My experiences are pretty similar to yours. I don't enjoy "typical male activities", i don't like my body hair, i don't want to be seen as "strong", i just want to be seen as small and let my hair grow.

Fortunately, you don't have to be "all man" or "all woman". It's fine to not give yourself a label, and just be yourself. That is, in my opinion, the most healthy thing to do, if your circumstances allow it.

I should say, as a trans woman, my experiences are pretty much the same as yours. In some sense I still don't "know" that I'm a trans person, but it seems like my desire to be a woman and my comfort with steps I have taken to become a woman indicate I'm probably trans.

Considering you were raised Catholic, it's hardly surprising you would struggle to conceive of yourself as or accept being trans.

Reading and watching certain things when I was at your point really helped me:

• Gender Dysphoria Bible
• Transition Channel videos
• Whipping Girl by Julia Serano
• Yes, You Are Trans Enough by Mia Violet

These were resources that helped expand my notion of what gender dysphoria could look like. Previously I thought trans women just knew they were girls from very early ages like 3 - 4 years old, and experienced extreme distress from that age on if not allowed to live as a girl, etc. - these resources opened my eyes to the variety of trans experiences and the different ways gender dysphoria can present.

I also personally found it helpful to read science articles about trans people, as it grounded my sense that something is happening biologically and that it's not just "social contagion" or anything like that. To that end:

• Joshua Safer's "Evidence supporting the biologic nature of gender identity" (DOI)
• Joshua Safer's "Etiology of Gender Identity" (DOI)
• the collective research of Daphna Joel and Dick Swaab for the current scientific theories of "brain-sex" (which likely plays a role in gender identity and gender dysphoria):
  • Joel & Swaab, 2019, "The Complex Relationships between Sex and the Brain", (DOI)
  • Joel, 2015, "Sex beyond the genetalia: The human brain mosaic", (DOI)
  • Swaab, 2008, "A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity", (DOI)
  • Swaab, 2000, "Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus", (DOI)
  • Swaab, 1995, "A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality", (DOI)

Reading Swaab's work in particular was eye-opening, since trans women whose brains were autopsied were found to have structures in their brain that were like cis women and not like cis men, even without ever undergoing hormone therapy. While the picture that emerges with later research did not point to something as simple as "male" and "female" brains, it is particularly grounding to me to have empirical evidence like this that lends credibility to our experiences. It really is more accurate to say trans women have a "female brain" than to say trans women have a "mental illness" as though the gender identity were due to delusions or psychosis.

If reading scientific literature is challenging, the famous neuroendocrinologist, Robert Sapolsky, has some talks that summarize the situation:

• Neuro-biology of trans-sexuality: Prof. Robert Sapolsky
• Robert Sapolsky: Brain Gender

Other scientific research that I found helpful early in transition is the empirical evidence that transitioning is actually effective for alleviating gender dysphoria and improving clinical outcomes with very low regret rates. This Cornell University systematic literature review summarizes research done on the effects of transition on well-being, and links to 51 different studies that collectively indicate that gender-affirming care improves the well-being of trans people:

What We Know Project, Cornell University, “What Does the Scholarly Research Say about the Effect of Gender Transition on Transgender Well-Being?”, 2018.

If you want to hear it: you sound pretty trans to me! The real question you should ask yourself is if you’d like to change anything about your gender or presentation. Would you like to experiment with people using she/her pronouns? Would you like to get feminising hormones? Would you like to present feminine more often? Some of these are huge steps and others are easier. It’s difficult to know whether you’re a woman if you don’t have the experience to know what it entails. But it’s clear that you have a desire to present more feminine. I’d say just follow your instincts and experiment in any way you’d like. You might find yourself experimenting more and more until you realise that you are a woman. Or you realise that you love presenting feminine but rather call yourself non binary. Gender is a multidimensional noneuclidean spectrum :) You don’t need to check all boxes on some list to identify as trans. You don’t need bottom surgery to be a woman. Try to free yourself from the limitations and labels that you are so used to. It’s difficult but very liberating.

