Social transition online before real life.

[Shadowlyc]

I'll start by saying... I still play Neopets. >D

But besides that, I had in a way lived a double life since when I first got on the internet about... 8 years ago, I signed up to mostly everything as male. Long before I even knew about what being trans was. It made me feel better and now I know why xP I never really felt guilty until I was recently outed and people made me feel like what I did was wrong or something o.o It's strange when I get off the computer and everyone shouts 'she' at me (I'm not out to anyone in my family), so it's nice to go online and just.. escape from that.

I wonder if that made sense. xD; I'm half asleep.

[Kreuzfidel]

1.  I did feel guilty about it when it was an issue (i.e. - people wondering why I never wanted to let them call me or why I'd never call them, people wanting to meet me IRL).  I guess the guilt wasn't really an issue 99% of the time because I really saw it as being myself - it was just that I wasn't transitioned, and so I had to make up lies about why I couldn't talk on the phone, etc. - THAT was where the guilt came from.

2.  It made me stronger in that I'm more aware that people like the real me - and that I am accepted as male.  I will do much better when I start T and can actually see some physical changes - right now it's always shocking when I speak to people because I expect a male voice to come out of my mouth, and not an androgynous one.

[Teknoir]

Before transition I was always male online. It never occurred to me to be anything else.

The "real name" (ie, the one that was not a handle) I used online way back then is what I legally changed my name to years later

But, you know, things were different back then. At least over here it wasn't quite as normal for online and offline to be so interconnected.

I've also never had anyone want to meet, talk via voice, see pics, know my real name or anything like that.

I was just being who I am without the baggage of other peoples existing perceptions. I never thought of it as a double life, and it's never been something I've felt guilty over.

Hell, I don't feel guilty now about not disclosing my past to people I know offline. The past is in the past, and it's now that matters.

[confused]

ditto
i've been female online since i can remember , and i think most (if not all ) trans people do , because .. before your out ,or before you realize it,the negativity and feelings cannot be held inside . and i never felt guilty about it before i see al these women here that has made it to the end ,weird i know . and it did help in real life somehow , although i'm not out yet

[MuddyFrog]

Thank you all for sharing and answering my questions. As to those who played neopets  Lol the only reason I stopped was because I found other things online to do. Then years later someone text me about a rare plushy I had. I can't remember my pass or even the e-mail I used at the time but I started my game hording then. Lol like in WoW I have to have all the mounts and companions.

[pebbles]

I did the same thing with Neo I stopped going because I was banned, In some online communities they've known me for a long time and don't know me as anything else other than female.
When they wanted to know my real name I gave them the female name I gave myself. When they wanted to see a picture sure I showed them a picture of me. Either they were begin kind but nobody has accused me of begin a guy. I've spoken to a couple of them on the phone again I can't tell if there just begin kind.

[jimmymot]

dude, neopets is so much more than a virtual pet. its a casino for children. i never fed mine or battled it. I just made 20 accounts so I could buy scratch lotto tickets and play card games. hahaha

i was a male online for long time too, also in a stage where i didnt consider myself trans.

at 15, i actually was a bit unfair to this girl i knew only online, as I convinced her i was male "for the fun of it" and we had a fake online relationship that i wrote off as a joke because i was embarrassed.

but yah, forums, email accounts, etc - gender: male   

[LordKAT]

You gender your email?

[MRH]

I think I had always kept my online accounts female as I was scared that if I put them as male other people might find out I was a girl. I used to go on Habbo Hotel as a girl for a while but then later created another account as a male and it was fantastic. It was a wonderful feeling having people on there see and treat me as male. On my ps3 everyone assumes that i'm male. I have a headset but theres a voice changer option and if i lower it a bit i actually sound like a man!! So I can talk to people as a male and its amazing. 

[jesse]

ive played on line games as female and chat rooms as female for me it was a sanity issue it allowed me to me breifly without the fear of hatred.

[jerebear]

Dude, Neopets...

I started playing as a guy on Neopets at around eight or nine. I always felt more comfortable, but, didn't know why.

[Squirrel698]

This was me as well.  I've been a guy on-line for years even as I went back and forward with the idea of transitioning in real life.  It was mostly my parents that stopped me but I learned not to give a ->-bleeped-<-.  I did feel guilty from time to time.  Worse when I used a fake picture which reflected my mental image of myself.

At this point I am out to most everyone that I talk to on-line.  Looking back I really had no reason to feel guilty, I was telling the truth as far as they knew.  To them I am just a screen name that is attached to my brain which is male. 

