Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hi,

I wondered if any other androgynes had any memories of feeling like they were in the wrong body at an early age?  Here's one that I think might be interesting. When I was something like 7, I told my parents that from now on I was "Billy". I would not respond to my given name, or I would get very angry telling my parents that NO I was a boy or my name is Billy. I was intent on going to first grade as Billy. My mom had this talk with me. I actually think it was pretty cool given that this was a LONG time ago, and things were not nearly as progressive as they can be now. She basically said that she thought (other) people might have a very hard time with this. I do not think at anytime she discounted how I felt. Anyway, I agreed to go to school as a girl.
I also experimented (without success) wiht standing up to pee and so forth.

I don't recall how long all this lasted or if this would have been intense and long enough lasting or if there was enough distress to be called gender identity disorder. However, they say that 80% of people with this do not become trans. I know that some percentage becomes gay but what else goes on, I have never heard. *Presumably*, the more traditional type doctors will tell parents, they become binary. I wonder what percentage actually becomes non-binary in some way or other.

I'd love to hear others experiences here if they feel comfortable.

--Jay Jay

No because I had no concept of that as a child.  To me, I was just me.  I never really thought of my body as having a specific sex.  Yes, I knew it was called female, but that's it.  It had no meaning to me until I reached my teen years when I started to go through puberty.  Once puberty started, I started to realize what female was and that I didn't like it.  I originally wore baggy jeans and my dad's jacket with it buttoned up even in the summer because I was ashamed of what was happening.  I never thought of it terms of being transgender, just that I didn't like what was happening.  For a few years after I was OK and even dressed like a girl (but I got to wear clothes from Hot Topic and I'm a sucker for their tops).  Then I hit my sophomore year.

At that point I was introduced to gender bending and homosexuality through yaoi.  When I first read the genre I was like, "That is the relationship I want."  At this point in time I made all of my internet accounts under a male name and a male persona even engaging in online relationships with other males.  I never told them I was female because I didn't identify as female and because I knew they would end it -- I couldn't bear to be seen as female in a relationship.  At this point I was seriously upset with my body because it wasn't they way it should have been.

I promptly squashed all feelings until I was no longer living with my parents.  I started to explore the transgender community more and learn different terms.  When I came across androgyne, I was like "huh...that suits me great" and have since used it.   I will continue to use it because, even when I transition to male, I will also be on the more androgynous side of things.

When I started school I learned that there are two teams.  Boys and girls.  Clothes and hairstyles are team uniforms.  And you'd better stay on your side and at least pretend to not like the other side, or else.

As a kid I didn't question that.  It was just another crazy thing to play along with.  The object of the game is to not get bullied, laughed at and shunned, and I took it seriously enough that I learned the arbitrary rules well.  I didn't dare consider what I may have wanted to do or be.  It is now deeply ingrained in me that the way to take care of my own feelings and needs is to break away from human contact and do it in secret... and sometimes I can't even do it then.  I'm getting better, but my ability to think for myself was so broken that I didn't even realize I was pansexual until a friend pointed it out to me when I was 25.

Quote from: aleon515 on May 04, 2012, 06:30:20 PM
Hi,

I wondered if any other androgynes had any memories of feeling like they were in the wrong body at an early age? 

It was kind of harrowing. It wasn't that I thought I was in the wrong gender. It was that I had no concept that there were acceptable (by everyone else) behaviors for one gender that were not acceptable for the other. So I always found myself being teased/ostracized for doing things that the other gender typically did. I remember dressing paper dolls - I probably was six or seven, maybe even older. My mother found me and said "you know that's the sort of things girls do." When I was 14 I played a Helen Reddy song I really liked on a radio show I was running. I got a lot of grief for that, and I was totally mystified. Looking back now, I know it's not the sort of music boys were supposed to like. It wasn't just male/female stuff. My social IQ was in the cellar. I was always doing things that people had to tell me were making me stand out and not in a good way.

I'm a really smart person and I found I had to make a study of what kinds of behaviors were appropriate. I'm actually proud of the fact that that now (age 50) I almost never stand out for doing something inappropriate (gender or otherwise). I'm becoming in touch with the fact that I'm going to need to express the female parts of my soul, and I confess to being somewhat apprehensive.

