I knew pretty early in my teens that I did not want biological children and that adoption would be the right choice for me if I wanted to be a  parent, for all sorts of reasons. Everybody told me then, "Oh, you'll see, you'll change your mind when you're older". I never did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The pregnancy ship has sailed now (all parenthood ships, tbh), and that's okay with me, but occasionally a day pops in when I wish I had had the experience of carrying a child, birthing it... Today is one of those days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And then I remember what absolute body horror scenario this is for me and all the ways in which it terrifies me, and any romanticized notions I have of pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding/etc go right out the window! Read More »

My partner and I were talking about an upcoming competition and I was unsure if I still have to compete in the women's pool, considering that I am not in medical transition yet. He said, "There are a hundred reasons why this pool is not right for you, but apart from them, why would you want to cause yourself crushing dysphoria? You don't need that."

We have a lot of differences about my transition and it's been a really challenging time for our relationship. However at moments like this I am reminded that whatever the future may hold for us as a couple, he still cares about my welbeing as a human being, as much as I care for his. This gives me hope that perhaps we could ride this out. Read More »

The barber who does my fade is about the best quiet ally I need in my life.

I've never come out to him, because the owner of the shop is always low-key transphobic, so he calls me by my old name but.. dude knows... and always tries to affirm me with small gestures. One of them being that lately he has started - entirely of his own accord - to give me a receding hairline xD I thought I was imagining it at first, but I paid attention yesterday and sure enough - just as we were done he took one critical look and surreptitiously shaved off a bit of my temples and my forehead to give me a widow's peak and male pattern baldness xD Read More »

Did a thing, did a thing, did a thing!

that I've been planning to do for 5-6 months now, which is to join a trans gym. Had my first training today and it was so. nice. to do physical things with people like me, with bodies, and stories like mine. To be asked immediately what pronouns and forms of address I use To .not. have to correct people every 5 seconds.

Meanwhile, at the usual training yesterday... After last time I corrected him about 20 times for calling me "she", the instructor has put it into his head that he won't use a. single. pronoun. when referring to me anymore. Not a single one. XD Not he, not they, not any of the Dutch options. Just my name. Which is fine!! You do you, buddy! Way better than "she/her" and I honestly do appreciate the effort. Only, he and I were demonstrating a technique and he literally had to use my name five times in a single sentence XD "So, we begin with Marbear standing in a low stance with Marbear's right leg leading and Marbear's left leg carrying 40% of the weight, while Marbear's plam is facing outward and then Marbear..." You get the picture. If someone didn't know my name before the exercise, now they definitely do 😂 Read More »

I went to the sports camp after all, but decided to stay only one day. Both good decisions, even though being there felt like swimming through an oil slick. I felt as if I was drowning the entire time, could barely follow instructions at the workshops, and didn't spar at all because I was so out of it.

Funny thing, most women immediately read me as female, but men largely couldn't quite figure me out. It was only toward the end of the day when I had to put on a chest protector that it got gnarly. The men's chest protectors hinder my range of motion, so I use a women's one which is...uh... two clearly separated perky molded boobs *headdesk* The reaction was spectacular. You could literally see the lightbulbs going on on people's faces, and suddenly it was a very confident "she does this", "hold her there" etc. Kill me. Read More »

I am having a distinct "what the fuck am I doing?" moment.

So, a month ago a signed up for a weekend-long martial arts training and sparring event. That would be my first such event since coming out. When I signed up I was finally feeling very secure and completely in state to handle all the surrounding BS like changing rooms, toilets, interactions and introductions to some notable people in the sport, not to mention the actual "contact" aspect of contact sports.

Since shit went down with my partner last Saturday, I've been in a tailspin. Two nights of no sleep and wanting to end it, followed by several days of divorce talk, and it hit me last night that the only reason why I'm still functioning is because I'm dissociating as if my life depends on it (come to think of it, it probably kinda does). I am completely checked out of my body, of my feelings, of my thoughts, of my entire existence. My being is somewhere else, outside my life. Read More »

I did the thing. I stopped being a self-sabotaging little bitch and asked my doctor to move me from the general psychiatric care route to a transgender-specific one. It only took me an entire fucking year of trying to navigate this shit on my own. Now all I have to do is wait for two more years for an intake. Which is fine. If the pandemic is anything to measure things by, two years can go pretty fast. I did the fucking thing.

