I'll never pass (MTF trans)

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I'm pretty sure that I will never be able to "pass" as a woman. My body is just too large for this, too male-shaped. My therapist agrees.

I don't know what to do anymore. My gender dysphoria is really strong now, to the point thst crying every morning is the norm. At work, I have a stuffed animal that I hug if something causes bad feelings.

I'm in my early 30s and am still a virgin who has never dated anyone. I've never even cuddled or kissed. I feel completely deprived of a part of my life because my body doesn't match my mind. I don't want to be touched when I'm this horrible monster. Also, anyone who wants me as I am now has expectations of me thinking as a man, which I just don't.

I don't have a good reason to live. I don't get anything out of life now that I enjoy. Everything is tainted by the undercurrent of feeling female despite my body. I don't feel much joy - mostly boredom with bouts of strong pain between.

I just wish that I were never born.

I'm 6'2" hands like shovels and a voice like a foghorn, I was completely transitioned near 15 years ago, I know what I am, the part of me that feels, has desires and is me is quite clearly female therefore I am female.
I might never be a stunning pin-up but where it counts I know I am beautiful.
Persist in trying to achieve your goal, I did not seek gender reassignment until I were 35 at that point I figured I had spent half my 3 score and 10 the wrong gender, I must say from that point I never looked back for me reassignment was defiantly the best thing to happen to me.

'There is nothing wrong with being a virgin, it is just one state of being". - Lenara, Fierfly - Janestown

I have a strong need to be able to look in a mirror and see a woman. If I can't do that, what is the point? Similarly, if nobody else sees me as a woman, all the legal protections in the world aren't going to make others' treatment of me the way it should be.

I'm about the same height as you, with huge hands and a low voice. I've been on hormones for 6 years with very little to show for it. Other than facial hair, which I've fried off, and a small amount of chest development, I look the same as before hormones. I don't even have the characteristic soft skin that women have that transwomen also are supposed to get while on HRT.

I don't wear women's clothes at all, because they make me feel worse about myself. They never fit right, because my proportions are all wrong, and when I look in the mirror, I look like a crossdressing man. Living as male is less painful to me than living as an unpassing transwoman. Not enough to make me want to live, though.

My mention of virginity was simply about saying that my life lacks some things. All my friends have paired off with partners they've found, and I'm just alone. I'm completely unwanted.

If there are things I really need in order to not hate myself all the time, but they are unachievable with current technology, why should I stick around? I just want this pain to end.

I feel you,
I was living crossdressed for about 2 years before I started hormones, once I was on them the effect was terrific I am most surprised the result for you has been so poor.
I really do hope that some way you can get what you need, please don't give up.

))))hugs((((

I'm also surprised at how poor your results have been. If you are taking street hormones try to find an endocrinologist. If you are seeing a professional for your hormones find a new one. Something just sounds wrong.

Passing isn't everything. If it's important to you, that's great. But you can only do what you can.

That is, I don't want to belittle your gender identity. That's great that you're a woman and want to be perceived as a woman!
I'm just saying, kind of, nobody is passing. Someone violates gender stereotypes and idealizes femininity or masculinity somewhere.

Andrej Pejić is beautiful and feminine, and is very, very tall. You can still be plenty feminine. Don't give up hope.

Maybe this isn't the best thing to say, because I want people to be happy now, rather than live for the future. But this is kind of meant as an "it gets better" thing. Technology and medicine and treatments are getting better and better. We have more treatments and ways to become more feminine or masculine or transition than ever before. And it will only get better.

And you never know how feminine you become until you keep living and keep trying. Keep trying and hoping, I know it can be hard. I'm not nearly as feminine as I would like, either. But there are all sorts of things I can do to make me feel better with my body. And that's what counts.

And you're beautiful. Don't let anyone tell you that you're unlovable.

I'm seeing Dr. Richard Horowitz in Los Angeles, someone many other transpeople see.