Childhood memories of being Androgyn? Yes, almost all of them, to one degree or another. I don't know if it was hard, so much as brutal, at times. I learned to kick ass on kids bigger than me, although I got my butt kicked plenty of times.

I know my mother understood in her 'Leave it to Beaver' way of looking at the world, more so when I came of age during the Viet Nam War years. Then the rest of the 70's and she became more worldly and realized she had changed and understood that I was not like my brothers and more like my sisters, although I was still some of both. I survived, just barely, because of her.

I still survive, sometimes brutally and sometimes I do get my butt kicked. Some things will never change, just as I have always been a gender that is non-binary.

Ativan

Quote from: agfrommd on May 05, 2012, 09:40:41 AM
It was that I had no concept that there were acceptable (by everyone else) behaviors for one gender that were not acceptable for the other. So I always found myself being teased/ostracized for doing things that the other gender typically did. I remember dressing paper dolls - I probably was six or seven, maybe even older. My mother found me and said "you know that's the sort of things girls do." When I was 14 I played a Helen Reddy song I really liked on a radio show I was running. I got a lot of grief for that, and I was totally mystified. Looking back now, I know it's not the sort of music boys were supposed to like. It wasn't just male/female stuff. My social IQ was in the cellar. I was always doing things that people had to tell me were making me stand out and not in a good way.

I'm a really smart person and I found I had to make a study of what kinds of behaviors were appropriate. I'm actually proud of the fact that that now (age 50) I almost never stand out for doing something inappropriate (gender or otherwise). I'm becoming in touch with the fact that I'm going to need to express the female parts of my soul, and I confess to being somewhat apprehensive.

You know that sounds a bit like me in some ways. The thing is that even years ago, girls were in some ways freer to take on different gender roles than boys. (You might have to go back to the early 1900s for girls to have been as straight-jacketed to gender roles as little boys-- perhaps go to a rural area?) They might tell you it is "unlady-like" (and they did) but I never cared about this. This always seemed to me to be a good thing. :-) You're not on the autism spectrum somewhere are you? I had a really low social IQ, perhaps a good way of wording this, until more lately. I am so surprised at myself now when I say things like "I think so and so is angry" and have a good chance of being right. I could never tell anger from some other more strong emotional state.

--Jay Jay

Quote from: aleon515 on May 05, 2012, 11:40:20 PM
You're not on the autism spectrum somewhere are you?

Something I've always wondered about. There was really no talk of autism at all when I was younger, and nowadays the "spectrum" is more like a an intricate spider web of symptoms, deficits, and treatment indications that it's nearly impossible to say "yay" or "nay" for any given case without massive evaluation.

But when I talk to some of my students who are classified with autism and they talk about having to use their intellect instead of intuition to figure out how to relate to people, it rings true to my own experience.

I could usually figure out how people were feeling. But I was (still am) often unable to predict reactions from seemingly unimportant or insignificant things I'd say our do.

To change the subject back to your original question I think the big way being mixed-gender colored my childhood is that there are so many expectations for boys, almost none of which could I completely meet.

We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.

Here's the really bad part. After decades and decades, I've finally got to the point that I can do most of those things, and I don't really like the parts of myself that have achieved them.

At age of about 4, I tried to wear silk stockings of a lady who visited my home, but unexpectedly it was too big for my little legs. At that age, I realized that I can not be woman although I dreamed of it.

Barbie~~

I recall wanting to play with girl toys and telling my grandmother that I didn't want to be a boy when she was telling me not to cry because boys don't cry.  I hated societies rules about being a boy from a young age I felt different to everyone else from a very young age,
I have many memories of being punished for not being a normal/real boy mostly by peers but sometimes by teachers/ parents/other significant adults.

