I've never really felt fully comfortable being open about myself on big platforms like Reddit, but on here it feels a lot safer, especially since adopting better digital hygiene.

So I'm just kinda saying it explicitly for the first time that I'm a trans girl. I like myself, I like my body, even if it's not perfect yet, and I like being pretty. I'm even slowly coming out more and more in real life too! Idk, everyone congratulate me or something haha

Things are hard, but I like how accepting the federated side of the internet has been so far to me.

I keep injecting into the wrong spot. Usually how I know is it feels harder to push the plunger down on the syringe. And I bleed a little upon removal. How I find the spot is I feel different spots on my leg to see if it flexs, I find the spot and mark it. Disinfect it and inject. Usually turns out fine but these past two times I've been bleeding and harder to press down the syringe (as stated) and I don't know what to do.

Please amplify and contribute!

Paypal: https://ko-fi.com/astradiayt

(Reposted after verifying with Moderators.)

Ammount of courage I got from comments on my first post here is insane, without that I probably would never do what I did. This will be a long post with a bit of rambling.

While I was alone at home I put on my mom's bra and got some mixed feelings. Bra was great and I'd like to wear those things but it made me feel dysphoric because my body is too big for it. I wanted to put on more of her clothes (dress or something like that) but decided to don't do it in fear that she will relize someone picked up her clothes. This is my first time actually thinking about fashon, normally I just wear clothes that is comfortable and I hate amything formal (even jeans are too much for me).

After that I installed FaceApp and used gender swaping filter on one photo of me. Normally I don't take photos of myself, never saw the appeal, but I love this edited photo. When I look at it it feels like that's who I am. It also looks like I'm wearing a dress there because wind changed the shape of shirt on my arm and rest of it is covered by hair, it made me love the photo even more when I saw it. It also helped me relize one important thing about my beard. I never shave because not having beard feels so wrong but now I relized that feminine face looks even better. Only thing I don't like about the photo is jaw, it still looks musculine.

I'm also playing games more than before, they allow me to feel more feminine. I even started using feminine forms of verbs and adjectives (this doesn't exist in english) while playing making me feel even more feminine.

So yeah, there is no way to deny it at this point. I'm a girl. I'm slowly accepting that. It feels great and awful at the same time. Can't wait to see what future holds for me after this. This is a big weight off my shoulders. I didn't pick a feminine name yet, any tips on that would be really helpful.

I'd like to come out to people in my life but it isn't safe. In country where I live most people are very religious and everything that has any connection to LGBT is considered bad. I pretty much know how my parents would react to this. When I came out as atheist to them they were devastated. We had a long talk where I tried to explain my position but they couldn't understand. After that we never talked about that and they behave like they don't know anything. Best case scenario with this would probably be them deadnaming and missgendering me. With other people it's even worse. Sometimes I hear people talking about stoning LGBT people to death so I'm scared that coming out would put my life in danger.

I thought about HRT for few weeks already and it's something I deffinitely want. From what I could find on the internet it looks like our gender affirming care is decent but there are two problems I see with it. First is that there aren't many specialists and literally all of them are in the capital. That basically means that if I went to therapist there is a really high chance that they won't have any experience with trans people. Second problem is that hormones for feminizing HRT aren't available in my country and our health care system doesn't cover them so buying from other countries is only option and it's more expensive. Going to another country is also option, I actually tought about that even before questioning my gender because of me being an atheist in a very religious conutry, but it looks like that would mean waiting more to start HRT.

I basically decided to wait untill I'm not dependant on my parents to come out and start medical transition, it's safest option and things may change to the better in near future. At least I don't have much problems with dysphoria at the moment, I mostly just feel euphoria, but I'm aware that dysphoria will become worse over time.

Thanks to everyone who read all of this, it means much to me. I just wantend to share this to someone and this is safest place to do it.

I can't wait!!! I really hope everything goes smoothly and I can get started on HRT ASAP

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to quickly add that the finalized format for requesting engagement has been decided. A commenter in the other thread suggested a similar format. (Thank you @Kayday@lemmy.world)

At the start of the body of your post, not in the title, the first line should look like the following.

