For obvious reasons, I desperately want to get out of the United States. Unfortunately, every country I look at doesn't seem interested in gaining a retail worker with no savings.

Am I just fucked? Is anywhere accepting us as refugees? Is there anywhere that's both relatively friendly to trans people AND relatively easy for an American to immigrate to?

I've gone my whole life (I'm 35) NOT thinking I was trans but now I do, wtf am I supposed to do with this? How do I find out for sure? Am I allowed to be a trans lesbian because I'm not attracted to men? Can I even come out, when it will ruin my whole life? I'm jealous of the youth, being old sucks.

So excited to be on the road again.

I had never tried taking it orally, but had to switch due to life circumstances and I swear it's made a big difference

Has anyone had the opposite experience?

So after I recently received news that my GRS coverage was denied which means that surgery is not a few months but likely years away, I spiralled pretty hard. And by pretty hard, I mean more than ever. The last three weeks, I've been more depressed than ever. Even more than before HRT. Because I was climbing a mountain, came close to the top and then it suddenly moved. I started smoking again for self-harm like I did before HRT. I stayed in bed for hours and hours, more than I've ever done. I either don't eat at all or overeat. I broke down crying in public multiple times in the first week after the news. I became scared of going outside because I didn't want everyone to see me cry again. I cried every morning after waking up for 10 days.

It's gotten better now. A bit. Reality is still the same, I'm still in complete despair at the thought of having to bear a penis for such a long time. I contemplated suicide for the first time in years. I'm not doing well at all, but in an attempt to see the positives and the good sides of life, I want to write a list with the things that I've managed in the 18 months that I'm on HRT and seriously transitioning now (It's on the day, actually! I started on March 13 2024). I had this idea when I read my HRT diary (highly recommend keeping one). I'm only allowing positives here, no particular order.

• I'm almost done with my Master's degree and will finish it in March with a very good grade (if I'm still alive then)
• I started writing and performing my prose and was able to put my experience into words that have moved crowds of up to 80 people
• I cried, a lot. I accessed my emotions for the first time since childhood
• I've been wearing my long natural nails for almost all of HRT and still regularly get compliments on them
• I developed friendships with my female friends that run deeper than I ever imagined friendship could go
• I finally felt allowed to send heart emojis without feeling like implying something romantic
• I've allowed myself to become so much softer in spirit
• I started taking care of my body and hygiene
• I grew cute little boobs I love. It feels right to have to protect my chest
• I can wear the clothes I want to wear every day without being hate crimed (well, except for if they're tight in the crotch... :( )
• I went on a date with a man this week, we sat down in a bar and the waiter asked: "And for the lady?", looking at me
• I changed my name officially and haven't been misgendered by anyone outside my family since March this year
• I got some cool tattoos I always wanted but didn't want looking like a man because I felt they were toxic. I love them
• I now have girl legs
• My hairline has started coming back
• I permitted myself to buy so many purple things. So many
• I have gone to a beauty salon twice now and the lady there was nice to me and not transphobic. I felt safe there and loved the treatment
• I now allow myself to not know things or not be able to do them. I lost the inner pressure of competence I always felt before transition (this is a bit misogynistic)
• I discovered that I like BDSM and whipping men lol
• I learned what it means to be desired and wanted
• I feel so free to just wear what I like and love how much fun fashion has become. It's become my lifeline and one of my favourite hobbies.
• I felt like a complete person for the first time
• I learned what unconditional love (by friends) is
• Women now sit next to me on the train, without hesitation
• I learned what it feels like to not be perceived as a threat in public
• People look at me now not only because I look weird but because I look hot and cool
• I'm celebrating my birthday next week and I only invited friends I see regularly and would consider someone I'd reach out to when I need help. I invited 18 people. This is a blessing.
• I learned what it feels like to speak with another trans person and just understand each other without words immediately
• I learned that however alone I feel, I am not truly alone and that my mind is trying to trick me into despair
• I dared to get a nose job and am so so much happier with my face now
• I don't have problems going to a hairdresser anymore because they won't be confused why I want a feminine haircut
• I'm not scared in the drugstore anymore when I look at the makeup section. The first few times made me throw up and I only managed a few seconds. Now I feel like I belong
• Sometimes, strangers (always women) smile at me on the street. I'm still so surprised by that that I don't manage to smile back in time, often
• People have started giving me the benefit of the doubt. I haven't been shouted at or criticised in months
• I learned what it feels like to live longer than I ever imagined I would
• I dared to go against my conservative parents and upbringing and tried to find happiness in a game of life that has the odds stacked against me
• It doesn't look weird anymore when I'm at home just wearing a t-shirt with no pants

I think this is my list, for now. There's probably lots of things I forgot but honestly, just writing it down helped. Maybe y'all want to comment your lists?

