at what age did you know you didn't feel like you were your assigned gender?

[dmj23]

For me it took until I was 12 when I realized something felt all wrong.

[Amanda_Combs]

Same age for me.  And you know how guys talk about the moment they "became a man"?  I used to think that was the moment you accept your sex you were born with.  And for years, I waited for that to happen.  That's why I started to think I'm trans* at 18/19.  I was clearly an adult and had never "become a man".


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[JoanneB]

Four

Life went downhill after that for a good 50 years

[Denise]

I asked my mother if I was supposed to be a girl somewhere in the range of 4 or 5.  That is one of my earliest memories - it left an impression.

[Raell]

I was celebrated for being the first girl in my family, so knew I was a girl, but strangely, both my family and I also assumed I was a default boy.

I had my wake-up call at puberty..my beautiful, thin legs grew ugly lumps of fat, and my chest started hurting. I was mortified and prayed desperately my body would return to normal. Instead, my chest grew, was soon interfering with my throwing arm and making it painful to run.
I struggled on, trying to cope, wondering why God had abandoned me.

Then..an even worse evil..my childhood male friends suddenly started looking at me differently, formerly harmless adult men in my life became uncomfortably friendly.
The world had gone crazy.

Eventually I noticed all the other girls "liked" boys, but I missed the point. I was happy if a boy liked me only because I would be allowed to run around with that boy and his friends

When my periods started they were so painful I had to go to bed and/or take powerful drugs. The drugs, however, were uppers and made me forget my misery, so were sort of a plus.

[Alora]

I think it was 5 or 6 when I first thought something was wrong. It was 30 yes later when it fully it me

[tearsofash]

Preteens. Or whenever it was masculinity started being shoved down my throat and I was aware of it.

[SophiaBleu]

I was a late bloomer at 15

[Ive]

I a MTF girl.
There was an age for me that, as Raell said, I started to miss "the point" about a lot of things my (male) mates talked about all the time. I think the first time was between 3 and 6.
And:

you know how guys talk about the moment they "became a man"?  I used to think that was the moment you accept your sex you were born with.  And for years, I waited for that to happen.  (...) I was clearly an adult and had never "become a man".

Yep, I thought that too, until I opened that door I felt to have towards "femaleness". I was 32. And today (34) I am still trying to check if I have still to become a man, which is something I feel so far away, as it was another universe.

Historical fact: In my city, Naples, South of Italy, transgender women always existed, but they were a kind of "very very homosexual males": they were called "femmenielli". They were "so wrong men" that everyone made jokes about them, and they were the lowest step in society, together with prostitutes, until some decades ago (and they could mainly prostitute to live - even if some exceptions existed).

To discover to be a "femmeniello" was as hard as to be the one ALL the people, even your "friends" make jokes about.
I am still in the acceptance phase, I guess. Thanks god, things are rapidly changing during the last years.

P.S.: btw, studying some history about the Reign of Naples, which existed until 1850s, it seems that homosexuality and similar topics were tolerated and even accepted. Then, the unification of Italy destroyed this micro-environment: it seems that the Reign of Sardinia, which invaded the rest of Italy with the help of Garibaldi (who said, lately, that did the biggest mistake he could do), cancelled the culture of the South, and installed their, plus the bigotry from the "allied" Vatican State. Since than, the societal values changed towards bigotry, and... that's it...

Kisses!

[josie76]

At 4 I told my mom I wished I was a girl. I have that memory burned in. I told my mom yesterday about me and asked if she remembered. She didn't but did remember me crossdressing near puberty. My mom was awesome about it. We sat around and talked over several cups of coffee. We haven't talked like that in ages. Happy and kinda sad missing it for so long.
Around 11 when puberty first gives signs of being near I started having very disphoric feelings about my body and being  a boy. Eventually I sucked it all up and kept burying the feelings every time they arose untill now.

[j-unique]

About 25 years. Guess that makes me "not real"?

[Cassuk]

Hmm,

i remember the strongest feelings around 7-10 and again around the early teens.

And then on/off since i turned 18 ,

[kathb31]

For me it was 3   (Guess I started early but didn't start fixing things
until I was in my fifties).