People have said that I need to lower my expectations. But I can't - if I could, I'd be able to live as a man, after all. It'd be so much easier. I don't think my expectations are actually that high. I just think that my body has very little feminization potential.

I really think that I'm better off dead. When the sum of everything in your life is a net negative, zero is an improvement.

I'm really sorry to hear about your gender dysphoria and suicidal urges. These are really tough times for you and the world can be so cold and harsh. But I have to try to convince you to stick it out for just a while longer. If you die, then nothing will ever get better for you. But if you simply put it off, and just keep on living, things will continue to change as they always inevitably do, and you may find yourself in a much happier place, and very, very glad that you did not commit suicide. I was suicidal for much of this past winter, and only finally stopped having daily suicidal thoughts about a month ago. It seems so selfish and heartless of people to ask you to keep living when it's so hard. But things are starting to get better for me and that could happen for you, too.

Is your doctor paying attention to your response to the hormones? Does he care that it isn't really working, and that's having a huge negative impact on your mental health? If not, then you really need a new doctor, no matter how much this one has helped other trans people. You need a doctor who will actually APPLY some of those years of education to the problem instead of brushing you off.
Do you live with people who put you down, or poke fun at your gender? You don't need that negativity. People don't have to perfectly understand you, but they do need to leave you alone about it and give you the same respect as anyone else. Cut them out of your life if you have to. Your mental health should be your top priority.

From your posts, it seems like living as a man is causing you serious harm. I don't know what you look like, and maybe you never will pass for a cis woman. But passing isn't everything. I have known cis women who do not pass as female, and that doesn't make them any less female, so it doesn't make you any less female either. I know we all want to look like underwear models :\ but many of us are stuck in bodies that are disabled, differently proportioned, or presenting the wrong gender, and that doesn't make us any less worthy of existing. We deserve all the same rights and respect as everybody else regardless of the way we look. And it can be really hard to reconcile that with mainstream media blasting us with hypersexualized imagery of airbrushed women all day. But it's true and we need to MAKE ourselves really understand that it's true. I have to avoid ads altogether (VERY difficult to do!) or my body dysphoria is triggered. I can't watch cable TV and I have to cover the computer screen during youtube ads. I can't read magazines, look at billboards, or even listen to the radio without obsessing over all the things that are wrong with my body. It sucks but nothing sucks more than picking yourself apart all the time.

Also: beauty is completely subjective, and what's popular this time period used to be really really unpopular, and what's considered to be feminine now may be considered neutral or masculine in the future. I started looking at pinup illustrations of people with bodies like mine - kind of chubby, differently proportioned, NOT very mainstream-definition-of-beauty - and it really helped me "be okay" with my fat and just...my body in general. What I really needed was to see the ways in which I am attractive just the way I am, and maybe that could help you too. There must be some things about your appearance you like - your hair? your collarbones? your calves? You should pay attention to the things you like about yourself at LEAST as much as the things you don't like.

Maybe you can bring out your femininity in other ways. Can you grow your hair out long? Have you experimented with makeup much? I know there is a lot of potential for sculpting the face with makeup. Can you get a bellydancing video? Bellydancing is supposed to bestow that feminine hourglass-figure due to the way the muscles are toned. Growing your nails out makes your fingers look more feminine. Heels can make your legs a more feminine shape, though if you are like me you probably want to stick with 2" heels or lower.

The thing is, when you look into a mirror, you are seeing a woman, because you are a woman. I'm not saying that you shouldn't go for surgery, or that your hormones don't need to be re-evaluated, I'm just saying that your gender is absolutely valid whether you do those things or not.

I really hope you feel better, and feel free to PM me (but just know that sometimes I can take a while to get back because of my social anxiety).

I feel like I'll never get surgery. Hey. Join the misery party. It's not like we can all be like Kim Petras or Nicole Maines. And it's not like we Americans can get the same benefits the Canadians and British enjoy in terms of access to care--though I remember your saying long ago you had well more than enough money to get every procedure, hormones, etc.

