How old were you when you realised you were trans* ?

[Matthew]

Just a thing I'm curious about, as it seems the only trans* people represented on TV had 'always known' and was just wondering how everyone else feels


-Matt

[Abby Claire]

I didn't even know what trans was until I was 11 and even then it really confused me. I did trans-like stuff when I was as young as 5/6, but I always recognized that I was male, just different from the other boys. I couldn't really put things together until about high school, so I said under 22. I didn't really "accept" myself as trans until recently though.

[Julia-Madrid]

Hiya Matt

Nope, I only realised when I was in my mid 20s. 

Before that there was confusion, lots of it, but definitely no clear realisation, no "aha" moment.

[patrick1967]

I'm 47 n one of my good friends is 43. I think for myself it was the fact that there was no accessibility to trans issues earlier. I knew the person I presented as was a front n that things didn't fit but no clue why. Then I lived for so many years this way that it was my normal.

[Amathy]

I was very girly until puberty.  It was after that I got really uncomfortable with my body and how people treated me socially.  There wasn't any sort of trans awareness when I was growing up tho so I just thought I was strange and that I would just have to deal with it.  Then I learned what trans was in college and that I could be a man.  It took me a couple years to accept, but it just felt so right after I did.

[katiej]

I'm not sure how to answer the question.  I knew when I was very little that I wanted to be a girl.  Some of my earliest memories are of praying to wake up a girl.  But I didn't know what being trans meant.

Then in my early 20's, I knew that I was interested in transition and did a lot of research.  But ultimately decided it wasn't a possibility for me.  So I decided I probably wasn't trans.

It wasn't until my mid-30's that I realized that other people aren't preoccupied with wanting to be the other gender.  That's when it occurred to me that I actually am transgender.

[LordKAT]

I had no idea of terminology, but then the sky is blue whether or not I know that color is called blue. I found out I wasn't seen by others as a boy when I was 3.

[Sheala]

for me it was lots of confusion and trying to hid the woman inside till i was 31.

[Taka]

i think i had an undefinable grief since i was 3-4 years old. but at that time, i didn't understand why i couldn't play boy games with the boys. maybe i didn't really understand gender "properly", i even still have problems understanding why it should matter if someone is male or female. the gender borders don't look absolute to me at all, even though a body is usually very obviously one sex or the other.

at around 8-9 years old, i started wishing, occasionally, that i was a boy. at ten i hated puberty because of secondary sex characteristics. i never wanted any of them, neither male nor female. i remember thinking at 12 that i wished i had an androgynous body so i could pass as a boy when i wanted to. seems like the reason i wanted an androgynous body was more because that allows one to choose whether to wear breasts or a penis on any given day. displaying all secondary sex characteristics at once would only mark me for bullying...

i'm fairly sure i was under 14 when i watched a documentary about transsexualism on tv. it made me realize what was wrong with me, but at the same time i also pushed the thought aside. something about that whole idea of a full transition just didn't fit (not to mention my parents' often expressed displeasure at the "gay lifestyle").

i was over 22 before the feelings of wrongness became very strong again. but not as bad as feeling like everything is wrong, it's not like i hate being female. i just hate not being able to pass as a man when i want to.

[Eva Marie]

I knew that I was different from a young age but in the 1960's we didn't have the knowledge that we have today and we didn't have the internet so I didn't begin to figure it out until my early 40's. My bell started softly ringing then and it got louder and louder - and here I am transitioning now 

Looking back I can clearly see the signs  that were there all along. I never wanted to play with dolls or dress like a girl back then but there were plenty of other clues.

[Jill F]

I sort of knew something was up when I was 4.  I was in denial until I was 43.  For my entire life, when something came on TV that involved transfolk, I could never take my eyes off the screen.  There was always part of me that saw myself in those people.  I also wished I could wear my wife's clothes since the day I met her (because they would have fit me!), but she told me that the last guy she was with was a crossdresser and I really didn't want to f*** things up between us.  When I was 42 and had to have my sigmoid colon removed, I knew on some level that I could no longer have that type of SRS.  I don't even remember where I learned about that procedure.  I denied it until things started to really unravel and I finally tried estrogen. 

[Jessica Merriman]

I had an idea at 5, but knew for sure at 7. There was no label for how I felt though and transition would not have even been considered or discussed. I was just a victim of my generation. 

[Julia-Madrid]

There was no label for how I felt though and transition would not have even been considered or discussed. I was just a victim of my generation. 

Yes, I lived this too.  I was in my 20s, living in South Africa.  Ignorant, chauvinist racist place..  The internet was just starting and TG resources were scarce. There was nobody to talk to and most psychologists didn't know what to do with us.  Finally I went to see the only person I could find - a transgender sex worker.  She was a terribly sad person in every sense. It freaked me out totally and I put The Girl in a box and hid her at the back of my mind for 20 years.  How times change...!

[Jo-is-amazing]

I didn't always know what Trans* was...
but I've known I was a girl, or at least meant to be one, since I was at least 5.

[ImagineKate]

I had "wanted to be a girl" since I was 4. I didn't know what a transsexual was I would say until I was around 7 or 8 due to something i heard on TV. And even then I thought it was just surgery. I had no idea about hormones or anything like that. I had one or two relatives that dressed me up. During my teen years it intensified with not just daring acts of dressing but also wanting to cut "it" off. When we got a telephone in 1989 I used to answer the phone like a girl and my dad quickly put a stop to that. It just came naturally. During my 20s, free from my dad's house and on my own I figured it out and it all made sense to me.

I had a good few clues that something was wrong because I was different and I had more in common with my female relatives than my male ones. I'm also higher IQ than nearly everyone on my dad's side and many on my mom's.

[big kim]

I can remember wanting to be a girl at 6 or 7.I was 21 when I realised I was trans and it wasn't going away.I spent the next 10 years trying to blot it out with lager,cider,speed and weed

[KaylaMadison]

I can remember wanting to wake up and magically be a girl from about age 10 or so, but I had no clue what any of it meant or why I felt that way, then when i was about 20 i just burried it all under alcohol. Wasn't till I was 30 that I was able to pull myself together long enough to figure it out.

[suzifrommd]

Since being a teenager, I've wanted to be female, but never dreamed that made me trans. It wasn't until I was nearly 51 that I started interacting with transgender people and realized why I had been feeling that way.

[Ayden]

I had no idea of gender until I was a teen; maybe 14? My first "I'm trans" moments I was 19. I couldn't get back to that closet fast enough

[Blue Senpai]

I didn't know the term transgender until like a few months ago but I knew something was off when I was like 8 years old.