[Requesting Engagement from _________]

For clarity purposes, this is the official way to request specific engagement groups. I'll respect other methods, but this way, it keeps things nice and transparent.

Few days ago I made a post here about me questioning my gender identity and comments there gave me a courage to experiment a bit. I decided to try playing some video games as female characters to see how it goes. I found that to be safest way to do it because it isn't about changing my appearance. Results are different than I'd like to admit but I will share them (as well some other ways I'll experiment with gender in the future) as a way of documenting.

I wanted to start with something more subtle so I picked Pokemon, more specifically Emerald version that I didn't play before. Gender of a character doesn't do much to change experience since it's a pretty old game. Most notable thing that I got from here is little animation before each battle where your characters moves on the screen, it felt kinda nice to have a girl there.

Second game was Bayonetta. This was my first time playing this. Only reason why I picked this is because I knew that main character is a female and I wanted to try it. Unlike Pokemon it is much more obvious that main character is female so my feelings about that were stronger too, it was pretty comfortable. Feelings I got from playing as a female character were actually the best part of the game for me (at least from a small part that I played).

Last game I picked is Palworld. Unlike first two games I already played this one for about 2 hours total with a male avatar so this was a great way to compare expirience. To be honest, it was better playing as a female and I got more motivation to play the game again. Gameplay itself was pretty much the same but with that one change it felt better. I deleted my first world with male avatar and will continue playing on this new one.

While doing all this I remembered few games where I already used female characters for pretty much no reason but didn't think about it until now.

In Mario Kart Wii I always use Daisy. Best character and vehicle combinations in this game use Funky kong and Daisy with Funky kong being better one. Funky kong was my first main but at one point I wanted to try Daisy and continued to use her, she felt better to play but I couldn't explain why.

While I was playing Super Mario Bros Wonder I switched my character to Daisy at one point for no reason and completed one world with her, returning to playing Luigi after that. In Mario games where you can use more characters I normally just pick my favorite one and use it entire game, Luigi is my favorite character from Wonder's roster and I'm not a Daisy fan so this didn't make any sense at the time.

When I played one mobile gacha game I mostly used female characters. My character choices were based on the playstyle and I used some male characters too but something always felt kinda off with them.

What I got from all this is pretty interesting and something I didn't expect to this degree. Honestly, I have a hard time seeing myself picking a male character in the future in any game where you have choice. And I can say for certain that there is no sexual attraction here (like playing a female character just to looks at her but), while playing there weren't any thoghts like that and I don't feel any kind of attraction towards fictional characters. Combining all of this with me having few experiences that I can describe only as physical dysphoria in those few days things become much clearer. Next step for me will be to try using she/her pronouns online and see how that goes but I want to wait a bit so my brain can process everything. While I'm aware that this showed that probability of me being trans is really high (maybe even 100%) I still can't admit that to myself, all of this is just too mindblowing to proces.

Just want to note ahead of time, yes I'm in an enormous amount of therapy already

Nothing in particularly spicy detail but topics and possible triggers include: Surgery, breakups, alcoholism, sex, generally poor mental health

I'm having surgery in June which I'm very excited about but also it's a big thing to be going through and I've needed a lot of emotional support. I spent the last few years building up my social circle and being in a vibrant polycule. In the last year though I've managed to go through 5 breakups, 4 of which were very long term, and now a divorce. This most recent breakup has been so hard on me, I was starting to heal from my paranoia I'd get dumped out of nowhere, the day I finally couldn't hold it in any more and was going to tell them I loved them they broke up with me before I had the chance. I don't have any partners left, I've only got a couple friends left one of them is in a different state. I spent years lining up my social circle with a lot of care and now that I need it most it's just crumbles. This recent breakup was kinda my last hope to have a grounding intimate relationship through surgery. They were such a lucky find and everything I've been hoping for and missing and I was healing so much pain just being around them but that's all gone now. There's only like 10 weeks before surgery and last time I tried finding anyone it took months of heartbreaking work. I don't do well without physical comfort, I'm back to sleeping only a couple hours a night, I'm losing weight again really quickly, I can feel my body falling apart from the stress

