Susan's Place Transgender Resources

On some level I always knew something was off.   At the age of 4 I wanted to wear the things I saw girls wearing and once asked my mother for a one piece swimsuit.  My mom gave me my first of many lectures about "what is appropriate for boys".  I mean, I didn't know the anatomical difference at the time, I just thought boy/girl was some sort of personal preference of your parents or something.  Most of my friends were girls because I didn't like the rough ways boys played and I hated fighting.  Both of my cousins were girls and I always played with their dolls when we went to visit, which obviously bothered my parents.  To compensate, my parents force fed me a regimen of sports and sporting goods.  I had a pretty tough time as a kid trying to fit in and getting relentlessly bullied and ended up developing a range of behavioral problems that, in retrospect, stemmed from my brain/body mismatch and its little friend, ADD.

I ended up actually liking sports (and yes, I sucked mightily at all of them and still basically throw like a girl!), but I also had this thing for butterflies since I was very young.  When I was 12, my father took a trip to Brazil and brought me back this shiny blue mounted butterfly.  I have had that butterfly in my possession continuously since then.   In fact it's the one thing I've held on to the longest.  It's on the wall next to me right now.  The butterfly is my spirit animal, and now I see it as an obvious symbol of who I really am.

The first record I ever bought was Pink Floyd- The Wall.   It's still my favorite, even after 34 years and 2000+ more albums in my collection.  The sad thing was that I failed to recognize my very own wall until it came crumbling down over 30 years later.   

As a teenager I became a big fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I saw that movie in the theater over 50 times.  I think I know why now. 

Then there were all the dreams I never wanted to wake up from where I was distinctly female... 

Do any of you feel kind of dense for not seeing some obvious signs?

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 10:57:01 AM
Do any of you feel kind of dense for not seeing some obvious signs?

Not dense, angry. I think if I'd understood what transgender was, I would have figured it out easily decades ago.

Based on what I read in the media, I thought trans women felt like "a woman in a man's body." Since I never felt like a woman, I thought my intense desire to become female was just a weird fantasy.

If any of the media reports had mentioned the MANY DIFFERENT WAYS to experience being transgender, I would quickly have figured out the fact that it hurt not having boobs and a female body was a giveaway.

Interestingly I never connected all that with the fact that I've always been fascinated by women's issues, media, and lives. I also never connected either of those two with the fact that I've always preferred the friendship and company of woman.

In fact, I used to envy trans women because they got to live as women while I never would.

It wasn't until I found Susan's Place that I had enough information to put the puzzle pieces together. That's one of the reasons why I try to educate people every chance I get.

Ive been wearing female clothes and make up since i was like 6 years old

"I want to look like that." ".... That's a guy."
Thinking/hoping that I was somehow going to turn out to be at least part boy.
Almost exclusively identifying with male characters.
Stuff like that.

This one hit me a while ago, but I did have some guys I was friends with, but it was never on the guy to guy level really, it finally hit me that I had actual crushes on them like a bunch of the other girls did!! Boy were my eyes popping when that sank in!!

There is quite a list of the number of sports that I was a total klutz at, with coordination that was worth two points a game to the other team!!

I loved girl type crafts as a young child, but I passed that off to the fact that I had an immune system glitch (in the form of allergies) and had to be housebound in fall and spring, and had to have SOMETHING to do.  I also had a difference in play styles with my sister -- I gave her dolls rides in my "mandatory" truck!!  She used my trucks to turn the dolls into crash victims!!  <and then blamed me for hurting her dolls>.  I got the spankings from that cuz I was the boy!!

Crap, I totally forgot about the crocheting and needlepoint when I was a kid.

Of course drunkenly kissing a couple of cishetguy friends in college probably should have set off the red flag warning.

there's was never a time were i thought i was a boy until i hit puberty. i only identified as female even though i'm a sadist. only sport i really like is swimming and when i started to stop swimming becuz of how i looked, it was like a punch in the gut and made me realize i wasnt who i thought i was. its quite upsetting really becuz i love swimming and now i can barely change without a blind fold on

I have a few fun ones.

I snuck into the ladies bathroom of my church when I was about seven. While exiting, my aunt caught me and I quickly came up with the excuse that the male bathroom was full and I really had to go. It was a lie. I was just curious about what in the world was in there. At the time, I didn't see this as odd but looking back I realize this was me 'venturing' into the 'other' world.

Then there are the ones we hear about a lot: dolls, make up, exclusively friends with girls, etc. My mother kept her wedding heels and man did I love wearing those things... in secret, of course. They were just so pretty!

One time I very vividly remember coming down a set of stairs (I was like... 14) and all I could see in my head was a fabulous gown glittering along as I made my grand entrance. While I was still in partial self denial of being trans (I identified as a drag queen at that point in my life), I looked back on this memory as my first desire to perform in drag. I still love performing, but now I look at this memory through a different lens: I see it as my first 'mtf' desire, as opposed to just noncomformance.

I'm done rambling, I promise.

Quote from: suzifrommd on May 14, 2014, 11:12:43 AM

Based on what I read in the media, I thought trans women felt like "a woman in a man's body." Since I never felt like a woman, I thought my intense desire to become female was just a weird fantasy.

I think that is the same reason it took me until this year to identify as trans.

As a kid (after puberty) whenever someone would mention an accident where someone's guy parts were crushed/severed etc and had to be removed I would silently wish that it happened to me so I wouldn't have to have them... That should have been a pretty big sign. (I heard those stories a lot as my mom works in the ER)

Also after puberty I started to wear more and baggier clothing as I matured to hide my male shape. Currently wear men's large when I easily fit in women's small. I consciously knew what I was trying to hide so I don't know why I didn't try to correct anything.

And yeah the sudden drop in interest in swimming post puberty. Preferring my friends to be female, envying them rather than crushing on them. Playing house and kitchen pretend games as a kid when the boys wanted to play sports etc.

I think on some level somethinhg didn't feel right. One christmas I was maybe 3 or 4, probably closer to four and it kind of confused me that the girls got different toys than I did.

Quote from: Umiko Liliana on May 14, 2014, 11:44:28 AMi only identified as female even though i'm a sadist.

Sadism is more common in males, but can be present in females as well. I'm also not sure how social aspects affect the statistics since there's a good chance the stats only show some and not all.

Let's just say I knew I was different for a very long time. My favorite childhood memory / book was about being a mermaid in a secret lake / mountain. Can't remember the book name but still have the picture in my mind

During puberty I always hoped my body would silently become female - but it didn't happen. I read Caroline cossey autobiography aged 11 or 12. I was watching programs about Ladyboys and transgender... But was also aware of some negative instances in my life and surroundings - and tried to brush it off as "fantasy" or ""this is the body I was born with and I'll try my best to live with it". Tried - succeeded to some extent - but eventually stopped living a lie and became my true self. And am much happier

Quote from: suzifrommd on May 14, 2014, 11:12:43 AM
Based on what I read in the media, I thought trans women felt like "a woman in a man's body." Since I never felt like a woman, I thought my intense desire to become female was just a weird fantasy.

That's exactly how it was for me (except I'm FTM). I thought being trans was feeling like you're trapped in the wrong body, and I never felt like a boy. I often felt like I wanted to be a boy, but mainly I didn't focus on it. I 'knew' that being female means you're a girl, so I 'knew' that, because of the body I had, I was a girl, and I never questioned it. I didn't feel like a girl, but I didn't feel like a boy either. How could I when I've never been a boy before?

The biggest sign for me was that I hated myself. I hated everything about myself and I never had a reason why, I just did. I had a wonderful family, childhood, life...but I hated myself. That could've been general low self-esteem, but I know it's not because I don't hate myself anymore, now that I know who I am.

Quote from: Edge on May 14, 2014, 12:13:39 PM
Sadism is more common in males, but can be present in females as well. I'm also not sure how social aspects affect the statistics since there's a good chance the stats only show some and not all.

i can be submissive to. i do get a thrill out of being manhandled o.o

When I was about 8 or 9, I saw some story on the news about a woman who used to be a man, and there was this surgery involved.  I was like, "Wow, you can do that?"  I was absolutely fascinated with the concept.  After that, every time I saw anything on TV or read an article about a transperson, it was like, "Hello!"

Unfortunately, some of the things I saw on TV about transsexuals were quite damaging to me, and it helped nail my closet door shut for many years.

When I was about 20 or 21, my uber-conservative boss found an episiode of Phil Donahue where the topic was "These people had sex changes only to become lesbians."  To me it wasn't weird at all.  To him it was "These f***ing freaks need to be gang raped and shot.  Can you f***ing believe this?  It's the most f***ed up thing ever.  Here, have a beer, I videotaped the whole thing.  You're never going to believe this."  And I had to watch.

Never mind about Jerry f***ing Springer, the king of transploitation.  Yeah, we're all freaks whether we're pretty or not.  GFY, a*hole.  Then there were the episodes where transpeople supposedly "came out" to their SO's, only to be violently rejected every time.  Yep, another nail in the closet door.

Quote from: Umiko Liliana on May 14, 2014, 12:33:46 PM
i can be submissive to. i do get a thrill out of being manhandled o.o

Thank you Umiko. I didn't want to go there but I am definately on the submissive side. Just don't kill me, cut me or leave bruises and I'm good to go.

Quote from: Jess42 on May 14, 2014, 12:37:08 PM
Thank you Umiko. I didn't want to go there but I am definately on the submissive side. Just don't kill me, cut me or leave bruises and I'm good to go.

exactly! no harming plz, everything else i'm ok with lol

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 12:34:18 PM
When I was about 20 or 21, my uber-conservative boss found an episiode of Phil Donahue where the topic was "These people had sex changes only to become lesbians."  To me it wasn't weird at all.  To him it was "These f***ing freaks need to be gang raped and shot.  Can you f***ing believe this?  It's the most f***ed up thing ever.  Here, have a beer, I videotaped the whole thing.  You're never going to believe this."  And I had to watch.

Sounds to me like that uber conservative boss may have had a little secret and masking it with bravado. Freudian slip when he mentioned gang rape. If he was really that disgusted he would have probably just said shot in the head. He would have probably been the first in line for the rape part. People like that never cease to amaze me and he was probably POed they were lesbians and he would never have a shot with them.

OH and video taping, why? To watch over and over again perhaps. Sorry you had to watch and hear his BS but slips of the tounge are extrememly interesting.

If I'm honest with myself there probably weren't many times before I hit puberty.

There are probably a few events which I could contort and make fit.

My early childhood events have no bearing and don't particularly matter to me.  I feel like I'm trans now, that's what's important to me.

