Hello all. I'm a new member and FTM. I'm pretty early transition, but with a complicated history - I suppose this is the place to tell the story.
I knew I was a boy when I was really young - maybe 3 or 4. I was reading pretty independently at that point, and my books were rather ahead of my age, so I picked up some ideas about sex/gender despite my mother's best efforts to isolate me from them. She tried to raise me in a very unisex environment, except that she loved to make clothes for me (adorable little dresses mostly) and kept my hair long. I liked the dresses (I didn't say I was a 100% gender-conforming boy - always liked drag for special occasions, just not day-to-day) but hated the hair. I got the idea pretty early though that I wasn't supposed to tell my mother I was a boy. I think it would have upset her. So I had to go through all kinds of contortions to justify my rejection of all things pink and explain that I should be allowed to have sleepovers with boys.
As an older kid, it got harder. I loved organized sports, and some sports (notably hockey, baseball, basketball and football) were sex-segregated from the beginning. I got two years of hockey before I "aged out" of the team willing to make an exception; I was never allowed to play football; I tried girls' basketball for half a season and quit. Baseball and soccer were successes though - my town's soccer team was coed through the early teens, and my stepdad volunteered to coach the baseball team and then let me on it. Some day when I actually come out to him I'm going to explain to him how much that meant to me.
Puberty wasn't a surprise - I read a lot, so I'd had several different perspectives on the body thing, from kid-oriented books to my parents' copies of the Joy of Sex and Our Bodies, Ourselves. I knew what was coming, I just hated it. I started binding my breasts as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I used sports bras most of the time, Ace bandages on bad days. I kept wearing boys' clothes, eventually moving up to smaller mens' sizes as i grew, except for special occasions. Nobody really thought anything of it.
I think the most crushing event I remember in that time period was the shoe episode. I wore boys' shoes, always had. But some time around age 13 or 14, I outgrew the top boys' size. So I went to the smallest mens' size, of course. It was way too big for me, but I assumed I'd grow into it in a couple of months - after all, my feet were growing awfully fast, and my friends (all guys) had gone through the same awkward period of too-big shoes a few months earlier. So I wore my too-big shoes and waited. And waited. And kept waiting, for well over a year...until it eventually became apparent that I wasn't going to grow into them. They were falling apart anyway, so I went to replace them, only to discover that there wasn't one pair of boys' or mens' shoes in the entire store that fit me. I'd been stuck with a permanent shoe size that didn't exist. Except in the women's section, where I discovered I was (to my horror) absolutely normal.
Anyway, other than that, I pretty much lived as one of the guys through my preteens/teens. Everyone knew I was supposedly a girl, but it was the '90s - androgynous, shapeless, worn, oversized clothing on androgynous skinny bodies was totally in. And nobody cared much about social conventions - we were far too busy being morose and cynical - so I could use whatever restroom I pleased, hang out with whomever I felt like, wear glitter with plaid, no problem. I actually secretly knew I was trans thanks to the budding Internet, but the info that was out there for transguys really only applied to the straight kind, and I was totally gay, so that was a non-starter. I tried not to think about it too much.
By the time I went off to college, fashions had changed a bit, and I'd also discovered that a lot of guys liked female bodies. Mine, specifically, seemed to be interesting. And getting laid provided a powerful incentive to present as sort of vaguely female most of the time. I hated the clothes, but I put up with it, stopped binding at all, wore tight jeans (ick, ow) and tried to develop something approximating female mannerisms. Not that I was ever very good at any of the above, but I passed well enough for the only purpose I cared about.
When I flunked/droppped out of college, being able to present as sort of gender-conforming was a plus, as I was able to join the military. I was an aircraft mechanic in the Navy, which was actually a ton of fun. I really had to repress the boy-feelings though. I ended up getting married (for convenience - it got me out of the barracks, which I found particularly oppressive because of the female roommate) and ended up actually liking the guy, so I'm still married now, which is a bit awkward.
So now I'm back in college, trying to un-repress everything, living as a straight-married gay guy in a woman's body who's partially socially transitioning but completely closeted except to a few people who know me through LGBT social groups. I'm 27, look like a 14-year-old boy thanks to my great new haircut, and sound like an adult woman. I don't know where or how fast I'm going from here, but getting some online support is going to be a first step. Thanks for having me.
