What made you realize you are a woman?

[Nurse With Wound]

There wasn't a moment or anything that made me suddenly realise, before puberty I wanted to be treated like a girl and would often make up stories in my head where I was female but because of my shy personality I wasn't one of those extroverted kids that tell their parents, rather I just didn't say anything out of fear and ignorance that anything could be done. I didn't really think too much of it and just kind of "got on" with life until I was around 13-14~, then it really started to bother me with puberty and all. Around the same time I also started actively using the Internet and pretty much looked up things about wanted to change my sex and found that there was a lot of other people like that. However I still managed to keep it secret out of fear for another 6~ years and it still is to most people apart from my mum and GP.

[pebbles]

Maybe it's just me but I don't understand alot of you these days :/

while I recognise and identify as female I also recognise I'm a transsexual It discribes an abberation in my phyiscal development and a aggregate discriptior of my past. in the same way that ex-self harmer is also such a discription.

It's strange topic. When I was 11 I knew I wanted to be female and I wished badly that I was female and not male. When I was 13 I was exposed to transsexuals on the jerry springer show. I was horrified and I didn't identify or relate to them at all I thought I was similar but equally radically different, When I was 15 my desire had become so strong that I would act on it by crossdressing growing my hair long and presenting as a female however even then I didn't identify as a transsexual I thought I was a sick perverted monster more than anything.

When I was 19 I guess that was when I started begrudgingly admitting at my darkest moments that I was a transsexual. But I only became comfortable discribing myself as such once I transitioned.

[Dana_H]

I'll leave the linguistic battles to those with strong feelings on that issue and just focus on what I think was the original intent of the question...

I felt like there was something not quite right with me for pretty much my entire life, but I could never quite verbalize what felt wrong. I had very little exposure to the idea of transgender people when I was growing up. I was aware that some people had sex-change operations, but the concept never really gelled in my mind as something real. I just knew that I didn't quite fit in anywhere, and that my attempts to blend in with my peers only made things worse. I just could not seem to figure out how to be a proper boy. This continued into adulthood. For about four decades, I was often depressed and rarely happy, because I could not figure out what was wrong with me. I only knew I didn't feel right.

For a time, I had a male roommate. At least, I thought he was a guy when he moved in. I discovered later that he was actually a pre-transition transwoman. Deep inside, something woke up and took notice, but it still took a number of years after that before things actually gelled for me and the idea of being transgender took on some level of reality in the back of my mind.

One morning, when I was about 40, I woke up and just realized that I finally knew what was wrong...I was never really a guy at all, even though I had a male body. It was an a-ha moment that hit me in that gray stage before waking and would not let go even after I was fully awake. I mentally tried thinking of myself as a woman with a female body, and it felt SO GOOD!  I felt happy. I felt relaxed for just about the first time in my life. I felt right. I felt GENUINE!

When I went back to thinking of myself as a guy with a male body, it felt downright unpleasant. It felt like a lie. Now, I can't bear to present as male unless I think of it as wearing a mascot uniform (like a blue panda costume or a giant chicken) for my employer. I even joke with my wife about putting on my "giant-chicken suit" before going to work.

That's how I realized. That's how I knew.

[LordKAT]

 I never really realized I was transsexual.
What I did realize was that other people perceived me differently than I perceived me. I was 3. I remember it vividly. I always wondered why people couldn't see me. They something or someone but it wasn't me. I was so alone and an alien in a human world. I honestly thought that I was a foundling like superman. I was about 15 when I learned that I was just born this way. That hurt more than anything before it since I thought that my alien 'mothership' would someday return for me. I would dream of a reunion with my 'normal' parents. Then I grew up.


Saddest part of all, it isn't growing old that kills you, it is growing up.

[Arch]

Horrible book I read back in 1989. I mean, it made me realize what I was, but it also said men (it called us "women" and "she") like me are messed up mentally and need lots of therapy so we accept being women.

Before that, I didn't know that FTMs existed, although I knew about MTFs.

But I've always had a boy identity.

[jainie marlena]

The word transsexual didn't offend me at frist but it seems to have so much negative meanigs tagged to it starts to hurt to hear it.

I have spent a long time trying to understand myself and why I have felt like I should have been a girl. I have labeled myself over and over but it wound not stay very long because it does not completely express how I view myself.
I do think the question that you asked is not  clear because it does not fit everyone, yet I do understand.
Something just wasn't right and finding a way fix it is all that could be done. I hope this make sense to you.

[Naturally Blonde]

I'm not a transsexual, I'm a woman born with the wrong parts!

Absolutely!

[LilKittyCatZoey]

Absolutely!

I agree with her !!

[~RoadToTrista~]

I don't, what's the difference? Besides not wanting to identify as transsexual after getting surgery...

[AbraCadabra]

Labels?
First there are strawberries then strawberry jam --- more labels?

If getting clocked in the Ladies (pre-op) you gonna say what? You transwoman or woman?

In this case transwoman, or? 
The WORLD does not share our sentiments there, as much as we would like it.