I've been sewing for something like 10 years, maybe a bit more. Aside from a couple of corsets, I've never really worn anything I've made. I've got an entire shelf with patterns, drawers full of finished and unfinished skirts, dresses, blouses, tops. No matter how fun the fabric or how well I fitted the garment, I always hated putting them on. There was always something off to irritate me. Maybe a seam wasn't perfectly matching another one, or the colour made my skin look weird, or - despite hours and hours of fitting - it pulled in weird places and I hated seeing the wrinkles. So I just assumed that I'm shit at sewing and have no attention to detail, and kept sewing just because I really like thinking about the math of turning 3D body measurements to 2D patterns to 3D garments again. Read More »

Well, my year began with the shittiest possible conversation regarding transition with my partner, so I got that going for the trainwreck that I fully expect 2022 to be. ☠️

I wish Loforo allowed for individual privacy settings for posts. I kind of want to talk about it, but I don't want to put that conversation up for every user here. Definitely not after someone commented telling me to die on my last post.

I started a new job this week and on the official channels I am still listed with my deadname and assigned gender. Meh. Luckily another person with the same name as my legal name started on the same day, so I could be all sneaky and just tell my team, "Ah, that's going to be confusing! Just call me [new masc name], everyone calls me that :)" Everyone caught on and I was pretty happy with how the situation played out.

Fast forward to this morning. Slack pings, I have a message from the team lead:
"Hi [new masc name], can I ask you a personal question?"
Cue panic. OMG. WTF. What do I do? Come out or deflect, come out or deflect? Aaaaaaa! Read More »

Reposted from marbear

Gender Dysphoria is some fresh hell that eats you from the inside, and it makes your skin feel too tight, and your face is stupid, and your body's all wrong, and your voice is shite, and did I mention how tight your whole skin suit feels?!! It doesn't matter how long you've been in transition, it doesn't matter how well you pass (or if you pass at all), it still keeps coming and you might look fine but it is actually gnawing on your from the inside until you're a blood pudding inside a human skin sack.

Normally this time Friday evening I go training, which helps a bit to get out of my own head. But of course we're in lockdown again and sportsclubs are closed, so I can't go punch my friends/get punched by them, and NO I'm not going out running in public - not when I feel like all eyes are on me and seeing me as some ugly lady with an unfortunate haircut. So it's my home and as many push-ups I can crunch but HELL I HATE THIS! Read More »

Tonight my partner called me his boyfriend for the first time and I swear I'm going to end up in the ER with a heart attack from the euphoria I feel. Yes, it was said 90% as a joke, but it's still a huge thing, considering we've been smack in the middle of trying to figure out this whole trans thing and how it affects our relationship. Last week he also unironically used my new masc name for the first time, and I'm just so fucking floored and grateful that he is as he is.

A week ago I was upset and wrote here about an extremely conservative trans- and intersesphobic decision that the constitutional court in my country of origin made: basically that the only valid identity is one's bilogical sex, and that given the demographic crisis of the country. One of my concerns was this will make it even more unsafe for LGBT+ folx. Another was that it was also going to be used as a playing card in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elecetions.

What do you know. Less than a week later, a bunch of paramilitary neonationalists led by one of the presidential candidates broke into an LGBT+ community centre, trashed everything and beat up some of the people there. At least one of them was armed. And, no, no one has been arrested, although the guy has been identified by the victims. Read More »

Occasionally I share here stories about my gender transition. A few days ago it was one about my observations on the value and joy of living authentically and not fearing to break with convention.

Well, what do you know? Today the constitutional court in my country ruled that that only biological sex exists and that there exists no reason for anyone to be granted legal changes in their civic status with regards to sex and gender identity. The exception being intersex people, and only those with chromosomal intersex conditions that lead to ambiguous secondary sex characteristics, so not even the majority of intersex people. That's rich, on the international day of intersex visibility, too. Read More »

For the longest time I didn't want to start transitioning, because of vanity and some internalized fatphobia. As a woman I was moderately pretty, at least, back when I was thin. Then I put on weight. Like, a lot of it. Which wasn't a problem per se, as oddly enough I enjoyed the process of seeing my body changing that way. It might have even alleviated some dysphoria, because once I stopped being thin people also stopped drawing attention to my body. No one feels compelled to tell a fat girl that she's elegant haha. So that was a relief.

However, I was still scared to start presenting male. I was afraid that what was an acceptably looking but fat woman would translate to a hideous man. And maybe it did. Now that that I've taken the plunge, I look like the love child of Kim Jong-un and James Charles, which is... a look. Yet, every time I see my objectively hideous face in the mirror, the joy I feel is overwhelming. I'm beaming. And people see that and and seem to be genuinely excited about me. There is a lesson here. A lesson about living as the human being you are, not the one that follows a convention that is killing it. Read More »