When did you know?

[Mika]

First off: I hate that the first thing everyone asks me and many others is "when did you know?" with a tone that says "justify yourself to me." That is not my intent here. I ask because the mainstream trans narrative assumes that we all knew when we were 2 years old and have never wavered and are always either hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine. I know that's crap, and that there's so much diversity in our community. But I admit sometimes I'm self-conscious because I haven't always known, I'm not hyper-masculine, and my identity is still forming.

If this is an applicable and non-offensive question, I'm curious to hear other people's stories, for the intrinsic value of community sharing but also, I admit, because I hope to hear stories that differ from the stereotype for my own sake. For those who's experience genuinely does fall into the mainstream trans narrative, there is nothing secondary or less valid about that: I only don't like the stereotype being applied to those that don't.

For those of you who feel comfortable sharing, when did you know you were trans (not necessarily when you identified with the term, but when you were first aware of your gender identity)? Was it a process, in stages, gradually, or an epiphany? Has your identity evolved over time, or been more or less constant? Did you know when you were a kid, adolescent, or in your adulthood?

I look forward to hearing some of your stories 

[Cen]

I first realized something was off around when I was 9 years old.  By the time I was 11 I was occasionally cross dressing in my sister's clothing.  I used to tell myself I'd come out to my parents and transition around age 18-19, but it didn't happen that way.  I feared rejection from my family and the other students at school.  A lot of people had me pegged (incorrectly, sort of) as homosexual, and I was basically friendless from age 11-19 aside for online friends from games like Ultima Online, Lineage, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and World of Warcraft.  As I got older I tried look and behave more masculine in an attempt to fit in.  I worked out 6-7 days a week and became relatively fit and muscular.  I was constantly looking to my father and my half-brother for approval.  Even with that, I still never really fit, and spent most of the time avoiding reality with fantasy/sci-fi novels and video games.

When I was 18 I started looking up information on GID and transitioning, but that is all I have ever really done.  Between then and age 25 (now) I moved from Dallas, TX. to Portland, OR, and have been slowly getting through school.  Back in November I came out to my girlfriend one night when I was drunk.  At that time I had decided to see a therapist, but didn't get around to setting that up until a week ago.  Since then I've been trying to gauge how my SO really feels about all of it while also trying to decide what I really want.

[Mika]

I've mentioned it before, but I personally think the whole concept of a trans "narrative" is rather stupid. Piecing together your personal history like a jigsaw puzzle isn't going to tell anyone anything useful about your gender. How much do we even really remember honestly, how much do we subconsciously shift and mould till it meets the correct expectations? Memory is a frightening elusive thing. I know right now, in this moment, that I am a girl. The rest is just commentary.

Absolutely, I couldn't have said it better or more concisely myself. Thank you for sharing your story, Sarah. It's good to hear about people who bash gender assumptions and stereotypes despite social expectations that are hyperbolized even more for trans folk.

Since then I've been trying to gauge how my SO really feels about all of it while also trying to decide what I really want.

Yeah, I'm in a somewhat similar place myself with my SO. Good luck, I hope therapy is helpful for you in your journey ahead, whatever it ends up beng. Thanks for sharing, Kori, it's good to hear from a fellow nerd on Susan's 

[Medusa]

For me I can't say exact moment when I know, it slowly develop trought time.
Until about 10 I was satisfied with what adults say me, I was boy and have no reason to doubt it - even when I was not interested in sports, I like things like embroidery, painting and was really fascinated with makeup things and matches and fire 
Then slowly as time passed there was thoughts like: It would be interesting to be a girl. I want a female body. etc.. But I never pay attention to this, I have computers and dreaming which can isolate me from real world. So I can relatively contentedly live until like 20 when I accepted myself as bisexual ->-bleeped-<-. But this was just rejecting truth. Last year (at 23) I go to therapist and accept what I am and in few months I want to start with HRT.
I might do it earlier, but I was at male high school and I was here strange enough even as I was (I have no sex drive, wasn't masculine ...), I have averse to intervene in body (with regard to my faith), I wanted try to be a man and finally I hate how I look and I did not admit I can ever be what I want

[Northern Jane]

Well I had it backwards! Long before I had any concept of gender I thought I was a girl because I liked girls, played with girls, understood girls, hung out with girls, played girls' activities, and found boys to be loud, rough, and obnoxious! It wasn't until age 8 that I realized my body wasn't a girl's body and I was in deep sh#t! Until I heard the term transsexual at age 15 (1964) I didn't know what the heck I was and couldn't figure out how/why if I was a girl I had the wrong body.

