Susan's Place Transgender Resources

1973 when I was all of twelve years old when Walter Carlos an awesome artist on the for front of electronic music with the new Moog synthesizer changed to Wendy Carlos.
I asked several people why and no one could explain.

http://www.wendycarlos.com/photos/indexphoto.jpg (http://www.wendycarlos.com/photos/indexphoto.jpg)

Depends on how you want to define "experience":

First time feeling I should have been a girl - 1960 ish when I was 4-5. I was in my sisters school uniform anticipating my first day of kindergarden. Mom tried to set me straight about boy's and girls clothes

First contact with a TG organization - I was about 14 sending away for info from the Erickson Education Foundation

First knowledge of there are others like me, not gay, not drag queens, but someone knowing they should have been a girl - Watching a movie on TV about Christine Jorgenson.  That is how I learned of the Erickson Education Foundation.  Both were 1970 ish

First encounter with a real life full time TS - 1979
First marriage to a real life TS - 1997  The very same woman as my first encounter :o 

First time out in public presenting as a woman actually feeling so perfectly right and happy being the real me - 2011

First time actually going to a TG support group - 2011

Oh what a long strange trip it's been

Oh, but are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful...

When I first read that headline I was worried that I'd have to be writing one of those: Dear Penthouse, I never thought I'd be writing a letter to you, but...

Reading Myra Breckenridge in 8th grade, 1969.  Frickin nun confiscated it from me (like she did with Candy - so much for 'if you're done with your work you can read on your own....).  It took me years to find another copy of Candy, but Myra was a huge best seller, so I went down to the corner store and got another copy that afternoon.  Didn't take it to school.

  Christine Jorgenson on a local live TV talk show in the mid 1960's.  My mom said that she was not a homosexual as such a thing would be in the street or in the playground would equate those as homosexual.  A lot of gay males did dress in drag to pass off as the female part of a heterosexual couple.  Remember, some homosexual couples did get arrested if caught back then.  I did know that I was not gay and what mom told me was a relief.  I came out to her in 1977. 

  Joelene

As a teenager with my first girlfriend, realizing I wanted to be the one with the vagina.

Course I didn't know I was transgender. I thought I was just weird.

My mother noticed the first signs when I was 18 months old. I was growing into a headstrong, independent, stubborn little sod rather than the sweet, submissive, obedient little girl she thought I ought to be.

My own first clues came when I was 5 years old, when I started to notice gender differences. I had my first female friend at the time (a neighbour)... and for the first time I noticed that I related more to my brother and our male friends than to this strange but lovely alien creature who was my female friend.

I expressed desires to be a boy and I insisted on wearing boys' clothing etc. etc. (all the clichés) but at every turn I was told that I'm weird, confused or downright mistaken about who I really am. I lived in a very conservative, religious, segregated environment (Apartheid South Africa of all places) so I simply learned not to tell anyone else how I was feeling because I needed to avoid being criticised and punished. I honestly thought I was the only person in the world who felt this way.

I didn't know that transgender/transsexual people existed until I read an article about Caroline Cossey in People magazine when I was 19 years old. I cried myself to sleep that night because I realised that there are other people like me and that there's something that can be done to make me feel better. I tore that article out of the magazine and I still have it to this day.

I discreetly researched the options that were available to FtMs at the time but things looked pretty dire in my opinion, so I shelved my dreams and threw myself headlong into trying to navigate my way through life as a female. That was 21 years ago, and I reached crisis point this year when I came to the conclusion that I simply cannot continue pretending to be something I'm not. So I did more research on the options available for FtMs these days and they look so much more promising, so here I am!

Reading The Marvellous Land of Oz when I was around 7 - reading Venus Plus X and Triton in my very early teens - my mum telling me when I was 15 (and trying to come out to her as... something...) about a boy called Chris at her art college who went away for a few weeks and came back as Christine :). First trans person knowingly met, 2 and a half years ago, he definitely started the avalanche for me.

Reading about April Ashley in about 1967ish.

Playing dress up with my sister when I was seven and wanting to wear the dresses.

At least that's the earliest one I remember vividly enough to recall.

My mom told me that when I was four, I took a bottle of rubber cement and tried to glue my penis back. When she asked me what I was doing, I told her that I need to hide it so I can be her daughter. Apparently this did not clue her in that something was different about me.

