10 years on, still struggling to accept myself

[itsyours2keep]

Hello there. I first used this board back in 2016 with a different account. I was 14 then, and I am 24 now. A lot has changed, but one thing that remains the same is the guilt and shame I feel surrounding my gender identity and sexuality. A couple of years after asking you all the questions that weighed so heavily on my mind, I found out that gay transgender men exist, and since that discovery I knew that’s exactly what I am and who I am. However, while I feel relief that I don’t have to be confused anymore, I don’t feel happy, per se.

Since learning more about myself, I’ve seen many people say that people like us are predatory, fetishistic, want to invade the spaces of others, etc. Some people don’t go that far with it, but suggest that it’s just not a valid or good identity or something anyone should be. Combined with a very anti-lgbt family and few meaningful connections outside of my household, I’m unsure of how to feel about myself.

A big part of me wants to change who I am. I’ve tried to force it several times. I’d give anything to be normal, to fit in and to be a good person that others can love, but I’ve failed each time. People make it sound so easy to “just stop” being gay, transgender, and so on, but it’s not. The feelings remain, and they only get stronger as the years go by. I hate being in a female body. I feel a constant discomfort and unease. I want to claw out of my own skin sometimes, despite how impossible that is.

I don’t want to be predatory or perverted or any of those things. The idea of becoming that way scares me more than anything else, I think. I was repeatedly sexually abused for years. The last thing I ever want is to inflict that pain and suffering on others. The mere thought disgusts me. I used to punish myself for wanting any intimacy at all. If I gave into the desires and engaged in self pleasure, I would self harm right afterwards. I wanted to discourage the feelings. That didn’t work, either, but I kept it up for a while because I felt like I deserved the pain, that I was legitimately evil. Sometimes I still feel this way.

Is there any hope for me? Do I deserve any form of acceptance or tolerance from others? If not, is there any hope for my “correction” so to speak? I’m so desperate to just feel alright again. I haven’t felt alright in a long time. It’s been so long that I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that form of contentment in my life at all. I’m even more desperate for the safety and wellbeing of others. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want everyone to be happy. We’ve all suffered enough in these past few years, I think.

Thank you for reading. Any response is appreciated, positive or negative. Take care for now.

[Heather]

Hi there, itsyourstokeep. Welcome back.

I'm so sorry that you have had to take in so much anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric and all the false beleifs that fuel both. You are not a predator or bound to be a predator because of either of these identities. Not only is the belief or statement that gay men, trans men, or both predatory because of those things false, we literally have so much data to the contrary. Overwhelmingly, predatory people are mostly cisgender, heterosexual men, and it takes a loooooooong way from there to even get to trans, gay men. I'm so sorry that you had to experience sexual abuse and assault, and I feel certain no one is at any danger of that from you. You couldn't be making that more clear. If it helps to know, actually predatory people are the last people who are concerned about being predatory: the worries and the strength of those worries you have about it alone make very clear this just isn't you.

We can't willingly or forcefully change who we are when it comes to our gender or orientation. I'm so sorry that you have felt like you had to try. Anyone who suggests this is something people can do, and do easily, no less, is someone very, very misinformed, or very, very willingly ignorant.

I do want to say this: there's really no such thing as a "female" or "male" body, per se. Sexing bodies like this has always been something that is based on deeply inaccurate understandings of human beings and our bodies. Intersex people alone make the idea that bodies come in "male" or "female" clearly false, but even the idea someone can have a body in opposition to the person's own gender who inhabits it is an idea based on false or archaic understandings about sex and gender, and based in a desire to make something simple and binary that is anything but. If an example helps with that, I'm a nonbinary person. I have a uterus and all of what usually goes along with that, but I refuse to say I have a "female" body because I don't. I am a nonbinary person, and I have the body of a nonbinary person. My body doesn't have a sort of gender attached to it without my consent or feeling of that gender because of its assigned sex. Do you know what I mean? I offer this up in case you might be able to let go of the idea that your body is female and move towards ways of thinking about your body that feel in alignment with your gender instead of at war with it. <3

I also want to add that those of us who are queer and trans/GNC are also normal. There's nothing abnormal about us, because there IS no normal when it comes to gender and sexual identity, only a butt-ton of diversity.

You deserve every kind of acceptance -- tolerance is the lowest bar, we all deserve so much more than that -- from anyone and everyone, very much including from yourself, who it sounds like you might be having the hardest time getting it from.

Might you say a little about what you think you'd need in order to be able to give *yourself* some acceptance?