when did you "know"?

[hizmom]

so this is a niggling question for my son....

truthfully, there was no real unmistakable indication
that "she" was a "he" in the younger years

for 4 years we struggled keeping AD alive
trying to manage  uncontrolled asthma,
so obviously that was a focus, enough of a distraction
to make anything else pale in significance

my rationalizing today was this:
he was the youngest of 4 kids
with a mix of genders

"she" never had a doll!!
the toys AD always chose or asked for
were the museum quality hard plastic
animal models, and to this day he still has them!

if "she" played with little girls,
the roles of "prince" or "ken doll"
were always the choice

additionally, i am not a glam kinda woman....
seriously, i dont use a purse,
dont own a pair of heels....
AD's sister on the other hand
is a total girly girl and SHE is the
one about whom i asked>>
"how did this little chick end up in MY nest?"

i was postulating to AD that the reason
it SEEMS that there were no gender questions
earlier than now is that there was no need to have them

it was almost totally neutral, a non-issue

so my question is: does the lack of any distinctive
and obvious indications in early childhood matter
as to the accuracy of one's feeling they are gender dysphoric?


i am glad he is cautious and questioning
but i really dont see this as an issue.....

thanks~

[JonasCarminis]

my growing up seems a lot like your sons.  a lot of the things i played with were typically boyish or gender neutral.  i was obsessed with these little plastic frogs and dinosaurs.  lol i had them all of the time and named each one.  however, when i played "house" type things, i wasnt ever a male role.  i was also never a mom... usually a sister.  i think that was just the vagina=girl thing.  when i was little it never really occured to me that i "wasnt a girl" because the gender differences hadnt been pushed on me.  i knew that people called you a girl or a boy based on your parts but i didnt know that there were any other differences, so i made no fuss.

no one in my family ever thought of anything about what i liked to play with as an issue.  kids are cool like that, theyre just kids who play. 

my mom has told me recently that i seemed a little past tomboy when i was a little kid, but it never really made any problems, but now that ive come out to her it makes sense and closes some holes.

[Sandy]

For myself, I didn't "know" until much later, like when I was into my late teens.

From a very early age I knew something wasn't "right" but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I was, and still am, quite the geek.  I loved science and mechanical things.  I thought dolls were dull because they didn't do anything.  That is until I saw my first Chatty-Cathy doll (Goddess!  That dates me!  I am such an old broad!).  But even then it was only curiosity about what made her talk.

I never got into the GI Joe thing either.  But I do remember having a puppet doll type of thing that was like a robot.  You could put your hand in the back and make it open its arms and press a lever and it would squeak through its mouth and pull a hook and have it open and close its eyes.  I spent hours with that thing.  I would send it on adventures and I would tell him my secrets and fears.  Only later did I realize that I was feeling very maternal about it.  I always kept it close to me and I slept with it on occasion

But then there are some who know from a very early age that they are cross-gendered and they will have nothing to do with their born gender.  The feelings in them are very strong and the indications are almost impossible to miss.

I maintain that gender is a spectrum, not a binary.  One of the reasons I believe that is because of my own feelings.  Early on, while I had a feeling of wrongness I couldn't identify it until I was much older.  But others display their symptoms much more strongly.

Regardless, though, in the end the only thing that really matters are the feelings of the person themselves.  There is no objective test for transsexuality.  We are transsexual because we say we are.  Our beliefs are what drive us.  And in the end that is all that really counts.

And also, if you haven't figured it out for yourself, you not being a girly-girl has no bearing whatsoever on making AD feel more or less feminine or masculine.

-Sandy

[cindybc]

I never got into the GI Joe thing either.  But I do remember having a puppet doll type of thing that was like a robot.  You could put your hand in the back and make it open its arms and press a lever and it would squeak through its mouth and pull a hook and have it open and close its eyes.  I spent hours with that thing.  I would send it on adventures and I would tell him my secrets and fears.  Only later did I realize that I was feeling very maternal about it.  I always kept it close to me and I slept with it on occasion

But then there are some who know from a very early age that they are cross-gendered and they will have nothing to do with their born gender.  The feelings in them are very strong and the indications are almost impossible to miss.

I maintain that gender is a spectrum, not a binary.  One of the reasons I believe that is because of my own feelings.  Early on, while I had a feeling of wrongness I couldn't identify it until I was much older.  But others display their symptoms much more strongly.

Regardless, though, in the end the only thing that really matters are the feelings of the person themselves.  There is no objective test for transsexuality.  We are transsexual because we say we are.  Our beliefs are what drive us.  And in the end that is all that really counts.

Hi Kassandra your story is closely related to mine in many ways. I do remember loving to play dress-up and house with my sister and my friend, Christine, next door.