"The standard narrative" sprang from those early years (1960s) when people, particularly the medical profession, were trying to understand this phenomenon and the ones who were visible, who were "out there" WERE the young ones who were "severely afflicted" and obvious/conspicuous - the ones who couldn't hide and usually didn't want to hide! They were also the ones that showed how effective medical treatment could be since they took to 'transition' like a duck to water and largely woodworked after surgery. There WAS a tremendous commonality between all their life stories and it was that shared experience that opened the doors and fostered understanding.

[MorganIsMyNameO]

I guess the first inklings of something being different started when I started dressing in my mom's clothes and demanding that she do my nails and makeup - so, around age 5.  Until 8th grade, most of my friends were girls, I played with girl's toys, and I also made some, err, 'questionable' clothing choices relative to my biological gender.  In high school I started getting into fashion and clothes, and fro this point on everyone assumed I was gay (that's not to say I don't like men, lol).  Since my earliest memory formations I've identified more with girls, and the thought of 'I wish I were a girl' has been fairly consistent.  I didn't know about transsexualism or the transition process, so I just assumed I was 'stuck' and I resigned myself to just live with severe gender dysphoria and depression.  It wasn't until I got over my last longterm relationship that I finally felt the need to actually be happy with my self and my life.

[calvin]

26.

In retrospect there were a lot of times before than when I could have/should have known, but the fact is that I didn't realize at the time. I could create a 'trans narrative' out of it if I had to, but the important thing to me is how I feel now, not what I did or didn't think twenty-four years ago.

[JungianZoe]

First known thought?  I was 4 and liked to play dolls with the girl across the street (I used to pinch gummy worms from school to take to her on these occasions).  Our backyard butted up against the big neighborhood park so there was a lot of opportunity to observe the other kids... I didn't like what the boys were doing--wrestling, playing guns, etc.--so I avoided them like the plague and stuck to my one friend with whom I played dolls and read her French Spot books (Spot is Sput in French, did you know that? ).  At night, I prayed that I'd wake up a girl the next day because the body I had wasn't the right one.

I'm not sure if the feelings were present earlier because my first known memory is of my parents' last fight before the divorce, shortly after I turned 3.  Every thought of the next year is of me crying in some psychologist's office or in court.  The divorce was really ugly and the system had absolutely no compassion for kids stuck in those situations back in 1980 (the custody arrangement was proof of how unenlightened they were on how to handle children).

So the feelings were definitely present and burning when I was 4.  I cried because things weren't right.  Then my stepmom entered the picture when I was 5 and the serious abuse began.  When I suddenly had reason to fear for my life, my gender issues got pushed to the periphery.  They didn't start peeping through again until my late teens, in high school, when I went goth and fairly andro because I didn't want to identify with anything masculine.  I did my hair like Siouxsie Sioux, wore pink when I could, colored my eyelashes with a sharpie (not recommended), and grew my nails long so I could put safety pins through them and then dangle charms from the pins.

First real bout of gender dysphoria was at 18 when my friends did my eyes properly for a Halloween party during our first year of college.  They told me I had Egyptian eyes and should always wear makeup.  When it came time to take it off, I crumbled into a pile of tears and didn't even want to go back out into the world without makeup.  I told my girlfriend about it and she responded by saying that she could make me feel better in a way that she always wanted to do, but never said: dressing me up in her clothes and putting makeup on me.  Yes, that made me feel much better.   Our relationship lasted for another three years and is still the best one I ever had with a girl.  However, outside of my girlfriend making me over, I never once crossdressed of my own volition.

Of my five relationships (4 girlfriends, 1 ex-wife) every one of them questioned more than once if I was gay.  I insisted I wasn't, but two of them weren't convinced.  One left saying I definitely was but just in the closet, the other said that I might not think I was gay, but I was definitely more feminine than she was and I only treated her like a sister.  And it's true... all I wanted from the relationships was a non-romantic girlfriend that I could shop with, dance with, and have an excuse to go to all sorts of female places without looking like an intruder.  I was living my trans identity vicariously through them, but I knew deep inside, all of those years, that I was born in the wrong body and something might snap someday.  I thought it was normal for everyone to have those thoughts, but only the weirdo "sex change people" weren't strong enough to keep those feelings bottled up.  I was in for a rude awakening...

