A great question

[Complete]

"I don't quite understand it or what makes some of us so different that this becomes a matter of life and death as children and adolescents and isn't something that can be ignored or repressed regardless of how much parents or society try. I know for sure without the support of my folks and being allowed to do the things I did, I can say with certainty that I would have killed myself because all of this was so absolutely fundamental to my very existence, I would have rather died than to have ever grown up to be a man." ~LisaK

For me this is a great question.  I have wondered about this ever since I first began interacting with people identifying as transgendered. I see the differences,  and l accept them. I just cannot explain or understand them. Maybe I shouldn't worry about the why and just celebrate our differences.

[FlightlessFootwear]

When it comes down to it we all have very different brains and life experiences, so it makes sense to me how those of us who identify as trans had such different experiences. Science really hasn't come far enough yet in even understanding what is the underlying reason for people being trans in the first place, so understanding how it affects us in such different ways doesn't seem likely to be fully understood anytime soon.

For whatever reason I had no gender dysphoria as a child, just a vague interest in the idea of being a girl. Over time it grew from interest to mild obsession, and now years later I am realizing that it is something necessary for me to be truly happy with myself. I don't know why it took me longer to realize this, why it develop over years instead of hitting like a truck at a young age, but I just attribute it to me being a unique individual. It would be interesting to know for certain how this develops and where it comes from someday.

[Lisa_K]

Since I am the one that posited that original thought, I've subsequently not had any major revelations pointing me toward an answer, after all, it was just yesterday, but there is something, even if it is indefinable.

Now under the guise of being one big happy family, holding hands and singing Kumbaya under the happy unicorn transgender umbrella, this venue doesn't really allow us to discuss what might be differences between us so I'll do my best to not go there. While not making any value judgments or insinuating any sort of hierarchy or superiority, there is that nebulous something about those of that did struggle with this as kids and managed to transition as teenagers but I do not know what it is.

The three of us here that have shared that experience and perspective, Julia1996, Auroasky and myself seem to have a certain understanding of each other that transcends our generational differences. Whether it was our innate, undisguisable and irrepressible personality and femininity and the social ramifications of being different or our interactions with parents and family or just the things we went through in general, there is a way we just get each other even if it is unspoken. Perhaps it's just recognizing a kindred spirit? I'm reluctant to speak for anyone else or use the collective "we", but we do feel different from most folks here which may only be because of our shared pasts but I suspect there's more to it than that?

Is this all just a matter of intensity and timing? I understand that those in their 30's, 40's, 50's and even 60's can be just as driven and desperate to transition but I have a hard time understanding if a person feels so strongly about this, enough to throw away wives, family, careers and security, what mental machinations were involved that allowed them to live with it for so long? How can some people repress and ignore something that to me was as fundamental and important as breathing? For someone like me, no amount of parental or societal pressure, bullying, beating or ostracization could make me be anything other than myself. I did not know how to be anything else and why should I even have had to? Maybe I was just really stubborn or not too smart? Maybe I was just too weak to resist or simply selfish?

Had my parents not been understanding and supportive, I would have run away or taken my own life. Nothing or anything mattered except the pain of not being a girl in every way that invaded and influenced my every waking moment and interaction. What force drives and overpowers a little kid to feel this way so strongly and fundamentally that it became a matter of survival and a life and death struggle as I got into my teenage years? I sure as heck don't know and if anybody has any ideas, I'd like to hear them because I'm clueless and have no answers. The disgust of being male bodied and growing up to be a man horrified me more than anything and even at 15, I knew that was never going to happen come hell or high water, even if I didn't know all the hows.

It's not that I have really ever questioned or wondered about these things. For me this is something that has always been and just was and I really don't care what the reasons were. All of this was just my normal although outside influences did everything they could to let me know how normal it wasn't which did nothing but strengthen my resolve and convictions. My feelings about who and what I was and am have never wavered, been questioned or faltered.

The question has been asked why. I have absolutely no idea.

[Amoré]

I don't understand the difference myself but I guess it has to do with who we are as a person and seeing as people are so different we each act different in a certain situation. We take different actions on different situations. Social conditioning can also play a large role in this. It is also to do with how people perceive rejection and the fear they have of it. Because if you transition you are bound to get rejected by aspects of live and some people in your life. The loss that people fear of losing loved ones and their position in life and giving it up for an unknown life.

The problem is once you started building a life around you the fear of losing all these things can be immense.

This may lead to people like me only transitioning in my late 20's because of the action I took when I could not transition as a teen. I decided the best thing for me at that stage was just to keep my dad happy and not have him bash my head in. I was also in a very intolerant school. It was a farmer school where anything out of the norm was not allowed. Schools in South Africa is sort of like the military. That pattern lasted for 12 years of pleasing others.

