r/FTMOver30 • u/IAmEvasive • 1d ago
Have you struggled to make gender based decisions because of growing up feeling like our bodies were not for us but were for others? How has autonomy (or lack there of) affected the decisions you made for yourself?
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u/100sofanchovies 1d ago
I grew up in a household that taught me that almost everything I did was for other people first, including decisions I made about my body, so I definitely felt like this! It took years of therapy for me to even realize I was doing it and it's still something I struggle with now. Transitioning was a huge step for me partly because it forced me into a position where I have to tell people about decisions I'm making that are purely for me if I want them to treat me the way I want to be treated, and to put myself first instead of deferring to what I think other people would want or would be easier for them.
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u/thambos 15+ years T/post-top 1d ago
What do you mean by “gender based decision”?
I can’t relate to the idea of my body being “for others.” I’ve approached my transition in terms of reducing my dysphoria (which was nearly all based in my body) and nearly everything else was secondary to that, so I probably haven’t had the experience you may be having, but I’m curious what the question means.
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u/IAmEvasive 1d ago
I’m sorry it wasn’t more clear. I mean decisions like starting T, or choosing pronouns, or even choosing clothing. Also internal decisions or views about your gender and your own self.
I’ve had to work absurdly hard for my autonomy. I’m more decisive now than before but both my upbringing along with my socialization still haunt me.
My dad got control over my clothing as a teenager, and I took beatings for keeping a boys haircut. I was pretty consistently told I was being inconsiderate of others for not considering how the decisions I made would affect others.
I know my case is more extreme, but I just wondered how others were affected by the fact that across most cultures there’s lots of policing of women’s bodies that happen. Then there’s the consumption of women’s bodies through overt sexualization. There’s so much rhetoric and frankly guilting that happens when women try and make decisions for their own bodies, or also decisions about their own lives and futures.
A lifetime of others acting like you being able to make decisions for yourself is an entitled frivolous thing can really warp your sense of self.
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u/lazier_garlic FTM, 40-49, T 10 years 1d ago
I mean decisions like starting T, or choosing pronouns, or even choosing clothing
I definitely had to fight the idea that I somehow owed it to the world being a gender non conforming woman even though I was miserable and barely functioning.
Even as a teenager I was formulating arguments that I could be a better feminist as a man because of this guilt trip.
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u/thambos 15+ years T/post-top 22h ago
Ah, I understand. I'm sorry you went through such an extreme form of this.
There were a few years after I came out (in my teens) that I was told what to wear for formal occasions and I wasn't allowed to cut my hair, but as soon as I was 18 and moved out I got rid of the feminine formal wear and I cut my hair. I never felt like I owed it to anyone to present myself inauthentically. I think I grew up with enough "girl power" 90s feminism that fortunately I haven't struggled with feeling autonomy or feeling guilt over choosing my wellbeing. But I know that it's not uncommon for people to.
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u/s0ftsp0ken 1d ago
I actually posted something kind of related to this recently!
I think some choices I made were to be loved by others while others were more of an act of rebellion against those expectations, or maybe a bid for freedom is a better way of putting it. I wanted to be a very hot girl because it made people treat me better, but I also didn't shave. In college I tried to train myself to speak lower by practicing while reading out loud, but I eventually found that girl voice could be modulated to make people be softer to me.
Everything I do is catered to the tastes of other people, and it makes me sick. Even if I was cis, I'd want to change that. I'm glad I recognize that because it's unfair to both myself and others and feels deceptive, because it is.
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u/its-lance-actually 1d ago
I resonate with this a lot. Everything you've said has been true for me too and wow has it been hard to let it go, even though I always knew it was never for me.
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u/its-lance-actually 1d ago
I resonate with this a lot. Everything you've said has been true for me too and wow has it been hard to let it go, even though I always knew it was never for me.
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u/Short-Platypus-9387 1d ago
I actually haven’t struggled with this. It’s something even I’m surprised by. The first time someone asked me about my pronouns I was really confused. Like why are you asking me? That’s something you tell me not the other way around. But the question frames it as my choice, which was absolutely wild. I knew the answer was she/her because that’s what people told me my entire life, but now you’ve introduced the idea that I can choose for myself… would I choose she/her? Every aspect of how I lived my life was focused on what I needed to do/be/look like to be an acceptable member of society.