I really didn't have a solid sense of gender until I started school, and even then it was a foreign concept I understood only intellectually, not empathically. I grew up in a household that didn't make a big deal at all of gender. With school, I only knew it as what "boys do" and "girls do". If I did anything that "girls do" I would be teased and if I did some of what "boys do" I would be all right, but if I tried to do too much of what "boys do" I was teased for being disingenous because of my small size. The whole thing seemed absurd to me, and to this day gender roles seem to me ridiculous and contradictory. 

A good example is that when I was nine years old during recess, I was sitting on a platform reading a book. Two of the more popular boys came up to me and asked me why I was sitting "like a girl". I didn't understand what they were talking about, so I asked "In what way?" They said because I was sitting with my legs touching, that boys sit with their legs apart. Obliging, I spread my legs as far as they would go, thinking that it would get them to go away. They just laughed and went away, me having no clue what they were talking about.

Another was in first grade when I would prefer going into the stall and sitting down to pee rather than using the urinal. A boy looked in one time (keep in mind, we were all six year olds) and told me that "only girls pee sitting down". So from then on out I would use the urinal. It was far more because I just wanted to be left alone that I went along with it, but it doesn't make any more sense to me almost two decades later than in did back then.

'Nother person without a solid sense of gender as a child. Gender norms were also not enforced very strictly by my parents, so I was mostly allowed to like "girl things." A lot of the things I liked were not "girl things" OR "boy things," though, so I guess I was just kind of weird. I liked sciency things when I was very young, but when I got older I started reading fiction a lot more. Most of the authors I like have been women (at least outside of science fiction which is male dominated). I remember specifically being told that I would not like some books that I actually liked a lot because only girls liked those books.

I remember liking girls more as a child too, but that was mainly because they tended to be nicer to me. I liked to be active and pretend things, but I wasn't big on "take care of the baby" stuff (we practically are babies already so why bring more into this?). I remember in preschool trying to liven it up ("quick, save the baby! there's an earthquake!" and being told "leave the girls alone."  I ended up doing a lot of things on my own, which I guess has been a lifelong thing for me. Individual friends, when I had them, might be male or might be female. There are probably more women that I like but socially it's easier to become friends with men.

As I got older I learned more about gender roles. I thought a lot of it was stupid and I didn't really want to try to live up to either of them, but I also identified more with women more and wished I could be like them. I told someone this and she told me that girls were mean to each other and I should be happy to be a boy. Probably girls would have been meaner to me if they had seen me as a girl, but I doubt it would have been worse than what I went through (plus people liking me wasn't really the point). I also started saying that I thought it didn't make sense for women to have to shave their legs.

One thing that discouraged me from considering myself trans is that I didn't wholesale identify with women, internalize gender roles for girls, etc, and in some ways I was very much like a typical boy. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I think if you're being pushed to approach things in a certain way, though, you're more likely to find some of the things within in that bundle that fit who you are. Pretty much anyone is bound to like SOME "boy things" and SOME "girl things."

When I was in the first grade the teacher wrote on the board:

I am a boy                   and      I am a girl
I go to school                          I go to school

We were to told to copy down the one that pertained to us.   I wrote down the girl version.
I really thought it was a choice we could make.

In the second grade for the Halloween costume contest I wore a very good witch costume with full face mask, wig and a full length black dress with petticoat.   I won second prize in the entire elementary school.

I can still remember playing on the "monkey bars" and seeing the girls hanging upside down by their knees.  I remember their colorful panties and smooth crotches.  I really, really wanted look like that.

They still insisted that I was a boy.

We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.
Think you put that pretty well Ag,spent most of my schooldays trying to cope with feelings like that,and trying to overcome them.

Quote from: Teema on May 08, 2012, 04:30:50 AM
We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.
Think you put that pretty well Ag,spent most of my schooldays trying to cope with feelings like that,and trying to overcome them.

I know I'm kind of repeating myself, but it's striking to me how much I can't relate to that. I didn't feel like there was pressure for me to be any of those things, although I was vaguelly aware that some people respected me less due to my coordination problems and that kind of thing. I think I really was oblivious.

Quote from: Carbon on May 08, 2012, 01:48:22 PM
I know I'm kind of repeating myself, but it's striking to me how much I can't relate to that. I didn't feel like there was pressure for me to be any of those things, although I was vaguelly aware that some people respected me less due to my coordination problems and that kind of thing. I think I really was oblivious.

