Hey there beautiful people, I'm questioning my gender (again) and this time, I don't know how to find an answer that feels right. In the past, I've questioned myself before and came to the conclusion that yes, I'm comfortable bring a cis guy. Recently, however, I've been questioning it again, and I can't seem to come to a conclusion that makes sense to me. Sorry if this isn't the right place for it, but this seems like the best community to consult

Overall, I feel comfortable in my body. I never really had any dysphoria, so I kinda just assumed that meant I was cis, but I've come to realize that's not always the case. I heard a better question is "would being a girl bring you euphoria", and that's a much harder question for me to answer. Growing up, I was always fairly in-touch with my feminine side: never shy to play with girl toys in school, always felt like I bonded better with my friends that were were girls, and occasionally wore skirts and dresses in public because it was fun. Back when I used reddit, I always enjoyed the r/egg_irl memes, but I didnt necessary relate, I just felt like marge simpson saying "I just think it's neat".

At the same time, I never really "wanted" to be a girl, but I also never "wanted" to be a guy, it's just what happened. It's hard for me to answer "would being a girl bring you euphoria" because I don't know what it would be like. I'm comfortable being a guy, but I can't say there's anything specific that I like about it, other than easier social norms and such. I've heard of "the button" thought experiment, where if you could press a button and instantly transform into the opposite gender, would you? I find my brain wants to know other information about the thought experiment rather than addressing the core question (for example: can i press it again to turn back?), and idk if that's just because I can be very focused on the analytical and practicality of things, or if it's because it's a hard question for me to answer.

I'm hoping to get some advice, but even through the course of writing this, it's becoming more and more clear to me that I'm probably not 100% cis. I'm pretty sure most cis people dont put this much thought into it, but if I'm not cis, then what am I? I still don't have any clue.

Hi! I've been right where you are, and the path for me ended up being transitioning. However, it wasn't a decision I just made, knowing from the start that it's what I wanted. I knew I wasn't quite cis, and the idea of feminine things really brought me joy. It finally came to a head when I imagined wearing a wedding dress when I get married, and broke down crying. I didn't go straight into HRT, I started with little things. For a while, I called myself gender fluid, and would dress femme some days, masc others. I tried other pronouns with people I trusted. It was only after many smaller steps, all of which brought me joy, that I finally decided transitioning was right for me.

You don't need to have the answers right now. You don't need to go through a period of questioning and then come to some sort of definitive conclusion. Some people do, and it's an easy decision for them to make. In my case, it's completely clear in hindsight, but I needed to take so many smaller steps first. Take those steps, and see how you feel. Gender is complex. Take things at the pace that feels right. You might be trans, but you also might be non-binary, gender fluid, or even femme and cis. Don't get too hung up on the labels, just figure out what actually makes you happy. The labels are just part of the social construct.

So YMMV but the early stages of questioning my gender were a bit similar to what you’ve described here. I didn’t believe that I had experienced dysphoria about my body, and the social realities of being seen as a man were… tolerable, so I assumed that I must be cis. However, the absence of pain is distinct from the presence of joy.

I began to increasingly chafe under the “man” label and identified as nonbinary for several years. Distance from masculinity gave me new perspective, and helped me realize that I was experiencing dysphoria the whole time. For example, I had always hated the way I looked in pictures. I grew a huge beard both to hide my face and because shaving made me feel miserable for reasons that were at the time unidentifiable. Furthermore, as an enby I began to find that the social moments that gave me the most joy were those rare instances when I was mistaken for a woman.

I eventually overcame my misgivings and sought HRT, and I kid you not the mental effects were nearly immediate and overwhelmingly positive. When I think back to when I was pretending to be a man I remember feeling numb all the time, whereas my world became so much more vibrant as my hormone levels feminized. Even with the hormones it took me almost a year to accept that I was, all along, a woman.

I am not saying that you are transgender. What I am saying is that sometimes it takes a lot of time and effort to flex your perspective enough to figure yourself out.

Hi there, Gorgeous! Glad you're here 💜

You don't need to know exactly what your gender identity is or what you can label yourself as. I spent most of my life "fine" with my agab, but i could never picture what my future looked like. When my egg cracked, I thought that maybe I was just questioning and nothing would come of it. Over time, I moved around through demigender, bigender, and gender fluid before finally understanding that I was just a straight up binary trans woman. That came after a lot of experimenting and better understanding the role that gender dysphoria played in my life when I never identified it as such at the time. Your gender journey is yours alone and it doesn't have to have any clearly defined stops, starts, or clear pathways. It's okay if its murky, and filled with ebbs and flows and detours. And its totally fine if that journey leads you back to a feeling that you are, in fact, cis.

Hope this helps, feel free to ask me any questions :)

However, the absence of pain is distinct from the presence of joy.

Holy shit I love this so much.

I grew a huge beard both to hide my face and because shaving made me feel miserable for reasons that were at the time unidentifiable.

Yup.

When I think back to when I was pretending to be a man I remember feeling numb all the time, whereas my world became so much more vibrant as my hormone levels feminized.

I feel like we've shared a life. My experience is exactly this. I rarely took an active role in my own life and just felt like I was floating along a pathway I was expected to be following.

I was content calling myself genderfluid for about 2 years and being more open about it within the last few months. I'm amab and sometimes I feel like a guy, but most days I just feel like a person.