Quote
That's exactly how it was for me (except I'm FTM). I thought being trans was feeling like you're trapped in the wrong body, and I never felt like a boy. I often felt like I wanted to be a boy, but mainly I didn't focus on it. I 'knew' that being female means you're a girl, so I 'knew' that, because of the body I had, I was a girl, and I never questioned it. I didn't feel like a girl, but I didn't feel like a boy either. How could I when I've never been a boy before?

The biggest sign for me was that I hated myself. I hated everything about myself and I never had a reason why, I just did. I had a wonderful family, childhood, life...but I hated myself. That could've been general low self-esteem, but I know it's not because I don't hate myself anymore, now that I know who I am.

Wow Jason, that sounds so eerily recognisable!

For me one of the biggest things would be that I always identified with and choose male characters without second thought. I never sought anything behind it, I didn't think about it, it just FELT GOOD.
For the rest I was also a massive tomboy and I behaved more like a boy than a girl, but this could also be an early sign of lesbianism, or just disappear later on. (it wasn't, but anyway)
Also when I would write stories, or create characters (my own) it would always be males without a thought. I found it hard to interact with females, unless they were very tomboyish and behaved like boys.

(//)

Quote from: Jason C on May 14, 2014, 12:28:22 PM
That's exactly how it was for me (except I'm FTM). I thought being trans was feeling like you're trapped in the wrong body, and I never felt like a boy. I often felt like I wanted to be a boy, but mainly I didn't focus on it. I 'knew' that being female means you're a girl, so I 'knew' that, because of the body I had, I was a girl, and I never questioned it. I didn't feel like a girl, but I didn't feel like a boy either. How could I when I've never been a boy before?

The biggest sign for me was that I hated myself. I hated everything about myself and I never had a reason why, I just did. I had a wonderful family, childhood, life...but I hated myself. That could've been general low self-esteem, but I know it's not because I don't hate myself anymore, now that I know who I am.

This. Exactly.

I knew when I was four or so, but by the time I was about  six or seven I'd learned that it was not an OK thing to think, much less say; and at that time there really wasn't any way to think about it, once you've had it (figuratively) beaten into you that you are in fact a girl. But I've always been gender-nonconforming, and it's hard to think of stuff I do that's not pretty much male-identified. Well, I cook, and I love to cook for others -- to the extent that I have any nurturing tendencies, that's where they come out.

Quote from: Erik Ezrin on May 14, 2014, 12:54:12 PM
Wow Jason, that sounds so eerily recognisable!

For me one of the biggest things would be that I always identified with and choose male characters without second thought. I never sought anything behind it, I didn't think about it, it just FELT GOOD.
For the rest I was also a massive tomboy and I behaved more like a boy than a girl, but this could also be an early sign of lesbianism, or just disappear later on. (it wasn't, but anyway)
Also when I would write stories, or create characters (my own) it would always be males without a thought. I found it hard to interact with females, unless they were very tomboyish and behaved like boys.

I was just the total opposite of you Erik.

Playing superstitious games with myself "if I land this game of hopscotch, I will wake up as a girl tomorrow"

The big one by far though... Padding my hips as a young boy and having it follow me into adulthood. Yeah that was awkward

Quote from: Jennygirl on May 14, 2014, 01:01:29 PM
Playing superstitious games with myself "if I land this game of hopscotch, I will wake up as a girl tomorrow"

That's funny in kind of a weird way Jenny. You know when kids go to bed at night and say prayers? God, how many times I asked for that last part come true the next morning?

Quote from: Jess42 on May 14, 2014, 01:07:07 PM
That's funny in kind of a weird way Jenny. You know when kids go to bed at night and say prayers? God, how many times I asked for that last part come true the next morning?

even to this day i do that. i even cry until my eyes start bleed saying "god, plz, when i wake up, make this nightmare end" but nope, he doesnt listen which makes me feel even worse

Ive had a lot. (Dint know about dysphoria antil diagnosed)

Anyway I had physical dysphoria and didnt know that exsisted antill coming here.

Pushing my belly out and wondering what it would be like to be pregnant.
Id scrutinise my pelvis/abdomen id prod and poke this area and that and i know its silly but i hoped that maybe i had ovaries.
And the killer for me. It was pride in feminin features that helped me cope bieng in this body as long as i have. (this is the one i wish id noticed sooner)

And id alaws choose fem for games, And play that char as myself (do what i would do) even calling fem chars by my birth name antill i choose a fem name for myself.

Quote from: Jennygirl on May 14, 2014, 01:01:29 PM
Playing superstitious games with myself "if I land this game of hopscotch, I will wake up as a girl tomorrow"

I used to try mind over matter. Hopping that if i concentraited anough on hips and boobs id get them natrually

Quote
The big one by far though... Padding my hips as a young boy and having it follow me into adulthood. Yeah that was awkward

Cross Gender behaviour persisting at and through puberty is one of the primary sings of dysphoria.

Quote from: Jess42 on May 14, 2014, 01:07:07 PM
That's funny in kind of a weird way Jenny. You know when kids go to bed at night and say prayers? God, how many times I asked for that last part come true the next morning?

Haha yes!! I did that too!

Quote from: Umiko Liliana on May 14, 2014, 01:10:24 PM
even to this day i do that. i even cry until my eyes start bleed saying "god, plz, when i wake up, make this nightmare end" but nope, he doesnt listen which makes me feel even worse

Aww hon. You just have to do what you can and seek out the little things that bring you those nuggets of enjoyment. It is appeasing in a way, and it also teaches you things. For me I guess it was the hip padding ;)

Quote from: ButterflyVickster on May 14, 2014, 01:18:19 PM
I used to try mind over matter. Hopping that if i concentraited anough on hips and boobs id get them natrually

Hahah, dang. That is almost exactly what I did! I was determined to find the next best solution that I could do then at that moment- which was to augment my body with anything I could find... socks, shirts, garments... I kind of lost track of all the things I tried.

Quote
Cross Gender behaviour persisting at and through puberty is one of the primary sings of dysphoria.

That's exactly what my gender therapist said- verbatim. It was one of those things early in transition that helped me out of the days where I wondered if I was "indeed trans" or just chasing some kind of fantasy.

Quote from: Umiko Liliana on May 14, 2014, 01:10:24 PM
even to this day i do that. i even cry until my eyes start bleed saying "god, plz, when i wake up, make this nightmare end" but nope, he doesnt listen which makes me feel even worse

Me too, I just don't wake up too awfully dissapointed "cause it ain't happened yet.

Quote from: Jennygirl on May 14, 2014, 01:26:24 PM
Haha yes!! I did that too!

Aww hon. You just have to do what you can and seek out the little things that bring you those nuggets of enjoyment. It is appeasing in a way, and it also teaches you things. For me I guess it was the hip padding ;)

Hahah, dang. That is almost exactly what I did! I was determined to find the next best solution that I could do then at that moment- which was to augment my body with anything I could find... socks, shirts, garments... I kind of lost track of all the things I tried.

That's exactly what my gender therapist said- verbatim. It was one of those things early in transition that helped me out of the days where I wondered if I was "indeed trans" or just chasing some kind of fantasy.

True words of wisdom. It is nice to know that I wasn't and am not the only one that has that particular prayer stuck in my head. There definately seems to be a trend in this thread.

I was never religious, and never prayed for this, but OMG was I so jealous of my baby sister when I was 14 that I wished somehow I could start over and just BE her.  I'm really glad I'm not her, now that I see what her life is/was like and exactly who she has become.  In fact I would NOT trade places with her for anything in the world now, but back then I lost a lot sleep over it.

I now wonder if that I had access to women's clothing that would have fit me at the time if I would have worn them.  My mother was 5 feet tall and by then I was way too big to have fit into anything of hers.  That was a line that I really wanted to try crossing at some point, but I never could get myself to do it due to the shame, guilt and further confusion I feared it might cause me.  Then I feared that can of worms I'd be opening.  I never actually did it until I was 43, and yes, it made me feel much better and helped confirm what I had always suspected about myself.

When I watch TV shows back the and still today, when I see a family and a brother and sister I can't help but think how the brother got so messed over by the universe and the girl got so lucky. Am I the only one that thinks this way. Of course F2Ms will feel totally opposite.

God I always felt so sorry for Bud Bundy and would have died to be Kelly Bundy, airhead and all. :P

i'm a complete clutzoid xD i trip on air, i giggle when i talk and i walk with a very fem switch that not even gay people can mimic. i never understood what men though and i always though they were icky  :o

For some reason I always had a thing for Katharine Hepburn.  I identified strongly with her and just thought I wanted to marry a woman like that.  Now I realize that she was someone I admired for a much different reason.

Quote from: Umiko Liliana on May 14, 2014, 02:08:32 PM
i'm a complete clutzoid xD i trip on air, i giggle when i talk and i walk with a very fem switch that not even gay people can mimic. i never understood what men though and i always though they were icky  :o

I never thought men were icky, at least when they take a shower. ;)

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 02:14:32 PM
For some reason I always had a thing for Katharine Hepburn.  I identified strongly with her and just thought I wanted to marry a woman like that.  Now I realize that she was someone I admired for a much different reason.

I am trying to think of a woman that actually I admired or identified with and I am actually having a hard time just pinpointing it to one.

There was so many and (almost) no one picked up on it. The only exception was one aunt on my Dad's side of the family. She didn't say anything at the time, since she saw how my family was about the whole thing.

1. Asked for a purse for my 5th birthday. (I was obviously turned down.) But it was my reaction that was a trip. My mom replied to me that: "But you're a boy. Boys don't have purses." I just gave her this blank look like, "what?". I knew that I was stuck in this boy body. But I never felt like a boy.

2. Asked the aforementioned aunt if she would buy me one instead. She said that she would if she could, but she knew that my parents would have tripped out over that so that was an obvious no-go.

3. Every time that I played "house" with my cousins, I always refused to play the "dad". I would always say, "Why can't I be the sister or something?" That always threw them for a loop.

4. Always walked and talked like a girl (I would even walk on my tip-toes to emulate my Mom in her high heels).

5. Began wearing my mom's clothes in secret around 10 to 12. Was busted a TON of times. I wore one of my cousins clothes a few times too when I was at her house. I got busted on that too.

Through all of this, everyone looks back on it and they thought that "it was just a phase". However, there WAS one instance where my mom and I had a talk one day after school when I came home and found out that I was busted yet again. She asked me if I wanted to live my life as a girl. I REALLY wanted to say 'YES!!', but I knew that my stupid, drunk of a dad would never have went for it, it would have caused a ton of problems, possibly their divorce. So, I chickened out and said 'no.' But if I were the parent and my child had exhibited that many signs, I would have found a competent therapist and done what I could to see that they would live the way that was right for them. But back in the late 80s, all that I saw was trash tv tabloid crap treating trans people like they were freaks. I also thought that if I did come out, I would be disowned and all crap. So, I stayed in the closest and gave up on the cross-dressing.