Don't know which is better. Maybe I'd have been happier if I was oblivious. I remember the hot tears when something seemingly unbearable happened and some junior bully had to chime in "Oh. Are you going to Cry?!?" As if it were the worse thing on earth. What I'd give to be able to go back and, instead of becoming embarrassed and ashamed,  say "Yeah. I'm about to cry. You ought to try it some time."

I suppose I could make a whole thread out of things we wish we had said to bully when we were younger.

Quote from: agfrommd on May 08, 2012, 05:37:05 PM
Don't know which is better. Maybe I'd have been happier if I was oblivious. I remember the hot tears when something seemingly unbearable happened and some junior bully had to chime in "Oh. Are you going to Cry?!?" As if it were the worse thing on earth. What I'd give to be able to go back and, instead of becoming embarrassed and ashamed,  say "Yeah. I'm about to cry. You ought to try it some time."

I suppose I could make a whole thread out of things we wish we had said to bully when we were younger.

Well, I did get harassed but I always figured it was because I was a horrible person. Or at least just really ugly.

It probably wasn't actually any better. I'm going to go with the people who weren't harassed repeatedly as children had it better.

Quote from: agfrommd on May 08, 2012, 05:37:05 PM
I remember the hot tears when something seemingly unbearable happened and some junior bully had to chime in "Oh. Are you going to Cry?!?" As if it were the worse thing on earth.

My parents would yell at me for something, and then I'd cry and they'd yell at me for crying.  They're mostly ok, as parents go, but....  ugh.  That was terrible.

I don't think they ever really understood why I liked to go play with the little girl across the street as much as the little boy across the street, but they let me do it.

Quote from: agfrommd on May 06, 2012, 10:11:20 AM
We were supposed to be:
* Good at sports
* Undeterred by setbacks
* Never cry, no matter what anyone said or did to us
* Not care if we got hit, fell down, bruised, scraped, etc.
* Ignore the fact that someone nearby might be distressed
* Unafraid in the face of physical aggression
* Impervious to insults, teasing, put-downs
* Etc.

Yeah..  I don't think most of those really have much to do with gender anyway (look how many female athletes there are), but people think they do.  And I really suck at all of them.

When I was just starting puberty, I thought I was going to turn out to be at least partially male. I knew that I had a typically female body, but thought I'd be male somehow.

It's interesting, I was watching a special on children and gender identity, and it's amazing how much fluidity children attribute to gender. Even for those children who accept fully the concept that they are a "boy" or "girl" think that it's possible to change their gender as they grow older. In essence, kids often think of gender the same way one thinks of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" regarding occupation. I wonder what's the difference between myself, as an androgyne, and someone who thought this way as a kid, but now fully identifies themselves as being either a man or woman without any amount of dysphoria.

Funny thing, I think I have LESS sense of gender than I did as a kid, as I had that feeling that I was a boy.  Perhaps it just all seems more complicated now, I don't know. I know now that interests and so forth don't really determine gender. So now I am at a point, I don't feel too much gender ID. Funny thing, but feminist talk is the only thing that makes me feel more "female". Not sure why that would be, except for a feeling of some group identity.

--Jay Jay

At it's base, I think gender identity is something that's just an ineffable sense of who you are. You can't really put it into words, or tally up traits that are either masculine or feminine and understand that way (which is why I have a huge problem with tests that try to get at some empirical certainty that will never really be there in good faith). I've never had that solid sense as one or the other as a kid or at present. Part of my personality is heavily maternal and I tend to prefer the passive role in romance, but it also includes a heavily logical side, and especially in LGBT activism I tend to be very outspoken. I've grown to realize, though, that it's not so much having a collection of both typically "masculine" traits and "feminine" traits that makes me an androgyne, it's this ineffable sense of being in between. 

