Quote from: Zoetrope on August 18, 2017, 01:53:00 AM
No - I wouldn't tell you what to believe - but it is not my personal belief that a person can have a fully formed concept of their gender and identity after one year of kindergarten.
Being an only child that grew up on a rural Ohio farm, I didn't really understand that I wasn't a girl or what was different about being a boy until I started kindergarten and had to segregate into the boy's line, etc. Then it became all too depressingly clear that what I knew in my heart to be true wasn't exactly seen the same way by others. I had no concept of "gender" or even the foggiest clue about "identity" but I knew for certain I was not the same as other boys regardless of what I looked like. To me, I was just one of the girls with short hair and different clothes and what body parts I had hadn't even come into the picture at that point until I figured out those were the things that made me not a girl. Fully formed, conceptualized or identified or not, I knew in my spirit and soul that I was meant to be born a girl. How did I know this? I have absolutely no idea, I just did and always have. It isn't something I have questioned that has always been a constant.
You've mentioned it has taken a lifetime for you to question and figure these things out and it seems impossible for you to believe someone has always known from a young age. By the same token, I find it hard to believe it takes someone being an adult before what they are comes into question or becomes a problem. This is NOT meant to be derogatory but If indeed one's sense of their own gender comes into focus between 2 and 4 years old, how is it that it takes someone 30, 40 or 50 years with a wife and kids before it becomes an issue? Being a boy/man or girl/woman to me seems pretty fundamental to one's life, it sure was to mine and for those folks that have had cross gender ideation since childhood and didn't do anything about it, all I can wonder is why or how they didn't if it was really that important to them?
I'm familiar with all the reasons. Unsupportive parents, incompatible environments, social pressures, fears of being different, ridicule, shame, religion, confusion, it couldn't be done or was too hard in the past and the list goes on and on, etc., etc. Intellectually I can understand these things and have a certain degree of empathy for those that struggle with these things later in life and my point in this discussion is not to diminish or demean anyone else's experience or feelings but when someone tells me I was too young to know my own, that I was mistaken or don't know what I'm talking about, how can that not put me on the defensive? In my earliest and only memories, I've always known myself to be a girl and nothing else. This is indisputable whether others believe it or not. My actions, interests, manner, interactions and friendships have reflected this completely my entire life. Think what you will about this. I know where I've been. Although transgender and transition weren't the words we used in my family back then, I began actively transitioning 47 years ago, started hormones 45 years ago at 17, had surgery 40 years ago at 22 and have had a lifetime lived as a woman from my teenage years to reflect on all this. That gender identity I had at 5 or 6 has remained solid and consistent for me as it will be for my forever. There's hardly room for anyone to disagree with this.
QuoteAt that stage we have yet to experience the flux of hormones and puberty, we have yet to learn beyond the very basics what gender means in society, and we have yet to experience much of life. I don't think preferring this item of clothing over that, or this toy over another, is a solid indicator of gender identity.
Granted, clothes and toys don't mean much but you've got to concede that these expressions can be at least a fair indicator of what's going on inside especially when these expressions are noticeably atypical to the point of causing social disruption. Also, discounting the lives and existence of pre-pubescent transgender children won't win you many friends among that demographic or their parents. Coming from that background I can say that your belief that a person can't really know what gender they are until puberty and the influences of sexuality come into the picture is simply inaccurate. All this influx of hormones did for me was make me suicidally depressed, further alienated me from my own physicality and only exacerbated the pain of who I was and how I was seen by others which by that point was completely androgynous and queer, which was to say the least, not very popular in the 1960's. This was the most distressing time in my life, not something that reinforced having a male gender identity in any respects. Quite the contrary, in fact. It only strengthened my resolve that things were fundamentally wrong and needed to be fixed.
QuoteSure, we receive plenty of confirmation of our gender during our teenage years, adolescence and even later on, as we progress through life and our experiences accumulate - I certainly won't dispute that!
But how can we 'just know' at age 6 or younger, when we have only just begun to learn what gender means - or who we even are for that matter? That is my question ...
Haven't non-trans people figured these things out by then? Did they need to understand the sociological implications of gender or have their entire lives and identity figured out? Didn't the things Michelle_P posted about the formation and establishment of gender identity mean anything to you or is that just rubbish because you believe it can't be true?
In spite of the odds or what you believe possible I have always known myself to be a girl in heart and mind. Never in any of my memories have I believed myself to be anything else and this was something far more than just internalized feelings. My parents had been taking me to psychiatrists from the time I was ten years old because my distress was palpable and when I did declare at fifteen that I was going to live the rest of my life as a girl why there was no resistance or surprise. What I was had always been obvious and yes, even as a six year old.
Just as I am expected to understand how others have experienced and dealt with their own transness even though it doesn't all make sense to me and seems foreign because it is so different from what I've been through, I'd appreciate the same level respect for my own experiences and feelings however different from your own they may be.
Let's all hold hands now and sing Kumbaya or something.