Quote from: suzifrommd on May 14, 2014, 11:12:43 AM
Not dense, angry. I think if I'd understood what transgender was, I would have figured it out easily decades ago.

Based on what I read in the media, I thought trans women felt like "a woman in a man's body." Since I never felt like a woman, I thought my intense desire to become female was just a weird fantasy.

This ^

I even talked to my MTF friend a while back and said that I had been thinking a LOT about SRS, and she replied "Well, I don't know, but if you FEEL like a guy and not a girl, then you should definitely look into it.

I'm not saying a DON'T feel like a guy (though I definitely identify as one, and prefer male pronouns), but I don't feel like a butch lesbian either, and that's what people saw in me.

I had always had more guy friends, identified less with the female drama and overdoing things and more with the guy way of being real and direct (I've been called blunt on many occasions), and I even played trading card games, video games, and liked females more than I ever had guys. Another giveaway that really helped me on my realization and acceptance of my true self was that I remember being just a little kid and thinking "I want to be a boy." I'd see things on TV of FTMs, and think "Man, I wish I could do that. I hate being a girl."

I HATE having a female's body; always have, and the dysphoria began when I began to truly choose my friends and the way I present myself. Both social and physical.

HI Jill F
Your story Mimicks mine almost to the T. (no pun intended). Anyways we could be twinners!
Tear down the wall!
Jenn

When I was around 7 or 8 I used to tuck my penis in the shower. I remember feeling comfort in not being able to see it. At the time I didn't know why I felt like I did. Whenever I would try to act feminine in elementary the teachers would tell me not to do that or this because it was girly. Combined with my experiences in school and my family's machismo culture, it was really tough to express myself.

So in my case I did feel like a girl. I just wasn't allowed to express that ever during my childhood.

This thread is very heartening for me. Mostly because so many people felt the exact same way that I did. Not that was a "girl trapped in a boy's body," but that I knew, on  a deep level, that my life would have been so much better if I'd been a girl. I remember, years ago when my parents force me to go to a councilor, during a discussion I had thought to myself, "I should tell him what I really think so he can label me as crazy instead of depressed and then they'll ship me off to a mental institution so I don't have to worry about this crap." :P

Quote from: Lady_Oracle on May 14, 2014, 03:13:23 PM
When I was around 7 or 8 I used to tuck my penis in the shower. I remember feeling comfort in not being able to see it. At the time I didn't know why I felt like I did. Whenever I would try to act feminine in elementary the teachers would tell me not to do that or this because it was girly. Combined with my experiences in school and my family's machismo culture, it was really tough to express myself.

So in my case I did feel like a girl. I just wasn't allowed to express that ever during my childhood.

OMG, I've been trying to shove that junk back up in there since as long as I can remember!  Never did have a use for it until high school.  When I was about 5 or 6, my brother had to have one removed due to cryptorchidism. (I later had part of one removed for similar reasons...) I asked my mother what they were for, and she told me that "Those parts are what you need to you grow up to me a man, grow a beard and be a daddy."  I remember thinking I could do without that.

Also, I could never take my shirt off.  I hated swimming, locker rooms, and god forbid I ever got chosen for the "skins" basketball team.  I never liked to be seen naked, and I still have some residual intimacy issues to this day.  Actually I'm relieved to never have to have sex in the male role ever again.  It's not like I actually had anything to be ashamed of and my junk is nothing out of the ordinary.  It's just not "me".

i tried to remove it with a piece of string when i first became aware of it after the whole operation "cut off" failure. my adamantcy at 15 when told my mother i was a female and i wanted surgery for about 3 months straight. of course she thought it was a phase and my sister called me mentally ill. she even made a comment the other day since my vitamin D level is low so i got pills, she said those pills are also good for mental illnesses. it was like a huge punch in the gut

hey,

i cant say, ah i was going for dolls, wishing that i will awake as a girl(as a horse maybe, but girl, no) in my childhood. I know i was different and i was used to boys and girls. boys at home, there were no girls at my age, and girls at all other places. so nothing useful for me there:S

QuoteEvery time that I played "house" with my cousins, I always refused to play the "dad". I would always say, "Why can't I be the sister or something?" That always threw them for a loop.

it is called mother-father-child here and i wasnt allowed to play the mother. for my cousin it was clear: "you are a boy", but i cant understand that.

and puberty...i cant say i wish for being a girl. alien feelings started and i really dont want the voice break, getting afraid of being gay maybe. it is all really subtil. most could be explained as trans-signs but other reasons would be valid, too. low self-esteem for the inconfidence in behaviour. just no party, womanizer or rambo boy. alien feelings caused by puberty. many cis hate their secondary sex characteristics when they develop without being trans, so... today i dont hate anything of it, too.
ok why i really want to ask the "maybe gay or trans" guy what was wrong with him and how he found out because i know inside that iam not so different to him, or why i want to get hair-growth-pills for breasts before i saw that man breast dont look like female breasts, and some other things are not so easy explainable by other reasons.
and i do many things, really many things that no one could think i am gay. that was really a matter for me. even if i always know that i am probably not gay because i always look so longingly to girls.

it is not so easy, it is a great picture without any clear signs like crossdressing, praying(ok i never pray this age), girl stereotypical interests, etc. i was always realistic and so i it is no wonder, that i dont think about things, i dont know that those exist.

Quote from: Jennygirl on May 14, 2014, 01:26:24 PM
That's exactly what my gender therapist said- verbatim. It was one of those things early in transition that helped me out of the days where I wondered if I was "indeed trans" or just chasing some kind of fantasy.

there i am now. from 20 upward i have everything a good trans need, but that i wasnt aware of anything in my childhood is bad. childs are so honest about those things... :S

greetings

To be honest I didn't remember any major gender problems from my childhood. It started during puberty. I started crossdressing and and was envying girls rather than being sexually interested. But I have many blocks that prevented me from accepting that I am transgender. I have never felt like female trapped in male body. It was obvious that I have male body thus I must be male and I didn't try to think about it any deeper. But I wanted to have female body so much. I think that this "you must feel like a woman"  prevented me from any progress. But after joining susans and other tg communities I recognized who I am and started transition and it is the best decision I did. I don't regret it and am happier now and love everything about it.

This thread really helped me to look back and remember all those little signs that I either ignored, denied or suppressed. 

It was like free therapy for sure.   I'd like to thank everyone who has chimed in.  I feel much more "normal" now.  Well, for around these parts anyway.

1. Always got fussy about being forced to wear dresses, skirts and bathing suits.
2. Always got to play male roles in games, like house--and I'd be mad if I couldn't. When I'd play power rangers with my friends, I'd always get annoyed that I was forced to be the pink or yellow ranger because I "was a girl" when I wanted to be blue or green.
3. I felt really comfortable and casually going around the house shirtless and in my basketball shorts when I was a kid, always got trouble for it later.
4. The traditional wishing on stars and birthday candles to be a real boy when I woke up. That went on from as far back as my memory goes to when I was about 12 (as far as birthdays go).
5. I unintentionally discovered what packing was when I was about 7 or 8; and made it a point to do it in secret. I think that sparked around the time I accidentally caught a glimpse of my friend Kyle at a slumber party...which was when I realized why I felt incomplete.
6. Upon seeing a mention of SRS in the 2002 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, I instantly knew that's what I wanted. I had to have been 9 at the time.
7. In daycare, I always got mad about gender assigned crafts (blue is for boys and pink is for girls). I think I threw a tantrum over one because of being confined to the wrong box.
8. I made countless attempts at standing to pee when I was about 10 and I tried making my own STP before I knew that was a thing...it failed horribly.
9. I was incredibly hostile when I got confronted by family members about how I was a "boy in a girl's body" for years. I don't know how much of it was not liking their tone, phrasing or me trying to bury my feelings.

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 07:39:53 PM
This thread really helped me to look back and remember all those little signs that I either ignored, denied or suppressed. 

It was like free therapy for sure.   I'd like to thank everyone who has chimed in.  I feel much more "normal" now.  Well, for around these parts anyway.

We are normal.
Im pretty sure if regular cis person was born in the wrong body they would be behaving like us. vice versa too of course.

We are human behaving like humans :p

Quote from: Daydreamer1. Always got fussy about being forced to wear dresses, skirts and bathing suits.

Yep. This is me at about four years old... one scared little dude.

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 07:39:53 PM
This thread really helped me to look back and remember all those little signs that I either ignored, denied or suppressed. 

It was like free therapy for sure.   I'd like to thank everyone who has chimed in.  I feel much more "normal" now.  Well, for around these parts anyway.

Honestly Jill I think that we are way more normal than "normal" people.

I have to agree with Butterfly, we are all just humans being human. WOW just Human being s. Wasn't tha an old Van Hagar song?

Ok this turned out to be super duper long, way longer then intended lol, sorry bout that...

Though I never had that "I'm a woman in a man's body" feeling or moment, I showed signs in my early childhood that I might be trans but never connected the dots because I never knew anything about this subject. I had a total male upbringing and everyone who lived near me were males so I only had male friends growing up; never was good at being social so I barely made any friends at school. I grew up playing sports and video games, once they became popular, and I can't complain, I love both still, but other than that, I don't feel like I ever really fit in.

Sometime in elementary school is when I began to "mess" around with my mom's clothes and even makeup sometimes; whenever I was alone so that I wouldn't be caught. After school I would play hockey and other sports almost everyday until it got too dark to see and also played video games with the same peeps.

In middle school and high school, my social situation started to change. People we used to play hockey with stopped or moved away, some of the people were older and either graduated or got caught up in other things. Occasionally we would get together and play and video games where still big for me. My brother, who is a year younger, started hanging with other people; once in awhile I would tag along as well, but they were "his" friends if that makes sense, not mine, and I didn't really fit. Later on I would learn about some of the things they would do that I wasn't aware of or invited to do. Some of them started dating and stuff around here but I had no interest really in doing so; the idea of sex and pregnancy was terrifying to me.

Another interesting thing about this time is that I waited a long time before I started to shave my face. By 8th-9th grade I had a lil moustache, beard and uni-brow lol. I waited a long time to shave because my parents told me that once I did it would grow in faster and thicker and I didn't want that.

I continued cross-dressing as well, even though my brother semi caught me wearing a bra; he felt the straps and asked me, I denyed it ofc  :P, played it off well I think, well at least nothing was ever said about it so who knows. I continued to wear my mom's stuff and had a secret stash in the only bathroom in the house and I would spend hours in it lol. I started getting "bored" with her stuff, I guess you could say, and started stealing stuff. A nearby thrift store would sometimes have bundles of clothing outside their store and I would dig through it looking for stuff to wear. I also started going out and shopping for stuff, which of course is scary as hell.