**So i'm in a bit of a weird position in my life right now. I've known i'm trans for the past 3ish years and recently started college. Most of the people around me seem to be pretty supportive and my parents are also supportive. I already have everyone calling me by my choice name but other then that I havent done anything I really want to actually start to transition so I can stop being depressed and there are some moments where like i really want to buy fem clothes but i go on amazon and its just too big of a mental hurdle to do anything related to transitioning has anyone else experianced something like this where they were in a place where they could transition and nothing was preventing them but they were just too scared to if so how did you deal with it?

Edit: Thanks so much for the advice everyone I think going on hrt is too scary for me but I'll order some fem clothes tomorrow. I really appreciate the advice and kind words <3

Hello everyone, It’s been a while since I last posted here almost a month. Honestly the truth is I have been completely overwhelmed with stress and depression because of my sister’s sickness. Life has been really heavy and in most days I honestly don’t know how to cope. My sister has been in the hospital for days now. It all started with her feet swelling then her whole body and after she fainted we had to rush her to the hospital. At first they suspected kidney failure then later confirmed she has severe Anemia. She also has another condition that requires her to be on lifelong medication. Right now she is still very weak receiving daily injections and sometimes oxygen when she struggles to breathe. The most painful part is that the hospital won’t continue treatment without us clearing the bills. The total needed is 1,670 USD but we are remaining with 1,057USD. Every single day the cost increases especially for oxygen and medication. I am really afraid of what will happen if we can’t pay. I know times are hard for many but I am begging if you can help us, please do. No amount is too small. And even if you can’t donate, kindly share this appeal becoz it would mean so much.

The support link is in my profile/bio. Thank you deeply for reading this and for any support you can give.

So my feet are what's politely referred to as freakishly large.

Eu 50

Uk 14.5 mens (womens size is not f**king applicable)

Us 16 (same)

I get custom made shoes subsidised because of a collapsed arch, but are there any styles I should consider to hide the enormity of my flippers?

Posted for reasons.

I just wanna say thank you for all these kind words. It feels soooooo good knowing that your struggles are "normal" and that other people go through the same, but it dies get better. It also feels good reading all the fantastic comments under all these posts here. This community helped ne a lot in my harder times and I Am so glad this community exists and is filled with such wonderful people.

So It's been probably 5 years since I've had anything resembling a friend group, or really anything like a friend; and recently I've been wanting to get out there again but I've stumbled across a couple roadblocks.

I can't do IRL because my town has 1000 people in it and most of them are hardcore conservatives and I don't own a car (fuck american infrastructure)

I am struggling to find an online group because I am extremely uncomfortable around men due to a lot of childhood stuff, and a majority of the public spaces are either mixed Adult / Teen or Adult only with absolutely zero tolerance for NSFW (I'm a hentai artist, unfortunately, I love my hobby too much lol).

I feel like a lot of it are personal hurdles I need to overcome too - like I'm very embarrased at how deep my voice is, I haven't had very many positive social encounters when I'm being myself and not putting up a façade etc.

But I have been working on myself recently and I think I'm getting there, but by trying to be too safe I can't really find the community I need. But I know for a fact that if I venture out too far I'll just end up getting hurt again, and my sensitive ass is pretty sensitive so y'know that's a shit deal.

What I want to know is: how did you find your group, and is it really worth it to put myself out there right now?