During my preschool years, between 3 and 5 years old, my mom on occasion would dress me in girl's clothes and parade me to the neighbors. I certainly wasn't putting up any resistance. It was common back then for moms to dress up their little boys in girl's clothes, I don't know, maybe a competition as to who could dress their kid the cutest type of thing.

I just happen to remember because I have a good memory of my early childhood. But then I remember also enjoying myself playing with boy toys, you know, like those big yellow Tonka toys, like the bulldozers with the rubber tracks and the steam shovels, and the dump trucks, gee, now those were a beaut. The dump truck was big enough for me to sit in so I would tie my Radio Flyer wagon to the back of the dump truck then pull Christine and a couple of her life-sized 3 year old dolls in my wagon behind me. Then we would just coast down the boardwalk to the bottom of the hill. She was my bestest friend until I became school aged and had to have my long hair cut and was told I couldn't play with girls anymore.

I had another friend I hung out with in my teens as well, her name was Helen and we would often terrorize the neighborhood together. That was our way to pay back those who snubbed their noses at the two outcast, the "town trash," they called us. Well maybe they were right especially when they left for work in the morning and found all their trash under their car and the trash can tied to their back bumper.

Shortly after Helen and I parted company I ran away from home and hitched my way to New York to join with the hippies. Guess what? They thought I was a girl and I certainly didn't dispute it. I even had a boy friend for a while. Can you imagine that, way back in '62?  I came back home 2 years later.

Well GID or not, I had me some fun back in those days.  Heck I still do now to this day enjoy who I am and probably continue to do so until I cash in my chips.

Cindy

[Jamie-o]

My earliest memory of gender dissatisfaction was when I was about 2 1/2 or 3.   I think that's about the time that I realized that there was a social difference between boys and girls.  I know that's the point when I started pitching a fit every time I was forced into a dress, or had ribbons put in my hair.  I always preferred boys toys, for the most part.  Loved Star Wars and Transformers.  (Have you seen the new Transformers toys?  They don't transform! What's the point of that?!  )  The only "girly" things about me were a love of stuffed animals (which were all male) and an obsession with the color pink until I was 5 or so.  (Once I started to school and started associating the color pink with stereotypes about girls, I learned to loathe the color.)  When we played pretend I was always a boy.  My mom finally gave up fighting with me over dresses when I was 12, and I haven't worn one since, except in in theatrical productions.  All this, and yet I didn't have the courage to actually say, "Yes, I'm trans," until I was in my 30's.  I so wish I had had the opportunity to start transition when I was still a kid. 

HizMom, your son is so lucky to have a mother who gives him a chance to be himself, and to explore who he is while he is still in the safety of home.

[hizmom]

so it really is a spectrum, with no one way of coming to the
feeling that something is not right...

sandy!!!  believe me i have no inclination to think
my lack of desire to wear heels had anything to do
with ADs circumstance and situation.....

i merely pointed it out to him that my "prairie"
sense of fashion, favouring jeans and flannels,
meant that there was never an emphasis on dressing
"her" in anything other than comfortable, functional
clothing  which ultimately could be considered gender neutral.....
yet another area where there was no need to battle a stereotypical "girl" thing.....


i just want for him to not be so scared of his own judgment

[Dennis]

I remember fighting off girly stuff since the age of 3 or so, which is as far back as I can remember. I also remember hoping I'd go to sleep and wake up with boy body parts. Even until I started transitioning at 42, I went to bed every night with the thought of how my day would have gone if I'd been male.

Adolescence got me confused and I figured that lesbian was the correct label for me. I hadn't heard of transitioning to male, and didn't until I was in my late 30's. Then the idea kinda percolated without me being aware of it. Suddenly one day I stumbled on a website and went "wow, that's me".

So for me, some part of me knew I was a guy for as long as I remember. As I got older, the impossibility of it seemed obvious, but I still had that longing.

Dennis

[Sandy]

sandy!!!  believe me i have no inclination to think
my lack of desire to wear heels had anything to do
with ADs circumstance and situation.....

i just want for him to not be so scared of his own judgment

That's great!  In reading about some other people who come out to their parents, the parents sometimes blame themselves for not being masculine/feminine enough for their child.  I just wanted to let you know that it was nothing that you did.

Trusting your hunches, I think, is an aquired talent.  That will come to him in time.

-Sandy

[sneakersjay]

Very early memories of crying when I found out I didn't have a penis, to hating dresses and wanting to wear pants; using the men's room if my mother wasn't looking, praying I'd wake up a boy with a penis.  Teen years were hard.  I'd been told I was a tomboy, but still a girl, and in my overly religious homophobic family I had no information and no labels for what I felt.  Never comfortable in my own skin at all.  Tried to make the best of it, tried to deny it, did my best to 'be a woman' and failed.