Things stayed like this for quite some time. I definitely got caught once; my mom had died and my brother had moved out with his g/f at the time, now his current wife, so it was just me and my dad now. One day I was washing my clothes and I forgot about them in the dryer, when I woke up I found them stacked on top of it and I was like %()$*)#()#($ (insert expletives). When questioned by my dad, I said I was washing them for a friend lol (so lame that one right?!?). He was like ya right, I see your mom's stuff in there, throw them away, which I did (only temporary tho, retrieved later from trash), but thankfully nothing else was said about that.

Up till this time I was still basically clueless about things. Never would've thought I might be trans, never thought I was a woman, never even thought I was a cross-dresser, I just thought I like to wear women's clothing. Still never had a gf, never had sex, nor did I really try or seek it out; I just felt undeserving of it and uncomfortable with all that.

Around 24 or so I met a girl online while playing a lame game and that's where things started to change again with me. Never met her irl though I wanted to nor ever really "spoke" to her, just messaged each other and played together. I called her my gf but she would say I was just a friend, if even that really, if asked about it, but anyways, I ended up falling head over heels for her. Somewhere/time in our relationship my thoughts switched from damn, I wanna be with her and bang her to, damn, I wish I was her. Started imagining have sex with her but I was her and she was me if that makes sense. I think this is because sex as a woman is more appealing to me than as a guy, possibly part of the reason why I never tried to get with anyone before.

Things continued to move forward from there. Randomly messing around on the 'net one day I discovered a "drag shop" for lack of a better word and realized I had to go there. I ended up getting breastforms and some other feminine clothing and planned on going on vacation dressed as a female. I did go on the trip but couldn't muster the courage to go out dressed. I knew I would be seen as a man in drag and a poorly dressed, half assed one at that, and hated the thought of that.

Shortly after I got back I learned that there are ways to feminize yourself and grow boobs and such, and I was like WTF, NO WAY! Here I am, a 20 something year old, who I consider to be quite smart, taking all kinds of science and other classes, in college and pre-nursing, and I am just now learning about this!!?!?!?!.....Needless to say, it did not take me long to realize that hell ya I wanna do this, even though I wasn't a believer and thought I was just gonna get scammed, and I started like the next day.

It wasn't until I found Susan's, I'd say around 6 months or so ago, and started reading everyone's intro and like 1000s of post that I started to realize that, hey, a lot of this sounds familiar o.o, maybe I'm trans lol. For me, reading and learning about everything and seeing the changes that people have made made me realize that hey, maybe I could actually do it and not be seen as a man dressing as a woman. If I would've had access to the internet earlier I might have realized this long ago but I wasn't allowed to have it until I was like 22 because my parents thought I'd get id thefted and all the other horror stories that the internet can bring.

I never had a clue until I was in my early 40s, and then I started to put 2 + 2 together. Now I see the obvious clues that were there all along that I didn't know to look for - after all, I grew up in the 60's and 70's in the southern region of the U.S., and that area wasn't exactly a bastion of trans activity, and trans knowledge was absolutely non-existent.

The main sign that I had was not fitting in. I never wanted to dress as a girl or play with girl toys. As a kid I got along well with girls until they reached that "boys are icky" stage and then I found myself rejected by them. I was a physically small, femme looking boy and I never made any male friends because of that, and because I didn't know how to relate to boys and I really didn't share interests in typical male activities like fishing or deer hunting. Instead I found myself a target for abuse so I had to manufacture a fake male persona to protect myself and try to at least have the appearance of being male. The fake persona took on some stereotypically young male behaviors to boost his male cred like drinking and racing cars, and he managed to get himself married and had kids.

I lived that fake persona for 40 years because I thought that it was the real me. Now I know different.

Plenty signs but I was too dim or too stubborn to recognise them without hindsight.
Age 7 I would wish to start another school as a girl.I would also daydream about living as a woman when I grew up
Age 9 at an all boys school wondering why other boys were terrified of being told to play a girl in a play.Around the same age we had a French boy visit our schooland I wished I was French so i could be called Jean.
Age 13 dressing upin some clothes I was supposed to take to a Church jumble sale and keeping the ones I liked and fit.This was the early 1970s and having hated boys haircuts I grew my hair out to a long DA and got away with it.
Age 14 Bobby one of the older boy's at school(by now a mixed school thank goodness) rode past one of my few friends and me on his BSA motorcycle with his girlfriend on the back with her arms round his waist,long blonde hair streaming out behind.My friend wished he was Bobby,I wished i was the girl
Age 15 seeing a short film of a beautiful blonde lady with her racing car and being amazed she was once a Spitfire pilot in the war.
Age 21 reading a piece in a seedy newspaper about a transexual and realising I was one and it wasn't going to go away and one day I would have to sort myself out

So I've had some time to really compile a list of all the signs. Like a  lot of people here, I never thought I could be trans, because I didn't fit the traditional trans narrative, in that I felt like I was a woman trapped in the wrong body. I felt male, and to add confusion onto the whole thing, I was primarily attracted to women, so it never occurred to me that you could be trans AND gay, so I spent years and years and years hating myself.

For me, growing up, not only was I interested in boy toys (especially Transformers) but I also was interested in some girl toys. I remember, clearly, wanting to get some Strawberry Shortcake dolls, but I knew that it was wrong, because I was a boy. My mom also, at one point, painted my nails, and would occasionally let me try on her clothes. I don't know why I ever stopped, since I was around 4 or 5 at the time, but I suspect it was more of the "boys don't do this" thing. Growing up, in Middle and High School, I was far more comfortable hanging out with the girls, outside of my small clique of geek/D&D friends.

Then there's the whole thing of thinking that my life would have been far better if I were a girl than a boy.  No definite reason why. I just knew. And I wished every night that I could just wake up a girl.

Like they say: Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

I always knew I was trans, I just didn't have language for it until a year ago.  When I was 5 is when I first noticed that I fit in better with the boys, and had my first major dysphoric event being forced to pretend to be a bride instead of a groom. That's where it all began, and I could go on from there but I won't. It wasn't long until I said to myself that I believed with all the advances in medicine and technology, by the time I was old enough to, things would be advanced enough to allow me to be a man.  I was 5-6 years old when I started thinking that.  When I was ~14 years old, I heard from a conversation I had that medicine HADN'T advanced enough (namely bottom surgery) and I was absolutely devastated.  A few years later I convinced myself that since it was impossible, I might as well give being a girl a shot.  I don't know why I kept trying, I was just hammering the proverbial square peg into a round hole.  When I finally came across YouTube videos of FTMs and their timelines I had almost forgotten my childhood dream to grow up and be a man.  It came back all at once and I knew this was what I had to do.  I don't beat myself up over it. I'm sad I couldn't start sooner, but it is what it is.  I can't change it.  All I can do is keep moving forward. 

I didn't always know I was trans, but I've felt kind of like an alien my whole life, like I missed some crucial memo of how most women naturally feel and see the world.

When I was little I mainly played with boys, and for some reason (thankfully) they never treated me "like a girl". When there were girls around and games of house were organized, I always wanted to be the family dog, because I didn't want to be mother or daughter or sister, and I knew even then that I wasn't allowed to be brother or son or father. This and a hundred other things, looking back.

when i first started entering puberty, i started popping pills just to kill off my hormones becuz i didnt want to grow up as a male, but they never worked so i become cold and lifeless as i had to accept the fact i wasnt female

Ok I have to admit it I never would use a urinal.  I never really gave it much thought but I suppose this is why.  It used to drive my family crazy.  They thought I had a stomach problem.  I think the problem was slightly lower than that.

Quote from: Christinetobe on May 15, 2014, 04:34:59 PM
Ok I have to admit it I never would use a urinal.  I never really gave it much thought but I suppose this is why.  It used to drive my family crazy.  They thought I had a stomach problem.  I think the problem was slightly lower than that.

Always HATED those.  I had men's room anxieties since forever.  It's not like my junk didn't measure up, but I had problems putting it on display. 

On a side note, another reason that I despise urinals is the design.  It seemed that no matter what angle you hit it at, the damned things are so parabolic that it always splashes back on you. EWWW!  Sitting is so much more hygenic anyway.

signs were everywhere after i was few months into puberty. but what actually tipped me off that i do have an issue, was that i liked girls. i was attracted to my friends and i was having difficult time holding myself in proper sense when this young teacher who wore quite revealing blouses was in the class. i'm embarrassed about this but i couldn't get my eyes off her chest and i was 13 by then. there was this role play family thing in our class we did for fun- it started with father, mother and daughter but soon half the class was adopted to the family as some relative. pretty dumb but it actually showed me what i needed in life. i was one of the earliest to be adopted, and when they were picking a character for me i was silently praying to get a male character. though i had long hair then luckily i was adopted as elder son. i took that chance to flirt around girls and i even got married to one, though i never stopped flirting with other girls. one girl even told me she was starting to see me as a real guy.

Way to many to mention.. But 1 in particular stands out..

When I was 12, the fog of my genderless childhood cleared, I went out and bought myself a complete girls outfit..

Ahh yes, the last thing I wrote reminded me. 

When I was a kid I asked my mom what my name would have been if had I been a girl. 

Oh crap, I was a girl!!!

As a kid I used to wrap a towel around my head like an Arabian scarf and pout at the mirror because I thought it made me look like an exotic beauty... :)

Getting denied girl stuff because the fruits hanging between my legs were making me a boy.
Before self-harvesting, I asked my mom whom replied I'll bleed to death. I was around 5. Fast forward, 33 years, still hanging... T_T

Sonia

Now you mention it, I vaguely remember being told the same thing when I was very young!!!

Oh crap, never thought it worth mentioning until now, but why is it that I have had so many lesbian friends since forever?  Not only that, but the number of lesbian and bisexual cisgirls I have either kissed or fooled around with over the years is sort of off the chart.  And to think I once turned down the one chance in a lifetime for a threesome with two cute redheads...  OMG, they were all on to something that I failed to recognize myself.

Quote from: Jill F on May 15, 2014, 04:44:44 PM
Always HATED those.  I had men's room anxieties since forever.  It's not like my junk didn't measure up, but I had problems putting it on display. 

On a side note, another reason that I despise urinals is the design.  It seemed that no matter what angle you hit it at, the damned things are so parabolic that it always splashes back on you. EWWW!  Sitting is so much more hygenic anyway.

Total derailing here, but someone's actually done studies on how to not get splash back at urinals.  Not surprisingly enough, part of the resolution was to stand several inches away which I don't think would fly well with most people. (also aiming for the lower sides apparently helped)

It's funny, I was just going to post a new topic about this, and here I find it at the top of the messageboard.