The short story is that I eventually had the opportunity to ask a group of guys (who thought I was female) if they would give up being a man for one day.  My entire life, I thought to myself I could do it forever, so what was one day?  The seven guys unanimously shot down the idea because they couldn't handle the thought of losing their masculinity for even one minute.  I was stunned to notice how different my lifelong view of gender was, and began seriously looking into transsexualism.  The more I looked, the more I noticed that people who wrote about it and made videos about it seemed to have lived in my head my entire life, took notes, and used my biography in place of their own history.  At that point, I was 31 and was so despondent about being seen as a guy any longer that I knew I had to make a choice: let anorexia kill me (I was 5'11" and 100 pounds) or transition.

Think I chose wisely...

[Sephirah]

For me, there's a difference between when I felt the way I do about myself, and when I knew what those feelings were. I've always felt I wasn't 'a boy'. When anyone said that to me, it just didn't register. It felt like people were talking about someone else.

"Go to sleep, there's a good boy."

"Um... where?"

That was the sum total of my knowledge, at that time. It was more gut instinct. Right from my earliest memories there's been that feeling there. A constant nagging at the back of my mind that something wasn't right. But I didn't feel at that time that I was 'a girl', either. I had very little direct knowledge of what male and female actually were. And I didn't explore it at that time because I had only a vague notion of what 'it' was. Looking back, I could have realised some of the ways I behaved or things I did were indicative of how I felt inside. But at the time they were so ambiguous that it was all too easy to convince myself that it was due to entirely different circumstances. Which I did, almost exclusively. About the closest I ever got was wondering why my brothers were different to me, in their attitudes and their approach to life. No more than that though. And only having two brothers gave me no frame of reference. I knew I wasn't one thing... but that didn't automatically trigger the acknowledgement that the reverse was true.

Spending a lot of time by myself as a kid didn't really help either. I would read a lot, bury my head in anything with words. I loved the escapism. I loved books with very strong female characters, had no idea why, but I would skip parts just to see what they did, how they lived, and dealt with challenges. That would often lead to very vivid dreams with myself playing that role. But again, it was easy to put it down to just recently having read it, and no more than that. However, at those times, the persistent nagging 'ache' would go away.

Thinking back, I didn't know until such a time as I could develop my own self-belief to the point where I could actually ask myself that question. I guess that came at the age of... hmm... I guess my early 20's when I found enough independence and distance from other people's opinions and views to really take a good look at myself. Until that point, I may have known, but people in my life also 'knew' who I was, albeit more forcefully, and my inner-self was too undiscovered to put up much of an argument. Those around you can create a life for you far more easily than you can create for yourself, I guess. And that led to long periods of "you're just not doing it right" rather than "hang on, maybe you're not meant to be doing it that way at all".

It's reasonable to say none of that matters, and no I guess it doesn't. But it's certainly interesting to look back on, from my own personal viewpoint. Maybe it doesn't tell anyone anything useful about gender, but it tells me something useful about myself as an individual. No one needs to prove anything to anyone else, it's not a competition, so I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of about a bit of introspection and trying to work out what made, and makes, you tick as a person. Doesn't have to be a trans narrative, just a human life story. And really, what does it matter if you're the only one who hears it?

[Sephirah]

I just think when it becomes a diagnostic tool for GID that it is problematic.

Agree 100%. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[MarinaM]

My therapist and I have been feeling this very thing out, and since I like to read short and to the point posts, I shall give one.

5 - intense dreams of being a girl (unaware of gender issues)
8 - aware of not being a girl due to socialization, started in on women's clothing (in doubt)
13 - came out as trans / something to my mom (in doubt, feeling out)
15, 16 - puberty hit really hard and I knew something was completely wrong (feeling out, but aware I may be TS)
In between Met my S.O. and went into whatever you may call thinking you can handle it
24 - I knew
27 - started transition

My identity has always been evolving, and it will undoubtedly continue to do so until I die.

P.S. Late transitioners rock! 'cause I said so.

[MarinaM]

I just read back through and saw Northern Jane's narrative and found a timeline similarity, but we handled it in the exact opposite manner. Whereas she embraced it, I tried desperately to fight it. Cool.

[Mika]

Thank you all for your sincerity, it really is refreshing. I don't know of other communities where I can find such sincere, open  and supportive people. It is so good to hear your stories of trials and triumph--inspiring actually.

In retrospect there were a lot of times before than when I could have/should have known, but the fact is that I didn't realize at the time. I could create a 'trans narrative' out of it if I had to, but the important thing to me is how I feel now, not what I did or didn't think twenty-four years ago.

That's a cool way of looking at it. What we feel now is most important, and no need to stress about our histories if some of us didn't always know.

Speaking of... Mikah, you still owe us yours!

