My first and oldest close friend came out as trans (MTF) a few years ago. They're also one of the most narcissistic people I've ever met, and can literally never admit they're wrong about anything. They also utterly failed at growing up from boy to man -- lived in their parent's through to the present in their 30s, never got a job, don't know how to own up to stuff or take responsibility, and has their girlfriend (who they maintained through the transition, luckily for them) do all their chores and things they don't want to do (don't ask).

Having known them 25+ years, it honestly feels like transitioning was a way for them to maintain their inflated sense of self without having to own up to their failure to "man up" as we're taught as boys.

Growing up a man, you're held to masculine standards. Growing up a woman, you're held to feminine standards. Transitioning, you lose a bunch of people in your life, but the ones who remain treat you like a little prince(ss) who can do no wrong and is perfect exactly how they are. It's a really compelling life path for narcissists that way.

I personally think it's really sad how being trans is now the go-to answer for when you don't feel like your birth gender. I mean, at it's core, that kind of view implies that we're all buying into the idea that you're less of a man if you don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, or less of a woman if you don't look like Scarlet Johansson. Like, what's wrong with being a skinny non-muscular guy? Or a heavier girl? I'm in my 30s, so a bit older than the current generation that was raised with the idea that you could be trans being popularized. But when I grew up in the early 2000s, there wasn't a single boy or girl I knew that felt 100% manly or girly. I mean, we grew up in the era of body comparisons, underweight supermodels, and zero-mention of body acceptance. If my cohort of classmates and I grew up 20 years later, I suspect a ton more would've come out as "trans" simply because it provided a comfortable escape from their self-perceived inadequacies as their birth gender.

Everyone I know who's come out as trans didn't really seem like they "fit" their new gender closer than their birth gender. Rather, they all have one thing in common -- they didn't "hit" the social checkboxes that define what a "man is supposed to be like," or what a "woman is supposed to be like" growing up. My MTF friend, for example, never learned to grow up from boy to man by never getting a job, never moving out of their parent's place, never owning up to any mistakes they've made or way they've upset people. They were just a boy who didn't "man up", and I can't blame them for not knowing how, because their dad was a big blowhard who similarly shirked responsibility. My FTM friend, on the other hand, was heavily molested as a little kid, and had a dad who wanted a son. It was the perfect recipe to grow up hating that they felt like being a little girl made them a target for molestation, and thus instead adopted a more "masculine" role in the bedroom of being the dom instead of the sub -- being more submissive made them feel molested all over again.

Not an artist myself, but my oldest friend came out as MTF a few years ago, and they've been an "artist" their whole lives. Never went to college despite being really smart. Never even took the SAT, because they went to a ritzy music school that didn't require it. Their parents had tons of money, and in terms of "being an artist", they're in their mid 30s, and have probably only ever earned a couple thousand bucks, -- ever -- from their music.

Worked one year in retail otherwise as a teenager, and that's it. To give you an idea of how coddled they were growing up, her mom showed up at my door one day when they were hanging at my house when we were 10. Her mom was holding a bag of Taco Bell, because apparently she called her mom while on a playdate because she was in the mood for Taco Bell. And her mom obliged...

I've known them 28 years, and frankly, I think for them, it was hard to feel like a man when they were basically still a child inside. They never grew up from being an immature little boy. And frankly, at a certain point by her late 20s when she came out, I honestly thought it was some sort of deep, deep-seated coping mechanism to deal with the fact that she utterly failed at growing up from boy to man.

This is spot on.

To add to it, even people who transition usually barely fit the mold of their new gender any better than their birth gender, since so much of what it means to "be a man" or "be a woman" occurs during young, formative years. Trans women can fit the woman mold better, I think, than trans men, since so much of what women think/feel that men wouldn't intuitively know is talked about online, but not vice versa.

For example, most trans men I know don't understand the subtle balance guys have to learn of being aggressive vs. standing up for themselves. Most trans men I know also still comment on fashion, have stuffed animals or a stereotypically "girly" looking bedroom, don't understand that you've got to walk slowly in public and not squeeze your way through crowds or people will look at you like a threat, etc. Trans men don't get that they can't just vent about their problems to straight guy friends and expect their friends to know what to do or say, because straight guys rarely if ever talk about that stuff with each other. These are all universal experiences for guys, but since straight guys don't publicize day to day "struggles of men" videos online like women post "struggles of women" videos, trans men don't have half a clue of what it means to be a guy before they've started to transition.

I have no idea how the hormone levels shift over time or exactly where they're at for you right now, or what permanent effects testosterone may have had on your bone/muscle development. What I can say though, is that as a guy, I've had a 5'4" ex who trained for BJJ for over a year (including exercise 2 hours/day). She was super fit, and pretty trained in BJJ, but when she asked to wrestle me once, I had her pinned in 5 seconds. At that time my physical routine consisted of PC gaming and driving to fast food. Over a year of her training, and hundreds of hours exercising and biking couldn't even last 5 seconds against me for no other reason than having 6 inches of height on her, and the extra muscle mass of being a guy (on average, men have 80% more muscle mass).

