Hi there tbombtbomb (cool handle btw!) I'm so sorry you're struggling in life the way that you are. I'm literally sitting here with tears in my eyes for you. What are you really seeking, deep down? I'm guessing you just want to feel okay inside. Am I right? Isn't that what we all kind of want at the end of the day. I too have struggled deeply with anxiety and depression, body issues, and many other things that left me feeling very NOT OK inside.

Trust me when I tell you that the answer to feeling okay inside has nothing to do with "gender". More importantly please know that it is possible for you, one day soon (maybe even today) to start feeling better inside. Feeling more comfortable with who you are, and with existence in general.

You mentioned rare health conditions, whether they play into "gender" or not - your health matters. Your physical and mental health. Many turn to the idea of being "trans" because we are struggling in so many ways and feel that perhaps some major change like that can save us. It can't. It's a false hope.

What CAN save us are tried-and-true approaches to mental health, physical health, and spiritual well-being. (I'm not talking about religion or any of that.) My advice to you is to press pause on all of your thoughts about gender and whether you might be "trans" or not. You are a unique human being and no one will ever be the same "gender" as you. You are not locked into expressing "gender" in any way due to the kind of body you have. The full menu of "masculinity" and "feminity" are open to all humans without restrictions or limitations!

So yeah enough about gender - the most important thing you can do is to learn to love yourself. To love the body you have. To begin to see life as an amazing gift of an experience. That any of us even get to be here! That we get to wake up and feel sunshine and touch grass and listen to birds singing in the morning. Lean into all that is beautiful in the world. Pet animals. Find a safe person and get/give a long hug. Draw, paint, dance, sing, breathe. You exist and that's a wonderful thing. Enjoy your life today more than you enjoyed it yesterday. Then do it again tomorrow! Make it your goal to enjoy life more each day and each moment. Joy lives within you. I know that's hard to believe that right now but it's true. Just play around with the idea of it. You are joy and joy wants to express itself in your life, to well up inside you and pour out as love for others.

Ok this is getting super long. In summary - please don't worry about "gender" right now. It's a made up concept foisted upon us by our ancestors. It's cringe. You are real. You are the only real thing. Your body is real. The you inside your body is real. Gender is not real. Gender is a story we tell ourselves. It's a fairy tale, a myth. You can always make changes to your body later in life if you want to. I don't personally care if you or you don't. But what I do know is - happiness is created on the inside.

Hey sorry ur dealing with that! It's admirable how you are remaining loyal to your trans friends in spite of some of their ignorance towards your situation. These are confusing times for everyone but honestly I see trans/detrans as two sides of the same coin and maybe this perspective will help you also:

Basically my belief is that gender is a myth. And it's a myth in a bigger way than we realize it. Patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and even homophobia are all wound up in this superstition that there are two fundamentally different types of humans.

Are human bodies organized for reproduction in (mostly) two distinct ways? Of course they are. But there are also many other categorical differences between humans, some binary (handedness - left/right) and some not so binary (hair color, eye color, skin color, height/weight, etc).

What if we had separate pronouns for left handed and right handed people? Separate names for them? Handedness reveal parties! This is the myth of gender, not that there aren't biological differences between human bodies, just that we've codified (specifically) the reproductive differences into entire societal meaning structures about blue and pink and who gets to chop wood or wear dresses.

So my take is the modern trans movement is, without even realizing it, a fourth "feminist" wave. We've spent so long trying to convince everyone that women are just as this-or-that as men while still separating "men" from "women" as wholly different. What message does that send - that we're separate but equal?

This could get really long and one day I may write a book about it but for now let me try to sum up. Gender is a made-up concept. This is great news for those suffering from gender dysphoria! Gender isn't real, so there isn't any concern about it mismatching your body in any way. Sure many in society still believe the myth about gender and that may cause you some real difficulty in the world (if you refuse to play the game) but when YOU no longer believe the myth yourself it can't create inner dysphoria, which is where the real damage is done.

That being said, since gender isn't real people can feel free to play the game however they want. Use whatever pronouns you want. Change your name. Dress how you want and alter your body to look however you want. But you'll be doing it purely because you WANT to, and not because you HAVE to. (For example, if you are playing a make-believe game with a child, or are an actor in a play, you don't stress over the fact that what you're doing "isn't real" because you know it isn't real. And even if the kid believes it's real, say it's Santa Claus or whatever, it doesn't have to cause you any distress.)

