When you dream at night, what gender are you?

[kylen kantari]

When I'm asleep at night and have dreams, in the dreams I am male, always. This has happened my whole life.

I am FtM and apparently my subconscious has known this long before I actively started identifying as trans. In fact I use this as one of my arguments when explaining being trans to others.

So, just wanted to know if this is something unique to me or if anyone else has experienced this.

Unofficial poll, when you dream at night, what gender are you?

[Jessica Merriman]

I am MtF and I have been female only in my dreams since at least age 7 (I am 49 now).

[mrs izzy]

A young vibrant 20 something female.

Oh you said dream not a wish. Lol.

Seriously just a normal past prime female. 

[Cin]

When I was 12, I had dreams where my aunt forces me to wear girls' clothes, and assures me that no one else will know and that there are no other male clothes, I secretly like it. It's funny because as soon as I put on girls' clothing, my body would magically change into a girl's body and it felt right to me. I also had dreams where only my top half was female.

Two weeks ago i had a dream where i am my male self, and came out to my mother, and she was really cool about it. It was great until the dream ended, and I know that my mom would never be that cool in real life.

This one time, i was a fully grown woman around 30 years old i guess, walking around a house as everyone comments about how good I look or how much i have changed or something, I knew that I was a man in the past too.

Most of my dreams are in first person though, I can't really tell.

[Ms Grace]

I am a complex and fluid representation of myself and my gender depending on the dream and any given development. My dreams are so utterly weird most of the time I pay no attention to their deeper meaning. I mean I once dreamed Abe Lincoln had been brought back to life via an oil painting and was really good at throwing hoola hoops. Serioulsy, WTF?!? I dare Freud to analyse that one!!

[IAmDariaQuinn]

Honestly... I don't think it's ever come up in my dreams.  Like it didn't even matter, there.

[Rachel]

I am MTF and I am Female in my dreams.

[AndrewG]

I hadn't realised this until a few months ago, but I've always been male in my dreams. Like you, it definitely seems my subconscious knew before me!

[JoanneB]

For the overwhelming majority of my life my dreams have been mostly third person or absolutly no sense. These days an even split between watching a movie, being male and being female

[MugwortPsychonaut]

In most dreams, gender isn't an issue. I'm just "me."

That's funny that you asked this question though, because just last night I had a dream where my trans status did become an issue. I was visiting the house of two brothers I knew as a kid. We lived in a pretty redneck town, but this was further exaggerated in the dream. Bumpy, dirt roads and houses with wooden foundations, raised off the ground. I was my adult, MTF self, and they were still kids. Time was frozen, as it typically is in a memory.

I walked into there house, and there was a macho, mustachioed man named Vulvan -- like a portamento of Vulcan and vulva. He said something like, "Well don't you feel pretty being a little girl?" I told him that I was a grown woman. He then informed me of his intention to stab me. I told him I didn't want to fight, and that I'd just leave. I left the house and got in my car, fearing that any second I could be stabbed to death. I turned the ignition, but the car wouldn't start. I told myself this wasn't a horror movie, and the car started.

So to make a long explanation short, I'm usually MTF in a dream.

[Jill F]

Mostly gender does not come up in my dreams.  I'm just "me".  I have, however, had dreams since I was a kid where I was distinctly female or wearing a pretty dress and had long hair.  I had a strange dream when I was 12 where I was chasing a pair of breasts (my breasts!) down the street, up trees, in and out of swimming pools and all over, but I could never catch them no matter how hard I tried.  It was just after they had removed vestigial "girl parts" from a testicle that had swollen to the size of a tangerine. (Common with DES casualties.)  I guess I knew subconsiously that male puberty was about to hit me, and I didn't like that idea one bit.     

As a teen and adult, I always looked forward to being a girl in my dreams, and I never wanted to wake up when I had one of them.

These days I'm either female or aware of being MTF, as last night I had a dream that I ran out of E and my endo had died, sending me into a panic.