I was hoping to get away with leaving it out lol, mostly because I am self-conscious about how my story is still developing and I'm still a little lost. But here goes. I hope I don't ramble too much, just skip it if I do lol

I've been grasping at my childhood and adolescence for prescient moments, but I'm afraid of imposing my current feelings onto pliable memories. I haven't always known; I still wonder if I know. But growing up, I was a huge tomboy: I was always in the mud, building forts and trading my Barbies to my neighbor Hunter for his Nerf guns (he was a bit gender variant as well and went on to do drag). My mom would wrestle me into dresses every Sunday to my vocal displeasure, and my gender expression was policed. I identified myself as a tomboy from a young age, and anyone's attempts to feminize me always rubbed me the wrong way.

In junior high, my parents put me in a private Christian school (prior to this I had been home schooled). I hated it, and I was ostracized a little bit because I wasn't like all the other girls and the boys didn't like me (I didn't like them either). The dress code for girls required me to wear skirts, but I wore the boy pants anyway, and got away with it every day except chapel day. I went through a girly phase in which I also tried to date boys because I was socially rewarded for it, but it was short lived as it just isn't who I am. At that age, I also started my life-long battle with depression. Eighth grade year, I was hospitalized twice for suicide attempts and was heavily medicated, for depression, anxiety, and insomnia. I made it through some how though. Denying who I was really took a toll, along with the internalized homophobia and transphobia (although I didn't know what transgender meant until high school).

High school was more of the same, just worse. More suicide attempts, depression, and heavier meds (a mood stabilizer, 2 anti-depressants, 2 anti-psychotics and a tranquilizer daily). Bleh. I became more aware of my desire for a male body, though I still denied and suppressed it heavily. I also finally accepted that I like girls, and came out as a lesbian just after graduation (though that term doesn't fit me well), to the great displeasure of my preacher father and equally religious mother.

Now my first year of college is coming to an end. This year I've really come into myself more: I'm expressing my gender the way I more or less want to, accepting myself, attending a trans support group, and figuring my identity out. I don't know how I identify. I'm terrified to claim "FTM" because of th implications for my relationship with my girlfriend, but I am not sure if it fits anyway. I know I don't like my female body, and I don't ID as female: but I am nervous to claim a male identity, there has always been a defensive wall there.

There you go, wall of text. Sorry lol

[Joelene9]

  Let's see, I'll use Emma's format, modified.
  5 - Some dreams of being a girl (unaware of gender issues).
  8 - Aware of not being a girl due to socialization, started in on women's clothing (in doubt), got caught!  Still preferred 'boy toys'.
  9 - Saw Christine Jorgenson on TV being interviewed by a very popular congenial local host.  Mom told me she is not a queer.
  13, 14 - Noticed the developing girls in my class and wondered:  Where are my breasts?
  15, 16 - puberty hit really hard and I knew something was completely wrong (feeling out, but aware I may be TS)
  18 - Joined the Navy, not to "man out", but to serve, during Vietnam.  I successfully put away my TG feelings during that time.
  23 - Out of the Navy.  TG feelings reappeared with a vengeance, I knew, S***!  I thought I had it licked!
  27 - Came out to mom, started seeing a shrink.  Mom since then to her grave reminded that whatever, you're still one of my babies!
  28-29 - Shrink didn't know much, nixed my request for HRT, he moved out of state.  Transistion postphoned due to the negative press and politics, more so than now. 
  57 - Tried the herbal method.  Limited success, worsened my GID and prostatitis in the end.
  58 - Went on HRT ~2 weeks after my birthday.  Everything the anti-depressants and the herbs didn't cure, the HRT did,  Transitioning.
  58 + 1.5 mos - Came out to some in extended family during Christmas, much more positive response that I thought it would be.
  58 + 5 mos - PSA test came in with the lowest reading since taking it 5 years prior.  No cancer.  Came out with the rest of the family with this and the GID.  Responses positive, especially from my psychologist niece.
  58 + 6 mos - Now.  Everythings better. 
  Joelene

[Lee]

Know that I identify as male?
23 

It took me a long time to pin down what has been bothering me for quite a while.  As a little kid, I was just me.  Looking back, there were a lot of times when I clearly acted or saw myself as more of a boy, but it was never an issue.  Puberty changed that.  Suddenly things (and people) were more gendered, and I became extremely uncomfortable.  It took binding my chest randomly to finally figure out what makes that "something's wrong" feeling go away. 

[tekla]

I personally think the whole concept of a trans "narrative" is rather stupid.

Here, here.  It's a (albeit very human) desire to retroactively put into a liner conflict-resolution model something that was pretty much random to begin with.  Besides with no clear ideal of what was omitted and why, and what was included and why, what narrative even begins to approach some sort of Veritas level of truth?

