Weird feelings

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Hi,

I was yesterday in a swimsuit shop and I got thinking about some strange feelings that I sometimes have, when I am in places such as a women's public bathroom, or a woman's clothing store, even a hen's night.

I kind of feel like a fake, a fraud. I can be trying on a woman's swimsuit, or a dress, or a skirt and I feel sort of like I am a man putting a dress on a female body that was sort of given to me at random. I look at myself in the mirror: I look female enough but I cant quite feel female.

Yesterday I was getting the salesladies to help me with the swimsuit sizes and I kind of half to expected them to suddenly say: "Wait a minute. You are not a woman. Get out of this shop!" But they didnt though.

I also felt strange at the mall's ladie's bathroom but none of the other women in the queue suggested I shouldnt be there.

Anyway I dont know if I am the only one who feels like that or not. Maybe I am just weird!

I don't find this particularly surprising, no...

I don't generally feel particularly masculine either. As a matter of fact, I can only really remember one time in my entire life that I can recall really feeling masculine - just for a few moments, not in connection with anything in particular going on. Most of the time I feel fairly androgynous.

I feel pretty androgynous...especially when I am confronted with uber-feminiine females, who I am nothing like.

I have had the feelings you described before...If I ever dress in a particularly female way, I feel like I am in drag.

It took me a long time to really get the concept of fun. Dressing up in men's clothing+fake moustaches=FUN at the mall.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

But it feel awful because sometimes I may want to be quite femme, you know? I feel great and want to buy a skirt, or think about wearing a dress... then I look in the mirror and laugh at how butch I actually am...

I hate it.

Charlie x

Yeah I like wearing dresses too. Just when I put them on I sort of feel like I am putting a dress on a doll. I look in the mirror and see the female image but I cannot connect it to "me".

Anyway there is feminine butch. Certain styles look good with short hair, it just takes experimentation.

I can very much relate to this. Most specifically female clothing items go beyond being physically uncomfortable to me - they make me psychologically uncomfortable, for the same reason as you. I feel like a man in drag.

I am actually more comfortable in skirts than trousers, as I always find trousers feel very constrictive and restrictive of comfortable movement. But the only style of skirt I wear is the long, loose style, which I've always found gives me the same sort of feeling as wearing some sort of gender-neutral robe. A short, tight skirt? That would be back to 'drag' again.

I do feel very gender-neutral. I feel just female enough to consider myself straight and romantically attracted to men, but largely uncomfortable with being classed as a woman; being directed to women's facilities and grouped with other women. Yet I wouldn't feel quite right being grouped with the men, either. I'd like to be in a third group, labelled 'other'.

Like most things, gender is a continuum rather than a dichotomy.

Just be who you are without trying to fit into only two traditional definitions.

Yes - although I am relatively feminine, I have moments when I'm trying on clothes etc. that I feel like a total faker. Like a guy in drag, even though I have the right parts.

As someone else mentioned, I feel more comfortable in skirts than I do in trousers. I find jeans particularly uncomfortable, as the material is kind of hard, and nowadays so many jeans are just cut in a strange way, that they cut into the body or ride up in the crotch. So I am actually more challenged when it comes to casual dressing. In the summer, I have some very comfortable skirts that I wear a lot, and I even prefer shoes like comfortable sandals with a small heel...(walking flatly doesn´t feel good to me). I never wear nylons though, ugh! But people tell me I look elegant, and I guess I do look feminine then....(I probably tend to look "too formal", if anything). But my skirts and tops are all plain, in other words, I don´t like frilly, "girly" things, or those long, skinny heels.

Funny enough though, I think I sort of know what you mean, though I feel it on a smaller scale. But when I am around other women, I usually don´t feel like I´m as feminine as they are...although I certainly look feminine. It´s hard to explain...in fact, I´ve worried, at times, that maybe I´m not "feminine" enough. I certainly don´t seem to share the typical qualities that most people seem to associate with femininity....

Morgana, you too?

Not only do I feel very mentally uncomfortable with them as such a specifically feminine garment, I have problems with the fabric. Touching it makes me feel almost sick; even looking at it for too long can have the same reaction.



When I stand and look at a group of women - a group of them together in particular - I feel as if I'm seeing them as a man would (just without the potential attraction!) I definitely feel as if I'm looking at something 'other', not a group that I'm a part of.

I mentioned something similar on a different thread. I don't particularly feel like I'm in drag.. but I feel like.. Like a nerd who tries to dress like the popular girls and everyone looks at her and is just thinking "wow what a faker, she really shouldn't try so hard to be pretty "

But I don't look like a nerd and everyone says I look nice. There's really no logical reason why I shouldn't be able to dress like a pretty girl. But I feel so phony when I'm dressed up nice. Actually, it doesn't really apply to dresses or nylons. I was raised in a religion where we attend services three times a week so I am pretty comfortable in dresses. It applies to me more when I am dressing up to go out somewhere, in slacks, a nice shirt, jewelry and makeup. I feel like a phony.

i relate to just about everything that's been posted in this thread....in fact, my best friend is a gay man and we have a joke between the two of us that i seem to be more like a gay man trapped in a woman's body than a straight woman. i've never felt particularly feminine or masculine...in fact i don't really know how to apply those words to myself--i just feel like me. i dress casually at all times, almost exclusively in soft cotton (even my pairs of jeans are pretty soft from wear and washing, which is just the way i like them). i can't remember the last time i wore pantyhose--blech

I do not feel particularly feminine, but I find it difficult to relate to feeling non-feminine (or feminine or masculine, or non-masculine for that matter).

It's not entirely clear to me, but I have an inkling that others might perceive concepts of femininity/masculinity in a much more vivid and 'real-feeling' sense than I do, such that these things have an identity in their minds that facilitates notions/ideas/evaluations about how closely one matches these identities.

I don´t like the fabric either; it feels sort of cold on my skin (hard to explain). But what I also really dislike is the extreme feeling of tightness on my body. I guess I just really dislike tightness- close fitting is okay, so long as my body can breathe too.