Childhood memories of trans or androgyny?

[aleon515]

Hi,

I wondered if any other androgynes had any memories of feeling like they were in the wrong body at an early age?  Here's one that I think might be interesting. When I was something like 7, I told my parents that from now on I was "Billy". I would not respond to my given name, or I would get very angry telling my parents that NO I was a boy or my name is Billy. I was intent on going to first grade as Billy. My mom had this talk with me. I actually think it was pretty cool given that this was a LONG time ago, and things were not nearly as progressive as they can be now. She basically said that she thought (other) people might have a very hard time with this. I do not think at anytime she discounted how I felt. Anyway, I agreed to go to school as a girl.
I also experimented (without success) wiht standing up to pee and so forth.

I don't recall how long all this lasted or if this would have been intense and long enough lasting or if there was enough distress to be called gender identity disorder. However, they say that 80% of people with this do not become trans. I know that some percentage becomes gay but what else goes on, I have never heard. *Presumably*, the more traditional type doctors will tell parents, they become binary. I wonder what percentage actually becomes non-binary in some way or other.

I'd love to hear others experiences here if they feel comfortable.

--Jay Jay

[Shang]

No because I had no concept of that as a child.  To me, I was just me.  I never really thought of my body as having a specific sex.  Yes, I knew it was called female, but that's it.  It had no meaning to me until I reached my teen years when I started to go through puberty.  Once puberty started, I started to realize what female was and that I didn't like it.  I originally wore baggy jeans and my dad's jacket with it buttoned up even in the summer because I was ashamed of what was happening.  I never thought of it terms of being transgender, just that I didn't like what was happening.  For a few years after I was OK and even dressed like a girl (but I got to wear clothes from Hot Topic and I'm a sucker for their tops).  Then I hit my sophomore year.

At that point I was introduced to gender bending and homosexuality through yaoi.  When I first read the genre I was like, "That is the relationship I want."  At this point in time I made all of my internet accounts under a male name and a male persona even engaging in online relationships with other males.  I never told them I was female because I didn't identify as female and because I knew they would end it -- I couldn't bear to be seen as female in a relationship.  At this point I was seriously upset with my body because it wasn't they way it should have been.

I promptly squashed all feelings until I was no longer living with my parents.  I started to explore the transgender community more and learn different terms.  When I came across androgyne, I was like "huh...that suits me great" and have since used it.   I will continue to use it because, even when I transition to male, I will also be on the more androgynous side of things.

[BlueSloth]

When I started school I learned that there are two teams.  Boys and girls.  Clothes and hairstyles are team uniforms.  And you'd better stay on your side and at least pretend to not like the other side, or else.

As a kid I didn't question that.  It was just another crazy thing to play along with.  The object of the game is to not get bullied, laughed at and shunned, and I took it seriously enough that I learned the arbitrary rules well.  I didn't dare consider what I may have wanted to do or be.  It is now deeply ingrained in me that the way to take care of my own feelings and needs is to break away from human contact and do it in secret... and sometimes I can't even do it then.  I'm getting better, but my ability to think for myself was so broken that I didn't even realize I was pansexual until a friend pointed it out to me when I was 25.

[suzifrommd]

Hi,

I wondered if any other androgynes had any memories of feeling like they were in the wrong body at an early age? 

It was kind of harrowing. It wasn't that I thought I was in the wrong gender. It was that I had no concept that there were acceptable (by everyone else) behaviors for one gender that were not acceptable for the other. So I always found myself being teased/ostracized for doing things that the other gender typically did. I remember dressing paper dolls - I probably was six or seven, maybe even older. My mother found me and said "you know that's the sort of things girls do." When I was 14 I played a Helen Reddy song I really liked on a radio show I was running. I got a lot of grief for that, and I was totally mystified. Looking back now, I know it's not the sort of music boys were supposed to like. It wasn't just male/female stuff. My social IQ was in the cellar. I was always doing things that people had to tell me were making me stand out and not in a good way.

I'm a really smart person and I found I had to make a study of what kinds of behaviors were appropriate. I'm actually proud of the fact that that now (age 50) I almost never stand out for doing something inappropriate (gender or otherwise). I'm becoming in touch with the fact that I'm going to need to express the female parts of my soul, and I confess to being somewhat apprehensive.

[ativan]

Childhood memories of being Androgyn? Yes, almost all of them, to one degree or another. I don't know if it was hard, so much as brutal, at times. I learned to kick ass on kids bigger than me, although I got my butt kicked plenty of times.

I know my mother understood in her 'Leave it to Beaver' way of looking at the world, more so when I came of age during the Viet Nam War years. Then the rest of the 70's and she became more worldly and realized she had changed and understood that I was not like my brothers and more like my sisters, although I was still some of both. I survived, just barely, because of her.

I still survive, sometimes brutally and sometimes I do get my butt kicked. Some things will never change, just as I have always been a gender that is non-binary.

