How do you describe yourself in your past?

[Julia-Madrid]

Hey Y'all

This is an interesting one, and I guess it mainly applies to those of us who transitioned after we'd led a substantial part of our iives in the wrong gender. 

The issue relates to how you refer to yourself when you discuss your past.  Do you imagine and describe yourself in your former gender, or in your correct, bright and shiny gender?

Part of this relates to language and gender:  in Spanish, adjectives, adverbs and other stuff have gender, so, soon after I started transitioning, if people asked me about my past, I referred to myself as male. 

But now, I find it much more consistent to refer to myself historically as female, even if it isn't strictly correct. 

As another example, when chatting with a woman who had recently met me, she saw a girl before her and assumed that my ex partner was a man.  Not true - my ex is female, but is there any real reason to correct her?

How do you refer to yourself when you talk about your past, before you became the right gender?

Julia

[peky]

As female because despite putting a good act, I never saw or perceived myself as a male....

[pianoforte]

Because most of my conversations are in English, I am usually able to use gender-neutral language when I talk about my past.

But if I am talking about experiences that in some way relate to gender identity (so... most of them) I usually end up using female terminology because it describes my authentic experience of how I was perceived and treated at the time.

I feel like if I were to have a conversation in Spanish, I might start using masculine terms, like niño etc, to describe my younger self. Mostly because of the opportunity to do so, and practice thinking of myself that way.

[Kamiki]

Whew, not going to be a popular answer. Or it may be the most common, not sure.

I lie (sort of, to others' perception it may seem so).

My reality is, I have always been a girl. End of story. I avoid anything indicative of the opposite. I refer to myself as female even when describing my past. I went to girl scout camp and in general led a normal young woman's life.

This sort of came into being without intent. I just found myself fudging details that did not fit "me" until the new fabricated truth became as solid as the original truth to me. This is not the kind of thing you can change up, you have to have the solid, non changing basics down.

As Jennifer Echols said, "It's easier to remember your lies if they're close to the truth," and so it is; in reality, at least in my experience. Thus all my "lies" are based around twisted/changed/altered truths. An exampled would be the aforementioned camp. When I was 12 I actually went to a Boy and Girl Scout camp, boys on one side of the lake, girls the other. It is very easy for me to relate things I saw girls doing or shared in experiencing with them; as I experienced them myself as well. I just fib about which dorm I slept in and who I told fireside tales with. Similarly do I handle secondary schooling, work, dating, prom etc. Derivations from the truth but so close remembering them is never an issue.

Also according to "channels", such as Darryl Anka who channels Bashar, by accepting a different past as your own you change reality streams to make that your reality. Though in all literalness I am aware there is not a quantuum shift nor any significant change in my world, I can relate to the base concept this self help personae is getting at.

This is actually basic human behaviour, an interesting factoid I learned from my critical thinking English 101 class was that people alter their memory of past events to fit their world view and that doing so is actually a part of how we maintain a healthy psyche by allowing us to explain/fit/accept things that have occurred and how they have affected us. And that this altered perception of events is to us, "what really happened" even if altered by our minds. So; for me, it is the truth. Probably at this point truth enough to Poly. We are talking ingrained responses, no delay in response times and perfect consistency. Because to me, it is the truth and not a lie, to my mother however it may seem a fib in some respects.

But yes, slight fibs in the end to the eyes of some.

Kami

[Jill F]

"Him"

[Carrie Liz]

I just avoid using gendered terms to describe myself.

I say "when I was a kid," or "when I was little" or "when I was in high school" to describe my past. I'll just shorten boy scouts to "scouts." There's no need to lie about the sports I played as a kid because almost all of them were unisex. So basically I just let other people fill in the blanks. Most often they just automatically assume that I was female socially at the time, and thus I'm talking about being a girl as a kid, girl scouts, etc. No need to lie, but no need to out myself either.

Honestly, though, even if I did say that I was a girl as a kid, I wouldn't be lying. Male was a label that was given to me, not one that I picked for myself. Just about any kid can be told that they're one sex, even if they very clearly identify with the other, and they'll go along with it, begrudgingly for some, more or less okay for others because they fit the stereotypes better. I fit the stereotypes, even though later in middle and high school I came to realize that I liked those things not because I was male, but because I was a more androgynous gender-nonconforming tomboy who liked both boy things and girl things. And that's how I've seen myself since I was 13 years old, so that's who I was, even if physically I resigned myself to being stuck in a male body because I believed I'd never "pass."