So as the title suggests I'm about to start DIY HRT soon, due to waiting lists for official HRT being long as hell (at least one year and I am just about to have everything to get put on the list). So I did some research on transfemscience.org and I also found someone through which I could get access to Injections (from voix Celeste) and Cyproterone Acetate (i will refer to it as CTA, because fuck that name). I will try to get Blood work done next month beforehand so that I know what my levels are, but I Am assuming, that my T shouldn't be that high (I always struggled with building up muscle mass and dont have that much thick body hair). The expected levels for my injections have been calculated using the simulator on transfemscience.org. Here are the graphs

Currently my plan on dosage and bloodwork looks like this:

• 1: Get levels checked
• 2: Do a first injection with 5mg E and wait a week
• 3: 3 weeks with 3mg E for levels to stabilise at around 150-200 ng/ml
• 4: Get another Bloodworm done (so in total 4 weeks after the first injection)
• 5: Depending on where my T-Levels are suppress them with CTA (I have no exact clue how much I will need, but depending on how close I Am to the goal of levels below 50 ng/ml I will probably start with a small dose like 2.5 or so mg/d)

The first dose with 5mg is used as a "kick starter" because as you can see in the graphs, after one week I Am landing directly at the low of the 3mg steady state.

In terms of fine tuning I think that its probably a good idea to wait 4 weeks after changing intake to give my levels enough time to settle. This is based on the about 4 weeks it takes for the E levels to reach the steady state after starting the therapy (this can be seen in the graphs). My goal is to land within the range of about 150-200 ng/ml for E and <50 ng/ml for T. I am aiming at these levels due to these levels, at least according to the introduction for transfem HRT, having the best feminizing (my autocorrect constantly changes this to demonizing lol) effects and at the same time minimizing other risk factors like liver toxicity or blood clots. I Am healthy, so I should be fine, but better safe than sorry.

Now my additional questions:

• Is there anything that I should also get regularly checked except E and T (The introduction to transfem HRT article mentions prolactine levels and to get regular MRIs with CTA, but says, this is only needed when going above 12.5 mg/d, which has no therapeutic value, so I am not going there)?
• Is 4 weeks a good enough interval to get blood work done after adjusting intake?
• Is there anything, that I should know about in terms if the safety of injecting (apart from that I need a good enough syringe/needle)?
• Anything else that I should consider that I did not mention here?

I already knew, that I am not capable of looking at the images of transition timelines, because it is absolutely devastating to see the progress of others while I have not even got it to get on the waiting list for an endo (but I am on my way to starting DIY). Seeing these kinds of pictures usually triggered quite heavy dysphoria and it usually comes almost instantly.

However, it seems like that not just transition timelines, but also storys of others who came out and literally had the best possible experience seems to be now a trigger too. Storys of people telling how supportive their parents are or who got the courage to go out full girl mode, while I am sitting here not trusting my parents with anything I plan on doing transition wise, since they usually try to gaslight me into not doing things or my mother gatekeeping on what standards I have to meet to be a woman. I am also way to nervous to go out in full girl mode (it took me literal weeks until being comfortable enough to not constantly hide my painted nails while being out in public).

It is absolutely devastating seeing how others are succesfull in becoming who they really are, and getting lots of support on the way to it, while it kind of feels like that I have to fight for everything myself and every single step in my transition takes literal ages.

Just so that this does not get mistaken: I have friends who are supportive, but they cant really take the burden of actually doing things from me. Best they can do is, that sometimes when we are doing something I get the courage to go out in a skirt since talking to someone distracts me and stops me from panicing over something as small as a piece of clothing. I dont even really have to fear for transphobia or meeting someone I am not out to yet when going out in girl mode. Its completely irrational, but still it takes wagon loads of courage (or weed) to actually go out in girl mode.

I’m pretty over shaving constantly, but I don’t think I can afford to go somewhere to get laser or electrolysis done professionally right now. How effective are at-home options? Which models of devices are recommended, if any?

This is really just a vent post tbh feel free to skip

In high school I had very supportive friends who helped me a ton and dispite being in poverty at the time I still had the time to care about my outward presentation. This ended up making the perfect moment in my life where I ended up focusing a ton on myself and even dispite having to hide it from very homophobic parents when I was out with friends I got called she/her basically every time a stranger saw me (unless I spoke lol)

But life hit hard after those couple months: I lost friends, my mom became bed ridden and eventually passed, I started failing school, a toxic relationship drained all the time I had from my hobbies. So my body hair grew out again, I put on more weight, I couldn't make myself exercise at all anymore, If it wasnt a school day I wouldn't even shower and I often rewore clothes since I would be too tired to do wash.