So, like I said, I have no idea how much you're impacted right now, but if you do have either elevated testosterone levels now (or increased muscle on you now as a result of previously higher testosterone levels), there's definitely going to be some degree of advantage over cis women. Might only be a 10% edge, but that could make a difference if you're talking competitively. Or, you might not have any lingering t or effects of t (like residual increased muscle mass) -- I really don't know for your exact situation.

It makes me so sad that feeling like the opposite gender is seen as a problem, and transitioning is seen as the solution. I'm in my mid 30s. When I grew up, every single one of my guy friends and I, even if we'd never admit it, didn't feel like we were super masculine, and had insecurities about it. Same goes for every girl I knew then.

I don't understand why people don't get that you can be a more feminine guy, or more masculine woman, and that doesn't fucking mean that there needs to be anything more about it. A guy who's skinny and awkward doesn't feel any more masculine than a girl with a bit more facial hair than most girls doesn't feel super feminine.

I feel like even making gender identity a question to begin with is a source of great pain for so many people. Instead of solving a problem, it just creates a whole new one where people don't just feel down about their perceived shortcomings in their birth gender, but they actually begin to dwell on it.

Before gender ideology became mainstream though, the vast majority of folks would just sort of shrug it off. Like, I was a skinny af boy growing up, got made fun of for looking wimpy all the time, had guy guys hitting on me cause I looked like a classic twink. But since I didn't grow up with modern gender ideology (teen in the mid-2000s), I just sort of had to accept that I was skinny and didn't look super masculine, and learn to be okay with it.

I feel like since we stopped telling people they're okay just the way they are, and instead the go-to answer is "well, maybe you're not a boy/girl", we've since had a torrent of people who now don't know how to just accepted themselves the way they are. The one idea hasn't just been popularized, but it's practically replaced the other almost entirely.

 I'm so afraid of not being seen as a potential physical threat.

As a guy close to 6 foot tall, let me tell you, bad intentioned guys don't see other guys as physical threats unless you're over 6 foot, and look like you're built with muscle, minimum 180lbs. I grew up skinny, and I can speak from experience that nobody ever considered me remotely threatening (or physically capable of winning a fight) until I gained weight closer to 200lbs myself.

My point isn't to dash your hopes down, but to let you know that it doesn't really matter, since only a tiny portion of grown men are even seen as threats themselves (at least to other men). Your safety doesn't come from being perceived as a threat, but from the fact that we have a civil society where most people, most of the time, don't go committing crime against others. I lived 25+ years as a skinny boy, and as long as I didn't get in people's business, they left me alone.

I understand and appreciate how as a woman, you would be more of target (both sexually, and for crimes of opportunity like mugging). But on the whole, your odds of getting victimized aren't wildly higher than an average guy's odds -- maybe double, at most (and double of near-nothing isn't that much). Just know, if you ever do get mugged, even I, or even my friends who are big, ripped dudes over 6 foot, wouldn't try to keep our wallets if somebody tried stealing them, because we know that anybody crazy enough to mug somebody is also potentially crazy enough to have a knife/gun and commit murder for a $20 bill. I've been sucker punched before, and let me tell you -- no matter how much you wish it weren't true, the attacker almost always wins, because they have the element of surprise. Your best bet in a situation like that is to hand over the wallet, no questions asked.

Goodluck!

They got attention because every guy in that room wanted to fuck them. Transitioning isn't going to make them want to fuck you. Did you not understand that from the get go?

It's really sad to me that gender ideology today is so hippy dippy these days that somebody wouldn't intuitively understand that. Like, a poor kid knows they aren't going to magically be rich, and are forced to learn to accept that. It feels like modern gender ideology is, for many people, just a massive distraction/delay from doing the hard emotional work and learning to accept and love yourself the way you are.

This is so sad to read. I'm a guy in my mid-30s. I was skinny as a boy, skinny af. I was asked if I was gay by many people, simply because I was skinny, and talked a lot (AuDHD). If I had grown up today, I no doubt would've at least pondered whether I would've "fit" better as a girl. But because we didn't have gender ideology being discussed mainstream, that was completely unacceptable in my brain, and so I didn't entertain those thoughts.

Ultimately, all it was was that I was on the lower end of the totem pole of popularity and sexual attractiveness when I was young. It forced me to learn to accept myself, give a middle finger to the haters, and be unabashedly myself. Once I started doing that, life got 100x better, and the nervous insecurity from my teen years shook off. If I had been born in 2004 and went through adolescence with today's gender ideology, fuck man, I might not have had a dick by now.

My point is this: just because you don't look like Scarlet Johanson, doesn't mean you're not a woman. And the fact that you never had gender dysphoria until somebody said you look like an attractive male celebrity means literally nothing besides that you felt flattered being likened to somebody attractive. Gender isn't just something you pick and choose based on what you think would suit you best. It's something your born with, and something that life and time forces you to come to terms with. Transitioning is only supposed to be a last resort if you really, really have such deep mental struggles that not transitioning is unbearable (and for many trans people, it's only "unbearable" because they never fostered the maturity and emotional regulation to learn how to accept some stuff in life and just roll with it). I bet there's a ton about yourself that you ought to love -- including a bunch of things you've probably never even been told. So, try to love yourself, instead of dwelling on hating yourself. Transitioning isn't always a solution to somebody's problems -- often, it's just serves to distract/delay somebody from doing the hard emotional work of self-acceptance and self-love.