I'm doing what I can to find people, going to bars even though I've been sober for almost three years now (I'm getting Shirley Temples so I feel less out of place), I've completely gone through multiple dating apps, I even went to a sex club for the first time the other day which was kinda magical but didn't help with a lot of what I'm going through. I'm scared something is going to go wrong with surgery and I feel a major urge to use what I've got while it is still here. I'm also not very attracted to other trans women which I feel ostracizes me from the local trans community. Often the expectation is because I'm into women and I'm trans I should make exceptions on my genital preferences for trans women; this has caused a major disconnect with how I'm able to socialize with the local trans community. It's so difficult to find people I match well with physically and emotionally and I've lost everyone I spent years finding. I was really hoping to have an intimate relationship to ground me before and after surgery and to have a trusting relationship be there while I'm learning my new body.

My tranniversary is coming up soon too. The last couple I had were filled with people and they were so special. This one I knew there wouldn't be very many people so I made plans with my now ex, we were going to do something out of town just us so I could get away from the bad feelings. Now I guess I get to celebrate my tranniversary alone, the one a month before surgery.

I don't know how I'm going to keep doing this. After surgery instead of being in a caring environment I get to split finances in the divorce and move into an apartment likely by myself maybe with total strangers. I'm completely burnt out at work, at life, I feel cut off from people and now I have major trust issues. I honestly don't know how I've gotten this far without picking up drinking again. Every day I want to nose dive off the wagon.

I'm so hurt and scared and don't think 10 weeks is enough time to figure out how not to be. I know going to clubs and stuff trying to hook up probably isn't good for me but I don't know how to stop this empty pain in me without human comfort

Hii cuties! I am currently going through quite the amount of evil disgusting and bad dysphoria, so I would really like to distract myself from myself right now... Even though I am not a fan of consumerism, this is the one time I feel it is appropriate to consume some media. I do have a homebrewed switch and a computer running Debian (with wine, so it can run windows games). I am a fan of rhythm games and cozy games like stardew valley (not a shooter kind of person).

EDIT: I am also a huge fan of games like outer wilds, cuz like wow that game is good. Also I like the magical parts of Terraria aaaaand floating islands are cool... Also I do have a VR headset. There, my infodump is completed now.

Not like for dating, I think I'm pretty far from that more like friends

I was thinking in activities like hiking to meet persons

title. it cleared up a few things for me, including my doubts. I'll still wait a bit before acting on it, but I'm pretty much an entirely cracked egg now (idk the terms really well lol)

It's been around a month since I started questioning my gender. I'm really confused on all of this, seeing a therapist would help but that's not an option for me at the moment (don't want to go into details about that here). Biggest source of confusion for me is the fact that there are some strong signs that I'm trans but at the same time I don't feel like a woman (nor anything othet than a man). Does this happen to trans women before egg crack or any form of transitioning? This question is a huge roadblock for me at the moment in terms of questioning, it feels like I won't get anywhere with this without finding amswer to it. It probably won't be final answer to everything but even if I'm trans transitioning would't be safe for 4-5 years so I have enough time to explore my identity.

Edit: Thank you all for responding, it's really helpful. Now I'm a bit more sure that I'm trans but I'll try to experiment in a safe way until I'm able to talk with therapist about this.

I recently had an injection that seemed to go wrong (CW: blood, I inject EV subq and I hit something like a capillary, there was a lot of blood and it bruised badly afterwards). Within a couple days I felt unusually dysphoric as a result of what I assume was a failure for the oil to depot and slowly release over time.

I get these "dysphoric thoughts" that maybe the estrogen is causing the problems, that I don't have objective proof that I'm trans, etc. Lots of doubt, paranoia, and increasing amounts of anxiety and irrational fear (about transition, but also in general, e.g. thinking spiders are in my bed), and I start to experience depression and anhedonia (things aren't as pleasurable, everything feels pretty flat emotionally, I just feel "bad").

Of course when I inject again and it goes well, I feel much better and I forget about these problems.

I was just wondering if anyone has advice on how to deal with dysphoria when there are gaps in the HRT. Obviously in the long term, surgery will fix the hormone issue and I suspect that will fix this problem. Until then, though, I am stuck in a rather fragile place where I feel normal (even good, even amazing) when my estrogen levels are high and suppressing my testosterone. Any small slip in that and I barely function as a person.