Well I always thought that when I moved out things would be better. That I'd get on E and become the girl of my dreams again! Instead the only work I could find is in a warehouse, my beard routinly grows to an itchy length because I just don't have the energy to shave, I was forced to move to the other side of the US to a shitty town in Idaho where im surrounded by only trumpies and racists, Ive lost all my friends due to the move. I don't just look like a man, but a whole ass dad to the point my coworkers assume I have kids... Im 19.

I don't have money, I don't have time, and I certainly don't have the energy to be trans anymore. Yet in my dreams when I look into the mirror, I see her, and for a moment I smile like I could when I was just a dumb kid again. And every morning after those dreams I'll wake up and be reminded that the friends family I'm staying with since I almost went homeless (and really need to move out from), even though their use my prefferd name, every action or joke or conversation is undeinably "your clearly a man". And I'm reminded of my sad reality that as I am now I will never come across as even remotely feminin

just feeling unusually happy today, but I attribute most of my happy days to transition (particularly estrogen), and in case it's helpful or motivating, others should know it really can get better, just keep trying

💖

i haven't posted about myself to the broader trans community or tried to find other transfems who feel like me, but the more i keep my thoughts private the more alienated and alone i feel. i'm sure other people can relate to how my identity manifests for me. i'd like to share.

my physical body does not match the mental image i have of myself nor does it align with my gender identity. when i went through male puberty my dysphoria only got worse. i have the expected body of a man and this causes me significant anguish on a daily basis. staring at my reflection and not seeing a femininizing image looking back is so debilitating.

however, i was socialized and raised the way i was, and that was "as a boy." i have an attachment to my male youth and i find comfort and affirmation revisiting those periods and seeing myself as a boy in some corner of my headspace. i developed as a boy, i made friends in "boyish" ways, i had some typically male oriented interests, and i genuinely became attached to gay romance and sex that i began seeing myself as male-but-in-a-girl-way.

if i "feel male" to some degree then why can't i just be content being a man? who am i to say that i'm trans-anything? it's something i have struggled with my whole life, but i simply detest the label of "man" being applied to me. the idea of being seen as one feels like erasure of my own identity to satisfy the morality of someone who isn't me. i don't embody masculinity, i don't relate to it. more importantly, it causes me stress and physical reactions to be placed in the category of "man;" to be seen as broad shouldered, wide, bulky; a prominent forehead and thick arms and legs; to be assigned roles based on my perceived manliness

however, i do not see myself as a woman either. it doesn't cause me significant distress to be seen as one, merely i can recognize womanhood isn't what i'm channeling. whatever space i am occupying feels rather close, though. it is 10x easier to talk to women and i've noticed several traits of mine are regularly assigned to those same women and would be described as "feminine." it's clear to me that regardless of my varied interests that any gender could take part in, i run feminine as a default setting lol.

so, as someone who has a positive connection to certain aspects of masculinity and refers to themselves with he/they pronouns i think i'm at odds with the majority of transfems, but i genuinely feel like the label best represents me. if anyone is curious i can go in-depth or answer questions, i don't mind. hopefully one of ya'll can relate as well.

*I'm agender and I do kind of feel like part of the community – at least it's very dear to me. However, I mostly stick to "nonbinary" or "agender" in order to communicate more precisely, so I don't usually call myself trans.

Disclaimer: I'm sorry if this post is not appropriate for this community. I chose this community because transfem is what I'm most familiar with and what I feel most aligned with because I like to present more feminine. Also, this is a rant so please forgive me if I generalize sometimes. TW: Some light profanity, some very indirect mentioning suicide ("lost").

Hello, everyone. I hope you're having a pleasant day. This post will be largely based off of a 2 am car-ride rant that my transfem best friend (let's call her Anny) was subjected to. She told me I should write it out and post it, so here we are. It's going to be a mess, I apologize in advance.

