Not so great. 6 months HRT.
I don’t look good in any feminine clothing. I’m too insecure to practice voice or makeup around my partner. Because I don’t look remotely femme I’m too insecure to look for a hairdresser.
My partner keeps pressuring me because I don’t like enough traditionally cis woman things, or don’t like them as much as I should, or that I still like some things that are not necessarily targeted towards cis women, and its ruining my self-confidence. I need local transfem friends I can reach out to and hang out with and go shopping with but its not easy being older and non-US.
Once step forward, three steps back.
I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but having hobbies and likes that aren’t traditionally feminine doesn’t make you any less a woman. Every cis woman I know has at least a couple supposedly “masculine” hobbies. If you’re partner is pressuring you to fit into a sexist stereotype, it sounds like they aren’t actually very supportive of you.
About in the same boat. 6 months in, see some changes but definitely agony trying to be patient. Is your partner supportive or not so much? Mine sure wasn’t it was pretty bad hah.
It feels like my partner wants to be supportive because it’s the right thing to do, but at an instinctive level she is unhappy and resentful as she was raised in an exceptionally conservative, highly-religious, eastern european family.
Which results in saying the right things, but pulling back short of any real support with passive aggression, apathy, and feigned ignorance. I’m not sure whether I’d prefer that to completely unsupportive.
I finally pass visually, at least sometimes (I can tell because men have started referring to me as girl, and online they condescendingly explain basic programming concepts to me), but man my voice is so masculine. I’ve only just started voice training and I wish I had started earlier.
I’ve been doing voice training recently with quite a bit of success. don’t forget to have fun with it and play around! the lions share of the work is figuring out which muscles in your neck you want to use. voice training doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom, it can be an actually fun thing to do! and trust me, it’ll be worth it when you finally hear your true voice <3
Thanks for the encouragement <3 I’ve been putting it off and definitely been a bit in the “doom and gloom” headspace. I’ve always spoken in a fairly deep monotone, so its fair to say I was pretty daunted by the idea of manipulating my voice. That said, I actually finally managed to make some minor (but meaningful) progress last time I practiced, so hopefully I can ride on that success to motivate me!
that’s awesome and yeah I was in a similar boat (deep voice with vocal fry). if your experience will be anything like mine, there will come a moment where it just clicks and while it won’t immediately give you an angelic voice, manipulating your voice will feel so much more intuitive (and that’s where it gets really fun ime).
If it helps, I can’t recommend this resource highly enough. In 3 months I achieved results close to my goal after poor results of on and off practice for the last few years.
Pretty great. I’m 3 weeks on HRT now but I didn’t notice any visual changes yet but I certainly do feel colder now.
It’s probably the hardest part of HRT: waiting for something to happen.
Done and dusted. A few years back, I realised that I had nothing else I wanted to achieve, no more goals or plans in front of me in terms of my transition. I’d achieved most of what I was hoping for, came to terms with some things I hadn’t achieved, and to this day I am still struggling with some elements I achieved. But even though the internal process is still going on, in terms of social, medical etc, there’s nothing left.
Still in closet. I’ll slowly start coming out to my family next week and see how things are going. I hope to start going to a therapist during summer but that depends on how accepting my parents will be.