By this we find coping mechanisms that allow us to tolerate in a way the gender we are in that we don't want to be. For me I was miserable but I tried to make the best of it.

[Another Nikki]

If you haven't read it, the essay posted at the link below by Dr. Anne Vitale explains her take on the differences.  http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm

[KathyLauren]

I understand that those in their 30's, 40's, 50's and even 60's can be just as driven and desperate to transition but I have a hard time understanding if a person feels so strongly about this, enough to throw away wives, family, careers and security, what mental machinations were involved that allowed them to live with it for so long? How can some people repress and ignore something that to me was as fundamental and important as breathing?

I have to assume that we each feel the pressure to transition differently.  I envy kids who feel it so strongly at age five that they are able to begin their transition before puberty hits.  I guess I didn't feel it that strongly, back then.  Instead, I put up defenses of denial and compliance.

But, as we all know, dysphoria increases with time.  Eventually it rises to the level where it can't be ignored or denied any longer.  Also, as we mature through our adult lives, we become more competent and gain self-confidence.  When, in my early 60s, my self-confidence had increased to the point where I no longer needed to deny who I was, I was able to tackle the increasing dysphoria.

Different people's confidence varies at different rates.  And different people's dysphoria rises at different rates.  So it should be no surprise that there is a whole spectrum of ages at which people come out and transition (or don't).

[SadieBlake]

I would have to say in my case it simply wasn't safe. My family was the sort of bigots that were unashamed of racism, anti semitism, or homophobia (and in their social context the homophobia was everywhere). Of course they were also and remain incredibly sexist.

And of course there was no language for trans, if you weren't adequately masculine then you were assumed to be at best inferior, at worst queer. These prejudices we're pretty much echoed everywhere so the notion of any escape was certainly unlikely to occur to me. I did absolutely want to escape, however by the time I'd gotten to an age where that was feasible, I'd also begun learning to pass better as male.

Understand that for someone who's been subjected to abuse, the coping mechanism isn't what it is for someone with supportive parents. Really the main thing I learned as a kid was how to hide. In my case the physical abuse was relegated to animals, pets however seeing that leaves a lasting impression. Rather my parent and family were quite clear that caring and approval was reserved for those who earned it. Entirely conditional, I grew up with few if any examples of unconditional love. People who are fundamentally unloved by their care givers are in a prison that I think those who come from functional, happy families can't easily understand.

I was the kid who came to tears often in school and you can bet that my peers made that every day for a long time.

Reciprocally to this day as much work as I've put into understanding and repairing the holes left by this experience, I cannot really fathom what it could be like to be in a family that actually cares for one another. I hear people speak of it, sometimes see it in action and marvel at the possibility. Healthy and caring families might as well be Martians for what little I can understand them.

Add to all that, I'm pretty far out on the autism spectrum. I had trouble interpreting emotions and connecting with my own.

So that kid was truly trapped. Yes there were ways out, however because it wasn't safe to know I was female, I just knew early on that I was different. After many years it was divorce which was initially a crisis for me that threw me into deep depression but also forced me to understand that I didn't just have a feminine side as a male, rather I was transexual, at first I figured myself for nonbinary but in a deeper place I knew that I'm fundamentally female. While I appreciate the lessons learned the hard way as a natal male and am pretty good at reinterpretation of my history as first male and then non transitioning transexual, all of the above is why I take to being finally female like a duck to water.

Lisa, I hadn't intended such a long response to your post, I'm not sure I could say it in fewer words.

[xFreya]

Some weeks ago my dad said to me "I wish you did this whole thing after finishing university". I got a little annoyed because I'm almost done with my transition so it's not a new thing, how can he still not understand that wasn't working? He told me about someone who planned to transition FTM after having a kid(meaning to say some people can postpone it a while). I could just say people are different.

I don't want anyone to feel less valid if they didn't start earlier though. Because I doubted myself at first, my mother and a psychiatrist too, because I didn't show any signs before puberty. Now that makes sense, because I didn't have that many feminine interests (which is perfectly fine because this is not about that), and there were no secondary sex characteristics yet. After puberty I just couldn't imagine being a man. Some people try to play that role for decades. Our individual experiences and environments play a part, but I think this is partly due to our character types. I have always been a stubborn person if I think I am doing the right thing. Some don't want to upset people around them. And if they get married and have kids etc it becomes harder. Until they can't do it anymore.

[KathyLauren]

it wasn't safe to know I was female

What a brilliant way of expressing this state!  Exactly this!

[Megan.]

