The Age of Four

[noleen111]

I remember my 4th birthday party... and i remember my fav color was pink... and i loved to play house.. hmmm a sign of things to come.. at the age of 5 or 6 i did wonder what it was like to wear a dress.

Now that I am all grown up... I dont really like the color pink... my roommate finds this weird... a girl that does not like pink...

I have virtually no clothes pink clothes... ok do have clothes with a little pink in it as a lot of female clothing has pink in it..  I have a totally bright pink bra and panty set which my roommate bought me when i got srs done. she told come on.. try wear pink.. at least no one will see it.. i have worn it a few times..

I also have a bottle of a dirty/dusty pink nail polish.. which i sometimes paint on my toes.. i will admit i kinda like how it looks on my toes.

[LordKAT]

Yep, early teen years were when the vague sense of something being off turned into, "I would have been so much happier had I been born a girl," thoughts.

By the way, my earliest memory is being in the crib. Is that weird?

I, too, remember being in a crib.  My aunt still has the crib, a cast iron one.

I was 3, in a pilot program for head start, turned 4 shortly after.  I still want that big Tonka fire truck and not the dumb doll.

[Squircle]

I don't think I had much concept of gender at four. I was the little one in the family and My mum used to call me daisy. I think, looking back, that my parents raised me in a fairly gender nuetral way. I loved a lot of boyish things like Lego and visiting castles but I also loved nature and was very quiet and shy. I could spend hours just with my own imagination, or usually just drawing. My earliest memory was going to a farm to buy a cat, which my parents said was when I was around two. But it's just vague pictures, nothing concrete, and I have no idea how much my brain has made up to fill in that scene.

I didn't really realise something was badly wrong until around 10/11 when I felt society outside of my family started demanding I act a certain way. I was extremely emotionally sensitive (still am) and I remember high school being a real shock.

When people tell me they knew since four, I never know how to react. Part of me thinks that it's way too young to have any clear certainty about gender, but then I think just because its outside of my experience it doesn't mean it can't happen. I've heard it used as a bit of a badge of honour in the past and before I decided to transition it made me feel a bit like I couldn't really be transgender because my life didn't fit the narrative that everyone else spoke of. Nowadays I feel a bit less sensitive about it because I know this is right for me, but I do think we have to be careful not to put too much weight on when we first knew.

[Julia-Madrid]

My earliest verifiable memories are from around 4 years old, the wooden floors at home which used to raise splinters all the time.  And being so close to the floor at that age...

My first gender discordant memories are from when I was seven, and I repressed them mightily until I was 25, when I finally hit therapy to understand who I was.  Yes, you're a girl.  And you like men.  Aaaaargh!

xxx
J

[Ash]

Four for me as well for my first gender memory.
Mama asked me to bring her slippers upstairs and put them in her closet.
Was completely in awe of all the pretty clothes and shoes and utterly jealous.

Also had a teary breakdown in my all boys school at five about not fitting in properly.
Really wished I had realised the true issue much sooner than I did.