Still had no idea about transitioning until maybe a year or two ago, but then only from short blurry clips on you tube and had the idea that transitioning would make me look like hairy woman - bleh.  Dismissed that idea, still not realizing what transitioning could do; still not realizing the word I needed to plug into google was transsexual.  For years I just assumed I was female with odd fantasies; I used to tell people I must have been male in a previous incarnation.  Clueless was I.

It all clicked when I finally chatted on IM with an ftm and went OMG, that's ME!!

Jay

[Elwood]

Meh. I did very feminine things as a child. But I still never identified as female... I think I always knew that, but it wasn't concrete until a little more than a year ago.

[Aiden]

LOL  I was always fighting dresses as well, they gave up when I was 6 or 7 lol except at age 9 where my father decided to punish me by making me wear one to church.  What was I punished for?  He made a joke he was going to have me wear one and I didn;pt know it was a joke and got upset and fought him, so he turned around and actually did it.

And for me it was Ninga Turtles, superman, and batman.   Though there was a short time I was interested in little mermaid and Barney, before moving on to Highlander, Goosebumps, Knight rider, Invisable man, Starwars and then Star Trek lol.

But yeh I think in a way I knew I was physically a girl but I never associated myself as girl or boy, despite playing more with boys than girls, till age 7 when grandmother told me I acted like a tomboy.  I accepted that as a description of what I was since I didn't know anything else and went on to play boy stuff.  Puberty started at around age 11 and I found myself being abandoned by my guy friends and hating what my body was doing.  Up till then I had hoped some miracle would cause puberty to go wrong and dreamed of having it actually turn me into a boy.  But it didn't happen, instead I ended up with an unmistakable woman's figure. 

Still considered myself a tomboy, but was so upset that ended up in mental hospital twice at age 13 before I forced myself to try and get better.  To push it asside, I didn;t want to end up back there.  I tried to be more girl, but wasn't happy, and wasn;t comfortable.  So went back to being tomboy. 

Think I was about 17 I realized that there was something more about it and started to talk to my online friends about it (only friends had at time) wondering what it was.  I described the feeling of not really fitting as a girl and always feeling fit more as a boy, but yet I was on this border because I couldn't touch or understand either I couldn't fit with either because a guy doesn;t want a girl around and I didn't feel i could be a girl.  Still no answers though and so I pushed it back and continued as a tomboy.

Last year I was trying to be feminine again, but I ran into a few transsexuals, and not understanding what they were at first I was sceptical.  It was this lady I went to class with that I started to realize I wasn't much different.  I just felt more a guy while she felt more a girl.   Still didn't know she was transsexual though lol...  didn;t hear of transsexual till I was bawling my eyes out over a movie about a mtf transsexual.   My father thought it was because the boys were picking on me, but it was because I felt like her the girl in the movie only I was a guy.

Took me till this year to finally look it up though after 2 years of it tugging me in back of mind to look up what transgender was.  It was reading it that it finally clicked.

[Rhye]

To be totally honest, I didn't "know" anything until I was 15/16. I was a happy little girl, I didn't resist dresses until my same age boy cousin friend and I decided we couldn't play outside if I didn't change out of my church clothes, and even though I hung out exclusively with a boy, I didn't think *I* was a boy. I was happy with whatever I was.

My cousin and I played dolls together, yeah. He was a guy that liked barbies, and I was a girl that liked pretending. We'd play "surgery" on our dolls, and set up schoolrooms in his kitchen or my living room. We built forts and playhouses in his woods. We built tents in my room. We did a lot of stuff and I was never once concerned about any of it. It was fun. I was comfortable in my skin. I had confidence. It was a good childhood, and when I let my parents know about this, it's going to be the first thing I tell them. I was the happiest kid I could've ever been.

All that little-kid confidence I had packed inside of me started dripping away when I hit puberty.

• 
  I was completely happy at 12.
  
  I was fine at 13, if a little awkward. Hell, but I didn't care yet.
  
  I was pretty self-conscious at 14, when I tried hanging more with girls and realized that I wasn't the same as them.
  
  I was downright depressed at 15, and by 16, I was giving up hope.

I thought my problem was random depression and social isolation. I've been homeschooled my whole life, and when I stopped hanging with the girl scout crowd, that left my cousin and my girl best friend. I saw my cousin maybe twice a year at this point and my best friend every month or so. I figured I'd be okay if I held out for college. I thought I could figure out who I am at that point, and it would all be better.

Around that time, I started having dysphoria issues, too. Not "I'm fat, I need to lose weight", but really weird stuff like a need to become more athletic. I started marathon walking and eating healthy. I lamented not fitting into my role as a teenage girl, and I felt like crap whenever my mom bought me something unisex or that was too baggy and therefore hid my curves. I was insecure in being a girl, and I felt the need to show off my girliness to compensate. I didn't want to separate myself even further by not looking like a proper girl.