[Ratchet]

I don't really care for the narratives either, but I sure so love to hear people's stories. It's an interesting thing to learn. How people get to where they are and what changes they go through. The best is seeing the change through pictures, of people just growing into themselves and figuring it all out.

To be honest, I didn't even know what transgendered was until about middle school, early high school. I didn't even know it was a possibility. I grew up with two older brothers, and was the only female. My mother hated me. She never wanted a girl. I specifically do not remember my mother's bashing of me from my early childhood but my family has told me the stories. I was even going to be adopted by my Aunt when I was younger because of it. Many people thought that was my reason for identifying as male. But my mom thought she was having another boy, ironically. I was born 3 months premature, and I don't know, I think she's always kind of resented me for being born a female (she passed when I was 9).

My mother did my hair and dressed me or else I would walk out the house in the worst clothes I owned, basically. Just like my brother. We wrestled, played video games, I played every sport but football because girls weren't allowed. My family was big on baseball so I played co-ed baseball for as long as they allowed it. Which was right up until middle school or so. I enjoyed time with just my brothers, outside of school, outside of the labels, when they'd introduce me as some random named male wrestler during our wrestling matches.

But I never knew, really, what I was. I was just... a tomboy. But my depression grew worse has years went by, worse and worse. I grew angry. I tried everything to fit in with the girls. Tried to do what girls did. Nothing worked. Nothing made me happy. And then I would find myself walking in the middle of the street in the middle of the night hoping a car would just... come by. There are various other family and personal factors as well, but my confusion was the main one.

My grandmother noticed what was wrong, and it wasn't until then, when I started to talk to people, when I got a therapist, that I knew what might be going on. I watched an episode of Maury with a trans on it. And for some reason, I just... sat there in awe. And I knew. I knew that this person was like me, and I felt happy. Happy and comfortable. That was probably around 12. Leaving out all the gender dysphoria that came along with puberty and the expectations of a "female".

So, I guess, 12 or 13 would be when I honestly could say that I had some clue toward the person my mind knew I was. Like a badly written book, I was stuck in the wrong body.

[Yakshini]

I don't know if there was any one event that just clicked for me and I knew I was actually a boy. I remember at a young age always having more boyish leanings and thought it wasn't normal, so I pretended to be like a little girl. I remember always pretending to be a girl in an effort to be normal and I remember fantasizing that I had been born a boy or turned into a boy once I became more aware of the sexual differences between boys and girls.
In middle school I learned that transgendered people existed, but was scared that I might be trans myself. I pretty much went into denial for years until I was sick of constantly being an actor playing a character that wasn't me without any breaks. I came out in high school, when I finally accepted that I am indeed trans.

[cynthialee]

At age 7 I really kinda bummed when the diferance between male and female finaly set in. But as I had a male body I was a boy and there was no way to be a girl, I droped it.
At age 9 I saw a Phil Donohue show that was about 5 diferant transwomen.
I knew before the end of the show that I was just like the women on the panel and I wanted to change like them.
However I was in a super religous home in my grandmothers home. Before I had figured out my gender she had firmly instilled into me all the old testament laws. I was fearful I was going to hell if I did transition. I saw the scriptures.
Anyways...at age 16 I knew I would some day transition. I had planed on doing so when I turned 18 and was no longer in my dads house but....yeah, by the time 18 came around I was in prison (military) the first time around. Took me until age 41 to completely shed all the bagage that kept me back.

So the short answer to your question would be, 'I knew at age 9 I was trans'.

[Northern Jane]

I just read back through and saw Northern Jane's narrative and found a timeline similarity, but we handled it in the exact opposite manner. Whereas she embraced it, I tried desperately to fight it. Cool.

Perhaps I should explain a little more..... I didn't accept the situation but fought it in a different way.

In my naive way I knew that I was (or was supposed to be) a girl and that there was something seriously wrong and I wanted it FIXED. It never occurred to me that I was supposed to be a boy because I just couldn't do boy - nobody believed it. Some people assumed I was Gay and although I was attracted to boys, I knew I wasn't Gay.

I wanted to be physically female because I was a girl and that's all I could ever be. I fought with my mother over it, had close encounters of the awful kind with doctors and shrinks, and even figured out about hormones and self-medicated at 14 when the birth control pills first came out. From puberty onward life was a battle to find a resolution. Dr. Benjamin's book (1966) was the first positive step (I was 16), finding an understanding doctor (age 18) helped, but I still barely avoided suicide until Dr. Biber came alone in 1974.