Quote from: Carrie Liz on July 04, 2014, 06:47:01 PM
You might like this passage from WPATH's Standards of Care:
"Yet many adolescents and adults presenting with gender dysphoria do not report a history of childhood gender-nonconforming behaviors (Docter, 1988; Landen, Walinder, & Lundstrom, 1998). Therefore, it may comeas a surprise to others (parents, other family members, friends, and community members) when a youth's gender dysphoria first becomes evident in adolescence."
And it also states that while most youth expressing gender-nonconforming behavior will grow out of it by early adolescence, (and that only 6%-23% of gender-nonconforming male children and 12%-26% of gender-nonconforming female children will still identify as transgender into adolescence,) once you do hit adolecense, all 70 of a group of young teenagers who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and took puberty-blocking hormones persisted with their trans identity into adulthood. WPATH basically acknowledges that the primary signifier of someone being transgender is the body aversion that happens as one goes through the early stages of puberty, and not just gender-nonconforming behavior.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
I was one of those who never really expressed any gender-nonconforming behavior either as a kid, but then when puberty hit all hell broke loose and I hated every minute of it.
Thanks. I am not sure because I didn't really like my body but I internalized so much of it like I made up reasons why I felt the way I did e.g. breasts are good because guys like breasts (I am attracted to both genders) and then it changed to, but I want small to non-existent breasts and there are men who like that and I began to resent female body standards of being big-breasted. I definitely fall among those people who were more like I have X body so I must be X gender and never thought I could be something else because everyone else told me that if you're a girl because you have a girl body, so you're a girl.
I think I mostly didn't understand puberty and I often thought it was better if I was born a guy like I just knew life had been better if I was born a guy and it was a really strong desire for me. I also felt like that because I didn't like female social roles that I had to fit into being female-born. I couldn't identify with any of them and I think I desperately tried to look for female role models for a long time that could represent my gender but frankly there were none except a few that really played more of a male role in say, fiction like I did really dig Selene from Underworld but aside having a vagina instead of a dick between her legs she's not really female or even feminine in her presentation and she could easily have been replaced with a male character and I doubt it would honestly have made that much impact on the story. Like, even if you take butch lesbians there's a difference if you know what I mean? They are still female inside and proud of it. You can feel the female-ness.
Another problem for me I think is that I never identified with Western hypermasculinity either so you end up in this big gender hole. I didn't want to be that and by that comparison being female somehow seemed a little better but only moderately if you stretched it really far to the tomboy and male area, but female wasn't right either.
But yeah, going through puberty wasn't one of those super-obvious signs either like I just knew by that time even then. Just felt discomfort pretty much and I didn't really understand menstruation for example, the first time it happened. I knew what it was but it never occurred that it could happen to me for some reason. Not sure why since I knew I was female-born and it would happen sooner or later but when it did happen I just pretended like it was nothing. I guess I feel frustrated because there aren't many other FtMs with my particular experiences that I can relate to. It makes me think if this is all in my head or not since no one else seems to be this way or at least feel things the way I felt it like how I moved from androgynous to bigender with an interest to seriously cross-dress but I never did until now when I finally came out to myself and my environment though then it's not really crossdressing anymore. Between each period where I felt weird about my gender identity I also kind of fell back into some regular monotony where I didn't think more about it. Not sure why. Just easier to not think or deal with it I guess, to ignore that it's there because it causes discomfort. Just this aching sense that something doesn't make any damn sense.
