How satisfied are you with your birth-assigned gender?

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5 I guess ... I'm perfectly happy being male ... but it wouldn't bother me if I'd been born female.

There's a few things I envy, a few I don't. One thing that sort of bothers me about the male role is how women are allowed to like stuff that was gender-neutral from one's own early childhood, but guys aren't. Like, for instance, Rupert the Bear or similar things. It's not something I'm so interested in that it really bothers me that much, but if I had some of the books from when I was a kid, I might like to look at them just out of sentimentality, and I feel like a woman could leave them lying around if company came over, but I couldn't.

But it's from my own childhood, and it's gender-neutral (if anything, it was more in the category of boy's fiction) ... so I just don't get it. How does a thing change from being neutral or even slightly male-oriented, to being females only? And how come it isn't consistent? I had Spider-Man comics then too.

Off the top of my head it's hard to think of other specific examples but there are lots of little ones like that, which are irksome. I guess what is more annoying, though, is the enforced interests, e.g. sports, cars, etc. And attitudes that I'm supposed to have, that I think are nonsense.

Other than these silly expectations, I'm pretty happy with my gender. None of my interests are particularly feminine and I'm not envious of dresses or makeup or any of that.

I went with 7 but could have also said 5. I like certain things about being male, but I find male culture irritating at times. Too much of it is nonsense dealing with physical strength, sports and "male bonding", all of which I have little interest in. Women are a little more free to pick and choose as a girl that likes football is attractive to a guy but a guy who wants to sew is a turn off to a woman (not that I sew, but it's a good example). Then again, I am a turn off to a woman so it really doesn't matter. It is nice being the dominant gender but it also complicates things when you can't read social cues. I am expected to make the first move if I were theoretically to be in a relationship. However, I can't read those signals so it is next to impossible for me to find love. Were I a girl, males would approach me even if I sucked at the whole interaction. This would reduce the likelihood of spending the rest of my life alone and no one finding my corpse until the stench coming from my dwelling becomes so overwhelming that authorities are called.

I chose 3, I always felt extra pressure from the family to uphold everyone's expectations of how they perceive the firstborn son & grandson should be. Girls always seemed to get to wear cooler stuff and get away with more lip. They were listened to and believed. I never experienced the celebration of boyhood that seems to go on. I wasn't allowed to have a BB gun or a pocket knife anyway. But they couldn't keep me away from motorcycles.

Even today, like hell if I'm going to wear pants down around my ankles, shave my head, cover my skin in tatoos, drive a big raised up truck, or anything else that symbolizes urinating on every fire hydrant and smelling every excretory gland I come across.

I've gotten to where I'm more comfortable in my skin but can't help but think that women who are perpetually alone don't get stigmatized to a tenth of what men do

Much rather be a boy than a girl... Unfortunately, i was born a girl.

I chose 3. In the past I would have rated myself at 2 or maybe even 1. I dislike being male, my birth gender. I hate things like all the hair (among other physical things), the male hormones making me more aggressive, the male sex drive (not to mention the way the bits function), the cultural expectations and cultural view of males, as well as the way many males act around other males. There are other reasons as well - the biggest one is that it just feels wrong, mentally, physically, etc. I very often think about how I'd rather be female, and feel revulsion at my body, even though I'm very fit physically.

The only things I like about being male are having my large hands (there is a lot I could not do on many instruments, especially bass and guitar, if I had smaller hands - with many things I do, my fingers are stretching as far as they possibly can), and the high level of general physical strength. I'd say those are the most useful parts of being male, to me.

I would call my feeling about my gender hatred though - I think about how I'd rather be female and feel anger, hatred, disappointment, at how that's impossible for me. I just think about it and it's not with words, but if it were with words I'd be thinking a long drawn out "fffffff******************! why? god damnit, f*** my life."

But there are some things I think of to try to make myself feel better about being male, such as how there's nothing I feel I can do about it. I particularly think about how I'm grateful for my large hands, when I think about how I hate being male - to temporarily lessen the hate. My special interest in playing music, particularly in playing bass (an obsession I've had for 14 years straight), is so strong that sometimes I'm okay with having my body, which I hate, because it makes doing my special interest the way I do it possible. If I were a female with smaller hands I would have to play the bass an entirely different way - it wouldn't necessarily make me a worse bass player, but I would have to play it differently, and wouldn't be able to do some of the things I do a lot. I'm told by many people that I have a very unique sound, and I wouldn't want my sound to be any different than it is, so that is one thing I like about having been born male.

