I thought this way for years. Turns out men actually want to be men, and I am much happier being a girl!

  • syl@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    27·
    1 month ago

    My denial message was “It must be a fetish. I’m disgusting. Why am I like this?” for years.

  • Mk23simp@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    19·
    1 month ago

    My form of denial was thinking that I didn’t really care about my body or my gender, so I might as well stay as a guy since I’m attracted to girls anyways. And then I didn’t actually seek out any relationships with girls anyways. And I didn’t pay any attention to my appearance as a guy.

    So, in hindsight, I have never been okay with being a guy, I just dissociated.

    • compostgoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      12·
      1 month ago

      I relate to that too. For a while, I had the mindset of “I don’t really identify with being a man, so I guess I must be non-binary, but I couldn’t be trans, so I may as well just stick with this”. And then I really just kind of put the bare minimum into taking care of myself, because I didn’t really like my appearance.

    • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
      9·
      1 month ago

      Yes youre cisgender

      You can, however, reject the gender binary for a spectrum and place yourself anywhere you see fit. Im generally fine with being a man and I don’t have dysphoria, so I too am not trans - but I consider myself non-binary. I have feminine traits im more than happy exploring and remaining more or less who and what I am now, and im fine with he/his pronouns.

      But really at the end of the day the only people’s business it is are me and my wife.

      • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        1 month ago

        For sure!

        I’m a dude because I have always had to be something, but I don’t think the distinctions are necessary, really. What’s even the point?

        • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
          9·
          1 month ago

          Patriarchy, mostly.

          Having genders is useful, but society needs to be more flexible with how people harmlessly describe themselves, not less. I blame the pulpit for the majority of backwards attitudes about it all, and I suspect many people here would have stories about being bullied for Christ. Especially those who’ve been homeless.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 month ago

      As an afab probable egg, I do think that many cis women might want to be men, just because of the patriarchy. I can’t find it, but there’s a quote I read somewhere about wishing that you could just go on adventures like men do (I have a hazy idea that it was from Sylvia Plath or Audrey Hepburn, but I can’t search for clear enough terms to avoid pages and pages of slop). It stuck with me, because I think there are a lot of areas that women are (to varying degrees) locked out of. There are also lots of Mulan-type stories about afab people who pretend to be men for a period of time in order to do something they wouldn’t have been able to do as a woman, then go back to living as women. We obviously don’t know their feelings on gender, but that reads like they’re cis women to me.

      • renamon_silver@lemmy.wtfEnglish
        9·
        1 month ago

        In my opinion, wanting the benefits of the patriarchy is different than wanting to be a man, with the acknowledgement that there can be some overlap between the two. Where Mulan’s military service was temporary and brought about by external pressures, a trans man likely would not need the threat of an elderly family member being drafted to war to make the change, nor want to go back to living as a woman. But at the same time I’m sure there are women like Mulan.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 month ago

        There are also lots of Mulan-type stories about afab people who pretend to be men for a period of time in order to do something they wouldn’t have been able to do as a woman, then go back to living as women.

        A bit like the older practice of women writers using abbreviated names or pseudonyms when publishing books because books written by men sold better.

        It’s crazy to me how unnecessarily gendered so many different industries still are, too. Professional cooking is still dominated by men but cooking at home is womanly. It makes no sense and it’s maddening.

      • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 month ago

        Yeah. I, cis woman, sit down once a year or so and ask myself a lot of questions (am I happy here, do I still want to be doing x) and one of them is, “am I a woman?” And the answer is “yes, despite how much this society makes that suck ass”. In my head I’m a woman. I do wish I had way less tit. I might be getting that soon though. Cancer scares suck ass though.

        • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 month ago

          I honestly can’t tell if I want to be a man, or if I don’t want people to think about my gender (which it seems like happens for men). I know I don’t want to be sexualized and I do want to be treated like “one of the boys” by everyone except my husband, but I can’t tell if it goes further than that. Luckily, I married a bi dude who’s down for whatever, so I don’t have to choose between us if I get a bunch more dysphoric in the future.

          • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 month ago

            Yeah, I very much get the ‘no one else should be thinking about my gender’ thing. I’d like a nice slightly less decaying metal body and no one to perceive me unless I want them to!