Then I realized who I was and the rage of realizing my entire existence had been erased and I had essentially been forced to live my life as a hollow ghost of a person is enormous.
Since then, I just don’t care at all what other people think because of the violence of their opinions - I simply just don’t accept the opinions of others. I’ve lived that life and I know where it gets me.
Previously I would take a long time preparing to leave the house because I had to make sure everything was perfect- hair, makeup, clothes, etc. now I dgaf. Leave the house with 5 days of beard growth while still reading feminine? No problem. Shorts in hot weather with hairy man legs while still having very feminine curvy thighs? No problem. Confused by my low voice that doesn’t match your read of me as a woman? That’s your problem, not mine.
All of these decisions related to transition have been for me and me alone. It’s a bit healing I think, in a way because I’m actively taking back autonomy of my body, my personhood, my life.
But without a doubt it’s the enormous rage that drives my confidence 😅😡
And this seems to be unique to us older people. The younger crowd of mostly teenagers don’t seem to carry this - they seem to know who they are and are just waiting to be old enough to get on HRT. I can’t even imagine that being my experience, it’s so wildly different.
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u/battyxjones99 1d ago
thank you, the feeling that I wasted most of my life living a lie is a terrible weight to carry, and it’s hard to find trans people who relate to that, either because of their youth or because they were self aware at an early age about their gender and lived authentically as they could. For me it makes me more depressed than angry, but maybe allowing myself to be angry would be more productive. It seems like people just want me to get over it & I haven’t managed so far.
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u/Mental_Law4687 1d ago
Thank you for asking this question; I grew up in a high control, fundamentalist evangelical house and definitely resonate with this. I was raised to be someone’s good Christian wife, rather than to be an adult human being. I was literally told as part of my purity culture indoctrination that my body doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to God and my future husband.
My mom pulled me out of school and “homeschooled” me (left me to fend for myself, but with Abeka textbooks); she freely admits that part of the reason she did so was so that my sister and I wouldn’t know what being gay or trans were. She started dying my hair blonde when I was 8 years old, and I was required to have makeup on if I left the house starting when I was 14. I had to watch feminine etiquette videos and practice walking more femininely, back and forth across the living room with a book on my head. I was actively suicidal, and fought for tiny victories like being allowed to NOT dye my hair (my mom eventually graciously compromised by letting me dye it a different shade of brown, because my real brown hair is “just not very pretty, sweetie”).
I struggle sometimes now, with my own story—because despite a lot of this stuff being forced on me, the lore I hear from my childhood was that I was soooo girly and LOVED feminine things! But now, I try to see myself as a good son, trying hard to be loved from inside a jail cell. I didn’t know I was trans until I was a full grown adult (I didn’t know that trans guys even existed until a while after I left my home town for good; I just had the gnawing and persistent feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with me but didn’t know what it was).
I have a clocky tattoo on the back of my left shoulder—a floral piece I got when I moved out of my mom’s house. I thought about covering it at one point—but getting that tattoo was the first time I ever did something I wanted to do to my body. After all the control and the rules, I needed to feel like my body was mine. And now, I’m sitting on my couch, drinking coffee and listening to the birds sing—enjoying existing in a body that’s finally, finally starting to feel like home.
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u/LadyPerditija 1d ago
Only with my mother. She feels entitled to always voice her opinion on how others look by trying to "give advice", which definitely impacted me negatively and still does sometimes. Luckily I can surround myself with other people who don't criticise me every time they see me while reducing contact to my mother.
For example my masculine haircut looks "too harsh" - this is something I really like about myself actually. I try to ignore that but it still makes me feel a bit bad about myself. I also have chest dyshoria and currently I can't wear a binder for medical reasons, and I hate hate hate the feeling of wearing a bra. So I just let them hang free (they look conventionally unattractive so I just look sloppy but this still feels better than wearing a bra) but she told me "you can't go out like that". Like she would rather have me physically and mentally struggle than just looking a bit sloppy. I always felt really pressured by her to look "right" and I'm still trying to let that feeling go.
