Share some activities youâve been interested in doing but couldnât do because youâre closeted.
Transmasc, Transfem, Nonbinary, and Gender Non-Conforming answers are all welcome and encouraged here.
Shaving. Now, that also does have something to do with low self-esteem and being scared about how Iâd look without beard since I am bearded for half my life and didnât shave my face smooth since I was 16, but Iâd like to try but then everybody and their mom would ask why and I donât want to answer (Iâm a bad liar and donât feel comfortable lying, too).
Edit: I appreciate yâall wanting to help, but please stop. I didnât ask for advice, Iâll probably eventually figure something out and I kinda feel pressured and pushed, itâs really not great. Sharing your own experiences is fine, but more is really not needed (especially if youâre suggesting coming up with excuses)
Been there, done that. What helped me was two things.
-
Finding out nobody cared that much about my beard missing, except some close friends/partner but they also know me
-
Just saying âI wanted to try something newâ which is definitely not a lie :3
Honestly shaving makes a huuge difference. Even now, a couple of months into hrt and permanent hair removal the difference a fresh shave makes for my self-recognition in the mirror is astounding!
- Finding out nobody cared that much about my beard missing, except some close friends/partner but they also know me
Itâs mostly about my family, especially my mom. Sheâs a different kind of judgmental sometimes. And sheâs the last person I want to get a sniff about me changing in any way.
Honestly shaving makes a huuge difference.
I know⊠Iâm happy itâs long pants season again so I can shave my legs and it hits completely different.
I might shave my face, too, but only when I donât have to meet with my family for a few weeks so I can grow some of my beard back. After New Year is probably gonna be good time since itâs probably scarf season anyway.
I get that. I didnât shave my beard until the weekend before starting hormones. It was an armor I grew to protect myself (partly from seeing my face) and I let it go when it was time. I had the same reasons for not shaving sooner. So grow it until youâre ready to shed it sister. Your body is yours alone.
It should be, but isnât exactly for my family. Theyâre already completely losing their shit when I tap a toe outside my usual âI wear black until thereâs something darkerâ-presentation.
âI bought an electric razor to try it out and see if itâs more efficient, but accidentally shore a giant hole in my beard and had to do damage controlâ is also a valid answer.
When I shaved and people noticed, I just told them I used to shave that way or that Iâve always preferred it this way, and the only reason I had a beard before was because I was so busy for a while and stopped shaving to save time, so I was just getting back to my normal habits. You can probably find a similar excuse, that you have always preferred it this way and youâre just getting back into it.
I should emphasize: men shave all the time, there is nothing suspicious about shaving your beard, hard stop.
Yeah, I kinda wanna try shaving off my beard as well. Itâd be a bit problematic for me though, all my ID has me with a beard, and i look completely different without it (photo ID gets checked a lot for work). Whole reason I grew it was because itâs so dense and grows so fast shaving smooth regularly was a pain in the ass.
Does your beard grow quick though? But yeah, how much a full, thick beard changes your appearance is often underestimated.
Hey, Iâm just here after reading your edit, and I just want to say that youâre totally valid.
I have a big bushy beard and I wear dresses and skirts and such. I know that Iâm definitely in the minority, but fuck it, lifeâs too short not to do what you want.
Ever since I was a kid I wanted a beard like my dad. Now that itâs come fully in, I havenât shaved my face in a decade. Itâs at least as much a part of my identity as my femininity, and the two donât have to be mutually exclusive.
Anyway, I donât want to add to the pressure youâre feeling. Youâre the only one who can say how you should live your life, and thereâs no wrong answers. But Iâve lived in the closet for a long time, and while I was there it might not have been comfortable, but it felt safe. But now that Iâm out, I wouldnât trade it for anything.
When I was closeted I often thought about transitioning as just a way for me to finally wear dresses and skirts in public that I was secretly wearing at home. And when considering whether to take things further, I would weigh all the downsides of transition (the cost, the social stigma, the danger, relying on exogenous hormones the rest of my life, etc.) against those benefits and it would make them seem not worth it.
But in retrospect, transition was different than I thought - estrogen changed my mood and solved mental health problems I didnât realize were even problems, that I had lived with my whole life and had internalized as normal and just part of who I was. I would have never understood how important or necessary transition would be to my basic health and sanity.
So yeah, now I get to make and wear amazing outfits every day I would have never dreamed of before, but thatâs not really what makes transition worth it, itâs like a side bonus. The truth is that I needed those exogenous hormones, transition wasnât choosing to need them, I needed them the whole time. The need wasnât optional - in a real sense transition wasnât optional.
I find that interesting because I really expected to wind up more butch than I did. I transitioned for the body and to be seen as a woman socially. I didnât even really start wearing makeup until I learned eyeshadow while recovering from bottom surgery.
Huh, did you mean to respond to a different comment? Sorry, Iâm just not sure how your story relates to mine. Iâm interested though! What got you interested in eyeshadow at that point, and what was that process like?
Personally I learned makeup before starting hormones, and it was crucial for the months of waiting for my first appointment. There were times I became suicidal where makeup legit helped me recover emotionally. But I wouldnât expect myself to be butch, Iâm a femme (even though Iâm not straight).
The differences between our initial approaches to our transness was interesting to me. Mine being âI may not even bother with anything beyond jeans and tshirts I just want a female body under itâ vs your wondering if hormones would be worthwhile and wanting them to enable you to be comfortable dressing feminine everywhere.
Iâd been interested in learning for a while but that was a period of about a month stuck at home with a huge financial burden finally lifted. And yeah I was in my process of accepting that Iâm a femme I wouldnât be taken any less seriously as a lesbian seeking badass vibes if I was a femme.
I had tried crossdressing for years before transitioning and itâd always only made me more dysphoric. The thing that made me embrace that I was trans was homemade breast forms. So to me a lot of makeup was also for a long while associated with that time period. I just wore eyeliner on special occasions.
I could have not transitioned, but the alternative wasnât staying cis. The alternative was not growing old.
Thatâs about right.
Itâs funny how I held on and didnât transition for other people, but when I transitioned pretty much nobody cared that much. Transition felt impossible and so selfish before transitioning, yet on other side it seems like it was self-destructive to not transition and trivial compared to how difficult I thought it was going to be. (Though transition is difficult, donât let me mislead - itâs just not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and there are so many things that went better than I thought.)
I guess this is just a lesson in how easy it is to rationalize and build up your fears, and how you are your own biggest barrier.
I currently have a similar thought proccesss to how you described yours.
Transitioning feels like this super selfish thing, where many of my friends and family will just not accept it, and where I drag people more down than I help myself.
Unfortunately I have not convinced myself to another point of view yet.
Be comfortable in my body
Wear the clothes I like
Express my joy at this cute thing I just found
Feel good when I wake up in the morning
Openly express my love for the people I hold dearest to me
Go into stores like Victorias secret
Stop for 2 seconds to oogle the cute dress in the window of said vs
Paint my nails
Listen to certain music
Look too long at a third of the people I find attractive
Grow boobs
Ect ect could go on you get the idea
wear the clothes i like and be comfortable in my body
- meet up with friends again
- (sounds weird, but) plan my future and not be so short sighted.
- Going climbing
- Wear super cool clothing
- Be gay <3 (and finding someone for me)
- Remove the large towels from my mirrors (mostly a transition thing tho)
- Maybe find interests which donât just serve as distractions from the status quo
- Hopefully invest into a different career path
- occasionally taking on an âentertainerâ-like character without it seeming naturally *masculine*
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