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable.
Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
--Douglas Adams Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

In a language that is binary in the gender sense, there are only terms and labels that are fluid in definition themselves.
Try not to think in terms of masculine and feminine, as they overlap to a huge degree, both being capable of being the other.
Androgyn or non-binary is this. It's definition lies in a language that is unspoken.
It is a feeling. The definition is fleeting, an indefinable sense of being.
It is capable of being understood to us all, more so to those of us who except that it is a true feeling.
One that is for the most part, always there.

Ativan

By age 4 I knew, and had stated to my parents and siblings, that I was a female, period.

The consequence of such an action was a never ending physical and verbal abuse, until I was told to live home at about 13 YO. They did try several cures, from a counseling with  psychiatrist, a shaman, an exorcism by prist, military school, and bribes; nothing worked of course.

Recalling my childhood memories use to fill me with rage, but now -thanks to the wonderful blue magic pill- it just fills me with sadness.

Yea,... The underlying rage and anger will always be a part of me.

A combination of Spiro and Klonopin quiet the beast, keeping it as just a memory.

Ativan

I don't quite remember how I perceived myself when I was very little. Later in my childhood (possibly after 8/9 years old), I was aware of being a female, but I had a tendency to identify with tomboys and male characters in movies and cartoons. Maybe it was simply because female characters were always too girly and boring, while the boys got to do the fun stuff. My dream was to be a cowboy, but I don't think I was trying to be a boy. Same thing with what they call "gender nonconformity". I played with dolls, but also with guns, action figures and lego... At some point, I developed an aversion for everything that was considered for females.
I also had a fascination for male clothing, that grew stronger in my early teens.
As I said, I don't think I was trying to a be boy and most of what I described is about gender expression rather than gender identity, ..so I'm not really sure this means anything at all!
I started to have issues with my body only when my breasts started to grow, but then again, ..I'm not really sure why. Maybe I was just uncomfortable with growing up!

All I know, I was going to cut off my penis, and pierce my ears to wear earrings at one night being on my own.

The rest would have taken care of it self ;) --- if there wasn't my mother (single parent), and the thread of getting the hiding of my life.
And I sure had some of those before, so I bloody well opted out.

Axélle
PS: what I didn't know then was, that electroshock therapy would have been next waiting down the line... just as well. This was in 1954!

when i was 4 i didn't like that just because i was a girl i'd have to have (oral) sex with a boy. but this might have more to do with sexuality (?) i've really no idea. this is one of the weirdest childhood memories i have, and should probably not be explained in depth, other than mentioning that there was no crime involved

when i was 6 i didn't get why i suddenly couldn't be in the men's sauna at the public bath
i was probably around 8-9 when i got pissed at my body being reason that my family couldn't all use our own sauna together
and when i was 10 i knew that i hated what puberty had started doing to my body
if only i didn't have these genes for big hips and boobs. so useless when all i ever wanted was to grow up to become androgynous
the next thing would probably be that funny dream i had in early puberty where i was a hermaphrodite, and the only thing that bothered me about it were the possible reasons for having a dream like this

i also remmeber that i could totally relate when i watched a documentary about transsexualism somewhen in middle school or earlier, but decided that i'd never have srs because they can't make a fully functional penis. so i dismissed the whole thought of anything related to transitioning and accepting myself as trans, since i thought it was all or nothing (and to a certain extent it really is in this country)

other than that i also know that i never got this big difference between boys and girls and why it was bad to walk and sit and talk like i some times did. the answer to why i can't be myself was that i'm a girl. makes sense, right...

No Harry Potter pjs! Now that's just plain sucky!

--Jay Jay

My favorite early memories were at a little less than four years old when I remember asking my mom to polish my nails, and I loved it.  At about the same age my two sisters also dressed me up in their old clothes for Halloween as their little sister. 

Worst memory was when I was about 8 and being told that I couldn't have the doll I wanted for Christmas.  Kind of hurt.

Funny what we remember and how it still feels warm and fuzzy.

I recall being about 7 years old, wrapping bedsheets around my legs and pretending I was a mermaid.  And an earlier time when I was pretending to be the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus.  And a phase of "tucking" in the bathtub. And that my best friend when I was 5 or so was a girl.

As I grew up I "grew out of" it all and felt shame toward any sort of gendered behavior, until I started roleplaying female characters in games at least.