In conclusion, gender dysphoria is real and can cause serious pain, real actual harm. But gender dysphoria can be relieved through a full and total awakening to the reality that gender is a complete and total myth. I regard all people who have awakened to this myth as "trans". You can no longer be "cis" because you don't believe in gender and therefore don't adhere to any that may have been assigned to you, at birth or otherwise. If your current gender (none) doesn't match the gender you were assigned at birth, you are by definition "trans". (Another term I use is "meta" gender, meaning "beyond gender" for those who might prefer that to the trans label.)

Hope some of this helps you. Love your friends. Help them see that gender is a myth. (Everything that is not tangible in the real world is a myth.) But that doesn't invalidate their transness! If anything it empowers it. It empowers their transness while simultaneously relieving them of the dysphoria and gives them the freedom to play around with gender however they like, whenever they like. They can still get surgery or take hormones but only because they think it will make life more fun, not to fix a mismatched body or anything like that. (There is nothing wrong with their body.)

"Dating as a gay trans guy sucks ass". Yeah I can imagine that's a tough niche! I would focus on this. Many straight guys are into masc females but trans makes it way more challenging. I would think about your dating goals and try to figure out how to give yourself the best shot at attracting people who ur attracted to, while staying as true to yourself as possible. (In actuality fem/masc are mythical concepts anyway so they are not actually part of our true selves IMO but that's next level s*** lol.)

And I agree you should delay the mastectomy since ur having doubts and you can always get one later. Focus on how you want to present to date successfully. It may seem shallow/superficial but it's really not. We present a certain way for a job interview. 🤷‍♀️

First off, kudos for you to have the maturity and foresight to see the futility of the transition path. Some good news tho..you don't have to always suffer from gender dysphoria. The bigger truth is that you are not your body. Your body is not you. It's just the fleshy vehicle through which you get to experience life. I would encourage you to look into spiritual teachings around this kind of thing. One person I like is Michael Singer, he has many videos on YouTube, here's one for example:

https://youtu.be/VhQ7Lj7P19U

Maybe try to do some soul searching about how you came to develop gender dysphoria. (If you can find a counselor to help you that would be great, altho in some areas it can be hard to find someone who doesn't fear that such exploration could be construed as "conversion therapy".)

Most importantly try to imagine a joyous life for yourself, one that isn't about your body one way or another. There is so much going on in this world to be enjoyed and explored and very little of it requires a specific type of body. I think the older you get and the more time passes, and especially less time spent around people who constantly obsess over transition, the easier life will get for you. Wishing you the best!

Yeah or taken a step further, "gender" is really so unique to each person that it approaches a point at which having any set definitions/categories for it loses value entirely. It's like your fingerprint or your personality. And the more you think about it "gender" itself is not really even coherent. Like what even is it? It's this weird meta-concept we have in our minds about what people with certain kinds of bodies "should" be like (presentation, behavior, etc). It's all so fluid and arbitrary to begin with. It's a mist, a vapor.

So yeah bodies are real but "gender" is not. Gender is an idea, a societal concept based on a myth. The myth is that male and female-bodied humans represent, beyond mere dimorphism, two fundamentally different kinds of humans - and that the differences between them are consistent, significant, and important. We codify this difference in society by allocating them different sets of names, pronouns, and so on.

In reality, while there are group level differences between people with different kinds of genitalia, at the individual level each human is a mosaic of characteristics, interests, and behaviors too complex to be reduced down to the simplistic categorizations binary gender constructs require. Furthermore such constructs are repressive and regressive, stifling the health and freedom of the population (especially so female-bodied people historically speaking).

Sorry I got a little academic there lol.

Hey there! Kudos to you for being bold and reaching out. Sounds like ur in a tight spot and I'm willing to provide some help. Identity formation is not something that many people understand. Most of us just believe we simply are the way we are and feel the way we feel but there is always a story, always a reason. You mentioned at age 10-11 you began having a desire to transition, what happened around that time?

When I started thinking about the gender binary, and how arbitrary that construct is, it make me rethink this whole concept. Like imagine if instead of there being shoe sizes like there are today (7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, etc) there were only two shoe sizes let's say size 5 and 10. Sure some people have size 5 and size 10 feet but many do not. So all those people now how to fit their feet in shoes that don't fit, shoes that are either too big or too small. Maybe some people even have surgery to make their feet smaller or bigger so the shoes fit better. This is how I see gender.

