Hi there! I was wondering if anyone else has had any experience with gender dysphoria but still felt like they are their own gender? It's an issue I'm not currently dealing with now. However when I was younger I struggled with having the genitalia and secondary traits of a biological female, like breasts. I also disliked being the "girl" in a relationship and felt really negatively towards being feminine or evoking any semblance of femininity, yet I never felt as if I wasn't a girl. Part of my hatred towards my body was because of my eating disorder though, and as I struggle less with self esteem I do feel like I'm more okay with those traits. Instead now I just choose to change the definition of a woman as not needing to be feminine or be overtly sexualized. Has anyone else had feelings like this? I know it might be odd, but I just haven't met people with similar feelings that weren't trans or that didn't identify as nonbinary.

I can't say it's something I relate to directly, I'm a transman myself, but from my point of view dysphoria has a lot to do with level of comfort with how others see you -- I know before I had top surgery I was far more comfortable with my own body in private than around others (that's only from my experience, I'm sure that's not true for everyone). If social pressures are telling you to be x, y and z because you're a woman but you don't identify with that opinion, then yeah, I think that's a legitimate reason to feel dysphoric about yourself, because how you see yourself is different to how everyone else sees you, which is the key -- I don't feel dysphoric because my body is 'female' and I am 'male' and there is something inherently wrong or shameful about that, I feel it because my body makes others see me in a certain light, which happens to be wrong, which is uncomfortable. Does... that make sense?

I feel the same! For a few years I identified as a trans man, but I have more recently become comfortable identifying as female. It really helped me when I realized that you do NOT have to be feminine to be a girl! You don't have to have long hair, or like dressing up, or doing any of the stereotypical girly things. I am female, but not feminine, and that's okay! Although I am not a lesbian, if I could apply a label to myself, it would be Soft Butch. Pretty masculine, but more.. "soft", it's hard to explain..

is it okay if I send you a message to talk about this and various things?

Of course! Feel free! :)

-hugs- Yes. I feel like I should be far more muscular/less flabby and have smaller breasts. There are things you can do- like, for me, working out and loosing weight {which I have to to protect my peice of shit spine anyway} Ultimately I decided I don't have to "Be" anything. Yeah, I'm female. That doesn't mean anything beyond that I have XX chromosomes. I HATE people judging me on that and generally speaking I tend to blow them out of the water when they get to know me. I've never been "feminine"- the cloths, the makeup- I remember as a little kid always getting race cars and not dolls in kid's meals. I STILL prefer race cars over dolls, action flicks over romcoms and one of my favorite pass times is sword fighting- I'm the only female in the group- and I keep large reptiles that I have scars from. Yeah, I like some of the more typical "female" things reading the not so occasional ridiculous slashfic or otherwise character driven story. That's not wrong either. There's nothing wrong with being yourself.