefer penises they would be just as happy with a partner with a good a strap on or a prosthetic and they’re needlessly excluding people without a penis.
I appreciate the feedback, and I apologize if that’s how it came across. The phrasing was poor and I did not intend to conflate the attraction to penises with either the sexual role performed or my own gender expression. The expression “people with penises” was used to include trans women and gay men, not to exclude anyone. I, as you say, would be fine with a prosthetic or strap on, and I am definitely not ruling people out on their genitals, but I understand how that could come across based on my phrasing. I’m actually talking to a trans guy right now and we’ve been talking a lot about exactly that. I kept trying to get my previous SO to peg me but she wasn’t into it. I super appreciate the feedback though and will keep it in mind going forward.
I’m sorry but grouping trans women and gay men together like that is transphobic. It goes under the assumption that these two groups have anything in common which they don’t. Trans women don’t all have a penis and if they do they don’t all use them the way men do. You can just say you like being pegged. You’d probably find more cis women willing to do that than trans women. Also nothing is stopping you from editing the op.
Removed by mod
You’re in the trans community replying to a trans person who explained why something is transphobic, and you’re still defending it. Contemplate on that.
Well said, and yes why wouldn’t I be happy with a strap on or a penis, good catch! Seems like a lot boils down to shitty attitudes from shitty people.
Thanks for the informative message!
Not speaking for Sop here because they seemed to be making a different point about how the OP talked about “people with penises” in a generalized way that lumped together the sexual dominance role men often play in sexual roles, essentially it implies a kind of stereotyping.
But to add some more context:
A lot of people think the genitals determine someone’s “true” sex or gender, and these gender-essentializing notions about genitals can create problems for trans people.
Lots of trans women have penises, but that doesn’t mean their penis makes them men, or that their penis functions like a man’s penis.
Penises become so associated with masculinity that people have a hard time separating the two, and the inability of some people to take seriously the idea of a trans woman’s penis being truly a woman’s genitals can not only be upsetting for the woman, but a kind of trans-denying / oppressive mindset about how sex and gender works.
So when a person is really into the penis on a woman, it can sometimes feel like what is attractive about that is that the penis is a masculine penis on a woman, not attraction to the woman’s genitals that happen to be a penis. In this scenario, they aren’t seeing the woman’s penis as an unusually large clit (for example), but instead as like a man’s penis, but on a woman’s body. This indicates a way of seeing the genitals and gender of the person that is invalidating.
In this scenario, it’s not the attraction to the penis itself that makes the person “bad”, it’s the way they see the penis that invalidate the gender of the woman that is “bad”. It doesn’t have to be hyper-sexual or prevy to be invalidating, the core issue here is about how the genitals are being interpreted and seen in the sexual dynamic.
One way this can come up, for example, is the expectation that the trans woman play a dominating and penetrative sexual role, essentially taking the role of a man in sex.
This of course is all messy because plenty of trans women enjoy domming, penetrating, or using their penis in a “masculine” way, and of course the assumptions we have about men and women and what roles they play in the bedroom are not reality, it is a normative script that we cater to, but which is arbitrary.
But at the same time, lots of people who want trans women to take on those stereotypically masculine roles might then also be engaged in a way of thinking about sex, gender, and genitals that is not healthy or trans-accepting.
Some of this ground is covered in the ContraPoints video about whether it’s gay for straight men to be attracted to trans women: is there something gay about loving a body that has a penis? (TW: trans slur in the video title.)
Thank you for the long explanation!
So mostly it boils down to perceived possible shittyness, I guess?
I probably need to think about all this more. Thanks for the video, and for the record, I couldn’t care less if I “feel gay” about something I like, but it is minefield I feel, because people are people and some consider those things like it’s important I guess.
Well, lots if thoughts, thanks again!
I don’t think it boils down to perceived possible shittyness, it’s that the reasons people have for liking the penis are usually that it’s male, and because they are attracted in some ways to men.
This comes up a lot with self-described straight men who don’t want to admit they have sexual feelings for men, so they sublimate that attraction onto a woman who happens to have “male” genitals.
And it’s relevant if it’s “gay” because it shows how you’re thinking about the genitals, if it’s gay to have sex with a trans woman it implies the penis is male and the woman’s gender is undone by this.
We also see this kind of behavior with labels like “men who have sex with men” - so many men are unwilling to admit they could have sexual attraction to men.
I see where you are coming from, and I appreciate this explanation. I apologize if that’s how I came across. The phrasing was poor and I did not intend to conflate sexual attraction and gender. Two separate things that I am dealing with simultaneously, lol. The one sort of led into the other. I chose the phrasing about penises because I did not want to exclude trans women, but I see how it could be problematic. As Valmond said, it does appear that my attraction seems to be with the penis itself and less with whatever gender has said penis equipped, and I recognize that does not determine or necessarily influence my own gender expression. The internet is a difficult place to have thoughtful conversations, and I really appreciate your well-thought out and helpful response.
I think you meant to respond to Sop, I personally didn’t find your statement about being attracted to people with penises offensive.
You know yourself better than I do, but I don’t know that it’s so easy to be certain where attraction to a penis comes from, and I think there are plenty of pressures to deny gendered associations with the penis in this context, especially after all this discussion about the importance of not seeing it as male. Not everything going on in your psychology is transparent to you, I would just remain open and sensitive to your feelings as they come up - it’s a complicated time for you and it’s better to be listening to yourself than trying to strangle unorthodox feelings, if that makes sense.
Also read trans literature to learn more about gender and sex.
particularly Julia Serano, Whipping Girl and Sexed Up are both great.
Your bedroom role and masculinity/femininity are orthogonal to gender. You can change those without changing your gender, you can change your gender without changing those, and you can change both.
Pick the gender for the gender, not other things. In case that sounds intimidating, note that this is all fuzzy human stuff and there’s no rules (except some stupid social rules) and you can experiment and do whatever you want. I also don’t like traditional femininity, but I figured out I’m still a woman, so now I’m an androgynous woman. Choice!
It’s not uncommon for trans women to want to take a stereotypically feminine sexual role in the bedroom, though - and it can certainly be a sign in conjunction with other things that you are trans.
That said, it’s not a necessary sign, and plenty of trans women enjoy taking stereotypically masculine roles in sex. I just don’t want to dismiss the significance for an egg that sexual roles might play in helping them understand their repressed gender identity, especially since so much repression gets sublimated into sexual behavior (a lot of trans folks never get past conceptualizing their gender needs as a fetish or kink).
Yeah I think a big part of the issue is that I don’t really like either gender expression, at least in more traditional terms. I have work to do learning about non-binary or agender folks, I think. I understand that sexuality and gender are not the same; I just think working through one is making me ask questions about the other. A big part of this is looking to be the task of figuring out what I actually want.
Thanks for the response, everyone here has been incredibly kind.
oh hey fellow robot gender admirer! it may surprise you (as it did me) to learn that many people enjoy and actively pursue performing masculinity or femininity. if so, you might also consider yourself agender!
Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
many people enjoy and actively pursue performing masculinity or femininity
Some guys legitimately enjoy doing “guy things” and engaging with society in ways where they can be perceived as male as possible… They earnestly enjoy it and it is not just a costume or funny social game for them, they would still want to be male even if they were on a deserted island.
Same for some women.
How often do you feel like that for one gender or the other?