Every human is unique so we each express ourselves (including whatever gender is/means, if anything) in a unique way. But society hands us only two boxes we can put ourselves in - man/woman, boy/girl, masc/fem - and says YOU MUST CHOOSE!

What if gender is like shoe sizes? You are a unique human being! What if you decided that the boxes are silly to begin with and you are just going to be unashamedly you, and you can pick and choose from the toys in either box (masc/fem) however and whenever you want and don't even have to worry about labels/identities/etc?

I call this being META gender, or beyond gender. (Technically "trans" can also mean this so you could call yourself trans also if you like.) But it doesn't really matter what you call yourself because calling yourself anything isn't really important - living authentically is what really matters!

Hey there friend! I have dealt with depression before and it's a dark hole to be in. I'm so sorry ur dealing with this. My honest suggestion would be to focus on recovery from depression in a general holistic sense, and not make the gender part of it the focus, at least for now. There are many contributing factors to depression and I bet you can find a lot of relief if you stop thinking about gender altogether (at least for a while) and start focusing on doing things that are known to contribute to the human happiness score. You can even tell that voice inside you "look dear we'll revisit the gender concerns later but right now we need to get healthier emotionally". Definitely find a therapist/counselor who focuses on depression (not gender) and, in addition to that, here is a list of happiness tips I made when I was trying to help myself out of the black pit:

1. Speak positively to yourself, about yourself (combat negative self talk)
2. listen to uplifting music
3. volunteer for something meaningful (or just do something nice for someone)
4. use the power of scent, especially plants and flowers (candles/shampoo)
5. Rest/sleep, sometimes we're not depressed we're just tired
6. hang out with optimistic people
7. stay hydrated (under-rated)
8. Take a break from ur phone
9. dance like no one is watching (+sing)
10. move ur body more, any kind of exercise any amount of time (stretching)
11. watch what you eat (and drink)
12. spend time outside (sunshine)
13. pray/meditate (worship/breathe)
14. read, draw, make art, do puzzles, play games, sports, have fun
15. give and receive long hugs (hi fives, fist bumps, playful shoves, pet dog/cat)

Happy to keep the conversation going. Your life matters!

Oh my friend! Thanks for sharing so vulnerably with me. I am simultaneously sad and hopeful for you. There is nothing wrong with you. (There is nothing wrong with you.) I typed it twice on purpose. :)

When I was younger I was so insecure about my legs. I believed that they were way too skinny, my knees too knobby. I thought they were so unsightly. I used to wear sweatpants under my jeans to school so my legs wouldn't look so scrawny. (One time a girl called me out on it and I was mortified.)

During a spiritual phase of my life I was praying and complaining about my legs. A voice in my head said "what are legs for?" I answered "walking and running and such I suppose." The voice replied "well do your legs allow you to do that?" "Yes" I answered. The final reply I received was "So then there's nothing wrong with them."

That conversation didn't immediately dry up all my insecurities but it did start a shift in my perspective that eventually eliminated the dysphoria. Was there ever anything wrong with my legs? No. I had let society convince me that there was, and I believed the myth. The myth of perfectly sculpted thick muscular legs being the only kind of attractive legs. Who says that's true? That's made up. Pure make-believe.

There are a bunch of myths still operating behind the scenes for you my friend. If your body works there is nothing wrong with it.

I know this is a lot to unpack and I know you're suffering. I'm inventing a possibility for you where you no longer suffer like this. A future YOU who no longer feels like a freak (except when you want to lol). It doesn't matter to me how you identify, short term or long, because your real identity isn't in such things anyway.

I am training to be an identity coach and will be offering some limited (free) sessions this fall. If ur interested in having a conversation (and ur an adult) send me a DM and we can set something up.

Love you!

This is a great example right here. It is "real" in the sense that people do indeed experience distress over thoughts/feelings related to gender. And yet it isn't a medical condition - not biological but rather psychosocial. The mind is reacting to what society is teaching it about gender and then comparing that with what it knows/believes about itself. (There are other factors and traumas that play in as well.) Once Dith_q was old enough to understand that gender is a myth, a superstition - that broke it's power and the "dysphoria" disappeared along with it.