For God's sake, even someone who was BORN male, David Reimer, took until he was 15 years old to transition back to his birth sex from the sex doctors tried to assign him. And that was only because he discovered his own medical history. Had they not told him, who knows how long it would have taken him to transition? It takes a LOT of willpower and developed reasoning to be able to break through what people tell you you are, even if you truly deeply feel that you're not.

[ImagineKate]

I think it would be very hard to lie about my past. That said I would just not bring up the topic with strangers.

[Brenda E]

A really interesting question, Ms. Madrid.  Since I'm still not out to most people, and certainly there's nobody who wouldn't know my past anyway, I tend to default to the male.  I'm a useless liar, so I'd no doubt get tied up in knots  were I to start to talk about the past as if I was once female.

From the perspective of linguistics, I suppose English goes a long way towards making this a somewhat moot point, not having many gendered nouns.  I can't think of a common example of when I might possibly refer to myself in the past in the third person.  Of course, as you mention, when talking about prior partners and relationships, jobs, and suchlike, there would be clues to something strange going on.

But it's worth thinking about now, because I have no doubt that it'll come up.  When thinking about the old me, I see someone who was male - I truly thought that I was male back then.  If I thought I was female long ago, I wouldn't have waited until I was 40 to transition.  It's a history that is just too long to bother hiding.  I might eventually pass, but I'll never be stealth; people who interact with me will figure out pretty quickly that I used to be a guy, and I'm cool with that.  It's too complex a web to try and weave, too many secrets to hide, too much mental effort.  (We're not all smart enough to speak two languages, Julia ).

Nor does my current female mind show any signs of doing the heavy lifting for me.  I haven't automatically reimagined how I used to look, feel, act and react.  In my memories, I'm still male, almost as if watching old films of myself.  I'll always be male in those films and memories, and after transition the images won't change and show a girl instead.

It'll be interesting (for me, at least) to see how more recent memories are formed as I progress through transition.  Things that are happening now, will I remember myself as male or female?  I'm currently female in mind, but in body generally male unless I put in the effort in front of the mirror.  In the future, will I still remember things post-transition as myself being male?  Will the mental image I have of myself just be too strong to alter, even though I look physically different?  Who knows.

[Edge]

I refer to my kid self as a boy because I was. Even though I didn't know it yet and I was raised as if I were a girl, I was a boy. Either that or I call my kid self a kid.

[Julia-Madrid]

So everyone,

Some very interesting views here, and I was expecting them to be divergent, as they are, based on strength of our dysphoria and transitioning age.

But there's no doubt - increasingly I reimagine myself purely as the gender I now am.  There's no reason to do anything else:  for people who don't know me, why dig up irrelevant history, and for people who know me, they all fully understand why I do refer to myself in the female.  Luckily the people in my circle, both socially and professionally, are sensitive; not a pedant amongst them!   

[kelly_aus]

I've still got way too many people in my life from my past to shade the truth. And, honestly, some things would make no sense at all if I 'changed' my gender when relating the events. With some, I will avoid gendering my younger self - but I don't rewrite history.

[Indoctrinated]

Female absolutely. But - thanks to family - repression over my feelings was such a blow to my self identity... I ended up rather selfless, only driven by goals so I'd pick neutral words over anything gendered. I would rather become nothing than a boy, that was it!

[Sammy]

I used neutral language if possible. Why? Because it was my life, it was me going to school, me studying in uni, doing all sorts of things and making decisions which I did. Those memories are my memories and not someone else's - it was not someone else leading my life, who might be gone now - it was me. "Same person. No difference at all. Just a different sex."

[gabimoneratt]

If it's someone that knows about me I might use male pronouns once or twice, but since I'm talking about myself and I'm a girl, I don't  even really think of it, it goes out of my mouth in female form without having the trouble to change the gender in my mind and all that stuff. If people assume this or that I just let them assume, unless I feel OK to tell them the truth.

[PinkCloud]

I just hated my male body. But I also hate most womanly things, or gender constraints. I think there is nothing wrong with being a bit tomboyish, that overly femme is not for me. The world is already boring enough to be just another binary, although I do identify as one, I certainly not always present as one. I just do what I feel, and be genuine, not fake.

[Lostkitten]

I wasn't very busy with what I looked like. I was the bullied one, the insecure, shy and silent. Over time I started to change, instead of introvert I became extrovert. I used to avoid problems and learned to confront them head on.

How I used to be and how I am now never been about gender. I don't think saying I was a young boy and now a girl. I was young and I always been me.

But I surely did change, appearance and personality wise .