For me personally it was utter denial and compartmentalisation. Sure I'd been cross-dressing since the around the age of 8,  and had wished daily to be a woman, but I wasn't a cross-dresser,  and certainly wasn't trans* haha.
The other thing about fear of discovery is very true for me,  I was totally paranoid about being outed.
Only once I had faced what was in the box in my head and let it out,  I discovered it wouldn't fit back in.
If I'd kept dressing in secret from my wife and family,  I might have lived the rest of my life as a fairly miserable fat balding guy eating myself into an early grave.
I survived all those years by simply denying what I really wanted and distracting myself with work,  hobbies and interests.


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[MaryT]

I would be surprised if any transsexual people had NOT contemplated suicide during their childhood, especially if they had no support from their loved ones and their was no reasonable hope of SRS or transitioning.  Here am I, 61 years old and still alive, though. 

One factor in common with almost all who transition by their teens is the support of at least one parent.  Some teenage transsexuals, without that support, have taken their own lives.  I think, though, that many who managed to transition in their teens, and think that they would have have killed themselves if they had not been able to, would still be alive. 

It is an old saw but there really is at least a glimmer of hope while their is life.  I contemplated suicide when I was twelve when I started growing pubic hair, as I didn't know that girls also have it.  There were still things to live for, though: the family pets, living in a place rich in wildlife, having the only friend I ever had who knew that I wanted to be a girl (as did she, or "he" as I would have said then).  I also read about April Ashley, so changing sex was not a totally impossible dream.  Remember also that cis women do not spend their whole lives just thinking about being women.  There are other things to occupy their minds: work, study, family etc..

When I read or hear about people transitioning in childhood, I often admire their courage and determination but I don't think that they are necessarily more transgender or feminine than I am, just luckier.

[Julia1996]

This question is something I have really wondered about. Maybe it has to do with different levels of dysphoria.  Or maybe some people are stronger than others when it comes to dealing with dysphoria. Or maybe whatever biological force in the womb that makes someone trans had a stronger effect on some of us. But no one really knows and for now it's going to stay a mystery. Until I joined this site I just thought all transpeople were like me and had known they were trans very early and tried to do what they could to transition. That some transwomen  can have a successful and even kind of happy life as a man was a totally alien concept to me. Actually it still kind of is. Please don't think I am trying to bash late transitioners, I'm totally not. By alien I mean something that's so far beyond my abilities that I have trouble trying to imagine it. Those of you who lived successfully in a male role are far stronger than me.

I didn't know I was trans when I was very young of course because I didn't know what trans was. But I knew there had been some awful mistake and that I had been born wrong and I started trying to fix it. My dad told me I was normally a very sweet child when I was very young but if anyone would try to "correct" my female behavior I became unbelievably mean and spiteful. My dad did try to encourage me to act like a boy when I was little but he said he just gave up finally because I got so mean when he did and that I would do whatever he had commented on even more out of spite. My uncle was always always telling me not to do this or that because boys don't do that and I was a boy. I totally despised him. Even though my dad yelled at me for saying it, I would tell him to his face that I hated him. And at Christmas and birthdays he always gave me totally male stuff. A football, cars, etc. I would just put his gifts into the trash without opening them. My dad would get really mad at me for doing it but I still did. And once when I was 7 I got in a lot of trouble because this girl I was playing with told me that I was a boy so I couldn't play with any of her toys and I hauled off and smacked her in the face.

Some of the stuff my dad has told me I did when I was little sounds a little psychotic now actually.  If I could have played the boy role things would have been so much easier for me. But I couldn't.  If I had been continually punished for female behavior and forced into male behavior it would have very damaging to me psychologically. I would be dead by now. I have no doubt I would have committed suicide. I think my dad realized that and it's why he has always been so accepting. I'm extremely lucky in that regard. My dad was in his 20s when I was little. Guys that age aren't very accepting of feminine little boys much less their own son.

[Megan.]

Julia, in the same vein,  I'll admit I struggle to relate to those like yourself who know so early. I always felt different to others,  but as a young child I can't ever say I felt 'female', those feelings only really solidified in my mid/late teens,  and by then I felt trapped by social convention to change things.

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[MaryT]

"I don't quite understand it or what makes some of us so different that this becomes a matter of life and death as children and adolescents and isn't something that can be ignored or repressed regardless of how much parents or society try. I know for sure without the support of my folks and being allowed to do the things I did, I can say with certainty that I would have killed myself because all of this was so absolutely fundamental to my very existence, I would have rather died than to have ever grown up to be a man." ~LisaK

The "great question" answers itself - the support of one's folks.  Although almost all transsexual people contemplate suicide, the only people who can say for certain that they would have killed themselves if they hadn't been able to transition in childhood are dead.

[MaryT]

May I also suggest that transgender forums are dangerous places to implicitly ask people why they have not killed themselves.

[Amoré]

From young I was also very feminine. My father used to fight with my mother to just put a dress on me to intimidate her when she said leave me alone. My father constantly emotionally abused me correcting my feminine behavior. It caused so much trauma in my life that I struggled at school and felt I want to run away. It became better once my mom and my dad got divorced and I was staying with my mom. But by that time as a 11 year old I was already struggling badly with depression because of all the trauma and abuse.