Just general anxiety and social anxiety I guess? I repeatedly told my mom, also starting in early middle school, and through high school, that I felt subtly dissociated, that I never felt like I was *in* the moment, or that I had a true sense of the present... that when I was around people I felt like I wasn't totally on, that I couldn't 100% psychically connect with the other person? Like there was some element of dissonance and I didn't know where it was coming from.

In middle school (~8th grade) I told my family at dinner that if I could have been born a boy I would in a heartbeat.

I hated wearing bras or any material close to my chest starting from my first bras. It just felt uncomfortable, and not right--even the most comfy victorias secret bras.

I also just started dressing like an emo androgynous boy in middle school which was a phase. In high school I also dressed androgynous but I mistakenly thought at the time that it was because I was bisexual. I also constantly drew doodles of the boyish hair I wanted, like everyday, on all my homework, all my notes, for several years. And I thought it was just cause I was attracted to boys...

but now I know why I did all these things and felt that way  ^-^

I didn't feel explicit dysphoria until the end of my first year in college, which is when I realized I was trans masculine.

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 10:57:01 AM


Do any of you feel kind of dense for not seeing some obvious signs?

to be honest i think i still cant see some obvious signs. i mean i can tick 99% of the boxes that says im trans, pass every test to determine my gendernessness, but still cant accept it

Refusing to put anything in my pants/shorts pocket, always needed to have a bag on me

Quote from: immortal gypsy
Refusing to put anything in my pants/shorts pocket, always needed to have a bag on me

Hah. I was the exact opposite. I had to carry a handbag when I was in high school, and I was always losing the damn thing. Hated it, too.

In hindsight, I pretty much hit every sign on the way down to today...

I could probably list a few things, but then I knew what I was from an early age. Signs don't matter a tinker to me, things transpired the way they did and looking back and trying to figure out this or that from stuff just isn't helpful at all for me. Besides, its too easy to look at little silly things from your past and try to connect dots where there may not really have been any real connections, just coincidences.

I remember practicing standing to pee off and on as a little kid.

Before puberty? I just chalked it up to the fact I had 2 brothers and people would just call me a tomboy instead. I climbed trees, fished, dug in the dirt, raced toy cars and so on. I didn't think it was such a big deal at those ages. Didn't even really care what gender I identified with.
After puberty though things shifted a lot. I got bottom dysphoria, wanted to present more male, relished in it actually when I could. But I knew absolutely zilch about transgender. I knew about gay and bisexual by the time I was 15/16. Around the time I discovered I liked girls and boys both equally but really even by the time I hit 17/18 I had only known about MtF and that's all I ever knew about transgender up until I was 24 surprisingly enough. I tripped on Ftm when I went gender searching through google trying to find out why I felt such self loathing and why I felt like I should have a penis instead downstairs.
Finally kind of put the puzzle pieces together last year for my self. The presenting as male, enjoying my hair cut like a guys, mannerisms for years like one, the feelings I had. Just made total sense to me once I actually paid attention to my self rather than trying to please everyone else.

I dont know that i can say i ignored much of it. As soon as i could talk i was telling people that i was a boy. I went to a gender therapist in like 1st grade... My parents told me to walk a middle line, so thats what i did.  Eventually growing into strictly buying from the boys section as of maybe 9th grade or earlier... I didn't know there was any path to actually becoming a boy until my girlfriend freshman year of college noticed my attempts to bind and said... "Lets figure this thing out."  And opened my eyes to the possibility of moving forward in a positive way.  I never really went through a denial after that point. Before then i just didn't know there was really an answer.

(But oh the years i spent trying to lick my own elbow... juuust kidding)

I was always a really eclectic kid.  Being raised a girl in the late eighties, early ninties, it was okay for me to not want to wear dresses and catch frogs in the creek.  My parents just thought I was a huge tomboy.  My dad and his dad almost encouraged it.  His side of the family were outdoorsy people.  Horseback riding, fishing, boating, camping, hunting, dog training, etc were things they liked to do.  So I think they thought it was adorable that I wanted to do what they did too.  So I can't really blame myself for not realizing that I always kind of wanted to be a boy.

I always identified with male characters on TV and in movies and video games, I remember this when I was as young as 5.  I was never the princess wearing dresses and needing saving.  I was the knight, or maybe the dragon.  *grins*

The first time I consciously thought "I wish I were a boy" was when I was probably 8 or 9 and I tried to hide my long hair under a hat, wear my most boyish clothes, and get my step-brother to call me "Marcus".  He wouldn't do it and laughed at me.  When I hit puberty, my dad and step-mom basically shamed me into being acceptably feminine and I didn't try to be masculine again until I was in college.  I think if I'd known that transition was possible at all, that I'd have tried much, much sooner.

So many recognisable stories here (especially from the guys, lol. Though it's nice to hear stuff from the girls' perspective.)
It's really great to read all of this and see you are not alone! Kind of all my life I thought I was, now I see I was very very wrong!

I also thought NO ONE would ever want to be a girl. That ALL girls felt what I felt, and thus I was just a normal girl that couldn't deal with ->-bleeped-<-, and had to adapt. I thought everyone felt like a boy and hated their body. I just COULD NOT see WHY someone wanted to be a girl. And thus the existence of MTF's came as a shock to me... guys... that felt like girls, wanted to be girls!? That was just the polar opposite from how I felt, LOL. But then I discovered FTM's, and ->-bleeped-<-, and everything, and now I finally know WHY I feel like this. That not every FAAB person feels this and that I am not alone in feeling this either. It changed my life!

I have to add my take on this after reading about all the other ftm's.  I just played with mostly boys growing up, liked there games, sports, and the outside things they did.  I just thought I was one of them and they accepted me fine.  I did have that problem that they could go over in the woods when they wanted to pee and be back quickly.  I some how accepted that I was different but I think also though I would grow a penis some day and be able to do the same.  This all changed the summer between 7th and 8th grade, I got my first shark week and my chest enlarged.  My mother and grandma took this as an opportunity to get be interested in girly things, which I did for 9 and 10th grade.  Then I started questioning what I was I really.

I was actually angry to have discovered so much about my past and never having discovered even the slightest idea of what transgender even was. My mind grew such a vast denial that I even grew an ignorant dislike for the trans community.

I try not to linger on it, but when I'm having one of by bad hormone days, I cry about not having seen the signs sooner or how none of the 7 psychologists I saw as a child because of my serious depression, anxiety and concentration issues could pinpoint it... I always played with girls toys, all my best friends were not just girls,  but the girliest of girls... I wanted so many girl toys growing up which I was denied out of "fear that I might become gay".. Always wanted to wear bright colors, girl clothes, girl swimsuits.. And what was their "diagnosis"? A ridiculous combination of ADHD and "Daddy issues", despite me and my dad having a great relationship and me not having even the slightest bit of resentment towards any of my family members, least of all my dad.

SEVEN freaking psychs, all saying the same bull just from "looking at me."

Life would have been so different for me had I just known earlier... And it would have also been 35 suicide attempts lighter.

Also; I hated being friends with boys because they were so harsh and apathetic... When I wanted someone to talk about my feelings, only my girl friends were there because all my guy friends were too busy telling me "stop being such a girl. It's depressing."

I remember the first time I grew a hatred for my assigned gender... I was with my best friend and we were playing a classic video game together (silent hill 1) because her bf told her to play it. We were gonna spend the whole night scaring ourselves silly... But I couldn't sleep over because "you're a boy and she's a girl and it's not right."... I was so sad, I failed to see the problem :'( no matter how much my parents and her parents tried to rationalize it. If that's not another obvious indication, all my life, my girl friends have always considered me "one of the girls"... They would talk to me about things that they would never talk to a guy about. I was always a good listener and an open book, and none of them felt the need to treat me as another guy because unlike my male friends, the idea of a friend zone was moronic to me.

I started flirting with gender confusion when I laid down my ignorance and befriended someone who is FTM. Then it was just a matter of a collapsing dam. I went from thinking I was just a feminine male, to thinking I was gender fluid, to finally realizing that my entire male persona was just an act that almost became a solidified lie. I almost believed it was true until I experienced the other side and cried for hours because I never wanted to go back (at the time I felt like I had no choice but to be male the rest of my life, unaware that transition was even a possibility for me what with having a wife and having built a whole life as male... So glad I was wrong)

Quote from: Erik Ezrin on May 23, 2014, 06:00:24 AM
So many recognisable stories here (especially from the guys, lol. Though it's nice to hear stuff from the girls' perspective.)
It's really great to read all of this and see you are not alone! Kind of all my life I thought I was, now I see I was very very wrong!

I also thought NO ONE would ever want to be a girl. That ALL girls felt what I felt, and thus I was just a normal girl that couldn't deal with ->-bleeped-<-, and had to adapt. I thought everyone felt like a boy and hated their body. I just COULD NOT see WHY someone wanted to be a girl. And thus the existence of MTF's came as a shock to me... guys... that felt like girls, wanted to be girls!? That was just the polar opposite from how I felt, LOL. But then I discovered FTM's, and ->-bleeped-<-, and everything, and now I finally know WHY I feel like this. That not every FAAB person feels this and that I am not alone in feeling this either. It changed my life!

I definitely relate 100% to that.  It always shocked me when my girl friends were into girl things... and into being girls in general. 

Quote from: Jennygirl on May 14, 2014, 01:01:29 PM
Playing superstitious games with myself "if I land this game of hopscotch, I will wake up as a girl tomorrow"

I used to do this with everything!  :). Never worked though  :(

I have felt this way for as long as I can remember, the first time I can actually date it though was when I was an angel in the church Christmas show around the age of 4.  I was dressed in a pretty angel costume and my best friend's mom was putting make up on me, it just felt right and I was so happy :).  I also used to pray every night that I would wake up a girl.  When that didn't work, I tried to sell my soul to the devil for it like I had seen in a movie.  I even had a pentagram in red lipstick that I drew on my stomach.  It must have been a pathetic and hilarious sight, if only my parents had walked in!

Signs that everyone else did or should have noticed in my life.....

- I wanted to play the flute and violin in grade school like the other girls, (my parents caught that clue and made me play the saxophone and cello :(

- I had posters of Belinda Carlisle and other female singers on my wall at a very young age before they would have been for attraction (first person I ever wanted to be was Belinda Carlisle circa 1980 before the horrible boy haircuts). 

- I always picked female characters when playing video games.

- Most of my music was and still is from female artists

- got caught shoplifting women's clothes in 6th grade

- my sister noticed that I was shaving my legs once I started growing hair

And yet with all of this, it will somehow be a shock to everyone around me I am sure.

Quote from: GnomeKid on May 23, 2014, 02:37:46 PM
  It always shocked me when my girl friends were into girl things... and into being girls in general.

Definitely this. Except it wasn't really shock, I knew that I was supposed to feel the way they did, but the "I must be an alien" feeling surprised me all the time.