Before HRT I would just do whatever I could to increase mental well-being:

• physical exertion (aerobic exercise, weightlifting, etc.)
• going outside and getting sunshine
• keeping up with hydration
• keeping good sleep hygiene (sleeping enough, going to sleep at the same times, etc.)
• meditation every day

But now it feels harder for me to "bootstrap" when there are gaps in HRT and my hormones aren't right, it's like I'm no longer used to how hard it was before.

Anyway - any tips or thoughts, would like to hear other's experiences.

This last weekend, my friend encouraged me to try learning puppy dog eyeliner since he thought it complemented my eye shape. I'd never used liquid liner before, and wow, it is tough to master lol.

Trying to achieve this look quickly became my Dark Souls; get off work, sit at vanity, get ass metaphorically kicked SO hard, wipe off, repeat.

Last night I finally got something mostly symmetrical and clean, and I'm really happy with it! Feeline quite pleased overall. Just wanted to share!

Hiya ladies,

With my hair growing, nails manicured, and eyebrows shaped, it's going to become harder and harder to boymode inconspicuously around family or friends (only my partner knows). On the other side of that, I'm nowhere near passing or even presenting femme in public, which makes the idea of coming out quite scary as they're seeing masculinity when I'm declaring femininity.

Part of me wants to wait like two years and then one day suddenly appear as my new completely feminine (hopefully beautiful!) self without any warning or advance notice! So people see the best version of myself, rather than seeing the mid-transition mess I am right now (or pre-transition mess I was!). But realistically I know that's not gonna work!

So I'd love to hear some coming out stories and when in your transition you decided it was right for you! And how those you came out to responded, if you're comfortable sharing that!

Over the years, I've seen many folk talking about their relationship with femininity and how it relates to their transition and to their sense of identity, of who they are.

I've never understood it though. I don't feel like I have a relationship with femininity, or at least, nothing beyond pragmatic necessity. It doesn't relate to my sense of identity or who I am. In many ways, it feels like an obligation, rather than a source of empowerment or self understanding.

So, I'm curious how it works for other folk who find empowerment in it. What does it mean to you? How did it help you find yourself? How do you relate to femininity now vs earlier in your life?

Edit - To add some context. I'm 7 years transitioned, and "post transition" for want of a better term. I'm quite comfortable with my own relationship (or lack of it) with femininity. This is more an exercise in trying to understand different perspectives :)

So, I was born(not literally) furry af, a few days ago finally got to "fuck it! Let's do it" and used some depilatory cream to remove basically everything from the hips up.

It's a bit weird, definitely different, but I love it! Haven't had any comments so far, still a tiny bit nervous about that. But also kind of more of a "who gives a fuck?" mindset. Wifey has definitely admitted to liking my arm freckles being more visible, which feels awesome af too!

I'm not convinced its100% related, but I've also been feeling better about myself, which is also awesome! I remember the past few(idk) years looking into the mirror some night and just thinking "I really don't like you/the way you look" but never really knowing why. Lately, I don't have that as much, and sometimes think I'm getting small glimpses of a woman in there!

It's different. It's terrifying. It's awesome.

Where are all my transhet sisters?

I love the queer community and I feel like the more I work on myself, the less accepted I will be as a queer person.

For example, I joined a queer friend-finding app recently which didn't have an option to label myself heterosexual. At first I went stealth and didn't list my sexuality, and I got lesbians calling me a tease. I made a public post about being transhet and I mostly got messages from weird cis men.

I'm going to look for friends only under the trans umbrella for now, online and irl.

To that end: I like pop music, knitting, and politics. Please tell me your favorite online communities and people to follow!

I just wanted to let everyone know that there is also general trans community here on Blahaj in case you were unaware. There are some additional resources you can find on there.

!trans@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Im really sorry for spamming this wonderful community, Please don't be mad at me for wasting space in your thread 🥺

I just wanted to make people aware that I created a Harmreduction community on this instance(!harmreduction@lemmy.blahaj.zone) because I really think its something we need here, many trans people are turning to drugs, personally, I know more friends who are on "hard drugs" than are not, so I wanted to make a space on this instance for people to safely talk about harmreduction, reddit can be quite toxic and I feel the atmosphere here might be alot better and the people giving advice might be alot more informed already.