It hasn't been that long since I found out I don't have a gender. One day I decided to look in the gender-drawer for the first time and it was just empty. Okay seriously, I was always confused as to why people were arguing about gender – I didn't get why people cared that much if someone was trans… they're not affected by it, why do they care? It's just someone's gender. (Being agender and not knowing it really is an interesting experience.)

I don't know where to start so I'll just tell summarize the past 1.5 years for you:

About a year and a half a go, I wasn't yet as close to Anny as I am now. We had been acquaintances for years but never really hung out until we joined the same D&D group. Eventually, I noticed that everyone in our lot was calling her by a nickname instead of her now deadname. I asked a friend about it and they told me that she preferred that nickname but when it comes to pronouns, she's not changing anything yet because the German language sucks. It was only after that pronoun-remark that I noticed that this had something to do with gender. The fact that she didn't use different pronouns due to the language sucking and not her personal preference had me concluding that she did not want to use masculine pronouns anymore but as I wasn't given any preferred pronouns, I decided to just stop using pronouns for her. This still seems nothing but reasonable and simple to me. Just substitute the nickname for all pronouns, done. Easy. I didn't know if she was enby, fluid, or something else and I didn't really care much, either. I just stuck to the nickname and avoided pronouns.

At a birthday party a few months later, Anny and I got to talking and somehow we got to the topic of Reddit. I told her how I had left Reddit a while back and how one of the communities I used to love lurking in was r/traa. I don't even remember how I found that sub but I just loved the wholesomeness and the people being nice and supportive to each other so I would drop in every now and then to just enjoy that. I didn't want to post or comment because I didn't want to intrude as back then, I still thought I was cis.

At that birthday party, Anny and I – along with a few mutual friends – started that D&D group and during one of the early sessions, Anny was browsing r/traa (during the game, how terribly rude of her :3). My oblivious ass asked her "why are you browsing that sub". She responded with "great question, why do you think I'm browsing that sub?"… it took me like 5 minutes to realize what she meant by that… I'm so incredibly dense sometimes… I, again, didn't really give it much thought, though. As it didn't answer my lingering pronoun-question, it didn't seem too relevant to me.

A couple weeks later, during another session, Anny wasn't feeling too well, she asked to stay over at another friend's place that night because she didn't want to go home (her parents are a bit… let's call it Christian when it comes to queer stuff). We got to talking about that a bit and eventually that friend asked if Anny would feel better if we used feminine pronouns for her. Her "well, duh" response was all I needed so I just blurted out "finally, I've been avoiding using pronouns for you for months now, thank you". Her look was pure gold. It was a kind of "Jesus, read the room" and "you sneaky little bastard" at the same time.

Over the course of the next couple of months – in no small part thanks to Anny and her insights and experiences – I came to realize that I was agender which was kind of a puzzle piece that made a lot of things make way more sense and it was also something that allowed her and I to connect on a deeper level and share our perspectives on things like wishing to not have a penis (My whole life I thought it was normal to kind of wish one didn't have one of those. The more you know, I suppose).

Some weeks later, we were all at our prom and around 1:30am, Anny got tired. I decided to drive her home and come back later. Because Anny is pre-transition and wasn't really out at school, she had been deadnamed the whole day. Nonstop. So when I asked her how she was feeling all she said was "I've been deadnamed way too much today."

I don't know what it was but I just got mad. Out of nowhere I just started telling her about how I don't get how her own father – who is aware that she is trans and that she wants to be called by her nickname instead of her deadname – deadnamed her the whole evening. I don't understand how people can have such little respect for others. I also don't understand why people always make such a big deal out of names. People get married, nobody cares. If Michael prefers Mike, nobody bats an eye, but as soon as their precious, fragile, narrow-minded, outdated gender norms get involved, they shut down completely and pretend that their brain capacity is insufficient to remember a person's preferred name. I mean, my dad was raised really conservatively (West Germany in the 70s and early 80s). He's also the most ADD person I know. He can look you straight in the eye and hear none of what you're saying. Even he managed to remember her nickname after hearing it once. He uses it >95% of the time. He even manages the pronouns. He slips up every now and then but corrects himself without anyone needing to say anything. People saying that it's too difficult are usually just jerks who don't respect other people enough to even try.