I guess for me looking back it would have been the disappointment at 13 when I didn't start growing breasts my mindset on being female was really strong from about 8 yo i asked my mother why my breasts weren't growing and all I got was a look of disgust and that is also when the abuse started from her I remember buying a chain at 12 with my pocket money to wear to school.  I wish I understood trans stuff then.

QuoteAnd yet with all of this, it will somehow be a shock to everyone around me I am sure.

Yeah, I had many tell-tale signs too, but yet my parents were super surprised, and my mom was just like "But... but... you are such a GIRL!" and then she would recall the few odd female moments I've had. Like how I danced around in flowery dresses as a 3yr old kid (I just liked the free feeling they gave me), or how I dressed up as princess ONCE (also at a very young age. I can't even properly remember why or when, etc.) While I dressed as a knight ten times more and when I grew up despised the idea of wearing a dress. She just all conveniently forgot all of that...
Parents *sigh*

Quote from: Polo on May 23, 2014, 10:37:04 PM
Definitely this. Except it wasn't really shock, I knew that I was supposed to feel the way they did, but the "I must be an alien" feeling surprised me all the time.

Ahh see... I think I've always been pretty stubbornly myself.  And the few times in middle school when I thought... "why don't I feel the way everyone else feels" I was quickly reminded of how dumb that is....

For example, I remember in middle school a group of my 3 closest girl friends were talking.  I came up to join and was told to go away because I wasn't enough of a girl to understand what they were talking about.  I was obviously quite offended.  I left and went off to feel bad about myself.  I didn't want to be a girl, but I didn't want to not have friends because of it.  Shortly thereafter I learned they were discussing their eating disorders............. I no longer felt wrong for not wanting to be a girl. 

Thats not saying being a girl = having eating disorders, but the experience deflected some of the bull->-bleeped-<- that I could have felt otherwise. 

I do remember trying to figure out with my one friend why she liked boys.... I really couldn't fathom the attraction.  I didn't realize for a good few years that its because I, in fact, like girls.... I've always sort of been a late bloomer =p

I remember trying to understand my feelings, and coming across Blanchard's typology. I read the ->-bleeped-<- description and was like,"That's not me", then read the overly-gay description and was "That's DEFINITELY not me, guess I'm not trans." I honestly wonder how much damage that school of thought has caused.

Then the whole masturbation thing where the feelings go away for 5 minutes, and you convince yourself you're just a weirdo, and ignore them coming back until you're walking down the street and get surprise slammed by dumptruck load of envy when a pretty, feminine girl comes strolling past.

I've always had this presumption that when we seek mates, we are inclined to choose someone who has identical features as ourselves. That we are attracted to the opposite version of ourselves, and those kind of bonds are strongest in the attraction sense. I presumed that was why some of the best couples with lasting power tended to look like each other. I presumed that I can increase my dating potential by chasing gals that looked similar me.

This carried over to my own hot babe internet pic collecting, except the pics I kept where of gals that looked similar to 'me', and most of the time they where only fully clothed, artistic softcore or vanity shots. Just like this.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Foi62.tinypic.com%2Ffwm3aw.jpg&hash=a66375463cf1afdb426351a25f6a987547a195f2)

Then one day it all clicked as to why I was so hung up on such a feminine idealization of me. Being aware of the whole trans thing I curiously did some investigating - and POW...! You know that feeling.

Other signs where my female like nurturing tendencies, for instance during my late cancer stricken father just two years ago. I had an intense devotion to his care, doing all the house chores, a labor of love beyond what most sons would probably prefer to do, or would delegate to the help instead. I was always jumping at the opportunity to take care of those dishes, this even extended to close friends homes at dinner invites. It was my way of contributing.

Let's see, imagining for years that the towel wrapped around my hair after a shower was really *my* long hair...

Remembering hearing my mother say to my father when I was 16, "he would look good as a girl, no?" in the parking lot when I was walking ahead of them. An odd prediction...

I'm probably more emotional than most guys. I also male fail every online "what is your brains gender" tests.

Oh yeah, there's my extreme misandry and seething hate every time I read the news about another woman raped or murdered, and all the collateral crime and violence testosterone brings into our society.

I've had it. I'm not rooting for the home team no more.

Good riddance.

I am an odd case...I KNEW I felt female as far back in my childhood as memory goes.  I knew everyone saw me as a boy, and I tried like hell to "sneak" or invent (thin) pretexts for using/wearing girl things.  In HS had a female character in D&D (yes, I'm that old) and married one of the boys' characters.  I always felt desperately uncomfortable in Men's restrooms and if I walked up to a urinal I could never make myself pee.  I HAD to sit down.  i was not the slightest bit unclear about the fact I was going to transition until about a year into college.  (PS - I started drinking like a fish around that time!)

Somewhere between 19 and 22, I gradually DECIDED I was not going to be transsexual, but gay. I thought that would be easier for my family and for me. During my senior year at university I "purged" my women's wardrobe by tossing EVERYTHING, dresses, accessories, wigs, makeup, you name it, in a dumpster.  I didn't wear women's clothes again until almost a year ago (I'm 43!).  It was really during that time that I went into total denial and failed to recognize that I hadn't changed at all.  In retrospect, i had plenty of signs to read.  Three of the biggest bricks HP dropped on my head during this time:  1.  all the female identities I used, computer usernames, phone identities, etc. - such as the time I was working market research on the telephone and suddenly one day just introduced myself as a woman without even thinking about it.  ("Joyce" I think I was!)  2.  When i bought women's formula vitamins "by mistake", secretly hoping that what made them women's formula was estrogen ("oh, oops!").  3.  The fact that every five years when I would get invited to the high school reunion, the first thought I would always have was, i can't let them see me unless I'm a woman!

I feel a fundamental personality sign when I was young was me being highly sensitive and caring about others; basically, I was highly emotional.  I remember being accused by males, both young and old, of 'being just like a girl' on numerous occasions.  Ultimately, this was highly damaging to my sense of self and ego.  I couldn't understand, especially at a young age, why it was so wrong  to feel the way i did.  Now, of course, I realize what I was expressing was totally outside the norm of male emotional expression.  Looking back, I feel I was even more feminine in this regard than my sisters.  With puberty came testosterone, and now I feel the general blunting of these emotions.  Are they still there? Yes, but tempered, and I do my best to not show them for fear of more ridicule.

On another more specific level, a root sign of my impending female identity was my total lack of enthusiasm from sports, especially team sports.  When I watch them, I simply can't comprehend how people can get a long lasting level of enjoyment from them.  I can actually sense there is just not a part of my brain that exists that should understand the pleasure of watching or participating in them.  Being young, I was placed in sports to play, but alas I just didn't get them and was soon consumed by other pursuits.

There were early signs I wasn't purely male, and I still feel these are fundamental parts of my intrinsic neurological architecture. 

I'm afraid to think about it too much for fear that it will convince me further that I am trans.  I guess you would call it cognitive resonance?  Starting with the diagnosis and then looking for symptoms to match up just seems scary to me.  But of course, I can't help but do it and the signs all seem to point in that direction: Signing up for "female" sports (My parents we're certainly not afraid of me doing "girly" things if that's what I wanted to do), wanting to play with "girls" toys, wanting to do basically everything that girls did and boys didn't.  That is until I couldn't take the ridicule from my peers anymore and learned to keep what I really liked and enjoyed doing a secret from the world.  Unfortunately, I couldn't stand doing the "boy" stuff either, so I never really found anything enjoyable to do.  My childhood as I remember it was very empty and that's carried on into my adult life as well.

Back when I was in early elementary I used to tell the kids at school one day that I was a boy and the next I would say "Oh i guess I'm a girl". I didn't even remember this until it was brought up in a psychological examination years later.

I remember I was confused. I didn't have siblings and my parents were quite distant so I didn't really learn about gender roles. I was extremely curious about the male anatomy though. When i was around 9 years old I would dress up this weird ass doll I had to look like a boy. I had this odd habit of playing with it as if it was me and i was making it go on weird adventures. I'd put socks in my underwear to try and pretend I understood the concept of having something down there.

By the time i was 10 I learned what the word "queer" was. I had heard it said by one of the older kids when they were talking about my short hair. I wanted to know what that meant. So like the curious child that I was, i did some research. The word "transgender" came up. I only had a vague idea of what it meant but it made sense to me. Up until that point of my life I had longed to be one of the guys and i didn't understand why. I was always just called a tomboy by family and that made no sense either. So when i finally had a word for it I told my school guidance counselor that I thought i was transgender and that I would like to become a boy now. Needless to say she didn't know what to say to that too much and just told me to wait until I was 18 to be sure. I agreed.

I waited until I said I would. It sucks that I was, and still am somewhat, such a severe case of depression that it wasn't until recently that i formally came out to another shrink about feelings of being trans.

Quote from: ZombieDog on May 22, 2014, 11:45:50 PM
I always identified with male characters on TV and in movies and video games, I remember this when I was as young as 5. 

I did the same thing. Except that was with females (obviously). I remember writing a TaleSpin fanfic back around 90/91ish (WAY before I even knew the term 'fan fiction'), and I wrote myself in as a character. But I wrote myself in as a girl (using the female variant of my birthname). When my friends found out about this, it wasn't the fact that I was writing something like this that tripped them out. But when they saw my character that I had created in the story, they were like, 'Dude, what the hell is this about?". I didn't care what they thought, though.

I prayed every night to wake up a girl with no memory of ever been born a boy.

Evelyn K: I just love in your signature the woman putting on lip stick. where did you find it?

Looking back on it, my life is littered with "that really should have been a clue" moments. The typical stuff like checking the "wrong" gender box on forms, wanting to be male characters, refusing to play with the dolls family members bought me because they were "for girls." Then I remember being 3, wearing a particularly frilly dress my mother had picked out for me at a restaurant and thinking it was weird that everyone was gushing over me instead of balking that a mother would put a boy in such a girly outfit. I also remember flat-out telling my parents I was a boy and trying to get my teachers to call me by my masculine-ish birth name.

I also put off buying bras for way longer than I should have. I kind of got away with it till I was 14 and discovered sports bras. I think I felt like if I didn't acknowledge it, puberty wouldn't come for me. When flat-out ignoring the changes didn't work, I purposely gained a bunch of weight, which made the problem even worse and led to an eating disorder.

The only school I ever felt remotely comfortable at was a Christian private school that had unisex uniforms, and that was in spite of the school itself being a nightmare. These all should have been red flags in retrospect, I guess.

Quote from: Emily.T on May 24, 2014, 04:24:09 AM
I guess for me looking back it would have been the disappointment at 13 when I didn't start growing breasts my mindset on being female was really strong from about 8 yo i asked my mother why my breasts weren't growing and all I got was a look of disgust and that is also when the abuse started from her I remember buying a chain at 12 with my pocket money to wear to school.  I wish I understood trans stuff then.

