What you describe is really familiar! I felt pretty much the same way starting out.

To begin with, my transition goals were “I want a more feminine body (specifically breasts)”; that was it. If it turned out I passed as a woman and people called me “she/her” that would be fine, but I’d probably stick with my old name and social role. Probably wasn’t going to get bottom surgery or anything. I’d just be a dude who looks like a lady, to coin a phrase. Whatever nebulous essence of femininity cis women had, I didn’t understand, and I didn’t have it. I was just me.

What happened next though is I got on HRT, the body issues started to get resolved, and I realized that I wasn’t actually OK with being seen or referred to as a man. So I changed my name, with a kind of “yeah, I know it’s weird to have a girl’s name, but that’s what the documents say, so if you wouldn’t mind…” approach. And I started presenting more and more traditionally feminine so that other people (and myself) would see me as a woman without prompting. I still felt that I was kind of faking it; I wasn’t a “real” woman, just pretending to be one. (Oh, and I realized I really did want bottom surgery after all)

But now I’ve accepted that everyone is “just me”, and I have just as much right to call myself a woman as anybody else. I choose to believe that deciding to be a woman is exactly what it means to be one! That’s not to say that other viewpoints are necessarily wrong, but it’s the only interpretation that makes sense to me now.

So I think what I wanted to say is: I think how you are feeling is pretty normal actually, and it’s possible your feelings will change as you get more comfortable with yourself. But it’s cool if they don’t.

You are absolutely welcome to start those conversations. But the only arbiter of you is you. We get involved when other people try and over talk your experiences and tell you that they know you better than you know you.

Listening the the experience of others and finding your own truth in their words is powerful. People telling you that their experience let’s them define your truth is where we step in :)

Have you seen a therapist that specializes in gender dysphoria, is trans-affirming, and works with trans patients?

You might want to work on this with a therapist, it’s important to recognize the significance of your dysphoria.

To be honest, estrogen made my libido stronger (and different), and my orgasms are much better. I repressed my genital dysphoria effectively until I socially transitioned, then once I was living as a woman and recognizing dissociation I had always experienced during sex, I started to want to avoid that and realized I had significant genital dysphoria. It’s hard to see, sometimes. Some people truly experience no dysphoria, some have a hard time recognizing it, etc.

For me, I think I could settle and live with a penis, but it would undermine my sense of being a woman. Having a scrotum was more disturbing, and erections sometimes would feel silly. Also, I just couldn’t center myself in sex - I was happy to please and service others, but being the center of attention with male genitals made me disconnect from the scene as a coping strategy.

Anyway, estrogen can cause penile atrophy and make erections less hard, but you can use a testosterone cream on the penis and give yourself erections on a schedule to prevent that atrophy, you can absolutely have estrogen dominance while still maintaining a fully-functioning penis (though your mileage may vary). I was actually upset with how little penile atrophy I had, and how my libido seemed to strengthen rather than diminish. Both of those I was looking forward to - having a smaller, soft penis that didn’t get erect at some point was something I desired, as well as reduced horniness.

Just know, you don’t have to think of yourself as a woman for you to be a woman. When you experience dysphoria about being a man, and feel like your body should be feminine like a woman’s - the absence of an intact certainty that you are a woman is not an invalidation that you are a woman. This is exactly how many women feel - I think only a minority of binary trans women were certain they were women and had an intact sense of being a woman. Most of us have to figure it out the hard way, and struggle with that. I certainly do, I don’t think I’m a woman, and yet I can’t deny that my dysphoria points me in one direction - I can’t deny that being a woman feels good and right, that having a woman’s body is affirming and positive to me.

I didn’t even know I wanted a vagina before I had a vaginoplasty - I couldn’t connect with those desires at all. But now, having a vagina is wonderful and a huge relief. I really had little awareness of how much male genitals had bothered me before, I was fully adapted to living as a man and that meant learning to ignore a lot of my feelings. It wasn’t until after the surgery that I even started to catch myself feeling shame about having a penis when I would lie down - like a habit of feeling shame when a bulge might be visible … then I realized there is no bulge anymore and felt massive relief.

Anyway - I don’t know that there is any way I could have figured out I would feel this way before, but because I had gender dysphoria and read between the lines, every step I took towards being a woman ended up being very positive for me.

Usually the non-binary folks I know have significant attachment to not being seen as a woman and preferring to have a mix of traits, like having a big beard as well as breasts and so on. Even though I’ve lived longer with a “non-binary” label, I now realize I’m probably not non-binary, at least not in that way. It was just a way for me to avoid transitioning when I wasn’t educated and didn’t understand what dysphoria looked like.

EDIT: I also didn’t know if I wanted breasts before I took estrogen, I was worried I would hate them or feel regret. Not everything was like that, I knew I didn’t want body hair, or thick dark hair on my legs and arms, etc. Some things were easy for me to feel and be honest about, other things were much harder to be clear on and were confusing. I think everyone has different experiences around this, nobody can tell you for sure what you will want or not want.

This is one of my favorite things I’ve experienced about being in Japan so far. Everyone is just “name-honorific” and it’s made me really happy to not deal people gendering me at all in most cases.

“They” can be applied as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun - but it can be awkward, esp. if you know the “they” referent well. Using singular “they” usually implies not knowing them closely, like “oh, the garbage worker took out the trash? Yeah, they came this morning” - it implies we don’t know them well or their gender, or something.

I never liked “they” even though when I was still in denial, I hated gender and wanted to not be gendered through pronouns. Asking to be called “they” was like the ultimate way to bring attention to my gender, and I didn’t want that - I wanted to not think about it, I wanted other people to stop thinking about my gender.

I know exactly how you mean, you’re basically describing my exact presenation~<3

I like to say that I’m sort of the opposite of agender, genderfull rather than genderless, but it’s really difficult to achieve that look. Hell, I can go out hiking topless in public and nobody even notices my tits, my moustache might as well be an cloaking spell. XD

That is to say, there are more folks like us than you might think, we’re just one of the least visible segments of the trans community because even if you’re used to recognizing trans people and agender folk, there’s no set aesthetic for us in-betweeners yet.