Quote from: foosnark on May 29, 2012, 11:55:11 AM
I recall being about 7 years old, wrapping bedsheets around my legs and pretending I was a mermaid.  And an earlier time when I was pretending to be the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus.  And a phase of "tucking" in the bathtub. And that my best friend when I was 5 or so was a girl.

As I grew up I "grew out of" it all and felt shame toward any sort of gendered behavior, until I started roleplaying female characters in games at least.

I've heard that mermaid fantasies are VERY common for Mtf children. You can see why.

--Jay Jay

Gender roles were both ignored and highlighted in my house... my mother was the type that did sit-ins in high school in the 60's to wear pants to school because she hates dresses, and she always made a big deal that girls can do anything boys can do, but whether I was doing "boy" or "girl" stuff was never highlighted. My father wanted me to be a super-smart science genius and it didn't really matter what gender I was: I was the firstborn and thus I would be wonderful at all things.

So for years and years I'd just read whatever and play with whatever and do whatever, and at school I'd spend more time with boys and my family just figured that's because I was a "nerdy" sort. But I'd still identify with female characters and I always wrote about female main characters in my stories. Why? Because I was a girl in body. No other reason. It was a very literal thing. I'd dress depending on how I felt... sometimes like a boy, sometimes like a girl. I guess being female-bodied people accepted "boy clothing" as okay for a girl.

When I hit puberty I finally went "oh hey I'm supposed to be a girl!!" and started perming/dyeing my hair, pierced my ears, joined a female-only youth group. But at the same time I wanted to cut my hair super-short. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I'm "supposed" to be. I talk a lot about presentation here because really to me that's the only way I can pin down gender in my own life--by what other people say is male or female. Probably if I was going to make up a species with two genders, everything I like would be my gender, and everything I don't would be the "other" gender. I don't even know what I'd call them though. I don't think I'd make there be two. Maybe four? Five? :P

Really though... and I'm a writer so that's probably why I see it this way... realizing that I identify with characters based less on gender than on personality made me go "I'm not really female in my mind." And I know, I know, men can identify with female characters and vice versa but that's not what I mean... I mean something I don't quite have words for, and it goes back to when I started reading (which was when I was 3), wherein I could totally identify with both little girls and little boys... and even little non-gendered alien children... because it didn't feel "weird" or "wrong" to imagine myself as one or the other. Or maybe it felt equally "weird"... leaning one way or another.

My favorite books have also often included some aspect of changing sexes, or body swapping, or sharing memories of other sexes (I'm thinking heavily here of the Atreides children from Dune Messiah and Children of Dune...)

My earliest memories of androgynous feelings were kindergarten or first grade, I can't remember which. Early on that school year is the first time I can recall thinking of myself as a tomboy, not like other girls, etc. According to my mother, even as an infant I would reflexively throw up on any dresses she put me in; once i was in a t-shirt and sweats I was fine. A couple of times I was accused of having too deep a voice for a girl by my classmates, that I was faking it to get attention. I remember my first real crossdressing experience was when I dressed up as Frodo from Lord of the Rings for Halloween in 5th grade.

I wouldn't say I thought about it overmuch as gender rules per se...I just knew that I was different, accepted it and moved on -shrug-

Yeah, that's how I was: I wasn't thinking about it much until puberty and then it was more "I want to fit in than anything else." Frodo is an awesome character to dress up as for Halloween.

I just had another thought on character identification: Jadzia Dax, from Star Trek: DS9. Female character, but she'd been both female and male in past lives (it's a symbiont thing.) I adooooored that character. So very much wanted to be her. Maybe I should head over to fiction to continue that. >.>

(Also, Your Humble Savant, I love your little avatar picture. EDIT: And apparently I got your name wrong. Sorry.)

Quote from: Ariel on May 30, 2012, 10:24:21 AM

My favorite books have also often included some aspect of changing sexes

You jogged a memory, Ariel. The first novel-length fantasy story I wrote as an adult involved a young man who was cursed with periodic unpredictable shape-shifting. One of the shapes he shifts into was - you guessed - a young woman. At the time I just thought it was a kind of a cool thought, but now that I'm more in touch with my genderqueerness, I see it in a different light.