I really understand you on this. I don't really understand why parents are disgusted by this.. People should be let to be whatever they want/feel to be.

One of the earliest memories I have that was a blunt hint that I was trans was when I was 4 years old. I always liked hanging out with all the girls in my old neighborhood and even thought boys were yucky. At that age I learned the difference between genders and tried everything to rid my self of my downstairs curse. Since then I have always been struggling to live life in the wrong body and my dysphoria was amplified during puberty when I wasn't growing breasts. I kind of accepted that I was in the wrong body at the young age of 4, but of course the whole idea of transitioning didn't exist to me until I discovered the internet when I was 15 and did research into hormones and herbal supplements.

Dysphoria hit for me when I was 3, in an experimental Head Start program. That is when I learned that what I know myself to be, isn't what others saw. That what I did and said didn't fit what was expected. Nothing made sense after that. From that point on, it was just one more thing after one more thing. 

Silly head start, why give me doll, I want my fire engine back. Why ask me to pick my favorite toy, then tell me it isn't.

Quote from: LordKAT on June 02, 2014, 06:33:17 PM
Dysphoria hit for me when I was 3, in an experimental Head Start program. That is when I learned that what I know myself to be, isn't what others saw. That what I did and said didn't fit what was expected. Nothing made sense after that. From that point on, it was just one more thing after one more thing. 

Silly head start, why give me doll, I want my fire engine back. Why ask me to pick my favorite toy, then tell me it isn't.

When I picked up a doll in preschool, they took it away, gave me a rubber ball and told me to play with the boys.  At least they didn't take my crayons and coloring books.

Quote from: Jill F on June 02, 2014, 08:26:47 PM
When I picked up a doll in preschool, they took it away, gave me a rubber ball and told me to play with the boys.  At least they didn't take my crayons and coloring books.

Weird isn't it. They now make dolls for boys.

Quote from: LordKAT on June 02, 2014, 08:30:35 PM
Weird isn't it. They now make dolls for boys.

They did when I was a kid as well, they just called them "action figures". *le facepalm*

I also think it's freaking hilarious that the make moisturizers for men now and call them "hydrators".

Quote from: NoMan on June 02, 2014, 01:47:33 PM
I really understand you on this. I don't really understand why parents are disgusted by this.. People should be let to be whatever they want/feel to be.

Thank you noman for your comment quite often I wish that I was just born a girl or born to parents who understood and would have helped me sooner.

I'm really glad that I found this thread. Reading everyone's posts has helped me realize that I am in a whole lot of denial! >< As far back as I can remember I hated being dressed up to go to school or to my grandparents. Best times were when I could wear my t-shirts and jeans and go digging in the back yard, playing in the mud or running around doing some sport. As I got older I often raided my brothers collection of Gi-Joe's, Transformers, He-man and other such toys. I loved to play football with my cousin and by the fourth grade I finally got to cut my hair short. I didn't have to wear dresses anymore which was a relief and though my clothes were still too girly it was something I could live with. I was constantly trying to get my dad to let me be a part of what he was doing because my brother clearly didn't want to and I very much wanted to but that never panned out. Middle school got interesting. My mom was always harping about being more feminine and I was like EUGH nooo! I think she might have started giving up then because eight grade rolled around and I broke my ankle severely playing football in gym class.

I've always hung out with guys and am not all that comfortable with women and that carried into high school. Wasn't too thrilled with puberty but I couldn't do anything about the cards I was dealt so I carried on dressing as I wanted to and hanging out with the guys and enjoying the mystical land of the weight room!After high school it didn't really seem to matter. I worked, worked out and the friends I made at work were primarily male. I met my husband through them and I played football with the people from work. I still remember someone on the opposing team one night had overheard that there was a girl playing and it spread like wildfire and everyone was trying to figure out who and it was me. Very next play I took out a college football player who was working seasonal that summer and everyone was going nuts about it and I was like haha if only they knew. I was accepted for being me and I did the whole kid thing :) and the problem was I couldn't be happy. I got griefed by family for my hair, my clothes, my interests. So I just blanked everything out but that didn't work nor does trying to be feminine when I don't like it and can't do it at all. I don't think like a woman, feel like a woman or act like one but I believed that was ok because that's what a tomboy is. Doh right? My husband has been a major help and so has this community of amazing people.

Wanting to be Daphnie from Scooby Doo. (That and she also got to wear purple and have red hair)

Purple and red hair are two things I like, along with freckles. Gypsy have freckles?

Omg!  I wanted to be Daphne too!

Now I know what my comiccon costume is gonna be!

Quote from: Emmaline on June 07, 2014, 08:07:17 AM
Omg!  I wanted to be Daphne too!

Mine were a toss-up between Dotty Dog, Portia Porcupine, Red Fraggle, Mookie Fraggle and Rebecca Cunnigham.

Fred, he at least got close to Daphne.

Now this is interesting? I identified with belma (we both wear glasses and had brown hair)
I was never to bothered about daphne, I just always wondered why belma never tried to upstage daphne.
I loved the film for that.
I don't know, in a way ive always been able to see through a lot of external presentation. yes somebody can look amazing, but its always the inner person that makes or breaks a presentation.

Its just something, Ive noticed with this, how I loved identifying with woman because of things I had in common with them, as well as envy at the things I wanted to do. (belma wore a skirt too a red/brown one I think pleated?)

Quote from: Laura Squirrel on June 07, 2014, 12:53:24 PM
Mine were a toss-up between Dotty Dog, Portia Porcupine, Red Fraggle, Mookie Fraggle and Rebecca Cunnigham.

Omg the Fraggles! I always saw myself as Wembley(spelling may be off). Wanted to be a Paw Paw Bear and Flint too.

To get back on the rails, those dreams where I was the guy in a relationship should have been a clue.

Quote from: Silver Centurion on June 07, 2014, 01:45:15 PM
Omg the Fraggles! I always saw myself as Wembley(spelling may be off).

Nope. It's right.

Quote from: LordKAT on June 07, 2014, 01:47:59 PM
To get back on the rails, those dreams where I was the guy in a relationship should have been a clue.

I experienced the same thing but didn't know what to make of it either.

Quote from: Jill F on May 14, 2014, 03:33:21 PM
OMG, I've been trying to shove that junk back up in there since as long as I can remember!  Never did have a use for it until high school.  When I was about 5 or 6, my brother had to have one removed due to cryptorchidism. (I later had part of one removed for similar reasons...) I asked my mother what they were for, and she told me that "Those parts are what you need to you grow up to me a man, grow a beard and be a daddy."  I remember thinking I could do without that.

Also, I could never take my shirt off.  I hated swimming, locker rooms, and god forbid I ever got chosen for the "skins" basketball team.  I never liked to be seen naked, and I still have some residual intimacy issues to this day.  Actually I'm relieved to never have to have sex in the male role ever again.  It's not like I actually had anything to be ashamed of and my junk is nothing out of the ordinary.  It's just not "me".

I felt the same way about my chest when I was a kid. Like I remember being terrified of taking my shirt off and being exposed. If someone saw my chest I'd panic. I hated being naked in front of anyone.

Oh there was the times i adamently told my mother in the car that i wanted to be a girl. Though it was a back and forth, i almost put a hole in the car floor showing how firm i was. Ended in failure though

I used to (and still do) wince when somebody called me a he, this was before I came out to my self, so I just though I kept stepping on tacks every time someone addressed me  ;D ;D

I always knew I was different: from the person next door, to the person right beside me in a café- I just knew that there was something in me that wasn't yet relevant, or relatable. It was misunderstood, even to me. Right now as I'm writing this, I'm still a bit perplexed, though the shock value has weakened as I'm getting more and more used to saying that I am transgender. I am to be a woman, as mentally I've already matured into one. Someone that is beautiful, serene, has a melody that is unmatched but moving with fluidity and refined grace.
I just have to match my body to how I feel, to have that manifest onto my skin as to resemble who I really am, so I can show the world my true beauty.

When I was young, a child, someone that was curious and dumbfounded by everything he saw, everything took me for surprise. I was excited I'm sure, seeing and feeling all of the colors around me, learning the objects, their placements, and their purpose. I suppose I was most intrigued by my mother, the spirit that I most observed in my childhood, and at that age I was most exposed to her than to any other life form. She raised me, and saw me when I was only beginning to bud. I was a tadpole, but I was learning. I was adapting.

I was becoming.

I don't have the clearest memory of what took place when I was two or three, but I can distinctly remember the color red. Specifically, in the form of make up: lipstick. I found the lipstick in her make up box, and I went to town. I, with a relaxed hand, painted my face with it- starting from the lips, and the area grew, staining much of my face with sanguine print. This was beauty, I'm sure I thought- whatever beauty was at the time in my head, that's what this was. It was also something my mother did, I'm sure.

My mother saw this. I think she was confused more than anything, probably wondering why, because this didn't make sense. Not her son. She probably brushed it off as a phase. She washed it from my face, and wiped the rest of the red residue, the marks that could trace to then- I'm sure she thought she erased that scene from my mind, but I was more aware than she gave me credit.

When I was five, I remember how real and true my conscience was forming. I was getting to know me, my head, how I was feeling. Even how pain felt.

I wanted to be like my mother. I'm sure I did, to me that's the only way to describe it. I loved her, and I love her. I didn't exactly have a father in my life at that time- he was existent, I knew the man that was supposed to be my father, but he wasn't really there. Not in my life, the things I did were the things I learned from my mom.

She raised me to love, but at that age I thought love could only exist with hate. I associated pain, wrath, deceit, spinelessness, a crippled and weary shadow of a man, with my father. They didn't get along, and would often spit and rebuke one another seemingly absentmindedly- it was a sport the two excelled at. For me, I associated love with my mom, because she openly cared for me, at every point in my life. She was pretty, and I wanted to be pretty- pretty was kind, pretty was good. I wanted to be good, and loved.

There were days when I came home from school, excited, knowing that I'll be able to play dress up without my parents' permission or wishes. When I came home, if my mother had to leave for something,  I would take advantage of that time and allow my imagination to roam free. I would frantically rummage through her closet, picking the dress I want, and I would find a shirt of mine to wear on top of my head- a yellow cloth, to resemble blonde hair. The dress I wore, at that time, was emerald green. It billowed and sunk to the floor, but I got what I wanted- the feeling to be a girl.

-

I have more to say, but I wrote this in the spur. It was cathartic, now that I think about it- it feels strange though... raw, I suppose. Right now, I'm 19- turning 20 tomorrow. I wanted to put this out there, because maybe it'll motivate me to start HRT: I know it's never too late, but I've tackled the certainty that I am transgender. Now I just have to approach it in a practical (and hopefully calm) matter.