I was 3 years old when I was caught playing dress up with my girl cousins. I kept doing that off and on, and I couldn't "GET" why it was so wrong for me to do that. It got so bad that my dad had to beat the crap out of me for me to stop.
But, for years I was like "WHY? is this wrong? I feel like a girl!...I want to be pretty like one!"  And ever since then, I've been battling my gender dysphoria. I tried the macho man thing and THAT was a complete mess!

At age 6 or 7 my sisters used to dress me up with my moms wig and there clothes. I kept doing it after that on my own without them knowing. Tried to control it for along time, did 20 years in the Navy. 

Depends on how you want to define "experience":

Or what you want to define as transsexual - since of lot of the above experiences strikes me as your basic TG stuff, not specifically TS.

Like are we talking about what clued us in on ourselves and something we did?
Or like someone we met, or a show we saw? I am kinda confused but I'll give it a shot.

I met a trans girl in a alternative school when I was around 12? Not sure, it was after my stint in the mental health facility. I was kinda erm a twat to her, you know that old chesnut. Anyway eventually I would follow her around everywhere with her friend. Always asking her questions and being called a little ->-bleeped-<-got by the older kid who slammed me around every day there for doing so. It's ok, one day the other kid who was very protective over me through him into the wall. It was hilarious.

You know something Snowpaw. I was a twat with people who were different from me when I was at school. I think most are.

But just like those who were twats to us, they need to grow past it. It's life. It's childhood. Not the idylic time of poets and politicians, but the reality of growing up and learning to deal with crap.

I only make that point because a few years ago, when the school reunion thing kicked off with that Friends Reunited thing, I bumped into someone I remember being particularly unpleasant to. In my defense, a number of us were and to make things worse, he was one of the nicest people you could ever meet. Anyway, I wrote a long and self critical email to him, telling him how sorry I was and how bad I feel and that he never deserved any of it and how much we admired him which was why we were so unpleasant.

Turns out, it was the wrong fellow!

Quote from: spacial on November 03, 2012, 03:39:07 PM
You know something Snowpaw. I was a twat with people who were different from me when I was at school. I think most are.

But just like those who were twats to us, they need to grow past it. It's life. It's childhood. Not the idylic time of poets and politicians, but the reality of growing up and learning to deal with crap.

I only make that point because a few years ago, when the school reunion thing kicked off with that Friends Reunited thing, I bumped into someone I remember being particularly unpleasant to. In my defense, a number of us were and to make things worse, he was one of the nicest people you could ever meet. Anyway, I wrote a long and self critical email to him, telling him how sorry I was and how bad I feel and that he never deserved any of it and how much we admired him which was why we were so unpleasant.

Turns out, it was the wrong fellow!

I wish I knew where this person was. I want to thank them for inspiring me and being my friend despite what I said, and I want to apologize. I regret so often how I was in school before I came out. I tried so hard to cling to some petty religion of hate. Well look at me now :D I'm uh different I think... sometimes. Idk

"The world according to Garp".

Guy loses penis after awkward car accident, guy becomes woman.

I saw it as a kid and remember thinking how messed up that was. It also helped later reinforcing my belief that there was no such thing as "female to male", since obviously, the presence of the penis was the be all and end all for what gender you could be.   ::) 

I think most of us have similar memories.

I remember dressing up as a girl when I was about 4 years old.
Seeing something about it on TV when about 6.
Telling my mum at about the same time. Lost my mum when I was 9 and had to repress feeling just to survive.

When I was about 15 it came back again very strong during puberty.
Reading articles in the newspapers which did not help much.

I saw my first TG girl in person in my 20's after moving to Sydney, some looked good but most did not.
There was no web to read up so I had no idea were to get more information.

In my early 30's went to a therapist to talk about it for the first time other than to my mother many years before.
More tragedy prevented me talking about my GID with him as there were more urgent thing to deal with.

Thus only now I am having my first true experience as only now I am doing something about it other than sitting on that painful fence not knowing what to do.

I didn't think that dressing as a girl was significant to me feeling I should be a girl. For me, it was all about the deep, deep feeling that I should be a girl. Dressing like one just felt normal. I just look at this a bit different than others apparently.

Quote from: Brooke777 on November 04, 2012, 10:24:48 AM
I didn't think that dressing as a girl was significant to me feeling I should be a girl. For me, it was all about the deep, deep feeling that I should be a girl. Dressing like one just felt normal. I just look at this a bit different than others apparently.

This, albeit from the opposite direction. My parents, teachers & other authority figures applied enormous pressure to try to force me to dress & act like a girl, but it always felt weird & unnatural to me.