Quote from: agfrommd on May 30, 2012, 11:30:04 AM
You jogged a memory, Ariel. The first novel-length fantasy story I wrote as an adult involved a young man who was cursed with periodic unpredictable shape-shifting. One of the shapes he shifts into was - you guessed - a young woman. At the time I just thought it was a kind of a cool thought, but now that I'm more in touch with my genderqueerness, I see it in a different light.

The group of characters around which I've been building stories since I was about 9, that will one day (hopefully) be a novel series, include a very definite woman who works in what is for our society very traditionally male roles, a lesbian couple that was until recently a heterosexual couple--one of the characters switched genders on me--and a man who regularly cross-dresses. And in the society I built, there are few "traditional" gender roles at all and wealth/status is determined in a nearly purely meritocratic way. People do what they're good at, to the point of switching careers later in life being nearly impossible (every society has to have its drawbacks, yeah?)

It was only very very recently that it occurred to me that maybe I was having trouble deciding what gender/gender expression my characters should have for a very good reason. :P

I knew at 5.  But, since I was beat just for crying I learned to hide very well.  So well that I could blend in with any crowd.  Now that I am not worried about getting beat, I have no reason to blend.

Quote from: Brooke777 on May 30, 2012, 01:30:16 PM
I knew at 5.  But, since I was beat just for crying I learned to hide very well.  So well that I could blend in with any crowd.  Now that I am not worried about getting beat, I have no reason to blend.

Why do people do that? I was never beaten, but I certainly was made to feel shame for crying. I do remember "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!"

I figured I'd understand when I get older. But I'm 50 now, not likely to get any more adult, and it still baffles me. I don't ever punish my kids by hurting them physically, and I can't even CONCEIVE of giving them a hard time for crying.

One of those things I guess I'll just never figure out.

The whole "stop crying of I will give you something to cry about" statement usually came mid beating.  When you are little and have a 6'2", 350lbs man hitting you, you don't put up to much of a fight.  My step dad kept this up until I was 16, and I finally had enough and laid him out.  My mom luckily stopped when I was about 15 and was finally bigger than her.

Quote from: Brooke777 on May 30, 2012, 04:12:28 PM
The whole "stop crying of I will give you something to cry about" statement usually came mid beating.  When you are little and have a 6'2", 350lbs man hitting you, you don't put up to much of a fight.  My step dad kept this up until I was 16, and I finally had enough and laid him out.  My mom luckily stopped when I was about 15 and was finally bigger than her.

Tough way to grow up. Hope things are better for you here on out.

Willing to accept a cyberhug for what you've been through?

A hug is always nice.

Things did get better.  I joined the Military, and left the house 1 week after I graduated.  I have not been back for longer than longer a week since.  He has only tried to hit me once since, and learned very fast that years of the type of training I had made me nearly impossible to intimidate.

As a kid, I kind of shied away from other kids and kept myself occupied in the library, drawing pictures and reading. When I did play with other kids, I'd sort of do whatever. I remember playing jump-rope and patty-cake as often as playing soccer and sword fighting with sticks. 

Clothing was another thing. Even my elementary school where we had a dress code, I still dressed fairly neutral. I'd usually wear boy's pants with a girl's top, just because it was what I preferred.

I distinctly remember one of my birthday parties where my mother forced me to wear something particularly gendered. I was so upset I ended up hiding in the thick wooded area behind my house and crying.

I also remember reading the tale of Hermaphroditus as a kid and wishing that something like that could happen to me. After that, I got really into mythology and angels, because I could find people and creatures that were being what I wanted to be but didn't think was acceptable to be at the time.

I always thought it funny that I was the middle child and that I had one male and one female sibling. For some reason, it never crossed my mind that I would be tipping the scale in one direction or the other. I know that's not exactly a memory, but it's something I mused about a lot as a kid.

