I recently found out Kris Tyson is now trans. She had a wife and a child before the transition. This kind of made me wonder. How can anyone be sure they won't turn out trans? Like what made you (to any trans people out there) make the switch?
To add a little context. I am a man, straight maybe a tiny bit bi. I have a some traits/interests that would typically be "reserved" (please excuse my terminology here and there) for women.
For instance, I dance a lot. I have even started ballet dancing. And in the past I had an eating disorder. Now I know this may sound a kind of bigoted or stereotypical. But I don't mean it that way, this is purely based on statistics.
However I feel in no way that I am in the wrong body. I like being a man, I like the idea of masculinity, and I like being a man who dances. (Okay granted, I did not like the eating disorder)
But it makes me "worried" if I do end up trans when I already have a wife and children. I want to know before I get all of that done you know what I mean? Tyson probably wanted too, now that I think about it.
Bottom line: How did most trans people know they were trans?
If you feel like a man, like being a man, and enjoy having man parts, you're probably a man. Your interests are not your gender, and dancing isn't exclusive to women. Even ballet has male dancers.
Still, a little bit of exploration never hurt anybody. If you are trans, if living as another gender would make you much happier, wouldn't you want to know sooner rather than later? And if you aren't trans, you might still learn a thing or two about yourself that you never would have discovered otherwise. Most people go their whole lives without ever questioning their gender or closely examining what it means to them, and I think they're missing out. There is power in truly knowing yourself.
Do some thinking. Ask more questions. Not just to others, but to yourself as well. What do you like about being a man? Can you imagine not being one? How does that image make you feel? If you could instantly become anything, with no rules or consequences, what would you pick? Don't shut anything down; there are no wrong answers. Allow yourself the freedom to explore.
It may help you to stop thinking in the binary terms that society imposes on us. Gender isn't just a question of Male or Female; there are many different kinds of men and many different kinds of women. There is a large area in between where the two overlap and the lines get fuzzy, and even places that aren't on the same spectrum at all. I myself am a demigirl. My gender identity is mostly female, but also a little bit male and a little bit something else. You don't need to feel obligated to be what anyone else is.
As for how I found out, I've already posted that elsewhere in this thread. It looks like you've gotten a lot of answers from others as well. I wish you good luck in wherever this journey takes you.
If you could instantly become anything, with no rules or consequences, what would you pick? Don't shut anything down; there are no wrong answers. Allow yourself the freedom to explore.
What's the point of imagining a change with no consequences? Isn't that effectively the same as no change at all?
I think they mean no consequences as in friends and family won't have any upsetting reaction, work will still be the same, and so on. Like picking male or female in a game, it rarely matters what you pick, the game just rolls with it.
I agree with the other replies too, but also yes. The hardest thing for some people to understand about my transition is that I don't want to be a different person than I was before. I'm not trying to change who I am. I just want to live who I have always been where people can see it in a way they couldn't before.