[aleah]

Aleah, thanks. Are you insinuating many of these who claim hetero maybe infact exploring their true gender identity and may not even realize it? If so, I can understand this then.
Otherwise, I am talking about a specific stereo type, the hetero-males that know they are hetero and are often manly with masculine habits, features and desire to grow large, hairy breasts.

I think the point I was making was that sexuality and gender identity are not really related. I know several post-op transsexual women who are exclusively lesbian, both doms and subs, no matter how hard they tried to be interested in men.

If you are talking however about people that idenitify as male and have no desire to ever been seen as female in any sexual or social perspective. I would argue they are still transgender, part of them still wants to feminize without making the full transition regardless of their sexual orientation.. why? No one really knows exactly. Genderfluidity/genderqueer is an unusual concept for us who fit neatly into the gender binary but the gender binary doesn't work for everyone's identity.. It might seem in practical to us who do fit in the binary but that helps them affirm who they are and more power to them. I think reinforcing the gender binary is the most damaging thing for the trans community in general.

But there is a lot we still don't really know about transsexuality, some people with early onset gender variance have genderqueer identities and some people with late onset gender variance have very binary gender identities. It's a pretty mixed bag and to be honest we don't know why.

I know both cases, someone who has distinct gender variant memories from age of 7 yet identifies partly as male and still wants to feminize. Then someone who only realised she was transsexual at 35 but she is now post-op after 2 and a half years and happy in her true gender identity. Both lesbians by the way

Most people, regardless of how early their memories or feelings started or how strong or consistent their gender dysphoria was, still have to explore their gender identity through expression.. sexual (hetero and homo, often it's different in both cases), social, emotional and physical and for me and a lot of others NBE is a great safe and discrete way.

It's a pretty big subject, books can be written on non-normative trans narratives. There is some evidence now that white matter in the brain that may be responsible for gender identity is actually incongreuent either partly or completely and that it takes 20 to 30 years to mature in most people. Which is probably why a lot of trans people really start thinking seriously about this in their 20s and possibly explain late onset transsexuality.. however it still doesn't make perfect sense, several MTFs who only had partly female white matter still identified as female completely and were post-op transsexuals. It's such a complex matter and is probably a combination of many factors, nature and nurture.

My trans narrative is not normative either.. I had a distressed puberty, severe depression and anxiety throughout my teenage years which lingered on into adult years. I didn't know why, confusing desires to cross dress and play out hetero-female sexual fantasies which I constantly dismissed. But I didn't have gender dysphoria as far as I knew, I just wanted to be a female but I knew I wasn't, I thought I was OK with being male for a while but I've realised I'm not, I am much happier and more myself in my true gender identity. I don't think this "coming out" to oneself even in very textbook cases happens quickly or easily, it might be one of the reasons due to whatever psychological circumstances that some people simply choose not to transition and I've heard of cases that have textbook gender variance but never feel like they should transition completely since they can't accept their true identity.

Sorry, big post, big subject