Then I latched onto a few male musicians that I marked as my role models. I sang their songs, I played their piano pieces, and I wanted to be like them. I took immense interest in two of those guys' physical traits. They were small, with delicate frames, big eyes, pretty cheekbones and slim fingers. They weren't girly, but they had traits like mine. It took me the longest time to make that connection, but looking back, I think that was my turning point, my first real sign that I was having problems.

I renounced religion and self-declared bisexual. Don't ask why I thought not identifying with girls would make me a lesbian. I knew I was different, and having a lesbian cousin already, I figured that 'gay' was one way to express that. That pretty much went out the window when I got around to dating a girl and realized that I was completely uninterested in lesbian dating, however interested I was in women.

A few months after that fell apart, I was researching different branches of psychology to figure out what I wanted to major in for college. I found gender psychology, which fascinated me, and when I got to transsexuals, I didn't immediately say, "This is me". But it provoked a lot of thought. Seeing 'Boys Don't Cry' didn't make me think I was like Brandon Teena, either: but it fascinated me. And I said, "It could be me."

I suppose that's where I still am, in a sense. I don't ever want to be a transsexual. I just want to be a boy. Being a girl's been terrible these last 3 years.

I'm proud of you, hizmom, for letting your son explore himself and being so supportive for him. I'm sure he appreciates it, I know I would.

[Mister]

I knew around age 3 or 4.  I questioned my mother on if I was supposed to have been born male.  I can't remember now what he responses were, but in our recent conversations she doesn't seem to remember this.

[Rhye]

It's really interesting how many people here knew when they were little kids.. I have to be the exception or something, it took me forever to figure anything out.

[trapthavok]

I was kinda like your son.

Gender wasn't a big issue in my household most of the time so I never gave my thoughts or mannerisms a second thought.

I was definitely sick a lot as a kid though, so I didn't have time to give it much thought, opening christmas presents in bed and such.... But looking back now I think I might've liked to play pee wee football when I was younger. Wish I hadn't been so sick.

I've always felt unusual though. I didn't know that it was possible for me to actually be a boy especially since my mom gave me a lot of sex ed books early on. But I do remember being far more interested in the guys part of the book than the girls part, I guess back then I just thought maybe it was cause I was supposed to be attracted to them since I thought I had to be a girl.

I didn't know much about the GLBTQ spectrum growing up, but yeah I've always felt like something was wrong with me or some part of me was missing...or misunderstood. It wasn't until I found out about transgenders did I ever feel like I'd finally put the last piece of the puzzle together- everything I'd thought and felt finally clicked.

[Aiden]

LOL I didn't know when I was little.  I just felt different when was little.  Didn't really understand it at time.  Just accepted it

[Lee]

I finally "knew" and understood that I am trans only about 3 years now. And I am in my early 30's 

As a kid, always refused girl toys such as dolls, barbie, etc. Always ran around topless, and would take my shirt off for nap time in kindergarten/1st grade. That didn't go over well with the teachers. Ever.

Thankfully, my mom never refused my GiJoes, and stopped trying to dress me in girl attire about the 4th grade. Was mistaken as a boy very often growing up. Had a horrid time (still do actually) in regards to periods and the breasts on my chest. Was diagnosed with GID at 17. Horrified when I can't hold my pee, and have to use the ladies room.

I was labelled as "lesbian" by my family and went with that label for a long time. Despite the fact that I have been attracted to other guys on occasion, and even attempted marriage with one.

My SO had suspected through much of our relationship (2ish yrs), long before I was able to even try talking/admitting it to her.

I see a change in attitudes and such for younger ones. I'm really happy to see and read about those in their teens/early adult years who have the support and resources that were not there, even if I was aware at that time. 

[Camden]

I think I was 3 when I wouldn't wear a dress anymore flat out refused. I was adopted and my parents ONLY wanted a girl. I was a true disappointment to them. I was really into Army Men and Hot Wheels. I dodn't have any interest in dolls at all. I did like stuffed animals though. I was 5 when I walked my first girl home from school. LOL I don't know how they never figured it out...Glad to see another informed parent on this site. Camden

[Aiden]

Hmm I always had a small thing for stuffed animals lol though marked it up as my lack of pets and my thing for fur.  Rarely really slept with them except to have them on the other end of the bed lol

[Elwood]

It's really interesting how many people here knew when they were little kids.. I have to be the exception or something, it took me forever to figure anything out.

I don't think I really "knew." I knew that I wasn't female, but I'd still do girly stuff. Because it was still fun. I strongly identified as "just a person" for a long time. I didn't know what the word androgyne was. I later realized that saying that was my half-assed way of trying to be "a little bit closer to male without breaking the rules." Then I realized if you're transgender, there are no rules. That was when I was about 17 and that's when I really knew.