Key

Did a test and came back covid positive. This **** sucks.

Queen Boo

YOU'RE TRANS TOO? F*ck yeah.

I wish my timing was better because I'm pretty sure I'm balding, I have a pretty noticeable bald spot on the top of my head and I've just recently noticed it, it motivated me to make the HRT appointment sooner than I had planned because I was going to have some dental work done first (estrogen increases your sensitivity to pain right?) but I'll take tooth pain over going bald, f*ck that sh*t.

I hope I experience some regrowth in the following months.

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Synthgirl

Yep! Discovered myself in 2004, been living openly as a trans woman pretty much ever since.

I'm not actually sure on the pain thing, my skin is softer and I lost a hell of a lot of muscle mass and physical strength. But to be fair my pain tolerance has always been awful so I probably just never noticed any difference.

Queen Boo

Beggers can't be choosers, I'll take what I can get.

Keffals was blessed with those Italian genes of course she was gonna end up with big bazookas.

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Queen Boo

Oh wow. Is it rude to ask how old you are? Because you look around the same age as me, I'm in my late 30s.

I came out as trans in 2013, I was trying to get on HRT way back then but a whole bunch of stupid family drama sh*t happened and I had to move to a place where there were no resources for trans people at all, no one to help me or guide and so I spent 10 years just hating myself and feeling hopeless, all because no one told me Tenncare covers HRT a thought that never occured to me in all of that time until just a few months ago for whatever reason.

I feel like such an idiot.

Anyway you look amazing and I wish I had the courage to confront my feelings and come out sooner like you did, but it's too late to cry about that now, I'm just so happy I'm finally doing this.

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Synthgirl

Thank you! I'll be 34 this July.

I feel you on the family stuff, mine were not the most supportive when I came out in high school. They were polite about it but still tried their darnedest to convince me that it was just a phase. That stalled me from actually getting on HRT for a while, and even up until 2016 I was still boymoding at work.

I'm so happy for you! You will be so much happier presenting your true self, and those positive feelings and gender euphoria will snowball fast, trust me. After I got on HRT and found a supportive job, it felt like I was finally living life to the fullest, like I was really living rather than just existing.

I wish you all the best!

Queen Boo

Thank you very much.

You're about the same age as one of my brothers, he is very supportive btw.

So if I did my math right you came out when you were around 14? Damn. I wish I had myself figured out at that age but also that had to be really hard to come out when you're in high school.

Glad you made it through, you're a trooper.

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Synthgirl

Yeah, 14-15. It's actually kind of a funny story. Growing up I never once thought of myself as a boy. I never had any interest in "boy things" and always questioned why there was such division between boys and girls. I wasn't sure I was a girl either, but I knew with certainty that I wasn't a boy.

In September 2004 my high school had an anti-bullying seminar thing where my principal said something along the lines of "this school will not tolerate bullying of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people".

That was the first time I had ever heard the word transgender. I searched on the internet for it and I was immediately overcome with emotion. All my life I had no idea there were people who changed their birth gender, and I instantly knew this was what I was feeling. I don't know what would have happened if that principal hadn't piqued my interest on that day, it's like fate, or something. I began to proudly say to my friends that I wanted to just not be a boy and be a girl.

I got some **** for it, but overall my friends were more supportive than my family. I think it helped that I live in a fairly liberal city and hung out with the alternative kids, I was very much what you'd call an emo kid back then. A lot of my other friends ended up being queer too, one came out as a trans man not long after I came out. Mostly people at my high school just thought I was weird, gave me a confused glance, and then went back to ignoring me. Being trans was way, way less known about back then.

It's been a crazy ride for sure.

Queen Boo

My introduction to trans people was the movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and as horribly transphobic as that movie is it was the first time I thought to myself "wait a minute, you can become a woman even if you were born with (as Ace would say) Captain Winky?" and I would have been about 8 years old at the time.

I also remember watching all those trashy talk shows that have trans people on and they were always treated like some sideshow but it still stirred my imagination, especially when I saw trans people who could pass as cis.

Then puberty happened and I just bottled all that sh*t up and tried to affirm my masculinity in pretty embarrassing ways for like the next 10 years.

And then in the late 00s I discovered websites like YouTube, Tumblr and Reddit that exposed me to other trans people and it was then that I started becoming increasingly fascinated with the subject while still denying I was trans myself because if I was trans I would have figured it out sooner right? The more and more obsessed I became the harder it was to deny my true feelings.

There's an old poll I made way back in 2010 where I asked Music Banter members if they were satisfied with their gender, I remember being upset that so many female members said they weren't and so many guys said they were, I think a lot of those answers may have had more to do with gender roles than dysphoria, but I was just flabbergasted that anyone would PREFER to be a man, all the while denying I was trans.

It's painful to look back at that thread, I was still using pretty transphobic language at the time.

And now I think about how much of that repression had to do with the deeply conservative culture that I grew up in, and how things could have been different if I was born somewhere more accepting.

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The Batlord

If it makes you feel any better I will always see you and respect you as an autist.

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