If you feel you can advice people, need advice or just occasionally enduldge, please join!

Also I am always there for anybody who needs advice, I am an intravenous polydrug user, amateur chemist, know a decent bit about injecting hormones right and even though I have puppy eyes, I don't bite :)

Lots of love!, Xea

and this popped into my head. As a friend said, it's confusing and scary but ignoring just makes you feel more confused and scared, and that's so accurate.

Maybe this isn't the best place for this, maybe it is?

I've been thinking of changing my workout routine, but I'm not sure how?

For literally at least half of my life I've focused more on building muscle. Now I'm wondering, how can I workout and keep as much strength as possible, but lose some mass? I mean, I'm not extreme bodybuilder, but I'm nowhere near afab size.

Is it possible (pre-hormone) to mostly keep streng, but lose mass? I wish a lot of me was smaller, especially neck, shoulders, thighs, and belly. Not totally sure how(or if) I can make changes pre-hrt to get more feminine? I don't want to lose too much strength, but I'm fairly big so I'd like to lose some mass.

I guess most of my routine is 3 sets of 8-12 reps in various exercises focusing on larger groups of muscles(e.g. Push-up, pull-up, - dips...)

Edit: not sure if it was clear enough, I'd love to lose some mass/size, but as much as possible, not lose strength. Does that make sense? I totally get there is a tradeoff, but I'm not sure how to switch up working out to lose mass? I think I'd like to be smaller (help me to pass?) but I feel like any strength training at all is inherently somewhat bulky? At least from a feminine pov?

Join me on the path to Twilightenment.

For those of you worried about testosterone levels, or who have been told that they aren't trans and "just have low testosterone" or something similar, I thought I would take the chance to show my pre transition T levels.

The image shows the average testosterone levels for cis men, by age. That upper red line is the 97.5% percentile line, meaning that 97.5% of cis men have T levels below this rate. And if you look, there I am, above that line!

Yet, I transitioned 7 years ago now, and I'm still here :)

MtF HRT Week 3 - My Experience

Week 1/Background -> https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/8767449

Week 2/Last Week -> https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/9074332

Dosage:

4mg Estradiol

100mg Spironolactone

Physical effects:

I have been dealing with some acid reflux, likely from my earlier stress. That ended up dominating how I felt physically this week, and has made for a very uncomfortable week. I believe it also started to affect my inner ear, and was causing me vertigo and lightheadedness, particularly after getting up in the morning. I am now on Prilosec, it seems to be helping quite a bit, but it has taken some time to heal and start feeling ok again.

My chest has been feeling slightly more sensitive, nothing significant or externally visible, but noticeable.

Mental effects:

I've been a little more down this week, but attribute that mainly to how I've been feeling physically. I am finding myself strongly motivated to accomplish more and explore life more, but have been relatively unable to due to the vertigo. Hopefully I am getting past that now.

I had my first appointment with my primary care Dr Monday, I was quite nervous about that. My provider does not have a good record on trans issues, and I was concerned how my Dr would respond. I was worried he would try to convince me some of my other issues were being caused by the hormone change, or refuse to treat me. Things ended up going pretty well instead. He was understanding, asked some basic questions about how my sodium and potassium were being monitored, and moved past it. I don't foresee any issues going forward with him, so that was a relief. We have decided I should resume the Methylphenidate for my ADHD, but at a significantly reduced dosage. I was on 54mg daily before HRT, but that almost immediately felt like way too much. I will be starting back on 27mg, and seeing how that works for me now. Hopefully I can report back next week on that.

My competitiveness continues to decline. I am finding myself worrying a lot less about how I compare to others and instead just wanting to be the best me I can be. That has been a welcomed change, and seems to be improving my communication and relationships across the board. I feel more genuine in my interactions, like I'm more in control of how I interact with others, and just calmer in general in social situations. I have always felt like I've had relatively severe social anxiety, that's not gone completely, but it's so much easier to manage than it was. For example, I received a last minute invitation to dinner from some family, and was able to just say "yes" to it, get ready, and go. The worry and fear just didn't seem to present itself like it always has in the past, instead of feeling anxious about having to see everyone, I felt excited! That was really nice.

