Introduction

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog :)

I figured it would make the most sense if I introduced myself, why I am here, and why I decided to make a blog. And then talk about some other random stuff to get it going.

So first off, I am 20 years old and I am a female-to-male transsexual. In a transgender context, such as online transgender forums, my gender therapist's office and such, I refer to myself as ftm or male. However, I eventually just wanna be a guy and refer to myself as male.

I haven't started testosterone yet but hopefully will be starting this month or next. I can't wait to start, and especially can't wait for the changes. I just transferred into a new college and I'm still adjusting. It's a big school so it's hard to meet people. I don't really know anyone here, save 3 people I already knew from high school and earlier who go here. I am hoping to meet people through the LGBT group (which is supposed to be pretty popular) as well as through the bowling club which I am going to be signing up for soon, once the clubs get started. I have had trouble socially for several years now, and I am going to discuss a bit about why I think that is.

I believe I may have Asperger's Syndrome. That, along with being trans and just not fitting in with the "mainstream" I guess you can say, has made me very socially isolated, and increasingly so since high school. I never fit in with girls, and I stayed away from guys because I didn't want to be treated like a girl by guys (no one knew I was trans, except for a handful of people, up until very recently.) I think transitioning and being out in the world, interacting in the world with other people, will help me socially. But I may still have some issues with developing healthy social relationships/friendships because I do think I have mild Asperger's, but just have never been officially diagnosed.

This whole Asperger's thing, it's rather funny because it's something that I embrace about myself (something I gotta learn to do with the whole being trans thing, haha.) The reason for this is because of that whole theory that people with Asperger's, autism, and autism spctrum disorders in general, have an "extreme male brain." So it's as though having Asperger's would verify my gender identity as male, and not only that, but an extreme male. :D

There are some issues I struggle with when it comes to masculinity. I do plan to work these out with my gender therapist (whom I believe is brilliant, by the way.) She asked me in one of my first sessions whether I question that I'm male. She asked in a tone that indicated "if you are still questioning this, we've really got some work to do before we look at starting you on male hormones." I told her that no, I don't question that I'm male, but I question my masculinity. She said that is a very good answer.

What I mean by questioning my masculinity, is that I question, "just how masculine am I?" I do not like to think of myself as a feminine man, and I shy away from anything that would make me seem feminine in any way, and have an inclination, often one that I force upon myself, to have stereotypically masculine thoughts, behaviours, actions, and interests. I have some sort of OCD thing going on where everything about me, or almost everything about me, needs to be masculine. It's kind of nerve-wracking because I question every move I make, every interest I have, and so forth. For example, I'll be like "do I use too many emoticons?" There have been studies indicating that women are more likely to use emoticons than men. So I'll say "Is it okay to use the amount of emoticons that I do?" And then I'll look at the way other heterosexual, cisgendered males use emoticons to see if my use of them is "okay." I guess "okay" in this case means socially acceptable. I do this with a lot of other things, such as the way I speak, my interests (in things like sports and TV shows and video games.) It drives me nuts but as I said it's this OCD thing that I really need to work on. lol.

Another thing I struggle with is something called H-OCD or homosexual-OCD. Yes, this is a very real thing. Basically it means that a straight man obsesses over whether he might be gay. He will picture himself in gay situations/encounters, and then will start thinking, "I must be gay because I am having gay thoughts." I think this H-OCD stuff may have come from the fact that I have never been in a relationship. I have never so much as even kissed anyone. The reason for this is mainly that, as I said before, I was always uncomfortable with guys treated me as though I was a girl. That includes romantic or sexual situations. So I've never let a guy kiss me. Instead, I would explain to them that I am trans and give them the whole rundown, because I preferred doing that to actually kissing them. This happened to me with two individuals in particular.

Now with girls, the situation was a lot different. I couldn't even admit to myself that I was attracted to girls until I was about 16 or 17. The reason for this is that I was so uncomfortable with the thought of myself as lesbian, or even the thought of myself in any type of sexual situation in which I have a female body. I also tend to be attracted to heterosexual women. Because of all this, I probably will not even start dating (or doing anything beyond dating) until I appear physically male (this probably also includes chest surgery, if a relationship ever became sexual.)

So that's a brief rundown of my transgender-related history. I have "wanted to be a boy" (I put that in quotes because it's not actually that I want to be male, it's that I am male) since I was about 3 years old and knew the physical difference between male and female. At that point, I couldn't really wrap my head around the idea of actually identifying as a gender incongruent with my birth sex, so that's why I use the word "want" instead of "am."

I plan to use this blog to write about my journey, my transition into manhood, and whatever I encounter along the way. I may eventually also post pictures of my progress with physical transition.