I think it did help me realize how much more comfortable I felt in a male role.  However as some of the previous posters have said it was difficult leaving that world and going out and being called, Ma'am, Miss, and Her.  I realized how much I wanted to stop living the lie of my female existence and start being who I really am. 

[Eosophoros]

Woah. I did Neopets and Runescape as a guy, too, since I was... ten, eleven, maybe? Runescape was tougher for me because I was really involved in a clan there and everybody knew me as my male name. I never thought of feeling guilty - I've always kind of been of the opinion that it's nobody's business what your sex is unless they want to sleep with you, and, well, as for gender... I IDd as genderfluid back then, so I didn't really feel like I was lying.
I'm on a few Star Wars forums and such where I tell people I'm a guy. One site I'm on, while not predominantly aimed at trans folks, has a large and active trans community, so I've got my gender set as male there but don't try to hide my sex.
My online identity is difficult for me because I barely understand my gender expression myself. So many sites don't have a genderfluid, third-gender or even intersex option, and that's what I'd be more comfortable with at this stage - in light of my parents finding my account. Nonetheless, if the choice is between identifying myself as male-sexed or female-sexed, nine times out of ten I'd choose male.
I doubt there's a lot of other people who pay attention to whether the two boxes are labelled SEX or GENDER. ^_^

[fastknight]

Yeah, I was male online. Only told two people that I'm technically a transman. In real life, I used to dress in a rather masculine style and wear a feather in my hair and I'd tell people I was half or quarter Native American because of my long hair. It would get wrecked when someone would come up and address me by my birth name in front of new people.

[Vancha]

I started playing as a guy on Neopets when I was 9 or 10, probably.  Made an account with my gender set to male, came up with a male identity, went to insane lengths to prove that I was male.  At one point I took a picture of my arm hair and said "does that look like a woman's arm?"  It didn't, but the fact that I was so damn obsessive about proving to them that I was male...? Very odd indeed.  I actually sort of changed identities very often; identified with characters, with people, always men... Different names, different stories, always the same personality.  But I was having trouble coming to grips with who I was.

That was the first time I ever felt good about myself.  I remember feeling, over time, that I was becoming more like my online self as I started to wear masculine clothes and present as more male... I remember feeling a great relief and comfort about that.  My "online self" was a representation of my "real self", one I apparently knew subconsciously from a young age.

The fact that I was always putting off meeting or talking to my online friends (and still do, with some of them) until I "transitioned", which was a very vague but expected part of my life, just kicked me into action.  It was always there; the knowledge that one day, I'd get a sex change, before I even knew the logistics of it.  I didn't ever see it in popular culture, I just knew that there had to be some way to make my body male and I knew I'd have it done some day, and I started putting everything off until it one day happened.  Having those friends and those experiences made me realize that I needed to start living, really living, as me.

[Byren]

Lol...I keep hearing my own story on here over and over!

Online I've always had one email that was for family (although it's a latin word conjugated in the masculine...though they don't know that! hehe), and everything else was whatever persona I was trying to be at the time.

I, too, played Neopets as a boy. I didn't know I was transgendered at the time, but I always felt sort of...invigorated...by clicking the 'male' button. I always signed on as a guy or a male character in chats or rp games too.
Now I play Warcraft, and all my characters on there are male. One of my mains is a male blood elf with a soul patch who I like to wishfully think I could resemble someday. 

Lol like in WoW I have to have all the mounts and companions.

Hehe...me too! Rivendare's Deathcharger...you WILL be mine! Hahaha!

[MuddyFrog]

Lol...I keep hearing my own story on here over and over!

Online I've always had one email that was for family (although it's a latin word conjugated in the masculine...though they don't know that! hehe), and everything else was whatever persona I was trying to be at the time.

I, too, played Neopets as a boy. I didn't know I was transgendered at the time, but I always felt sort of...invigorated...by clicking the 'male' button. I always signed on as a guy or a male character in chats or rp games too.
Now I play Warcraft, and all my characters on there are male. One of my mains is a male blood elf with a soul patch who I like to wishfully think I could resemble someday. 
Hehe...me too! Rivendare's Deathcharger...you WILL be mine! Hahaha!

Gah okay listen to this my GF had the DeathCharger drop for her first time in the place. And she allowed one of her idiot guild leaders to whine about how long he has been trying to get it. So she contacts a GM and he transfers the mount.... A year later mount still won't drop again for either one of us and said GM has done this in wrath loads of times just to get sets he wants to role play in.

My current envy that phoenix bird.