The old story of inner and outer perception. If you want to push your luck, and have to show your "stuff" the jig would be up, and then what?

Transwoman will be what you are --- skirt up or down.

Post-op I opt for woman, I dang well will have earned it by then IMHO. YMMV

Axelle

[JennaNicole]

 I knew I wanted to be a women for life, when I went out dress up and actually felt comfortable with myself for the first time. I still have things the made me insecure, but I felt more like myself and the way that made me feel made me know.

[Francis Ann Burgett]

Always have been since childhood, just grew up mentally as a nice little girl, it felt great, normal. 

[grrl1nside]

As a newbie, this thread has been rather enlightening in a rather eerie way. I certainly have started to understand that there is a heck of a lot of politics around the terminology. I suppose I have been just so focused on myself that it wasn't at the foremost in my mind. I'll have lots to think about in terms of how I consider the notion of being female or transgender or transsexual. I mean that I knew that the topic is a hot one when dealing with the outside community but I was oblivious to it internally (but like I said I am a newbie and was desperately avoidant before that). I'm sure I'll put my foot in it sooner or later.

But taking the question literally in terms of my personal awareness. I knew at puberty but basically ignored it or tried to believe that it was other issues and that it wasn't the driver. Whether it was identifying with females, understanding them better then men, hating certain body parts that I have, enjoying more feminine roles, communicating in non-masculine manners, trying desperately to solve it all by trying numerous aspects of the male role as if being good at one of them would make things better but instead just making me feel worse, detesting the testosterone surges both sexually and aggessively. As they come they feel completely alien, detestable, and in complete opposition to what I was actually feeling and thinking internally at the time but the body was on some horrible chemical auto-pilot and afterward they leave me nauseated.

Feeling phantom body parts. Anybody ever have that? You look in the mirror growing up and you know there are certain things that should be there and literally damn feel them as if they are there, but they simply aren't there? I don't know, maybe this is just plain weird.

So far I know one thing that returns and returns. The more I accept myself and my feelings in relation to being a woman the more relaxed I am. Not sexually aroused. RELIEF plain and simple. I'm not on HRT and I'm not full-time, but I am working toward it. In the end, I should have been born a woman and I know it.

Hopefully, I am not the only one because this isn't easy to write.

[JungianZoe]

But taking the question literally in terms of my personal awareness. I knew at puberty but basically ignored it or tried to believe that it was other issues and that it wasn't the driver. Whether it was identifying with females, understanding them better then men, hating certain body parts that I have, enjoying more feminine roles, communicating in non-masculine manners, trying desperately to solve it all by trying numerous aspects of the male role as if being good at one of them would make things better but instead just making me feel worse, detesting the testosterone surges both sexually and aggessively. As they come they feel completely alien, detestable, and in complete opposition to what I was actually feeling and thinking internally at the time but the body was on some horrible chemical auto-pilot and afterward they leave me nauseated.

[...]

Hopefully, I am not the only one because this isn't easy to write.

Definitely not the only one!  You just described a good portion of my internal life with that post.  Not just before HRT, but after as well!

[xXRebeccaXx]

There wasn't a moment or anything that made me suddenly realise, before puberty I wanted to be treated like a girl and would often make up stories in my head where I was female but because of my shy personality I wasn't one of those extroverted kids that tell their parents, rather I just didn't say anything out of fear and ignorance that anything could be done. I didn't really think too much of it and just kind of "got on" with life until I was around 13-14~, then it really started to bother me with puberty and all. Around the same time I also started actively using the Internet and pretty much looked up things about wanted to change my sex and found that there was a lot of other people like that. However I still managed to keep it secret out of fear for another 6~ years and it still is to most people apart from my mum and GP.

We almost have the same story =D only I told my mom. She wasn't supportive at ALL.

[Nurse With Wound]

Heh, my mum isn't really supportive at all either right now, she's pretty much just ignored it apart from coming to me a second time after I told her to "talk" about it, and by "talk" I mean her telling me she thinks it's wrong and it's only because I don't know how to act like a man and me still being to scared to properly voice how I feel. But I only told her like last month so hopefully she'll come around if I'm able to coherently tell her how I feel.

[~RoadToTrista~]

Your guy's My Little Pony avatars are really distracting. >.<

[LilKittyCatZoey]

We almost have the same story =D only I told my mom. She wasn't supportive at ALL.

Heh, my mum isn't really supportive at all either right now, she's pretty much just ignored it apart from coming to me a second time after I told her to "talk" about it, and by "talk" I mean her telling me she thinks it's wrong and it's only because I don't know how to act like a man and me still being to scared to properly voice how I feel. But I only told her like last month so hopefully she'll come around if I'm able to coherently tell her how I feel.

Just like my story i was even told over my dead body  but one year later and shes accepting  hoping 1 more year and shes supportive 

[madirocks]

Your guy's My Little Pony avatars are really distracting. >.<

No way!! They're awesome!

[LilKittyCatZoey]

No way!! They're awesome!

I think Julia's is scary