I remember since I was in early primary school (around 3-5 since I started school very early) telling my friends my name was Jacob and i cut my hair (which was all the way down my back back then cuz my mum wanted me to look like my step sister)  off in the boy's bathroom at school in kindergarten I was sent to a behavioural institution and prescribed Ritalin and some other medicine
Since I was about 4 I've been seeing sex therapists and gender therapists but stopped at age 8 though
I still feel the same as I did since such an early age (except for the name Jacob.. O.o)

I don't really have childhood memories of being in the wrong body, but looking back, I can clearly see some trans* stuff there.
Untill puberty and highschool, gender didn't really exist to me. I felt different than the other girls, but I didn't really feel like being in the wrong body back then. (that happened after puberty started)
Back in the childhood days, I played with a lot of 'boys' stuff. Space lego, playmobil with indians, cars... I hated dolls and barbies. I had way more guy friends than girl friends. At some games on school during breaks and such, girls weren't allowed to play along. Except me. I was not seen as a boy by the other boys, but still I was the only 'girl' that was allowed to play along.
My mother told me a couple of years ago that as a child, I was behaving just like a boy. (but still looked like a girl in girly clothes -girl pants and shirts, I didn't wear much dresses because they were unpractical- and long hair)

Quote from: BlueSloth on May 05, 2012, 12:07:07 AM
When I started school I learned that there are two teams.  Boys and girls.  Clothes and hairstyles are team uniforms.  And you'd better stay on your side and at least pretend to not like the other side, or else.

As a kid I didn't question that.  It was just another crazy thing to play along with.  The object of the game is to not get bullied, laughed at and shunned, and I took it seriously enough that I learned the arbitrary rules well.  I didn't dare consider what I may have wanted to do or be.  It is now deeply ingrained in me that the way to take care of my own feelings and needs is to break away from human contact and do it in secret... and sometimes I can't even do it then.  I'm getting better, but my ability to think for myself was so broken that I didn't even realize I was pansexual until a friend pointed it out to me when I was 25.

My experience exactly but in addition i was very shy and horrified of the locker room/ showers in high school. I was frequently called Fem, girly boy,  ->-bleeped-<- ect and couldn't figure out why.??? Im just becoming aware in andro. Im 50 years old.

Quote from: Kinkly on May 07, 2012, 01:04:43 AM
I recall wanting to play with girl toys and telling my grandmother that I didn't want to be a boy when she was telling me not to cry because boys don't cry.  I hated societies rules about being a boy from a young age I felt different to everyone else from a very young age,
I have many memories of being punished for not being a normal/real boy mostly by peers but sometimes by teachers/ parents/other significant adults.

I once played hop scotch with the girls at recess when i was 6 and thoroughly rebuked bu the nuns. I was genuinely mad about it and they forced me into special classes playing "boy games" with brother bob and if you were bad he would take you to the rectory shower for a "special baptism" >:(Im feeling that part of mu androgyny is rebellion against the gender we are forced to endure from society.

Quote from: joann on July 15, 2012, 09:31:30 AM
I once played hop scotch with the girls at recess when i was 6 and thoroughly rebuked bu the nuns. I was genuinely mad about it and they forced me into special classes playing "boy games" with brother bob and if you were bad he would take you to the rectory shower for a "special baptism" >:(Im feeling that part of mu androgyny is rebellion against the gender we are forced to endure from society.

The later (special baptism) sounds kinky-- perhaps as an excuse for sexual abuse. There is no such thing in any religion, to my knowledge. The "boy games" special class also sounds like what they did with children in the so-called "sissy boys" project. This was designed to keep boys from becoming trans by behavior mod methods (tokens for "good" or boy behavior and various punishments for "bad" or girl behavior).

MAJOR TRIGGER IS DON'T GOOGLE THIS, If YOU DON"T THINK YOU COULD DEAL WITH IT. The punishments are very nasty. I hate to shout but this is nasty, evil stuff. If you can handle it is rather fascinating in a sick sort of way.

--Jay Jay

for me it was i've wanted to live my life in a more feminine way/ vessel but having a penis has never felt wrong and ive never felt some great desire to have breasts ,  internally i feel a lot more female but at the same time i dont really feel like a " man" or a " woman' at all but something different alltogether