The Gender Variant Phenomenon

I've been hopping into Trans Academy on VRChat for the past couple of weeks and chatting with people going through much of what I'm going through right now. One of them shared a link to a journal article called The Gender Variant Phenomenon -- A Developmental Review and I found it extremely enlightening.

It leads with a description of groups that transgender people can fall into. Group 1 are MTF individuals who find it nearly impossible not to present feminine, group 2 are FTM individuals who find it nearly impossible not to present masculine, and then there's group 3:

Group Three (G3) is composed of natal males who identify as female but who act and appear normally male. We can hypothesize that prenatal androgenization was sufficient to allow these individuals to appear and act normally as males but insufficient to establish a firm male gender identity. For these female-identified males, the result is a more complicated and insidious sex/gender discontinuity. Typically, from earliest childhood these individuals suffer increasingly painful and chronic gender dysphoria. They tend to live secretive lives, often making increasingly stronger attempts to convince themselves and others that they are male.

This feels like it could be me, since the other two groups are definitely not me. Right after that, there's a bombshell:

The story is very different for Group Three. In the hope of ridding themselves of their dysphoria they tend to invest heavily in typical male activities. Being largely heterosexual, they marry and have children, hold advanced educational degrees and are involved at high levels of corporate and academic cultures. These are the invisible or cloistered gender dysphorics. They develop an aura of deep secrecy based on shame and risk of ridicule and their secret desire to be female is protected at all costs. The risk of being found out adds to the psychological and physiological pressures they experience. Transitioning from this deeply entrenched defensive position is very difficult. The irony here is that gender dysphoric symptoms appear to worsen in direct proportion to their self-enforced entrenchment in the male world. The further an individual gets from believing he can ever live as a female, the more acute and disruptive his dysphoria becomes.

Yep. This is definitely me. Holy shit, this is me. I've tried suppressing my desire for long hair by having short hair. I've tried having a beard. I've tried dressing incredibly masculine. None of this made me feel happier to look at myself in the mirror. You know what did, though? Dressing even the slightest bit feminine. I've probably taken more selfies in the past 6 months than I ever have.

You might have also noticed that I have dropped hints about feeling this way for a long time. Or maybe you didn't. The goal was that you weren't supposed to, but I got some catharsis about being open about it that I could deflect if challenged on it.

The article then continues on in a Monty Python's Meaning of Life sort of chronology. In the "Early Adulthood" section, we get to another bombshell:

The cloistered, natal males, on the other hand typically start to realize the seriousness of their dilemma at this age. It is common to hear reports of these individuals increasing the intensity with which they try to rid themselves of the ever-increasing gender-related anxiety. Many individuals paradoxically adopt homophobic, transphobic, and overtly sexist attitudes in the hope that they will override their desires to be female.

I experienced this from when I was 15 or 16 until I was probably 21 or 22. I still hold an immense amount of guilt over it. But, I look at photos of me from back then -- when facial hair didn't grow as quickly and my aesthetic could broadly be described as butch -- and I wish I looked like that now.

When I dug through my backups to find some photos, with the knowledge I have now, it is so obvious to me where my internal gender compass has always pointed. I mean, I look like a lesbian Guy Fieri in the second one.

Next, we get to "Middle Age". Roughly where I am today. And this is where it really started to get real for me, because I check every one of these boxes:

These individuals often show up in therapy offices with symptoms mimicking Depression or Generalized Anxiety Disorder. They complain of panic attacks, irritability, sleeping disorder, inability to concentrate, and recent weight loss. If they are married, there is often serious martial discord due to self-imposed disassociation from the family unit. Job performance may also be affected, it is not uncommon the hear reports of individuals experiencing negative performance revues [sic] or outright threats of being fired unless they seek help for whatever is bothering them. Pressed ever deeper into despair, suicidal thoughts begin to intrude into daily life. Even at this point the individual may be reluctant to discuss their gender issues lest the door be opened to a fear-laden real-world exploration of gender transition. They are consumed by feelings of being inexorably trapped.

Yes, even that box.

The anecdote that immediately follows this paragraph is also highly relatable, though I don't feel quite as strongly about my anatomy being wrong:

John, a 50 year-old genetic male, medical research scientist, married (23 years), father of three children aged 20, 17 and 7, phoned me after experiencing a panic attack severe enough to require emergency attention from paramedics at the airport on his way to give a presentation at a conference. John gave me only his first name and informed me that I was the first to be told what he was about to tell me. He said he was "gender dysphoric" and that he was "desperate." Feelings that were once "controllable through sheer force of will," had increased to where he now was having protracted periods where he would close his office door, lie on the floor and weep quietly while curled up in the fetal position, holding his genitals in pain. Other than intrusive and repeated fantasies of being female, he had refused to allow himself any overt form of female gender expression. He reported feeling that if he was to cross-dress and be caught, he would dishonor his wife and family. Having attained international recognition for his work, he was also concerned about his professional reputation. The only other form of temporary relief came through masturbating, often up to five times a day.

This person ended up transitioning and since this article is from 2001-2003, is now in her 70s. I hope that she has spent the past 25 years having such a fulfilled life that it makes up for the years living in anguish.

After reading this article, I am even more grateful that I was able to find a community -- the furry community -- full of supportive people who helped me come to terms with and ultimately accept my gender identity. I also feel a lot better about being a "late bloomer", when so many of the trans people I know are barely old enough to drink. I don't know what's going to happen with my personal and professional relationships, though. This scientist was able to "renew and redefine" her relationships; I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds tumultuous.

I worry that others see me starting down this path of change and think that I'm moving from being authentic to being inauthentic, like I'm suffering from some kind of trans imposter syndrome. Since it was the furry community who brought me to this point, it might even seem like I'm coming out as trans just to be more accepted in the community or something similarly unhinged. The reality is that I've been a part of this community since my sister and I drew Ziggy in her bedroom in 2000 or 2001 and I found it preferable to anthropomorphize a character over being my normal, boring identity. I just didn't know that was called furry until 2023 and didn't participate in my local community until 2024. There is plenty of discussion online about why autistics make up such a large percentage of the furry community, and therefore why I find the community such a perfect fit for me, but I think my favorite is Patricia Taxxon's On The Ethics of Boinking Animal People.

This article gave me some hope that it's not quite game over for me yet, and having a strong community has helped me realize that it doesn't matter whether others think I'm being inauthentic, though it is still making me feel bad. I feel like I've just solved a puzzle that I've been trying to solve my entire life, and it's cause for celebration. Life doesn't work out that way for me. The next few months will be rough, and I'm genuinely scared of what will happen to me when I'm in between gender presentations come our next big work offsite in June.