What Were You Doing 20 Years Ago?

[Jacquelyn]

I was a year old. I guess I was learning to walk and I had started eating solid foods. Times were good. I had a staff of servants who bent to my every whim, wait, can I go back to that?!

[Al James]

I'll be your slave- is that similar?

[Jacquelyn]

I'll be your slave- is that similar?

LOL.   

[Melody Maia]

Jackie is grooming a new set of minions as we speak. She is, however, always accepting applications and she will get back to you.

[Jillieann Rose]

20 years ago I had one son in college, one in high school and one in grade school.
I worked in a factory on second shift 10 hours a day to making money to support the family and to send my sons to college.
In just a couple of years the two older boys would both be in college.
My wife and I would celebrate our 20th anniversary in a few months.
I mostly worked, slept, ate and worked some more. And weekends was the time I worked on our home.

[Julie Marie]

I was married over 9 years, had 2-1/2 kids, a mini van but no dog.  There might have been a cat somewhere in there.  I was living in the same house I am now and working as an electrician foreman.  I don't think I had yet heard the term transgender.  I didn't own a computer and had no idea what the world wide web did.  I hadn't met "anyone like me" and I felt the odds of doing so were remote.

I knew about Christine Jorgensen.  I had read and followed the story of Renee Richards.  I had years earlier found a book titled Conundrum by Jan Morris, during one of my many archeological digs through one of numerous local libraries.  I wondered if I was like her.  I was too embarrassed to check the book out so I read it there.  The library was the only decent source of information about the TG world I had back then but few libraries had anything about it.

The dream of one day finding a cure (that meant some magic potion that would make me a girl) was ever present but in reality I knew I would go to my grave as a man.  No way could I do what Jorgensen, Richards or Morris had done.  No way.

[rejennyrated]

I was married over 9 years, had 2-1/2 kids, a mini van but no dog.  There might have been a cat somewhere in there.  I was living in the same house I am now and working as an electrician foreman.  I don't think I had yet heard the term transgender.  I didn't own a computer and had no idea what the world wide web did.  I hadn't met "anyone like me" and I felt the odds of doing so were remote.

I knew about Christine Jorgensen.  I had read and followed the story of Renee Richards.  I had years earlier found a book titled Conundrum by Jan Morris, during one of my many archeological digs through one of numerous local libraries.  I wondered if I was like her.  I was too embarrassed to check the book out so I read it there.  The library was the only decent source of information about the TG world I had back then but few libraries had anything about it.

The dream of one day finding a cure (that meant some magic potion that would make me a girl) was ever present but in reality I knew I would go to my grave as a man.  No way could I do what Jorgensen, Richards or Morris had done.  No way.

Which all just shows how wrong one can be... 

[Amy85]

I was 5 and a half and all I wanted was candy, McDonalds, pizza and to play video games.

Fast forward to today and... nothing's changed.

[cynthialee]

20 years ago....
That would make me 22 going on 23.....
That was around the time I made my first attemt at transition.
I didn't know what I had to do other than find a psychiatrist. When I found him it went south imediatly.
He told me that I was just a sick young man with a sexual fetish. (but I didnt mention 1 time in the interview anything about sex) He told me I was going to go down a spiral of depravity and disfunction. He told me I needed to stop dressing and I needed to just find a good girl and marry her. Maybe have some children. That if I did the feelings would go away.
I beieved him. I bought it hook line and sinker.
I thought that he knew what he was talking about. I didn't realise that not every psychiatrist is trans friendly.
The poison he filled my head with kept me from my transition for anouther 19 years.
If I could remember the mans name I would send him a long bitter letter.

So twenty years ago I was letting a psyrink mind rape me and ruining my life as a result of his bad therapy..

[spacepilot]

OH... uhm. I don't remember. Probably throwing up or something else that 1 year olds are good at. Haha

Oh god how is it that I'm 20 years old. O_O

[gennee]

I was working and raising a family. Never knew I was trans. I didn't know such things existed. 


Gennee

[myles]

Could be off a bit but I think that is when I was in the first Persian Gulf war, was there for both storm and shield. In the Marine Corps stationed in 29 Palms (hell!).
Myles

[tekla]

Teaching at the U in the fall and spring, raising kids, touring Dead all summer long, piles of Dylan shows all over the US (that will go down as the real Golden Age of Bob Dylan and the start of the Never Ending Tour), working with friends in SF on the SF Trans Rights Initiative, lots of 'girls night out' in Des Moines, Minn/St. Paul and Chicago.

[juliekins]

 20 years ago   ...... I was married (yuck!) and discovering how bad a match it was becoming
                      ....... had beautiful new 1 yr old daughter and was struggling to start a new career
                       ...... moved from Northern Cal. back to Chicago. (yuck!)
                       ...... my son was still a year and a half away
                       ....... I was wishing desperately that I could live as my real self

[AmySmiles]

I was 7 years old.  So I guess that was around first grade?  I was being a confused little child, jumping rope by myself at recess because I didn't really want to do what the other boys did.  I had a few friends of either sex - I didn't discriminate, my only criteria was they had to be awesome.

[ClaireA]

20 years ago? I was only one! I was probably sitting in a playpen full of cheerios 

[blair]

I was 6 years old, living in San Jose, CA. This was around the age I really figured out something was wrong. I remember getting the "wrong" toy in a kids/happy meal. It was a doll and I hid it from my parents and kept it. Amazing what little minds can comprehend.

[Michael Joseph]

Well, until march 3rd of that year I was in my moms womb

[some ftm guy]

20 years ago i was 5. i bet you could tell by photos (if you could see a few) that i already passed as a boy. me and my older brother looked almost exactly alike in hair and clothes. liked almost all the same boy things, if you could count just playing toys by myself at home, plus candy, life was awesome lol. and i had sort of figured out a year before what was wrong but couldn't understand til only several months ago.

[purple sky]

I was 16.  It was a very difficult time.  I was a closeted cross dresser who at that time got into drugs and alcohol.  I expressed myself in my daily appearance as a wanna be rebel outsider to express my messed up situation,  I held this pattern for the next 15or so years.