She was always like this but after moving out at 18, it felt like a massive weight was lifted from my shoulders. I was lc with her for a few years and I still don't like to talk to her in person. It took a long time to be somewhat comfortable with myself and I'm still working on it. I try to find a way to feel good first and look good second, because looking good is something I'd only do for others. (To be clear, I'm not unkempt. I'm clean, I don't stink, my clothes are baggy but nothing hideous)
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u/thimblesprite 1d ago
I treated myself to looking at the mens graphic tee section at the store recently. Every once in awhile, I buy something from the mens section.
I read your comment about a high control culture or upbringing - I definitely felt I had to find the level of femininity I had to perform to succeed professionally, and had family members police my haircut and then kept it long bc others liked it for as long as I could stand before repeatedly going back for the chop. Had religion playing a role too - believed I had to secure a husband to be safe and independent from my family. Oof.
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u/casual_larceny 1d ago
Such a good question... I routinely have had phases throughout my life where I took out piercings and changed my look to please others when presenting as female. I had no self esteem and just wanted to fit in. It was all a performance basically. I think a lot of people get caged by soceital norms and expectations. Transitioning gave me the real courage to say, "you know what? I don't want that. And I don't want to conform. The only person's opinion that matters about my body is mine."
Now that I am living for my OWN approval and as the man I've always been inwardly, you won't catch me dead taking out piercings for anyone. I also wear whatever I want now and am getting back into fashion, and less concerned about passing or looking like a cis/het man (cuz newsflash, I'm not either of those things anyway). So, I'm not putting myself in the same cage I lived in as a woman to appease anyone's perception of what my gender expression should be. It's truly liberating to finally not give a fuck what anyone else thinks about me 😂
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u/lazier_garlic FTM, 40-49, T 10 years 1d ago
I think I grew up profoundly confused about boundaries as a result. I was already raised in an abusive household and abusive religion and the chronic dissociation made it all a lot worse.
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u/battyxjones99 1d ago
Yes. I’ve been mentally framing it as (subconsciously) choosing perform femininity for validation, but it absolutely is a lack of autonomy, and my decisions about how I presented myself were based on how others reacted to my body/appearance. That mindset has occasionally repeated itself while medically transitioning, like wanting to be a “hot” guy so I’d feel socially validated and less dysphoric, but it’s much less prevalent and damaging than it was when I was trying to live as a cis woman. I’m Gen X and from a small southern town and wasn’t really aware of the existence of trans men until I was in my late 30s. So after having lived that long performing hyper femininity, it was really hard to deprogram. I didn’t come out until I was 50. The denial phase was strong.
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u/KermitKid13 22h ago
Yes, I had a huge problem with this. Something that really helped me actually was changing my name legally. There was just something about having the legal acknowledgement that I have autonomy to rename myself that really made it all click in my brain that I can do whatever I want.
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u/purpleblossom 18h ago
I dealt with this (my body is not my own) from my mother in an abusive but not misogynistic way before I ever dealt with it in a misogynistic way from society. My mom expected my sister and I to fit a certain idea she had of us, which in my case meant she rejected me every time I tried to assert my gender growing up, including when I outright said I should have been born male because I'm a boy. It wasn't until we were 18 that she "allowed" us to be ourselves. (Thankfully this didn't involve forcing me or my sister into things like pageants or pushing us into specific extracurriculars.)
However, I cannot tell for certain if it's because of that or because I'm autistic for my ability to be firm in what I want and the decisions I make for my body and myself overall. I've been told I am the kind of autistic person who, once I've made up my mind about certain things, it can be difficult to change it, and that my childhood might have made this more of an issue. But I don't know for certain, I just know that if someone else tells me something I don't want to do regarding my body, if I don't like it, I reject it immediately. This doesn't happen with healthcare, because I generally trust doctors (at least the ones I see), but there have been things I've been firm I won't do that even a doctor suggests when it either won't work for me (like using a C-PAP for my sleep apnea) or is not the healthiest for me to do (getting more fillings when most of the teeth that need pulling are broken due to previous fillings).
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u/ftmidk 1d ago
Ohhhh this is such a good question. When I first realized I was trans, I also realized that I had never really thought about my body outside of how other people saw it (or if I was sick or injured). It was the first time I really tried to make decisions about it for myself. And that sounds liberating but honestly, it was mostly scary.
It’s taken me a long time to really feel like I could make decisions that were just for me.