Ativan

[aleon515]

It was that I had no concept that there were acceptable (by everyone else) behaviors for one gender that were not acceptable for the other. So I always found myself being teased/ostracized for doing things that the other gender typically did. I remember dressing paper dolls - I probably was six or seven, maybe even older. My mother found me and said "you know that's the sort of things girls do." When I was 14 I played a Helen Reddy song I really liked on a radio show I was running. I got a lot of grief for that, and I was totally mystified. Looking back now, I know it's not the sort of music boys were supposed to like. It wasn't just male/female stuff. My social IQ was in the cellar. I was always doing things that people had to tell me were making me stand out and not in a good way.

I'm a really smart person and I found I had to make a study of what kinds of behaviors were appropriate. I'm actually proud of the fact that that now (age 50) I almost never stand out for doing something inappropriate (gender or otherwise). I'm becoming in touch with the fact that I'm going to need to express the female parts of my soul, and I confess to being somewhat apprehensive.

You know that sounds a bit like me in some ways. The thing is that even years ago, girls were in some ways freer to take on different gender roles than boys. (You might have to go back to the early 1900s for girls to have been as straight-jacketed to gender roles as little boys-- perhaps go to a rural area?) They might tell you it is "unlady-like" (and they did) but I never cared about this. This always seemed to me to be a good thing. :-) You're not on the autism spectrum somewhere are you? I had a really low social IQ, perhaps a good way of wording this, until more lately. I am so surprised at myself now when I say things like "I think so and so is angry" and have a good chance of being right. I could never tell anger from some other more strong emotional state.

--Jay Jay

[suzifrommd]

You're not on the autism spectrum somewhere are you?

Something I've always wondered about. There was really no talk of autism at all when I was younger, and nowadays the "spectrum" is more like a an intricate spider web of symptoms, deficits, and treatment indications that it's nearly impossible to say "yay" or "nay" for any given case without massive evaluation.

But when I talk to some of my students who are classified with autism and they talk about having to use their intellect instead of intuition to figure out how to relate to people, it rings true to my own experience.

I could usually figure out how people were feeling. But I was (still am) often unable to predict reactions from seemingly unimportant or insignificant things I'd say our do.

To change the subject back to your original question I think the big way being mixed-gender colored my childhood is that there are so many expectations for boys, almost none of which could I completely meet.

We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.

Here's the really bad part. After decades and decades, I've finally got to the point that I can do most of those things, and I don't really like the parts of myself that have achieved them.

[barbie]

At age of about 4, I tried to wear silk stockings of a lady who visited my home, but unexpectedly it was too big for my little legs. At that age, I realized that I can not be woman although I dreamed of it.

Barbie~~

[Kinkly]

I recall wanting to play with girl toys and telling my grandmother that I didn't want to be a boy when she was telling me not to cry because boys don't cry.  I hated societies rules about being a boy from a young age I felt different to everyone else from a very young age,
I have many memories of being punished for not being a normal/real boy mostly by peers but sometimes by teachers/ parents/other significant adults.

[Anthropos]

I really didn't have a solid sense of gender until I started school, and even then it was a foreign concept I understood only intellectually, not empathically. I grew up in a household that didn't make a big deal at all of gender. With school, I only knew it as what "boys do" and "girls do". If I did anything that "girls do" I would be teased and if I did some of what "boys do" I would be all right, but if I tried to do too much of what "boys do" I was teased for being disingenous because of my small size. The whole thing seemed absurd to me, and to this day gender roles seem to me ridiculous and contradictory. 

A good example is that when I was nine years old during recess, I was sitting on a platform reading a book. Two of the more popular boys came up to me and asked me why I was sitting "like a girl". I didn't understand what they were talking about, so I asked "In what way?" They said because I was sitting with my legs touching, that boys sit with their legs apart. Obliging, I spread my legs as far as they would go, thinking that it would get them to go away. They just laughed and went away, me having no clue what they were talking about.

Another was in first grade when I would prefer going into the stall and sitting down to pee rather than using the urinal. A boy looked in one time (keep in mind, we were all six year olds) and told me that "only girls pee sitting down". So from then on out I would use the urinal. It was far more because I just wanted to be left alone that I went along with it, but it doesn't make any more sense to me almost two decades later than in did back then.

[Carbon]

'Nother person without a solid sense of gender as a child. Gender norms were also not enforced very strictly by my parents, so I was mostly allowed to like "girl things." A lot of the things I liked were not "girl things" OR "boy things," though, so I guess I was just kind of weird. I liked sciency things when I was very young, but when I got older I started reading fiction a lot more. Most of the authors I like have been women (at least outside of science fiction which is male dominated). I remember specifically being told that I would not like some books that I actually liked a lot because only girls liked those books.

I remember liking girls more as a child too, but that was mainly because they tended to be nicer to me. I liked to be active and pretend things, but I wasn't big on "take care of the baby" stuff (we practically are babies already so why bring more into this?). I remember in preschool trying to liven it up ("quick, save the baby! there's an earthquake!" and being told "leave the girls alone."  I ended up doing a lot of things on my own, which I guess has been a lifelong thing for me. Individual friends, when I had them, might be male or might be female. There are probably more women that I like but socially it's easier to become friends with men.