[bluepaint]

A few years ago I remember reading a post asking if you are MtF did you identify with mermaids when you were a child? It reminded me of how much I did as long as I could remember! Now they know that many trans children do!


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[big kim]

About 7, I often thought of going to a different school  as a girl & living as a woman when I grew up. It would take another 14 years to join all the dots when I looked back at all the other signs.
I went to an all boys junior school & remember the fear other boys had of being made to act the girl in the school play & wondering what the fuss was about! Miss Bennett was a teacher who'd be kicked out of boot camp for being too strict! If she told you you were playing the girl you were playing her. Sadly it never happened to me. I had little interest in sport unlike most boys & hated boy's haircuts.
We had a French exchange kid & I wished Iwas French so I could be called Jean like the boy.
When I was 13 I was given a bag of Mum & my sister's old clothes to take to church for a jumble sale, I took out the ones I liked for myself.
In the early 70s 1 of the older boys at school rode past me & a friend on his BSA motorcycle with his girlfriend on the back. My friend wished he was the boy on the bike, I wished I was the girl with long blonde hair streaming behind,arms round his waist.

[Sharon Anne McC]

*

I know that I was at least as young as age three.  I was always 'out' to family from that age - causing trouble with what were called 'feminine protesting' tantrums:  'I'm a GIRL, Mom!', 'I'm gonna get an operation!' (even if I had no idea whether it was possible when I was a child during the 1950s and 1960s).

Josie, we share a similar experience.  My mother and I were talking while she cooked breakfast one Saturday morning.  I told her my name is now Sharon.  That began another row between us.  I asked her about that event 20-some years later; she denied any memory of it - an event quite critical to me was less than nonchalant to her.

Ive, thank you for your discourse of Italian culture and history.  I am not familiar with details but I understand that Thai culture is quite open about transsexualism - I heard of the term 'lady boy' is used there.

*

[Raell]

Sharon Anne mentioned lady boys in Thailand.

The kathoeys are common in Thailand, but the people foreigners call "lady boys" are mostly gay men who like to cross-dress, rather than what the US calls transsexuals.

The term kathoey used to mean intersex people, but has a looser meaning now which includes men heavy in feminine traits, but kathoey consider themselves male.

Most transgender women in Thailand refer to themselves as women, women of a second kind, or third gender, as is allowed in Thai Buddhism.

Most transgender people I see here dress as they please, often with mixed gender presentations, without hormones or operations.

[Miss Lux]

For me I believe 3 or 4 years old and I started transitioning on my own against all odds at 11/12 years old....felt like me against the world but it gets better...i am happy now

[dmj23]

don't know how true it was but I just was watching a movie about transgender people claimimg most transgender people know they are trans at 5-7 and 40% are suicidal or have suicidal thoughts concerning this. I've never had a thought in this direction. And I surely had no clue about any thing about really being a boy at 5-7. I did start to think something wasn't right with me at 7 because of the puberty but not as far as me being a girl. I didn't even know I was a tomboy I just was and my mom said I was but I didn't know the word for it or that I was different from anyone else. I rthought I was different from other girls at 7 due to the puberty but nothing else.

[zamber74]

It was an earlier age, before 9 years old.   By the time puberty hit, I was feeling it full impact.  I actually took a razor to my chest, because I literally thought I existed underneath my skin, that my body was absolutely wrong.  I know that sounds insane, but that is how sure I was that everything was wrong.  I remember those nights, praying, pleading, begging with God to fix me.  I also remember being 9, playing dungeons and dragons, and always making a girl character, it was my escape.

Those were really tough times, I was absolutely ashamed of my body.. I could not even change in the boys locker rooms, I remember getting in trouble often, because I would skip out of gym all of the time.  Even out of gym, I would wear a long thick coat, even in the summer, because of how horrible and out of place I felt. 

Before 9, my memory becomes a little more fuzzy, the concept of gender was confused, I remember admiring my teachers that were women, and wanting to be more like them, I remember wanting to join the brownies, I also remember my best friends were girls, but actually coming to the concept that I was a girl I do not recall, as far as I knew, gender did not exist.  Such topics were not often talked about.