Questioning my appropriate gender identity

[SquishyWing]

For most of my life, I’ve identified as male since I was born that way. However, I’ve been considering whether I’m trans, but a few things have made me unsure. Firstly, I don’t feel any kind of gender dysphoria. In fact, I feel like I’m physically male but more mentally female, if that makes sense. Secondly, I know that even if I was absolutely certain that I was trans, it would be really difficult for me to start feeling comfortable identifying as such. Do you think this means that I’m not really feeling this way or am I just not feeling confident about it atm? This has been really annoying to deal with, so I’d really appreciate any help you can give :)

[Bumble_Bee_]

This is just a possibility, but maybe you're genderfluid (like moi) again, just a possibility though

[DaviM703]

This sounds a lot like my experience. I just thought I was a guy without thinking much of it since I was raised to think so, but I could never conform to the social patterns that people thought a guy should. My therapist said over and over that looking for male friends seemed to him like the best solution to feeling like I couldn't have close friends because of amatonormativity and partner jealousy, and I just felt frustrated that was all he kept saying over and over but had a very hard time telling him why it was wrong. Even knowing I got along much better with women than men it took me several more years to figure out why. I didn't feel totally confident about identifying as not a man at first, the first couple shopping trips I did to get new clothes after changing my pronouns were only stuff from the men's section that just looked more gender-neutral before I got comfortable getting clothes meant for women. If you made a post about feeling this way then you are really feeling it and that's valid.

[sol]

Feeling gender dysphoria isn't a requirement for being trans! Many trans people don't feel gender dysphoria and that doesn't make them or you any less valid. I also think it's pretty common to be hesitant about identifying yourself as another identity. At least, it certainly wasn't easy for me, I was afraid of being wrong about me being trans. (but I wanted it to be true so bad, and maybe that was enough)

Anyway, my little advice is: figure stuff out in your own time, it's okay to experiment with your gender expression (such as trying new clothes and/or pronouns, to see how you feel about it) even though you're not certain about being trans, I think that's really helpful when you're questioning