I recently met a guy who is really similar to me, doesn't want body hair or muscles, gets mistaken for a girl or for a 16 year old boy while he's 19 (me too but I'm 20), we even used to have similar masculine hobbies: liking cars, playing need for speed, customizing die cast models. He never crossdressed and it took a long time to come out to me and he told me that he started having an interest in feminine clothing at 12-13 (I started at 11-12) but never crossdressed due to embarrassment, as the conversation proceeded he started saying ambiguous things and I started thinking he could be mtf and we both said stuff like "I don't want to look like "a transvestite" when I'll be 40" and right after talking about clothes he told me "seeing a girl and not knowing" and I completed the phrase with "if you want to be with her or you want to be like her" and he replied "yup", I repeatedly told him "hmm... you could be mtf... or maybe just a crossdresser... you should tell a psychologist these things, you know..." and he was like "nahh, I don't give these things too much importance" "I dislike becoming a masculine man but if it happens whatever.." and lastly he asked me "what do you think about all of this?" and I replied "well.. my first impression is that you could be a repressed mtf... well you could even be just a crossdresser... but..." and he told me "ok, the truth is that I'll be on hrt 6 months from now, my gender dysphoria is diagnosed" I had a panic attack, I empathized so much with this person and I was like "so guys like me exist" to find out she wasn't a guy at all, the only difference in our experiences is that she repressed these feelings till this year and avoided masturbation while I embraced crossdressing and the first time I masturbated it was pillow humping (which I'll do from that day till now) and I was having autogynephilic fantasies (which I still have to this day), now it seems to me that I'm clearly mtf and it took a person very similar to me to realize... Idk I liked being an androgynous crossdresser, I liked having a delicate face and long hair but a flat chest but now my chest got some muscles and I hate them, I'm even dating a girl who is into crossdressers and androgynous guys, she is bi tho, I thought I was going to get my place as a lucky crossdresser but nope, now it seems that I'm just a transgirl and it's true, I don't want to grow up into a manly man, I thought I was going to grow up as a sort of David Bowie but no one knows and I can't hope in something i don't know... and now it looks like that the genderfluid/androgynous male thing was just a façade that hid being mtf from myself, the agp does nothing but support this theory in my opinion... maybe if I really was a little bit male I would masturbate normally and would have less of these fantasies, which slightly decreased recently but are still very strong, I noticed that some people tend to stop crossdreaming while approaching their first twenties, I know a girl who used to crossdream but now doesn't from a long time and she is sure this began because of yaoi, and it began around the same age of my fantasies but she has 0 dysphoria and crossdressed very rarely, it's also that she likes fashion so a masculine outfit doesn't have to be related to these fantasies, I guess it was just a fantasy for her, I still like to dress like a boy and call myself one (?) but it's like I'm ok with being a boy but I don't want to grow up into a man, physically, I used to like my ephebic body, I never wanted it to change but it is starting to and I don't know what to do, maybe I should get on hrt too... it saddens me tho... I was enjoying my time as gender non-conforming
P.S.: getting on hormones for life and surgeries doesn't really excite me, maybe a light facial feminization, eh I luckly have an already androgynous face, but the eyebrow ridge, not the ridge itself actually, more like the forehead kinda sucks, so... I could polish that little detail, maybe the chin too, even tho it's not too big and it's kinda round-ish
Just because she defined herself in terms of being a trans woman it doesn't mean you have no choice about how you define yourself. The gap between non binary and binary is actually quite small and many people fall in the middle somewhere. I've read stories by genderfluid people that could have easily been written by a trans woman and I've known trans women who could just as easily labeled themselves genderfluid. This is really up to you to decide and depends heavily on what feels right to you. That being said, regardless of how you label yourself, your body will change as you grow older, you can't stay young forever and testosterone does gradually masculinize your body and face with age. Unfortunately, defining yourself in terms of being trans won't stop that, only medical intervention can prevent further masculization and that means taking hormones for the rest of your life. Truthfully, I suspect that you are overestimating the effects that facial feminization can have without HRT. In my experience, the changes amabs go through in their twenties is massive and is not really limited to the face. I'm sorry that you are going through this sad realization. I remember being in a similar situation when it seemed that my body would stay young forever and then one day my body just changed without me realzing that it was happening. I was forced to accept it because it juat happened and I never had a choice about it. hugs, Eveline
I was starting to use green tea and liquorice to stop testosterone, I thought I could just block testosterone (not completely because that would cause healt issues I know) even by getting on some anti androgens, altho getting on hormones as "genderfluid" is not easy, especially if one is aiming to get on the quantities to get an androgynous body instead of a full transition. The testosterone production tend to drop as the years go on anyway, so I thought I could get on T blockers now and then live a regular life with a body which would still be androgynous, but maybe that's impossible and crazy also I've read about trans people who decide to avoid transition, so that gave me ideas since going on hormones for life bothers me
also, people like Van Burnham (look him up on google) made me think I could live this way, he was going through mtf transition, he got facial feminization, but then he felt like he was loosing his "male element" so he decided to get off hormones and now he is an androgynous male, his body still fits well in dresses and his face is very pretty, I'm not sure about his age but he has a wife and a child,I think he is in his late 20s now
One thing I have to say is to be patient with yourself. Ultimately, you do have time and you are still young. The fact that you are relatively fine with being perceived as male means that deciding to transition fully later on won't really be as big of a problem as it is for many trans women. You will always have the option to start HRT, the only difference is that if you start later on you will be less likely to be consistently perceived as binary which is anyway something you don't seem to see as negative.