As I got older I learned more about gender roles. I thought a lot of it was stupid and I didn't really want to try to live up to either of them, but I also identified more with women more and wished I could be like them. I told someone this and she told me that girls were mean to each other and I should be happy to be a boy. Probably girls would have been meaner to me if they had seen me as a girl, but I doubt it would have been worse than what I went through (plus people liking me wasn't really the point). I also started saying that I thought it didn't make sense for women to have to shave their legs.

One thing that discouraged me from considering myself trans is that I didn't wholesale identify with women, internalize gender roles for girls, etc, and in some ways I was very much like a typical boy. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I think if you're being pushed to approach things in a certain way, though, you're more likely to find some of the things within in that bundle that fit who you are. Pretty much anyone is bound to like SOME "boy things" and SOME "girl things."

[Randi]

When I was in the first grade the teacher wrote on the board:

I am a boy                   and      I am a girl
I go to school                          I go to school

We were to told to copy down the one that pertained to us.   I wrote down the girl version.
I really thought it was a choice we could make.

In the second grade for the Halloween costume contest I wore a very good witch costume with full face mask, wig and a full length black dress with petticoat.   I won second prize in the entire elementary school.

I can still remember playing on the "monkey bars" and seeing the girls hanging upside down by their knees.  I remember their colorful panties and smooth crotches.  I really, really wanted look like that.

They still insisted that I was a boy.

[martinb]

We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.
Think you put that pretty well Ag,spent most of my schooldays trying to cope with feelings like that,and trying to overcome them.

[Carbon]

We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.
Think you put that pretty well Ag,spent most of my schooldays trying to cope with feelings like that,and trying to overcome them.

I know I'm kind of repeating myself, but it's striking to me how much I can't relate to that. I didn't feel like there was pressure for me to be any of those things, although I was vaguelly aware that some people respected me less due to my coordination problems and that kind of thing. I think I really was oblivious.

[suzifrommd]

I know I'm kind of repeating myself, but it's striking to me how much I can't relate to that. I didn't feel like there was pressure for me to be any of those things, although I was vaguelly aware that some people respected me less due to my coordination problems and that kind of thing. I think I really was oblivious.

Don't know which is better. Maybe I'd have been happier if I was oblivious. I remember the hot tears when something seemingly unbearable happened and some junior bully had to chime in "Oh. Are you going to Cry?!?" As if it were the worse thing on earth. What I'd give to be able to go back and, instead of becoming embarrassed and ashamed,  say "Yeah. I'm about to cry. You ought to try it some time."

I suppose I could make a whole thread out of things we wish we had said to bully when we were younger.

[Carbon]

Don't know which is better. Maybe I'd have been happier if I was oblivious. I remember the hot tears when something seemingly unbearable happened and some junior bully had to chime in "Oh. Are you going to Cry?!?" As if it were the worse thing on earth. What I'd give to be able to go back and, instead of becoming embarrassed and ashamed,  say "Yeah. I'm about to cry. You ought to try it some time."

I suppose I could make a whole thread out of things we wish we had said to bully when we were younger.

Well, I did get harassed but I always figured it was because I was a horrible person. Or at least just really ugly.

It probably wasn't actually any better. I'm going to go with the people who weren't harassed repeatedly as children had it better.

[BlueSloth]

I remember the hot tears when something seemingly unbearable happened and some junior bully had to chime in "Oh. Are you going to Cry?!?" As if it were the worse thing on earth.

My parents would yell at me for something, and then I'd cry and they'd yell at me for crying.  They're mostly ok, as parents go, but....  ugh.  That was terrible.

I don't think they ever really understood why I liked to go play with the little girl across the street as much as the little boy across the street, but they let me do it.

We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.

Yeah..  I don't think most of those really have much to do with gender anyway (look how many female athletes there are), but people think they do.  And I really suck at all of them.

[Edge]

When I was just starting puberty, I thought I was going to turn out to be at least partially male. I knew that I had a typically female body, but thought I'd be male somehow.

[Anthropos]

It's interesting, I was watching a special on children and gender identity, and it's amazing how much fluidity children attribute to gender. Even for those children who accept fully the concept that they are a "boy" or "girl" think that it's possible to change their gender as they grow older. In essence, kids often think of gender the same way one thinks of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" regarding occupation. I wonder what's the difference between myself, as an androgyne, and someone who thought this way as a kid, but now fully identifies themselves as being either a man or woman without any amount of dysphoria.

[aleon515]

Funny thing, I think I have LESS sense of gender than I did as a kid, as I had that feeling that I was a boy.  Perhaps it just all seems more complicated now, I don't know. I know now that interests and so forth don't really determine gender. So now I am at a point, I don't feel too much gender ID. Funny thing, but feminist talk is the only thing that makes me feel more "female". Not sure why that would be, except for a feeling of some group identity.

--Jay Jay