Boys' clothes were simply 'normal' clothes to me that I didn't even have to think about; girls' clothes felt like I was in drag. And nobody should be forced to dress in drag against their will - particularly a child.

I don't know if I myself would call it a TS experience...but

When I was about 16 I got pretty drunk and my girl side came out...you know how alcohol brings out hidden things about people. At first I wasn't sure what it was, but I started to notice that it kept occurring in small ways every day.

At that point I thought I was bigender...although I'm still not sure...

Because when I came out to my parents I started feeling more female than male, and I haven't switched back to feeling male.

Now I'm starting to think that my male side was a method of coping with people bugging me in school. I have quite a few feminine traits...although people wouldn't call them that; if I pointed it out they would instantly recognize it.

I don't know what's up with the, "I knew when I was three years old crowd". It kind of makes a lot of TG/TS people feel as though they are fake. I don't mean to criticize people who have experiences at a young age; but I just hate it when it makes other tg/TS people fall into more self doubt...

Kiera

As one of the 'I knew when I was 4 years old crowd' it souldn't make you feel fake.

This isn't a race. It's a bunch of people with varying degrees and types of gender identity problems, supporting each other is finding ways to deal with them.

I am really pleased you made these points.

Keira

I agree with Jill - my experience doesn't invalidate yours; nor does yours invalidate mine. We all get there when we get there, how we get there, and if we get there. We all struggle in our own way, and each battle is legit.

Quote from: Keira on November 05, 2012, 05:33:38 AM
I don't know what's up with the, "I knew when I was three years old crowd". It kind of makes a lot of TG/TS people feel as though they are fake. I don't mean to criticize people who have experiences at a young age; but I just hate it when it makes other tg/TS people fall into more self doubt...

I feel the same way (as someone who didn't have an inkling I was Trans until about 6 months ago, but is having very similar feelings to just about everyone here.)

I've had to decide the past is unimportant - it's my current feelings that matter, but I still get the part about feeling fake. In a world where Transgender people have their authenticity questioned frequently we're very sensitive to that. For me, most recently, it was by a psychologist evaluating me, who spoke the words "I'm going to diagnose you with GID" almost painfully, like it hurt him, like he was being dragged to it, like he though I was lying to him, trying to fool him, but he couldn't prove it.

One of my unique problems was that I was raised women.My dad died when I was six and there were no other male figures in my family there for me to pattern off of.
By the age of 10 I estimate I spent over 300 hours at the makeup counter 150 hours in the shoe department and 100 hours and women's close department tagging along with my mother and my sister.
Then to be followed by an hour and a half of chitter chatter at the restaurant.

Quote from: agfrommd on November 05, 2012, 07:27:26 AM

I feel the same way (as someone who didn't have an inkling I was Trans until about 6 months ago, but is having very similar feelings to just about everyone here.)

I've had to decide the past is unimportant - it's my current feelings that matter, but I still get the part about feeling fake. In a world where Transgender people have their authenticity questioned frequently we're very sensitive to that. For me, most recently, it was by a psychologist evaluating me, who spoke the words "I'm going to diagnose you with GID" almost painfully, like it hurt him, like he was being dragged to it, like he though I was lying to him, trying to fool him, but he couldn't prove it.

The worst part of trying to figure out if you are TS/TG is that "we are our own worst critics." On top of criticizing ourselves we are deconstructed by others. I can't even really say if I am "still figuring out if I am transgender"; it's more the fact that I can't believe I am.

Sorry to go off topic...but I think there is more than just "one first TS experience". It is more like a journey, than flicking a light-switch.

I'm not a TS, so that title doesn't apply.

But for first TG?  Well, that sort of depends on threshold.

Probably around the age of 7 or so-ish, I remember my mom going on how long and strong my nails were.  I just couldn't be bothered to cut them all the time.  I didn't really care about any gender overtones.

Also around that age, my sister and I borrowed my mom's house shoes.  They were soft, so they were fun to wear.  I didn't really care what they looked liked so much, or that they had any gender attached.  My mom wanted us to stop, though. XD

Around 10-11, I remember being really drawn to a shiny poodle skirt my mom made for my sister.  One time I was alone in the house, I decided to wear it.  I wasn't really sure what to do from there, but I did some spins and other movement.  It felt great.  I was very conscious of the gender associations, but I don't think I ever felt like it was making me a girl or anything, just that it was forbidden.