As of a few days ago, I have decided to reject gender as a concept. I identify as a gender anarchist, pronouns today are he/they

In case you haven't already, I suggest reading The Gender Dysphoria Bible. When the realization first hit me that I might be trans, it wasn't until I read the bible that I realized a lot of what I had been experiencing for years was actually dysphoria and not standard issue depression. I had questioned my gender on and off for years, never really feeling like my gender was a problem for me, and it wasn't until I finally experienced something 1:1 from a comic about someone realizing they were trans that I finally realized it could be.

After I read the bible, I knew HRT was for me, and I started transitioning at a speed I thought was a fucking rocket ship because the only reference I had was my friend who took a couple years to go from cis to HRT, and I took 4 months. I went by a new name and new pronouns in about 2 weeks because I had been thinking about it for years apparently and had already mentally prepared myself for all these decisions without realizing it. The point of this paragraph is both speeds, and any other is equally valid so long as you're happy and comfortable with it.

On the theme of you being happy and comfortable, that's all that really matters in your transition! Hopefully the process isn't too hard for you, but we'll be here for support when you need! ❤️

If it is accessible where you live I recommend talk therapy, preferably from a provider that specializes in gender heath. I had been living an as enby for about 5 years and was already pretty sure I wanted hormones when I sought it out, but I found meeting with a knowledgeable professional sans just talking everything out was really helpful.

Good luck on your journey sweetheart.

Edit - saw your original comment and realized you’ve probably already done this. Glad you made it through ❤️

Oh yea I've been doing the whole song and dance for a while :) Thank you for the comment though!

You sound a whole lot like I did before HRT. I still don't have a particularly strong attachment to any specific gender identity, but it turns out estrogen can do wonders for your mental health even if you're nonbinary. It's also worth mentioning that you can take it for weeks or possibly even months with no permanent physical changes, test HRT out and if it doesn't improve your life you can just stop taking it.

You could be some flavour of Non-Binary (enby) if you're not feeling necessarily aligned to man/woman which would still fall under the trans umbrella :p

A lot of people sometimes wrongly assume being enby always means not aligning with any gender, but that's just one of a good few different types:
Agender, Bi-Gender (both), Genderfluid (flow back and forth between 2 or more genders over time) etc too name a few. It could be worth researching them and seeing if they align better with how you feel. Enbys can still tilt one way or another while still feeling not fully rooted in any specific box.

But regardless on if binary or enby, sometimes we can find ourselves suppressing how we feel ourselves growing up only to not be able suppress it any longer later in life as cracks start forming in the walls we put up.
Funnily for me, looking back I had too many signs to count as a kid but with so much what I had to deal with and worry about, it was easy to suppress. But with a better environment in my late teens and early 20s, and finally dealing with my at the time undiagnosed ADHD, my head was a lot clearer to be able to confront how and who I am.
For me, I had never really felt comfortable being seen or described as a man, never felt comfortable having the social expectations out on me for it, never liked my name, always felt off about my body (hated the body hair, devastated when my voice dropped, always felt something was missing from my body even though I learned to just tolerate it with everything else going on - though I'm lucky my body still had a bit more of a feminine frame to it so I can appear more in the middle despite the issues). I when I was younger thought I was "comfortable", but over time realised I wasn't. The "comfort" wasn't really that, but now a sense of apathy towards myself, feeling as though my body had gone in the wrong direction but feeling no way to stop it so just giving up, especially with everything else I was dealing with. That took a while to unpack and confront.
Enbys can still go HRT too which is widely accepted and helped by gender healthcare, or you may choose not to

But with all that, I still feel like I don't really fit 100% in either box, (though for me I'd say I'm 75% in the feminine box and 25% out of both). I currently go with genderfluid (between Woman and Agender), describing myself as a transfem enby as I lean heavily towards fem, though I am still in the process of figuring that out, and figuring out if the "agender" part is really just my apathy "given up" state that I've been slowly rejecting as I accepted and presented more fem...

I say all of this about my journey, more as an example. Maybe it's something you can relate to in ways, maybe not at all. We all have our own journeys and our own questions to answer. But my point is that there isn't one designated path to being trans, we're all still unique in our experiences and who we are, and that journey can sometimes take a while :)

Don't worry too much about not being able to pin exactly what and who you are so soon, sometimes this journey takes a while. It's a sense of personal introspection that most people don't even consider doing and everyone is kinda taught not to for so long in our lives that it's obviously going to take a bit of time when you do.

Maybe in your journey, you figure out you are trans, and maybe that's binary, or maybe it's non-binary. Maybe you ultimately figure out you're cis but just happy to really embrace your feminine side, ultimately that's a question only you can answer, but you don't need to answer it immediately.
Take your time, look into the different trans identifies, see if any speak to you more. You could also try with identifying with one for a few weeks, or try with different pronouns (like online or with friends, trialing they/them, she/her etc, see how it feels, if it sticks or feels off.
And of course, as you've done with this post, ask questions with other trans people, we've all gone through this or similar paths before and can hopefully help!

Good luck in your own journey though! Even if it feels you're unsure where you are at now, you will figure it out in time, whatever the answer ends up being for you :)

I’m also questioning / exploring my gender. The only method that makes sense to me is to try to take small steps / experiment away from my agab and see what I think of them. Creating a 100 % perfect proof of my transness from imperfect recollections and biased hindsight seems like the wrong approach.

One existentialist article that resonated with me argued that ultimately, being trans is a choice and we can’t be sure before we try. We can make wrong choices and that’s okay, too.

How would you feel about trying out a non binary identity and see where that takes you?