I guess this won’t be on anyone’s radar who isn’t in Japan, but I saw the new “This Is I” on Netflix. I was pretty apprehensive going in, but it turned out to be IMHO a compassionate treatment of the subject matter.

It could be very triggering though, so be careful if you’re struggling with dysphoria or transphobia.

Who wouldn’t like that?

Surprisingly, an awful lot of men :3 One other factor to consider is how often you think about having a female body. An occasional “heh, that might be cool for a day” when you watch a gender-bending anime, or whenever your mind wanders?

A good way to confront your internalized phobias and biases is to ask yourself, if being a woman sounds good, why haven’t you transitioned already?

A couple of answers I hear a lot from trans-questioning people are:

• “I’m ok with being a man.” ⇨ Does “ok” really mean “ok”, or is it perhaps “I don’t like it, but it’s all I know” (could be repressed dysphoria).
• “Being born a woman would be OK, but I wouldn’t want to be a trans woman” ⇨ This could be internalized transphobia presenting as a fear of not passing.
• “I don’t feel like a woman” ⇨ nobody “feels like” their gender, but you know who wants to be a woman? Women.
• “I’m worried about what family/friends/society would say” ⇨ in other words, I want to transition but other people don’t want me to.

I have a cis woman friend who’s going through menopause, and often complains about symptoms.

Her: Is there nothing I can do about this?
Other friend (cis woman, on HRT for menopause) + me (trans woman, on HRT for girl): ESTROGEN!
Her: Yeah, but… that’s kind of a big step…

It’s not just trans people who are scared to commit, y’all.

Yeah, it sucks missing out on the childhood you wanted. But there’s no reason you can’t do the things now! I know people sometimes look down on the “baby trans” phase, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I love going out in a ridiculous outfit and too much makeup. I even got scolded for wearing a skirt that was too short :3

It’s worth putting in the effort to make friends with more women locally, too. HRT will make it progressively easier as your appearance changes.

Niiice :3

Yay, voice clips! <3

Yay, hormones!

Boobs for me were both faster and slower than I expected. I got buds pretty quickly, and I soon had to be careful what I wore to keep the pointies hidden, but it was about six months before I felt a bra wasn’t optional any more. And then it was a very long wait before I got to “ok, these definitely look like boobs now”. Still hoping for some more volume in the coming years.

Oh, and voice: yeah, I’d get started ASAP. I switched to trying to do a fem voice full-time pretty much immediately, and it was closer to a year before I was reasonably happy with my voice. (It was passable after maybe six months though). It will massively help you pass as a woman, and helped my dysphoria a lot.

Wow, that was something. There are things in there that I don’t really relate to, for which I’m thankful. I guess my response to the self-doubting voice is usually “yeah, this might all be a huge mistake. So what? yolol”

But that section on looking back at the kid I supposedly was, and not feeling any connection to them; not really knowing how I managed to get this far, seeing the calendar skip from decade to decade… yeah, I felt that. “I didn’t want to live until I came out”: ain’t that the truth.

For me, “I go by <name> now” was enough, since I don’t like to make a big thing of it. Usually my appearance is enough to get the message across, but if I need to my usual lines are either “I’ve joined the girls’ team” or “I gave up being a man”.

Woah, you’re gorgeous! Keep on being yourself <3

Yes, that’s exactly what I felt too: peace. I’d been living with feelings of “something’s missing/wrong” and “if only” that got stronger and stronger until I finally figured it out, then… silence. Just regular old me.

I was always curious what it “feels like” to be a girl, but then I realized that (presumably) everyone is “just me”, going through their lives. And since I was apparently a girl (without knowing it at first), that means I already know what it feels like: it’s how I feel.

I still struggle at times to honestly accept myself as a woman. Sure, I want to be one, and (most of) the people around me accept me as one, but there’s still that little voice that says “you’re faking it.” And quelling that voice is, for me, the hardest part of transitioning.

Hi there! My egg cracked at 39, and I was also extremely worried about how things would turn out. But I also knew that I had no real choice: it was transition or bust.

Think about how you’d feel growing old as a man. Is a little less upheaval worth giving up your dream?

Some of the things I worried would happen if I transitioned did happen: turns out I’m not too bothered. Most of the things didn’t happen. A lot of really awesome things that I didn’t think of did happen.

It’s in the same spot, but a different orientation and thus totally invisible. At least, that’s what always happens to me.

Ahaha, oh yes. We learned about castrati in music lessons, and all I could think was “that sounds awesome”

It’s a beautiful feeling when everything is nicely encapsulated.

Ah, that’s a good one! Two of mine that spring to mind:

• My “fetish” for shaving off all my body hair. I had no idea why I was doing it, just that it felt really good.
• When I first went to school, all the girls had pierced ears. So of course I asked if I could get mine pierced too, and was told no. That led to decades of being massively anti-piercings, because, it turns out, if I couldn’t have them then no one could. When my egg cracked and I realized I was just jealous and didn’t have to follow the instructions my parents gave my six-year-old self, I immediately went out and got earrings.

EDIT: how could I forget? When I was about 11 I was convinced that I was going to grow boobs and could get transferred to the girls’ school instead. No dysphoria here, totally cis behavior.

I found I didn’t have the bandwidth to feel (or perhaps notice?) dysphoria about certain things until I’d taken care of the “higher priority” stuff first.

Hi Domi! Welcome to the club <3

うん、今度是非！よろしく〜

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