I was visiting a forum that I haven’t really had the time to visit and ran across a link to a Boston Globe article about how transmen are graduating from women’s colleges.  Transmen are people like me, FtM’s.  In any case, I’m no stranger to hearing about this kind of situation.  When I was watching Transgeneration, there was an FtM who went to an all women school and there was a bit of a trans community there. I

I’m becoming more and more comfortable about the fact that I’m FtM.  The more I become comfortable, the more people I want to tell.  But at the same time, I wouldn’t really feel safe coming out to more people in my area.  There isn’t really a great trans community here, if at all.  I know there’s a growing gay and lesbian community, and I know of a few crossdressers, but even so, it’s not the same.

It’s great to see more coverage of FtM communities, such as in the article.  The more exposure, the more people can get to know FtM’s and the more used to it they get, the better for me.

In addition, researchers believe that more young people than ever before are acting on those feelings. “It used to be that transitioning was a midlife process, but the Internet has changed a lot,” says Brett-Genny Janiczek Beemyn, one of the lead researchers in the UMass-Penn State study. “With the click of a mouse, more and more young people can find others going through what they’re going through and have a stronger sense of themselves at a younger age.”

When I first told my parents how I was feeling and that I am trans, they blamed the internet for “corrupting” me; telling me that it was influencing me in a bad way.  I don’t blame them.  They wanted an excuse, they had one at their fingertips.  I was spending a lot of time online when I told them.  The internet opened up a whole new world for me.  I was able to find information and other people who were feeling the exact same way and suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone or weird, and dare I say, I didn’t feel like a freak.