Crying in bed because I wasn't a girl should have been a definite tell :) But it always went better at some point before it became impossible to hold back so I never sought help. My teens were loops of doubts, then certainty but too scared to talk.

In my later adolescence I realised I (or started to) liked guys, and I was able to to feel better about being one. And I had a few adventures with guys as a guy which felt great and I thus believed that my trans phase had passed, for a few years.

During that time I often described myself as "I don't really care/I could be either, but people say I'm a guy so ok" but I still had a little (repressed?) desire to be seen as a girl. And I was weirdly emotional about being treated as a guy by laws that differentiate between men and women (military service/retirement age)

Then I had to work as a kitchen assistant, mostly with women, and being treated as a non-woman by them felt really bad. (Previously I was in an environment that didn't really feel gendered) And the outfit made me look vaguely feminine and I liked it and awoke my desires to be seen as a girl and experiment with clothing and nail polish.

As I experimented, it completely shattered my egg, I slowly came out to friends, and 14 days ago, started HRT!

Weird right wingers kept going on about trans people, and I wanted to be informed about it and learned a few things about myself in the process.

I genuinely had no idea for most of my life. The signs were there all along but only in retrospect. It took me 2-3 years of questioning before I started transitioning. I was not ever truly certain I was trans until I started HRT, and everything started to feel fine, like genuinely fine. Didn't realize I was depressed from dysphoria my entire life because I had no point of comparison.

I certainly envy the trans people who were able to learn they were trans at an early age. The best time to transition is just before the start of puberty, the second best time is now.

But I don’t experience the sort of revulsion at my genitals that I hear some trans people describe (although I do hate being so hairy).

There's so much variation in experiences. Being trans isn't defined by suffering even if lots of trans people do suffer.

Personally, realized I was NB in my late-20's a couple years ago. At first (like, for 2-3 weeks?) I considered myself agender but didn't identify with the "trans" label. Soon I realized I actually related a lot more to transfem experiences than I expected, so I accepted the trans label. I still like the agender and NB labels, but also consider myself transfem. I don't think of myself as a woman even though I now take E and have nuked my T levels.

I'm trans as fuck, and had a very similar experience to you - right down to identifying as nonbinary for a while. Theres no "right way" to be trans, and like you I don't experience dysphoria from my genitals.

What I can suggest is that if you have people whom you trust and feel safe with, start trying on she/her pronouns with them. Perhaps ask your wife to try referring to you as her wife!

Whatever the outcome, remember that its going to be okay, you are valid, you are worthy of love, and gender is a spectrum.

Hiking in the desert last spring and all the sudden it hit me, I never thought of it before and boom. I considered myself a semi normal guy and never knowingly had any interactions with trans folks until the morning of my outing.

After taking 3 month shots of Lupron for medical reasons for a year and a half, my doctor put me on a 6 month shot, a few weeks later I started having severe anxiety, I worried about everything and everybody, I was tense and emotional, had empathy like I’ve never known, after searching around, I decided I was having female menopause type episodes from having extremely low testosterone. I rode the emotions a few weeks and started feel a little loose physically, and just surfed the waves mentally

While waiting in line to get some direction for my hike I clocked a woman and thought ,Oh she knows what hormones do to emotions wish I could talk to her about it. Of course I didn’t, but I thought about her during the hike. My thinking was, she just said to herself fuck this I’m a girl and did it. I rolled that in my head the rest of the day and pretty much decided that's what I’m going to do. I’m 67, been a happy go luck guy my whole life, I would describe myself as your screwed up relative that never got their shit together but are happy with their life. After I got back home I asked around in the r/ place talked my oncologist into some patches and feel really incredibly grateful to have stumbled into this at the backend of my life.

I think you're overthinking it. Transgender isn't one particular thing, it basically just means not cis (and even then there's people who kinda identify with their AGAB and kinda don't at the same time), so it's impossible to get more specific while still generalizing to all trans people.

Personally, I don't strongly identify with labels, I only really care about labels in how they help me quickly communicate with people.

All of that said, I don’t know what exactly it feels like to be trans, or be a woman, so I don’t know how to compare my experience to how I “should” or “shouldn’t” feel.

