@psych_, how old are you?
@psych-
Do yourself a favor, ignore all the online tests, the gender tests, the âare you transâ tests and so forth, it is a path of self knowledge and learning. Once upon a time it was pretty aweful, gender therapists had these idiotic rules, like if you were M to F you better say you loved wearing dresses, played with dolls as a kid,wanted to get married and have the house with the picket fence, etc there was one user story and if you didnât follow it, well, you werenât real. I would encourage you to seek out resources. If there is an LGBT group/center near where you live, they often have support resources and counselors that may be able to help, including referral to therapists and such to help you work out what you are. It is a path of self discovery, a journey, and in the end you will decideâŠand if you arenât sure, from everything i know, that is pretty common:).
âI donât dress provocatively in the workplace (or anywhere, really, lol, since thatâs not my style) but if a male coworker wishes to find me attractive, more power to him. I havenât found being good-looking to be any kind of detriment in the work world.â
Being good looking is completely different than dressing to show sexuality and wearing obvious amounts of makeup. I suspect we are talking about different things here.
Yes, to musicprntâs comments. Try not to judge yourself, psych. All this is challenging enough.
Echoing musicprnt, psych__. Self-questioning and self-doubt about âauthenticityâ are incredibly common, and incredibly self-destructive. Example: as a teenager, I spent years telling myself I couldnât âreallyâ be transsexual, because I primarily liked girls, and I saw someone on TV saying that you had to like only boys. Not so.
@psych_, I can only add that medical science does its best to categorize an analog world of endless variation. Who decides that a tumor of 1 cm is stage 2 cancer and 1.00001 cm is stage 3? The oncologists get together and they vote. Psychiatrists do the same thing when they are establishing diagnostic criteria. But those descriptive boundaries donât necessarily reflect real-world distinctions. Maybe you donât fit neatly into a recognized box. That means the boxes are just an approximation of clinical reality.
Caitlyn Jenner is one thing, but surgery at 18?? I think that is awfully young for such a huge decision.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/nyregion/transgender-minors-gender-reassignment-surgery.html?_r=0
This is what the womenâs schools have to deal with as they open their doors to trans women, which all the major ones are saying they are doing. Thatâs great to be open to trans women, but how many young people at that age have really had the chance to strongly identify / live as women if they were born biologically male? Especially if they didnât have family support.
âBeing good looking is completely different than dressing to show sexuality and wearing obvious amounts of makeup. I suspect we are talking about different things here.â
Agree, but Iâd also say that showing sexuality and wearing obvious amounts of makeup are different things, too.
âAgree, but Iâd also say that showing sexuality and wearing obvious amounts of makeup are different things, tooâ
I suppose so. If you are wearing obvious amounts of makeup, you might look like youâre trying too hard.
Depends on the makeup, doesnât it? Mascara to enhance lashes and bright green eyeshadow a la Mimi on Drew Carey are two entirely different things.
There is mascara that enhances lashes, and mascara that looks like you have enormous spiders on your eyes! Not to pick on the ladies on Fox, but take a look at them. Every single one have those spiders, I think. Itâs rather scary.
Oh goody another reason to never watch Fox 
(I am absolutely, irrationally terrified of spiders.)
I am impressed by what some people can do with make-up- men and women alike. Iâve spent a lot of time on movie and theater sets and truly, it is astonishing what artists can do. Iâm talking about âtypicalâ make-up and stage make-up, of course. (I still donât wear make-up and have no desire to but it is a work of art sometimes.)
â(I am absolutely, irrationally terrified of spiders.)â
Aha! Now you know why you donât like Fox! 
Not so many have the chance to live, obviously â especially if their parents arenât supportive. Identify? Not that there are really so many trans people in the first place (1 in 100? 1 in 500? Nobody really knows), but of those that exist, there are quite a few who do identify by that age.
Thereâs a big difference between identifying at 16 or 17 and identifying at 5 or 6, but even the studies of young children who are cross-gender identified, purporting to show that most end up identifying as gay rather than trans, are highly dubious to say the least, given that they were conducted back in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly by doctors who engaged in the equivalent of âreparative therapyâ â on the theory that itâs easier to be gay than trans. Thereâs even some evidence that some of the studied children who purportedly grew up to be gay eventually transitioned in adulthood, decades later. So again, itâs all pretty unclear.
I think the hormone blockers are such a wonderful option for minors â a reversible treatment that allows them to avoid distressing body changes until they are older and allow them more years to experience life and learn about themselves.
I donât think that has anything to do with mascara. Many women now wear false eyelashes, at least on TV.
I have rather short, straight eyelashes, so I donât even bother with mascara, because all it does is end up smudged underneath my eyes.
If the cause of gender dysphoria is hormone levels in utero, then what would happen if there was a hormone treatment that could reverse the effect? Take a 4 month treatment at age 18 and like magic, your feelings âmatchâ your body. Would it then be appropriate to recommend or choose to take such a medical approach?
âComplicating matters, studies suggest that most young children with gender dysphoria eventually lose any desire to change sex, and may grow up to be gay, rather than transgender. Once into adolescence, however, their dysphoria is more likely to stick.â
I would love to see the studies that claim this one, that most young kids with gender dysphoria grow up to be gay. I agree with Donna, that smacks of so called studies done decades ago, some of them sadly done by gays with an agenda , that M to F trans folks were gay men afraid to admit they were gay.
I would be very, very much against permanent changes, like surgery, for young kids, Hannaâs view is mine, that hormone blockers make sense when puberty hits. Teenagers are a different story, by the time a kid hits 15 or 16, assuming they have been working with a therapist, and have been living as their identified gender, it is more than likely that those who are gay or were simply âgoing through a phaseâ or whatever will have found themselves at odds with the way they are living and say something. Obviously, no therapeutic process is perfect, but if a kid has been living as their desired gender for years, if they are comfortable, then by the time they hit their mid teens hormones and surgery may very well be indicated.
One of the things I suspect is that if surgeons are doing surgery on kids in their teens, that they are not doing so without ample documentation that the kid has gone through a long process, that therapists and such have signed off on it. Anyone doing that kind of surgery without that is quite frankly a fool, they would be so open to liability suits it isnât even funny because if a child is involved, they will have no where to hide.
I wonder about this from a slightly different angle. Most kids, even smart hs seniors, are still young, havenât been really out in the world yet, have limited perspective, etc. In the case of my own D2, who went through a terribly rocky period from about 11th to the beginning of college jr year, counseling comforted her, but didnât clarify her perspective or ground her for quite some time. Iâd like to hear thoughts on whether a pubescent kid can be ready.
I ask respectfully. I understand the discussion about feelings, knowledge, identity, etc. And that treatments can be stopped. But can a 13 year old understand the various considerations, have the emotionally mature perspective, in the way, say, a 20 year old might?