My mother then got together with this crazy drug addict boyfriend that abused me also because I was so feminine. I was scared of telling my mother I want to be a girl because of what this drug addict would do to me if he found out. I fell deeper into depression where I didn't want to go to school because of how the children treated me for being feminine. So life at school and home was hell. At the age of 15 I tried to commit suicide. I then went to a psychologist that didn't believe in transitioning and advised that I go and stay with my abusive father because that would make me a man. Well after coming out to my step mother and my dad that didn't allow me to transition things turned to hell. I tried to castrate myself to get rid of the male bits by tying shoe laces around them. I injected myself with battery acid in it. I tried to cut it off and passed out in a puddle of blood. My dad just pushed on that he won't allow me to transition no matter what I do. I ended up in hospital a couple of times by mutilating myself. I almost lost the male bits and even not that or ending up in hospital for a suicide attempt changed his mind. All I got was a worse life.

My dad put a pistol in my hand and told me to shoot myself if I want to die and I must just make sure I do a good job. I decided then I must hold off out of fear of him. I didn't transition because I was scared of hurting his feeling I was scared that he would hurt me. I felt like I wanted to die at times rather than grow up being a man but I also knew if I held out long enough I could finally transition and be the woman I felt I am. I thought if I die I will never know what it is to be me.

This fear was en grained in my head and that is why I ended up trying life out as a guy. Because of the trauma that my dad caused in my life.I thought all people would act like he did and do the things he did to me. When I finally got out from under my fathers wings quite the job where we both worked and moved out of the house in the same street as he stays to another state. I had freedom and I grasped at it with everything I had.

[Deborah]

I don't think this is complicated at all.   There is a big difference between being accepted and supported by parents and family on this issue and being afraid of being beaten after being told you are a freak and insane.  Some kill themselves.  Others figure out how to get by and continue living. 

Whether or not one accepts they are trans at that age is secondary.   You can know and accept what you are and adopt any alternate persona to survive if you  see no way out of the situation.  This was probably even more the case in the pre-information age.   


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[Faith]

following the topic to be about our differences in how fast or dire the need to change is .. well, we are different - everyone is.

I changed slow, fear or what doesn't matter now. I just know over the years, as I look back, I was never really happy & mildly depressed. People around me knew, my wife knew, family knew. Each in their own way would ask how I feel, am I ok, I should smile more, etc etc. They didn't know why, I couldn't say why, not even to myself.

I've had a good past life, marriage, children, grand-children. I wouldn't change that now if I could. I do wish I had come to terms with myself sooner.

Now that I'm actively seeking answers and, more importantly discussing it openly with wife, I can honestly say that I feel more relaxed and comfortable than previous years. My concern now is not with the change but with how the change affects those around me. One day at a time, it's all I can do.

suicide? I hate the whole topic. Death is an escape not an answer, please seek answers not escape. There's so much to live for!!

I can't tell, did I ramble a bit? Oh well, things get in my head and they just come out sometimes.

[Another Nikki]

Megan, thanks for posting my thoughts/story for me above 

[Kylo]

I have never contemplated killing myself over this particular problem. I also never lived a "normal life" because of it.

When I ask why it is I did not compensate, or have kids, or get married, etc., it seems the answer is that it just isn't "in me" to do those things. Rather than being compelled to do those things I was compelled somehow not to do them, maybe there is something lacking in my instincts or in my brain to do them. But there is also something deeper, that I have no real explanation for, that stands in my way and prevents me from being like the rest of the people around me. I can only characterize it as a sort of mental wall between me and those things, and I didn't put it there myself, it was there from day one apparently. There are only some things my body and brain is permitted to partake in in this life, and the idea of suicide isn't one of them.

But - having been through what I have - I am absolutely sure I would have killed myself if that wall wasn't there. Because I definitely wanted to cease to exist all throughout my childhood and a little beyond. I still have a tenuous relationship with "life" and there are many moments when I do not enjoy being conscious and alive (especially so these days now that I realize I can't do so many things others can do). Yet somehow I am still not "allowed" by my brain to do away with myself, nor have I ever allowed myself to over-indulge in escape avenues like drugs and alcohol which is often the thing people turn to instead of death when under high stress. I couldn't tell you why it is I can't do these things. I just can't.

But I would be all kinds of messed up if that mental wall wasn't there. I could easily see myself as a hopeless junkie, for one thing. I could easily be dead. I could easily hurt everyone around me and be impossible to live with, and in and out of psychiatric care. Yet, I keep it all together fairly well. Maybe because of these mental no-go zones I have.

But I'm not in control of them; I didn't get to pick which things they were.