I don't think anybody does. But "trans" and "woman" are just labels. I find it's more helpful to think about what you want to do.

I feel like If I had been born as a woman, I would prefer that to having been born male. And if I could flip a switch and instantly be a woman, I would.

You might like to reflect some more on what this implies about your gender.

For most of my life I identified as "just a regular dude... unfortunately". Possibly with a greater-than-usual interest in HRT and trans topics, and a rather persistent fantasy about having a female body.

Then I started briefly questioning, but was still "not trans... unfortunately". The thing that cracked me was seeing egg_irl memes of the "you can just be a girl; there's no entry requirements to be trans" variety. I realized that transitioning was something I desperately wanted all my life but didn't allow myself to consider, and that was that. A very sudden "ohhh shit I am trans" moment. I still doubt whether I'm "really trans", but I sure as hell don't want to stop transitioning!

Anyway, check out the Gender Dysphoria Bible (see the sidebar), stick around and I hope you manage to figure yourself out satisfactorily, whatever you turn out to be.

Told my therapist I had that I was "broken" and had "bad" thoughts of girl clothes. She told me what being Transgender is with love and kindess and acceptance and learned "hey that's me"

Basically one therapy session with a good therapist.

Obligatory "Only you can decide who you are and who you want to be."
The trans community is usually very cautious not to tell other people who and what they are, because that's the negative experience that most of us made: Other people told us who we are and/or who were supposed to be (assigned gender and all that) and it went badly for most of us.

For me personally, I also lacked the language to express my gender feelings when I was young. I was a precocious, sensitive kid that had more female friends than boys usually had. Yet I did not reflect on my gender very much.
Only during puberty did I realize that something was off. I realized that I did not want to grow up to be a man and desired more than anything to be female. Yet I also lacked the language to express myself. I grew up in a small city with no visible queer scene, so I did not really know how to express myself and ultimately surrendered to grow up as everyone expected me to.

But it never felt right. "Maleness" was like clothes that did not fit me, no matter how hard I tried. I often felt like a "fake man" and that I had to perform maleness as much as possible, because people expected it from me and I was not good enough at it.
Meanwhile my desire to be female also never went away. Looking back I now understand that this was gender envy, but in the moment I experienced it as a constant yearning that pulled on me and while it got weaker from time to time, it never fully went away.

My only outlet were games and virtual spaces wherein I usually played female characters. The easiest way for me to lose interest in a game was if it forced me to play as a man.

My egg finally cracked when I realized that my gender envy encompassed trans women too: Why could they have a transition while I did not? Why could they take estrogen while I could not? Why could they wear female clothes, etc. These kind of thoughts ultimately led me to realize that I am trans myself, because I wanted to change my gender so much and I was the only one who could make that happen.

Ultimately my transition was not only an embrace of my own femaleness, but also a rejection of maleness.

WYKYK; "When you know, you know."

Don't rush yourself. Don't let anyone try to crack your "shell" or treat you like an egg if you feel uncomfortable with that. Be yourself and feel it out.

If after hearing a few testimonies and stories from other trans people you personally feel that experience more closely matches yours; by all means don't hesitate to consider yourself trans.

Explore our communities, hear some stories, explore the meanings on your own terms and find what fits!~

Welcome to being Queer/Questioning. <3 Lots of space to explore and even decide you want to venture out to explore under the even wider umbrella of being trans.

So yes; technically you could argue you're trans; even as you are. If that makes you comfortable; do it. If it does not; you don't have to. It's your own labels and your right to self-assign whatever labels you feel fit you best.

Late 20s to early 30s. It was during lockdowns when I wasn't interacting with irl society much - work was all remote, and all my interactions were online. I quickly realized that when I removed the pressure of having to conform to what I thought was expected of me, I was actually a completely different person. I started interacting with more queer people, especially trans individuals, and realized that there were a lot of parallels with how they felt about gender and all the other constructs of society which never really made sense to me. Honestly, I meant sooo many when I started FFXIV.

The idea that I could decide how I wanted to identify and be perceived by people never really occurred to me.