--- skip until the next triple hyphen if you don't want to read my ramblings about a special interest

Example for bass: false harmonic barre chords - such as 9(13) on all strings - index finger acting as capo on G D and A strings at the 9th fret, with my pinky fingering the harmonic on the 13th fret for all of those strings. My fingers must be parallel, or the chord won't sound, since I play fretless basses - I must also exert a very large amount of pressure with my index finger and thumb, especially if sliding one of these false harmonic barre chords, or the notes will not sound as clearly. I once peeled the skin under my thumbnail back from the nail along the edge from the friction of doing one of these slides fast. After that I made sure to sand the back of the neck more than I had already, to give it a very smooth feel.

I do a -lot- of things with both natural and false harmonics, and I'm almost always doing chords with them, which requires me to often have my fingers stretched out in very awkward angles and also spread far apart often. I actually have problems with my left hand wrist nerves occasionally (carpal tunnel - although I've not had these problems since about last October, thankfully) which will cause pain in my wrist and some tingling in my fingertips. This is caused by the strange angles I must put my wrist in to be able to finger a lot of these things. On guitar I do a lot of oddly shaped chords that the other guitarist in one of the bands I'm in (the band I play guitar in) can't do, because he has smaller hands than mine and can't stretch his pinky out far enough to do the fingering.

--- rambling over

I wanted to transition for a while, and was going to - I had full plans, long scale timetables with goals and milestones and such, how I'd go about it all - but I decided not to, mainly because I don't think my body would transition well at all. I'm 6'2", and I have very large bones, large feet, large hands, masculine jaw and generally very masculine bone structure. I'm about 165 pounds, so my bone structure is pretty visible. Hormones can alter much about your physical appearance, but they can't do anything about your bones. So I've decided to just be male and deal with it - oh well - nothing I can do about it. So I try to not think about it much, because it causes me to feel hatred and revulsion at my body.

I don't mind being female, physically. I just wish my mind would make up its mind. I definitely have a more androgynous, male-ish brain. I can't say I'm maternal or nurturing. But I don't get the macho attitude either. Now that I'm female, I'd prefer to stay that way, but I'd be ok if I were born male instead.

Because of my asexuality, I sometimes wish I was genderless and perhaps a bit androgynous, but i appreciate the organ I was given as a male as it makes urinating easier and quicker, or at least thats what i assume, I i like to be able to aim.

I really could care less so I guess I'd be a 5. I guess there are some advantages to having a dangling sex organ vs. an internal one. I don't care for men who feel they have to act macho nor for women who act "girly-girly"

I'm often male in my dreams. Although I'm happy enough being female, I sometimes forget that I am, and feel without gender at all.

I don't think it's a physical thing though, it's not about bodies but minds. Or maybe souls.

Had the surgery. Never been happier.

I chose 7. I'm generally quite happy with my gender, but I recognise now that I don't identify with it as much as other women I know seem to. I look female and dress in a feminine way but hen I think of myself as a person I don't really think of myself as female just as neutral.

One thing I think is interesting about this thread, is how many females there are who desire to be males, compared to the number of males in the thread who desire to be females. It seems many more females here desire to be male, than males who desire to be female.

I find it interesting, because the place I usually talk about gender issues (a website where all of the users are anonymous - no screen names/usernames) were MtF (males who wanted to be females). I wonder if it is because there are strong stigmas against males who express such wishes, and the anonymity makes them feel okay with disclosing their gender issues - or, if it is because that website potentially had/has a larger male population than a female population. (biologically male and female, that is)

I just find it interesting - it's because for my entire life as someone who hates being male and feels disgust at their body -every-single-day- (and as someone with a practially photographic memory, I am being very literal when I say -every-single-day-) - when I interacted with other people with gender dysphoria, they were mostly males who wanted to be females - yet here, on WP, my only real sanctum as far as autism is concerned, it's mostly females wanting to be males. It's just interesting to me how my main safe place for my autism differs from my main safe place for gender dysphoria, as far as ratio of males wanting to be female to females wanting to be males is concerned.

I voted '7'. I'm female, happy to remain so and could never be mistaken for anything other than female. But, I'm not particularly feminine and feel really uncomfortable in the presence of 'dolly birds'. Had I been born male, I'm sure I'd have been just as happy with that too.