Questioning: fetish or trans?
Hey everyone,
This will be my first time posting. I’m 36 AMAB. I’m sure a lot of people reach out on this thread during their questioning phase, and that’s exactly where I am, and I also feel I am at the end of it.
So I don’t have any strong gender dysphoria or body dysphoria. I don’t get giddy or happy with female pronouns or feminine adjectives like pretty or beautiful. I am addicted to trans porn. I am both attracted to the transwomen I watch and envious of them. I am very obsessive of looking at women and jump back and forth between the question do I want to get to know them or do I want to be them…. Sometimes the answer is one or the other.
My earliest memory was 4, getting aroused watching Mrs. Doubtfire (please don’t judge, I was only 4), specifically the parts where robin williams was trying to find the perfect persona, and then when he was trying to put on the body suit when he had that visitor over.
My next memory was when I was 7, I was angry at my mom for some reason and I thought she was mean or bad, and I was so upset I called her a man. She was confused… but I remember actually projecting this onto her because I was trying to get her to tell me whether or not there was some truth that I, as a 7 year old, didn’t know about the world and you could just switch genders. (For context… my dad was domestically abusive and never around… hence why I called my mom mean/bad. My mom never hit me, I just associated the bad feeling I was having caused by someone else as a trait of being a man).
I had always liked dressing in my mom’s clothes since I was little, but as I got older I grew too big to fit in them. I remember a guidance counselor coming into one of my classes when I was 14 to talk about the effects of drugs on the body and their dangers. One of the things he talked about was hormones and how if men take estrogen it will make their genitals smaller and make them grow boobs. I remember being excited and looking this up; now confirmed, it is possible.
I became not only addicted to trans porn but using social media to look for other people my age or a little older who were living the same experience, and using it almost like soft pornography. I would be so envious at how brave these girls were and they “had the ability” to do this.
I would often fantasize at night as waking up as a girl the next day and wanting people to have no knowledge that I was a boy, or swapping bodies with pretty girl I know, or imagining something catastrophic happening to my body which would force me to live a life a girl. I would always make these requests with the condition that I only want it for a day… just in case.
When I was 22 I wasn’t having much luck dating around (I honestly had very minimal dating experience), and I told myself that if I don’t get into a serious relationship soon, I’ll strongly consider transitioning.
I‘ve had type 1 diabetes my entire life (pretty much born with it) and have ocd. I’ve used my diabetes as an excuse to not transition, and my ocd pretty much can keep me in constant feedback loops of self-doubt. I’ve also used the idea that I will never be loved or have a family as a trans person as a way to dissuade myself.
A few years back I found myself crying in my car, listening to music and reflecting on how much time I spend watching pornography… and having this complex feeling that for some reason was compelling me to think/ feel that I wanted to transition.
I’m having a hard time discerning whether these feelings are from porn and I purely want to be a women for sexual purposes, or if it’s something else. I’ve been weening myself off porn and have tried to sit with my emotions rather than relieve myself of them. Often times I notice that when I relieve myself I would feel completely different afterwards… almost like the exact opposite of how I was feeling before the act (ashamed, not dysphoric, or not wanting to be a girl at all).
Some days I get this feeling of wanting to be a girl, and it’s more intense on days I listen to YouTube videos from Dr.Z or other trans women’s experiences… and then other days I don’t align with the feeling of wanting to be female… I actually appreciate being a man to an extent and I can’t imagine living life as a woman, although… It’s extremely difficult for me to visualize any sort of future for myself at all.
Not sure if anyone is as hyper vigilant/ sensitively aware about certain areas of their body… but for some reason I’m aware of my nipples and perineum. (Does anyone else experience this)
At this point I know it’s not going to go away. I know the transfemme community struggles a lot with people seeing them as sexual deviants or objects, so I feel uncomfortable asking this but I’m ashamed to bring this topic up in any group calls with other transwomen out of fear that they think I’m there to get off on them. Is this an experience transwomen have or have had, or is this more in line with a fetish?
I know this is a long post, but If you have any questions or comments, please feel free. I just want everyone to know that I deeply appreciate any feedback or things to consider, and if this post really bothers you please let me know. Thank you!