When I told her that even my dad managed the pronouns about as well as you could hope from someone in their 50s, she said that she doesn't even listen to pronouns anymore because I'm the only person who actually manages to consistently do it right. That broke me. I just started crying. The way she said that. So exhausted from this day, so tired of it all… To be fair, our friends slip up only occasionally. Most of the time, it's fine. However, I could relate a bit because everyone always uses masculine pronouns for me… which technically isn't wrong (I go by all pronouns) but I don't like that it's exclusively masculine pronouns. Though, it was clear to me that I couldn't really fathom the way she must be feeling.

I then ranted about people pretending that switching pronouns is hard but I won't bore you with that, this post is already a fricking essay.

At this point, my subconscious is wondering what my point is. I guess my point is that I want you all to know that you're not a burden. You're not difficult. You're not overreacting when people constantly forget your real name and use your deadname instead. You're going through hardship that most people will never even begin to comprehend the gravity of. I'm really grateful that I get to experience at least a glimpse of what it must feel like because it allows me to be more understanding. When I look through this community and all the other wonderful communities on this instance, like I've been doing for years… I just see so many wonderful people that have so much love to give, so many awesome ideas and thoughts to share. People who get their will to live crushed by people being disrespectful jerks. It pains me so much to think about how many great people we have lost to this nonsense. How many people we have lost to people who get offended by someone not conforming to their idiotic understanding of how humans work.

I said this to Anny that night and I'll say it to all of you: Please, please don't let them win. Please reach out. There are so many organizations dedicated to helping you all. You're worth that. You deserve to be supported. Heck, you can even hit me up if you feel that talking to some genderless blob who's obsessed with Linux and D&D could benefit you. You're all so lovable, please don't hesitate to reach out.

If you read all of this… you have my respect.

Lots of love :3

I recently came to the conclusion that I was definitely supposed to be a woman (yay me). But I've spent the first half of my life trying to suppress that thought, that I hadn't put much thought into what I'd like to be called.

I'm trying to find a name which would suit a relatively butch lesbian with a mischievous personality who was born on terf island to boomer parents in the 80s but also works in Scandinavia. My given name has a female version, but it sounds weird for a Britt.

What made you settle on your names?

Edit: thanks for all the replies. I'm going to try out Kara for a while and see how it resonates. Feel free to suggest similar names or potential middle names (which absolutely should not start with k, by the way).

Well, it's happened. Three months ago, I made a post here asking about how to cope with the wait for surgery (By the way, thank you for all the nice comments. They were very helpful and I regret I just didn't have the energy to reply. But know they were appreciated a lot). I was aiming for January. I prepared all the documents, collected them over months and put in my application for coverage. And today, the answer came back. Denied. I did everything right. All the right documents, all the right doctors. The reason for the denial? They say I need to provide proof for 12 months of therapy. This is an old guideline. The current guideline, which has been in place since 2020 says: 6 months. I paid a therapist out of my own pocket without their coverage for exactly 6 months of therapy. This was about 2000€. And now they, who are literally the institution made for adhering to their guidelines, are disrespecting their own guidelines.

Respectfully, I can't fucking believe it. I read the e-mail four hours ago and I'm still in tears. Of course I'll appeal it. It'll probably work, they're factually wrong. But this delay means I won't have surgery this winter. It'll be summer at least before I have surgery, everything takes ages in this transphobic, terrible system. Initially, I just went to therapy because they made me, because I needed the hours for the application. But this system is making me sick. It's making me mentally ill, it's making me consider suicide. I don't know how to cope with having a penis any longer. The wait until January felt impossible. And now it's postponed, at least months. Maybe years, who knows at this point? The thought of having to endure this body so much longer makes me physically sick. I want to throw up. I can't do this anymore, it's so painful. Honestly, one of the most painful things, if not THE, I've ever experienced.

Another summer with a penis. Another year without being seen as human by dates. Another summer without swimming, without tight dresses, without cute bottoms. Another year of wasting my youth on the most horrifying thing I wouldn't even wish my worst enemy: transition. I know it's an ungrateful thing to say and positivity should be embraced but right now I'm on the ground and I'll just say it: I wish I was cis. I would do anything for it. I'd kill, unironically.

Rant over. I'm sorry, I just had to get this out.