I think I mentioned before that I feel the same way, kittylover, if I did I apologize with my horrible memory. All we can really have at the moment are people with empathy that we can talk to in terms of this rigid situation. Not sure if you saw it on one of my responses before, but talking about it constantly to my online friend on deviantart helps me a bit. Only bad thing is since she's quadriplegic, she can't go on the computer to respond as often as I wish. ( Sometimes I think it's because she's sick of it, but she always says it's fine.)

I also keep envisioning things in the future to help me get going. We both know no matter what people say it will never really fix anything, but just keep talking about it... there's something about that repetition of talking about it to someone that seems to at least keep one's head above water.
Will we ever be able to get out of the quicksand of depression and suicidal thoughts? Who knows... I always look online everyday to see if there is some break through. All we can do is be there for one another in the end.

This post is a few weeks old but im bored and have just been looking randomly through the many threads on this site.

In regards to the original post (I scanned through some responses), who you are and how you feel doesn't really matter how you look. If you are a different gender than your sex reflects, than behave as your gender.

I should mention I am not trans or otherwise gender confused myself but I thought I could hopefully lend some supporting words.

I have seen people who are gender and sex of a women and are ten times more masculine than me. You should just be comfortable in your own skin. If you want surgery so that your "sex" reflects your gender, I don't think that is personally an inappropriate thing to do, that is totally up to you.

But in regards to at least how you look, it really doesn't matter. Just be yourself, wear the clothing your comfortable in and act how you want to act.

Hope this has helped in some manner.

I live with gender dysphoria too, I'm in a tall and broad-shouldered male body, huge hands and feet, deep voice, I'd would never pass as a woman. If there was such a thing as male brain/female brain I would definitely be female brained, but I'm not convinced ... So much is culturally shaped, brains are the same at birth and change with learning, experience, etc. Knowing that helps me to carry on. Maybe the dysphoria is in the map of the body in the mind. I don't know. If it was simple I'd transition but it's not. Life is hard enough, transitioning would be hell and never complete, I'm either a gay man or a straight trans woman... the latter would be so much harder. I suppose I'm lucky that over the years I have learned to cope, not without gender dysphoria reappearing every time I become depressed about anything else, but when I successfully fight depression and I'm happy it doesn't matter as much and life can still be good.

^^^^ BecauseImArtistic, thanks for posting. You have shared some really helpful and encouraging thoughts which could only have been written with empathy and wisdom.

Everyone's brain is not the same at birth. If brain development was cultural, then they would not terminate so many Down syndrome pregnancies.

This professor discusses transsexual brain differences. He explains how neuro-science is reliably able to identify "male" and "female" brains.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3C4ZJ7HyuE[/youtube]

Thank you LNH. I was referring in particular to my own cognitive differences and the neuroanatomical regions which support these and develop after birth which are commonly held to be signs of sexed brains -- but not to such an absolute extreme. Of course Down syndrome involves identifiable brain differences. Yes there are markers of differences... I should have been more careful in my wording, but yet again I naively didn't expect someone to take issue... I have a solid psychology education and have done my homework on this. I don't disagree with the video and it doesn't contradict what I meant (e.g. the marker at birth of sexed brains in the video referred to does not involve the usual neurological sex differences e.g. corpus collosum, and of course adult trans women develop different brains to adult men despite taking the same medication). I don't have the energy, time or will for a debate. I was sharing something very sensitive and personal, and this is a support thread.

I know one trans woman who doesn't pass very well, but I still think of her as a woman. And not because I'm particularly enlightened or whatever; it's just that--who she is, her personality, is female, even though physically, the effects of testosterone exposure are obvious. When I look at her I think of her more as an unusual-looking woman than a "man in disguise".

So, I don't know if you really need to pass, so much as you need to find people who will think of you by your personality rather than your appearance.

It does mean that people will know you are trans, and that some people won't like it. That's a scary prospect. On the other hand, you get to stop pretending.

There are drawbacks whatever you decide... I guess you have to decide what's more important to you, what you are and aren't willing to risk.