Discussion:

I'd like to start adding a topic of discussion each week, if you have any suggestions for good topics in future posts, message me and I will include them. This week, I'd like to talk a little about how this affects things with our partners/close relationships, how we manage that, and how that changes as we move forward.

Do those close to you know the real you? How did those close to you react when you told them who you are? How have your relationships changed over time as a result of coming out? What unique challenges do our relationships face?

My wife of 10 years has supported me and been by my side through everything since I first came out to her a little over a year ago, but it also has been extremely challenging for both of us, and has put some strain on our relationship. She was overwhelmed, and unsure how to handle things or really even how she felt about it for quite a while.

At first she was a little angry about it, and blamed me for not telling her about this sooner, and "lying" to her about who she was marrying. This was not fair to me at all, but also seemed like a reasonable feeling for her to have. She was quite shocked at first, and it really tested our connection and felt like we were close to failing a few times.

It's true who I am now is not exactly who she thought I was, but it took more than I wanted to convince her that despite that, I am still me. I tried to help her understand that all the things she loved about who I am weren't changing, that instead what was changing was the things neither of us liked about me. All she could see at first though was that the man she fell in love with wasn't the woman I wanted to become now. She supported me anyways though, it was hard on her at times, but she never stopped trying.

There has been some conflict around it feeling like I'm challenging her own femininity. I am far more girly and feminine than her, and it seemed for a bit that it was really hard for her to feel secure in her own womanliness in a way. It was hard for her to feel comfortable helping me with some of the things I was asking for help with, like makeup or shaving, I believe partially because I was excited about those things, and to her they were more just annoying things she had to do than fun exciting stuff. She still helped as much as she could though, and taught me far more than she will ever realize.

There was, and still is, lots of confusion around what that means in regards to both of our sexual orientations. Were we suddenly lesbians? What did that mean for us? How would others react to that? Over time I think we have realized labels aren't important. I love the person she is, she loves the person I am, and that is truly all that needs to matter for us to want to be together.

Our biggest issue though, has been around encouragement. Knowing that it was causing her stress and discomfort early on when I expressed my femininity around her, it was very difficult for me to feel ok with pushing that on her. I was desperate for her to help me feel ok with who I am and what I want. I asked her many times to encourage me, to tell me she wants me to express myself, but she was unable to. It was very difficult for her to suggest I work towards what she thought she didn't want, but I was putting it almost entirely on her to tell me when it was ok to be myself and when it wasn't. She never wanted that control, but I didn't want to make her uncomfortable. We fought far more often than I wanted to around this, and I was quite worried that we would never get through it.

It wasn't until I realized that I can't wait for someone else to tell me it's ok to be myself that things changed. I realized I was asking her to do exactly what I was fighting against, that I was still valuing myself through the eyes of others, and asking them who it was ok for me to be, and when. I don't want ANYONE telling me who I have to be though, that's the entire point of my transition, finding who I am and learning to love that.

The only way forward was to accept that being true to myself was more important than anything, that if there were people in my life unwilling to accept me for myself, they shouldn't be in my life. So I made an appointment with Planned Parenthood to discuss HRT. That was terrifying, I was very concerned about how she would respond, and at first she seemed hurt I didn't involve her in that decision. I couldn't though, the only person that can decide who I am is me. She came with to my appointment though, she was by my side as I finally started looking for help with this, she held my hand as I told the Dr I struggle with gender dysphoria.

Things have improved, a lot, since I made that decision. She has since realized she was still somewhat in denial of the reality of all this, and me taking the initiative and making an appointment forced her to face that and accept it. Our relationship is finally feeling somewhat stable again, and our communication around all this has gotten much better. It still not always easy, but it's easier, and that is making it possible to grow together again.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have someone as strong as she is by my side, and look forward to learning more about ourselves and finding new ways to explore our love for each other.

I never believed any of this was possible, yet here I am doing it. Find support, reach out, you are less alone than you think.

Melissa