I had always disliked a lot of aspects about myself and tried to be as much of a ghost as possible. It rarely felt like I was living for me. As I slowly started to explore the things I truly liked - cute things, pink things, and soft things - I noticed my views of life started to brighten. I felt more excited about the things I was surrounding myself with, and I noticed people were interacting with me in a friendlier and warmer way. As I started to shine brighter, people around me started to shine brighter, too!

All that said - why didn’t I just lean into identifying as NB or just fully ignore gender as a whole? I did initially, but about those things which I didn’t like about myself - so many happened to be T driven. Thick body and facial hair- no thank you, thick/rough/acne prone skin- please go, body composition- wasn’t really liking how it fit in the dresses/skirts I wanted to wear, overall mindset and emotions (this changed a lot), etc. Obviously, all these things have taken time and additional effort, but it all feels so fulfilling.

I was initially worried about how people in my life would react/treat me, but I decided to start always putting my own feelings and desires first... no one else was going to. I will acknowledge that it's bit easier for me to do that- my circle is incredibly small, I’ve been single for 5-6 years, I was working remotely, and I kind of rarely leave my home.

My question to people - if you had an irl character creator, how would you design yourself? How would you choose to move in the world if there were no expectations?

I don't actually know that I am yet, but I've spent the last decade or so sort of dissociating. I never really liked looking in the mirror, I just see a ghost staring back at me, and I think I would like to look less manly, even if that doesn't necessarily mean like a woman. I joined an LGBTQ+ community and started trying some different gender expressions recently. I bought a skirt and some long socks, I started shaving all my body hair, I've thought about different names. Not a lot of it's stuck, but I do like the way my skin feels shaven. I just still feel like a kind of dumpy mid-30s balding white guy though. I don't even think I look particularly bad objectively, but I do know I personally don't like the way I look now. A friend of mine started drawing a mid-30s tech worker bunny boy who turned himself into a long-haired raver with a fat ass after I started talking about it and now I'm trying minoxidil and I'm hoping to get on Finasteride and maybe E soon, I'm hoping it'll give me nicer hips and a butt, and if I happen to grow (bigger) breasts, well, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Maybe I'll like them, and worst case I can always bind or get a mastectomy.

The more I talk about it, the more I realize the things I say are very eggy, but I don't know if that's actually what it is. Like, I just want to have hair again and feel cute and, for lack of a better term, fuckable, instead of constantly comparing myself to the guy with no life from South Park. I guess we'll see where this goes.

AMAB person here. When I was kid I loved wearing skirts and do makeup at home alone in room. When I was teen and discovered reddit I looked at crossdreser and femboy subreddit and thought they looked cute and I wanted to look like that. I figured out I want to be referred as woman and also there is this whole beef with my penis I just hate it and wish to have vagina. But also I still love being referred to as man that's why for now at least I use bigender term but it might change as I discover myself more or it might not change. I want to have vagina but not necessarily female body, I would love feminine body but also like my masc body except penis of course.

I was always a precocious little kitten and figured out I was enby around age 11.

I never could get comfortable with the idea of manhood and when I got around to examining my feelings I realized I wasn't a woman either. A bit of brute-force introspection eliminated all other possibilities and revealed that a mixed gender suited me best, but I grew up in Texas in the 90's so there were no role models and the very idea of what I was seemed like an unachievable fantasy. I kept those feelings to myself for years. It wasn't until 2018 or so that I met another enby and immediately recognized that part of me in them. That cracked my egg for good, and started me on a project of escaping Texas so I could start hormone therapy.

I feel like If I had been born as a woman, I would prefer that to having been born male

Imo it's better that you focus on what you are now rather than think about all the random possibilities that never happened. Up to you though, I personally don't like thinking about that as ngl I kinda feel the same way.

I don't experience the sort of revulsion at my genitals that I hear some trans people describe

Nothing wrong with that! Some people do feed bad about it, others don't. I've heard countless times from cis women how they wish they could have a penis because its simpler.
I personally don't feel particularly bad about mine other than when wearing tighter clothes.