[Tessa James]

As I have changed in transition so have my dreams.  In the past my dreams were essentially genderless except if sexuality was part of the theme and then, well TMI maybe, but let's say I was the more passive bottom one.  Now i am clearly a girl and my dreams can reflect the struggles we have  Last night I was upset in my dreams that a man coming on to me discovered some stubble and I was rejected.  Oh boo hoo, just a bad dream but IRL that stubble really does bug me so I guess my dreams are helping me work it out.

[Carrie Liz]

My dream self has actually adjusted over the years to mostly stay in line with whatever my current external self was.

When I was a kid, I was always a boy in my dreams. (Or at least I was myself, which at the time was a self that honestly wasn't even very aware of gender, I just went with what other people told me.)

As a teenager, when I started experiencing dysphoria, I was still mostly male in my dreams, but started having a lot of dreams where I was female. (And I LOVED those dreams so much... every single time I had one of them, it made me feel SO good. And likewise I started having "old man" dreams where in the dream I'd be a middle-aged guy, hair falling out, more masculine face, and I would FLIP THE F*** OUT when that happened.)

When I started transition, the self in my dreams became somewhere in the middle... an effeminate in-transition person who was often trying to pass as female but worried about not actually doing a good job at it.

And now post-transition, I'm mostly female in my dreams. The one exception is when I'm having dreams about my past, namely ones involving my ex-girlfriend, I'm often male.

I guess my dreams tend to be a reflection of whatever is going through my head currently, and however I currently view myself.

[Rudy King]

FYI: I'm IS.

In my dreams, I've never been myself.  Nor have I been male or female.  Even the people, and places I visit are not part of my life in any way. 

Sometimes when I dream, I wonder around a school.  Each dream is a different school, but mostly I don't see others in the dream, but sometimes I do.

My dreams are more like watching a movie, or making an observation.  Even after I started on ert, I had no changes to my dreams.

Sometimes, it bugs me, but mostly I don't even think about it.

[AbeLane]

When it does come up in my dreams, I've found that when I'm having a nightmare I'm in a female body. When I'm having a good/regular dream I'm male. Go figure.

[orangejuice]

From as young I can remember I've had dreams where I got to go to school dressed like a girl. Like someone else said when I put the clothes on I became a girl. Also like others I had some where it was a punishment thing. I'd dream I'd done something bad at schooland for punishment they made me a girl but I secretly loved it. I had dreams where I'd look down at my body and physically see it change from male to female.  Then as a teenager I  started having these dreams where all that happens is I'm standing in front of a mirror and looking at my reflection and I see a girl. I have that dream a lot. Then there's anytime I have a sexual dream I'm always a woman having sex with a man. That sucks. I think I could put this whole thing behind me if it wasn't for the dreams. I mean I imagine waking up next to a wife in the future and with a family after having a dream like that and I think I'd just top myself with shame.

But equally I have many dreams where I'm just me as I am today.

[ImagineKate]

Genderless and female. Sometimes male but not really anymore. I have had a few trans dreams, one where I was on the operating table ready for SRS... Then I asked if I could go and stand up and pee one last time, lol.

[King Malachite]

I'm just me in my dreams....usually I'm not thinking about gender in my dreams. 

[sqrkbkwmqko]

Mostly male. Sometimes, especially recently after knowing about trans*, and also during my carefree-er early pre-teens phase, female.

During my last few teenage years, I think, I experienced more-than-few "hot" dreams which most of them started with the realization that I was lucid dreaming, and me manifesting the individual persons that I wanted to "get hot" with. Yeah -_-. And I was male and it didn't bother me at all that I was "having fun" as a male.

I'm confused. I think I might be gender-fluid (or it's just my dysphoria that is fluid if that makes sense) and that being trans might just be a phase... in a cycle, because if it is a phase then it would mean that I had moved in/out of it AT LEAST 4 times and will most probably face it again in the future I think if my dysphoria ever goes away again. (not that I'm sure though if it really did ever go away)

[rachel89]

Recently, I have either had an entirely male body or have been in the early stages of transition on HRT. Some of them have been about coming out, getting electrolysis, finding out a cousin is trans (not in real life). Many of the dreams which I remember, that seem unrelated to transition, are extremely bizarre.