I couldn't de-transition if I wanted to

I've been feeling really trans positive all week.

I've also been thinking about transition. It's an odd thing really. I have transitioned to the point where people totally accept me as female. I'm not talking about passing. I've passed for quite a while now. Basically over the past few days helping my friend begin his transition it's been dawning on me that were I for some reason to want to return to living as a man it would be a very difficult thing for me to do, and honestly I don't think I'd ever be able to pass as well as I did before transition. For one thing I really love my breasts and there is no way I would ever give them up but seriously short of moving somewhere and starting a completely new life I don't think anyone would ever buy me as a man.

Psychologically I couldn't do it. Actually I probably would have less endurance for it than a cisgendered woman would, considering my past. I went "full time" as a woman when I could no longer force myself to present as a man. That happened relatively quickly after I first started going out dressed as a woman regularly. I think somewhere in the depths of my subconscious I knew that was the case and I think a big reason I was never really a "cross-dresser" (in public anyway) was because even any acceptance as a woman would cause me to seek full acceptance which I did and have. Read Norah Vincent's Self Made Man for some insight into what living as a man was like for me and why I couldn't go back.

But the thought that for some reason if I did want to start living as a man again I would have to retransition is an interesting thought. I think because in transition there is no way to guess what type of man or woman you will become. I mean I suspected I'd be a jeans and t-shirts kinda girl who was just on the feminine side of androgynous. I am not. I mean I wear jeans and t-shirts to work and occasionally outside of work, but I'm not feminine androgynous by any means, I'm flat out feminine in my person and in my outward expression of that person.

If for some reason I were to go back to living as a man I doubt "straight Nate" would return. I imagine I would be heterosexual but I can't imagine that I would by any means be masculine.

Which is kind of the dilemma I was in before transitioning. Or rather that isn't accurate at all. I am female, and was female and a rather feminine female at that but prior to transitioning I had kind of learned how to act and speak to appear masculine to others. I imagine I still have the knowledge but probably not the ability.

Anyway this is kind of a milestone. For better or for worse I am a woman and will be for the rest of my life.


The thing about it is being a woman is not all that different from being a man was. For me anyway. I mean the  biggest difference I can think of is that there is more of me. As a man I was severely limited in my personality because I couldn't access it. How I'm actually treated isn't all that different.

Okay, my opinions don't hold the weight they used to, my abilities aren't valued as highly etc. Of course I also don't get yelled at for being to quiet in the kitchen anymore, and people actually listen to me without me having to be much more forceful with my opinions than feels natural. If you want a list of the differences between being perceived as a woman an being perceived as a man I can't really give you one. I don't experience the world differently. There's just more of me to offer.

Which is kind of why it is hard to explain being trans to cis people and why they can't understand us from their perspective. I did "want" to become a woman, but only because I really wasn't ever a man. I basically was a pre-adolescent female until the age of 28...with a rather horrible hormone imbalance.

I mean being "a man" was horrible for me, because honestly what woman wants to be breastless, hairy and built like a man.

So...I'm kind of happy that that is someplace I can't go back to.