Hi! Welcome to womanhood! 😁

How has transitioning as a whole been for you? Getting on hormones, wardrobe changes, socially, etc? I’m only out to my close friend circle, but already know my close family is cool with trans people.

I socially transitioned months before I was able to start hormones. That initial social transition wasn’t particularly helpful to my mental well-being and was even destabilizing (creating a lot of stress, resulting in worse mood swings, intense nightmares and parasomnias, worsened suicidal ideation, etc.). Looking back, I could see an argument for taking estrogen for a year or so before socially transitioning. (I socially transitioned as soon as my egg cracked because I was afraid I would crawl back into the closet and never come back out - I had to find a way to force myself out.)

My experience with hormones was very positive - estrogen changed my life and my mental health significantly, and that was very clarifying. I realized I would want to take estrogen no matter whether I was “really” trans or “trans enough” or not - estrogen made me happy, made my brain function better, it lifted me from depression, alleviated anxiety, and gave me a life in which I felt “irrationally” life affirming. Estrogen is responsible for me no longer wanting to be dead, I had wanted to be unalived since I was maybe 11 - 13 years old (looking back, quite a coincidence that it was around when male puberty started, hmmmm), and when I started estrogen it was like going back to childhood. Estrogen mostly made me feel “normal”, like I could see how life could feel bearable to other people.

Transition can be massively destabilizing, but I don’t really see any alternative - transitioning (particularly medically) was like starting my life. The alternative isn’t really living.

If you have any conservative/anti-trans people in your life, how have relationships been with them since you started? Have you cut ties, or hidden your transition, or anything else? I have some bigoted family that are otherwise decent people and that I’d like to stay connected with (for now, at least).

I had some transphobic in-laws I was close to who blocked me and refused to talk to me. They reacted worse than I expected.

I lost blood family too, unexpectedly.

Friendships with anti-trans people really changed, they stopped talking to me as much or treated me differently.

I wouldn’t particularly advise you invest much in relationships with anti-trans bigots, it’s just not a recipe for good outcomes (for you or them tbh).

That said, I understand the impulse, I was very accommodating of the anti-trans people in my life when I first transitioned.

How was surgery as a whole? What was pre-op like, any things you didn’t like about it, things you had to compromise on, etc? I’ve never had surgery in the first place, so this would be extremely foreign to me.

I thought I would never get a vagina when I first transitioned. I knew I wanted an orchi, but I thought I didn’t have any bottom dysphoria. But then my dissociation and coping strategies sorta melted away, and I was left with increasing distress about my genitals, and sex became more and more complicated for me. I clearly had bottom dysphoria, even though I never had specific thoughts like “I hate my penis” or “I wish I had a vagina” - I never felt a direct desire for a vagina, which made it difficulty for me to decide to have a vaginoplasty. It was a lot of having to read between the lines about what would be good for me or not. I remember in a therapy session, my therapist asked me to imagine myself in 10 - 20 years, that I’m living as a woman, using the restroom, going to changing rooms, going swimming, etc. - what would I feel in 10 years? Would I wish I had done something? That was clarifying, I knew instantly that yeah, obviously I wanted to have a vagina, I would regret living with “male” genitals that long, with denying myself that. I thought because I could cope and live with a penis that I should, but that was foolish and didn’t prioritize my well-being.

I have a long post about things I wish I knew about surgery before my surgery: https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/27942310

another post on the specific challenges I faced and how I dealt with them: https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/27942310

Overall, surgery was challenging, but I suspended judgement and acted on the assumption it would be worth it for a future-self, and I think I was right - it was completely and obviously worth it, and I wake up happy to have a vagina every morning.

If you don’t mind, what was dysmorphia like for you? I’ve wondered for a while before now what it’d be like to be a girl, and have especially felt it in the genital area. And on the occasion I’ve been “misgendered,” I always felt really good about it.

I don’t think I even had that level of awareness that I would want to be like a girl in my genital region. I did have the experience of being accidentally misgendered as a teenager and feeling happy to be confused with a girl (though it was a complicated feeling for me, at least as bitter and upsetting as it was sweet - I didn’t think I could be a girl then).

Dysphoria was hard to describe, often it was like shame or embarrassment, a lot of the time it was like my body became someone else’s and I felt sexual pleasure through the sense of the body being a separate male body - like, the penis wasn’t attractive as my penis, but it could be attractive if it were someone else’s penis. Dissociation was hard for me to notice happening. I often lived vicariously through the women I dated

How have you learned to do feminine stuff? Like chest measurements, makeup/nails, other clothes stuff, etc? Just researching online, or do you ask cis friends, or something else?

A combination of everything! I actually went to a Sephora and got a makeup lesson from them. I was lucky enough to have women family members show me how they did their makeup. To be honest, I was always interested in clothes, fashion, and nails, so I already had some experience on that front. But then I researched body shapes and how to dress my body to feminize it, etc. online.

But most of my femininity is “natural” - it looked weird to people on my male body so I was assumed to be a gay man, but once I passed as a woman, I found myself living a gender-conforming life for the first time … it was rather surreal to suddenly be “normal” that way. Transitioning made me so extremely normal, lol.

Are you doing any voice training? If so, anything you can recommend to help? I have a lower voice and a small range, so anything helps.

Yes, I highly recommend voice training. I saw a speech language pathologist who specialized and almost exclusively worked with trans patients on their voices. Voice training is admittedly challenging psychologically, but it’s one of the things you theoretically have a lot of control over (unlike so much in transition), so I encourage everyone to get into voice training. It took me around 6 - 8 months of weekly SLP sessions and full-time voice training outside that to find a passing voice. I know people who have taken shorter or longer to find a passing voice.

Here’s a clip of my voice you can listen to, to get a sense of my progress.

Here is a beginner’s guide I put together for voice training: https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/32117601/16502930

Any resources you can recommend me on this? Where to learn about treatment, advice on how to do this stuff?

Yes, I have so many recommendations, lol

checkout some comments I made with links and lists of resources I recommend:

• https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/40610299/19859171
• https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23710814/13642552

also, checkout my tips for transition & improving dysphoria

Here’s some recommended reading to get you started:

• Gender Dysphoria Bible
• Whipping Girl by Julia Serano (and Sexed Up as well)
• Yes, You Are Trans Enough by Mia Violet
• “What Does the Scholarly Research Say about the Effect of Gender Transition on Transgender Well-Being?”
• An Introduction to Hormone Therapy for Transfeminine People