Quote from: Simulacrum on June 12, 2014, 09:04:23 PM
I've tackled the certainty that I am transgender. Now I just have to approach it in a practical (and hopefully calm) matter.

Me too!
Well, I'm getting there, each day I know it more and more, just need to squash that doubt out somehow....

I began to resent everything I associated as typically female or feminine even at a very young age like the color pink, and I always thought of myself that I must be some very atypical tomboyish girl because I just didn't want to fit into gender norms at all. One the one end I felt like I just wasn't a girl deep down but I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to be since my body said I was a girl. I didn't know transgender existed. I also hated a lot of physical aspects of the female body like I began disliking having breasts and menstruation was just the ->-bleeped-<-ing worst especially because I suffered from a severe case of endometriosis, and I just overall felt so damn confused when people asked me about me about my gender like I had to fill it on for surveys and such but female just didn't feel right. I knew what was being asked of me, but I just didn't really feel like one. It was only after I was told by my doctor that they wanted to one of my ovaries that I began to realize that something wasn't right because I felt so damn happy over it, to finally get rid of that ->-bleeped-<-. It felt so damn relieving and it wasn't just relief because of my disease though yes, that played a role too, but I just didn't see it as a part of myself in the first place.

It led to a very serious and deep introspection about my gender identity as I realized my reaction was quite atypical for someone in my situation, and I realized I was transgender.

My first sign was an inherent desire to have a penis when I was 5 or so. I actually stuffed a sock in my pants because it just felt so wrong that I didn't have one.

Oh cripes, it's not just me? Sometimes I feel like... what was I thinking? How could I have not realized this a decade ago? It's so darn obvious now.

Quote from: Jason C on May 14, 2014, 12:28:22 PM
The biggest sign for me was that I hated myself. I hated everything about myself and I never had a reason why, I just did. I had a wonderful family, childhood, life...but I hated myself. That could've been general low self-esteem, but I know it's not because I don't hate myself anymore, now that I know who I am.

That right there? yeah, that's me. I don't remember a lot of my teenage years, because I was put (by my well-meaning mother and school nurses and psychiatrist) on a cocktail of antidepressants that were completely wrong for me, but I do remember wanting to claw my skin off and self-harming because I hated my body and what it was becoming so intensely. My early 20s were mired in the same self-hatred, though it came and went and wasn't always so bad. The minute I started thinking "hey, I'm male", it was like oh! Now I don't hate myself?! Where is that undercurrent of interminable self-loathing that's plagued me since I was 10? I don't HAVE to feel worthless?!

There's a ton of other examples, too:

• From birth I hated that I wasn't the little brother my brother wanted. I played with all his toys and didn't like dolls and would rather pretend to be dinosaurs than play house, but it was never enough
• I have had vivid dreams wherein I am obviously male since I was 5 or 6 years old, and I can't recall even one dream where I was female and myself, versus some other female character my brain made up. When I'm male in my dreams I am myself.
• I've always identified WAY MORE with male characters in books/movies/video games, but when given the option to play a female character in a game I always would because I "didn't get to be a boy"
• That's always the phrase that was in my head, my whole life. It wasn't "I think I might be a boy", it was "I don't GET TO BE a boy". I didn't know it was a possibility. When a friend I'd grown up with transitioned ftm, I was incredibly jealous, but thought I wasn't trans because I hadn't always known the way he had.
• When I got my first period and my mom told me why, I was completely horrified. The idea of becoming pregnant felt completely 100% foreign and repugnant, like having a chestburster from Alien. When I finally got a Mirena IUD and stopped having periods, suddenly I hated myself way less.
• Probably TMI, but sexually I was never interested in my own sexual pleasure until I figured out that I'm male. I loved giving others sexual pleasure but I just felt weird and uncomfortable having my partner's focus on my body, rather than on their own pleasure. (sex is way way way better now that I've figured out I'm a mostly gay dude)
• my whole life from puberty on I was always super concerned about whether I was being female "right". I'd look at women around me and base my appearance on theirs, very very carefully. It never came naturally to me. I wore dresses and heels and makeup because that's what girls are "supposed" to do. I was performing, constantly, and it was exhausting.
• I always liked hanging out with groups of guys that treated me just like one of the guys. I never felt comfortable in groups of girly girls. I've never felt truly accepted in either situation.
• my best friend in middle school was gay and came out to me in 8th grade. He told me that he was confused for a while because he was attracted to me and he was never attracted to any women. That... probably should have been a big clue-by-four. XD
• when I was a little kid my favorite playground game was "chase my friends around and tackle them and give them noogies". I stopped when the playground monitors mocked me for "flirting" with the boys. (to be fair it was partially that, but mostly I just liked physical aggressive play)
• I had a breast reduction surgery seven years ago and I begged the doctor to take me as small as possible. I told her I'd rather be an A cup that looked disproportionate than stay large-chested and have it look normal. She refused and took me to a DD. I wish I'd known what I do now-- I could have had top surgery covered by insurance!

Quote from: UnlockingJack on June 26, 2014, 12:21:17 PM

• my best friend in middle school was gay and came out to me in 8th grade. He told me that he was confused for a while because he was attracted to me and he was never attracted to any women. That... probably should have been a big clue-by-four. XD

LOL.  Clue-by-four.  I love it!  I like that one better than "cluebat".

My personal experience was always getting along beautifully with lesbians since high school.   So many of them had this huge aversion to cishet gys and dudebro culture, but I seemed to be somewhat of an honorary member of "the club".   As a "guy" I even ended up kissing several gay and bi girls, and even got intimate with two of them.  So many times I heard something to the effect of, "You're really cool for a guy.  Why can't all guys be more like you?"  I had racked it up about ten years ago to the possiblity that they didn't normally get treated like human beings by cishet guys, but now I'm pretty sure I just gave off a barely transparent "gay girl" vibe.  Oh, if they only knew now.  I'm sure most of them would say now that it all made perfect sense.

Oh wow, just realized you're a Jack.   Wanna go up a hill with me sometime?  (Kidding...  It didn't end up so hot for the last one.) 

I always felt something was wrong with me and, for some reason, I hated myself and took it out on others because I never learned how to manage anger. This whole gender identity crisis sort of got triggered when I got raped. Since that time, I started to hang around guys more, playing some casual soccer and I recall liking 1-2 girls back in elementary school. At that age, I obviously couldn't put a finger on it but I knew that I wanted to be a prince like those you read about in fairy tales. After a while, I think i freaked at what I was feeling since girls don't like other girls so I tried to repress it. It worked out for a good while until high school. At that point, my mom started to suspect something when I didn't have a boyfriend so she assumed I was lesbian. I looked it up and I just figured that was the explanation since I found girls very attractive. How dead wrong I was.

Granted, my mother never let me cut my hair short and forced me to just stay somewhat of a tomboy. Compromise. Due to such restrictions, I started to imagine myself with short hair and wearing whatever I wanted, thinking of myself as a butch lesbian. But then I realized that I wanted MORE. I didn't want to just look like that, I literally wanted to become the man in the relationship, go beyond the butch lesbian look, etc. I freaked and, once again, I repressed it because it seemed unnatural and that my parents wouldn't approve. The image of a perfect family was so important for them and so, I made them happy by remaining the way I was at the expense of my own happiness. I felt withdrawn, getting through the day was hard work and I didn't feel like doing anything at all. No motivation whatsoever. I always felt angry all the time and I didn't know why that was. It all reached a point when I suddenly had this urge to wear my brother's clothes, went to school braless and got strange looks from people.

At some point during my internet exploration, I discovered the word transgender. I researched on it, drawn to the word and realized that this was it. This is what's been going on with me since I never did feel like being a girl or acted like one, liked boys or even liked or talked about girly things. I was a boy trapped in a female body due to some strange work of nature. Looking back on certain memories of the past, it all makes sense now.

I'm taking the steps to correct this issue by starting the process to receive HRT and I'd hopefully be able to afford top surgery in the near future.

My older sisters had dolls, I played with them. I got an "Action Man" doll instead, not quite the same thing. I think I had a certain amount of "counselling" from one of my older brothers, probably intended to stop me from being too "soppy", he was very aggro about things in general. I didn't really latch on.

Playground stuff was weird - I wasn't into "girls' games" as I'd been given a bit of conditioning in that area, but I was kind of not very good at football either. Mostly I'd run or skip around and feel a bit bemused.

I remember the local paper reporting on a male civil (public) servant who'd "had a bet" at work regarding dressing as a woman to work for a week. I'm not clear whether the bet was "lost" or "won". There was a photo of this person, dressed in 70s finery, on the front page with the headline "Sybil Servant". It fascinated me - and I could "read" the paper and look at this instead, for that evening at least.

There were a number of tv programmes in the 70s and 80s on broadly trans issues. Some better than others. I recall my stepmother telling me not to watch one "Play for today" as it was "disgusting". I think this was already my second time of watching it (good old repeats, no VCR or pvr in those days).

Puberty meant a locked in fascination with being female. Whilst I liked looking at women it was not in the "Urrr, uggg, look at that!" way, but an interest in how the looked what they were wearing, and how I might look in that. But it was too hard for me to really accept this. I was different, but at 16 that's something you avoid. Or sit miserably in the corner, reading Jude the Obscure, and being "moody". I would then cheer myself up by reading Sylvia Plath.

On one level I think I "knew" but I didn't know what to do, it was simply too scary at that time.

So much of this thread rings so true for me.  I was always a male character if allowed to be (Lisa Squirrel - I wanted to be Braker Turtle :) )

I'm not sure if I actually remember it, or if I'm only constructing a memory based on my mother's repeated telling of the story, but apparently the only huge tantrum I ever threw as a small child was at 4 years old, when I freaked out about having to take ballet and not being allowed to play t-ball.  I used to play He-Man games with two neighbor boys from 5-8, and I convinced them to let me be He-Man for the longest time, because I had the same haircut as him  :P  Then came an incident when I was 10 and cut off all of my hair, and my mother flipped.

Then came puberty: I felt like I was mutating into some sort of freak creature in middle school.  Long before I knew what binding was, I tried substituting a tight ace bandage for a bra when I was 13.  Unfortunately, I fell out of it in the middle of gym class...

I've always been more apt to jump and cheer or cry over the smallest things, so I always figured my personality matched my body - except that I never wanted to discuss specific emotions with anyone, as most girls seemed to.  I always knew that I was into both genders, so I figured my hatred of my chest and my growing dislike of my other parts was down to my not being straight.  Then one night, my first girlfriend (also bi) and I were looking at magazine photos of different men and women, commenting about how they were all so hot, and she pointed out some actress and said, "I wish I looked like her."  I pointed to a pic in the same magazine (I don't even remember of who) and said, "I wish I looked like him."  She gave me the most disgusted look on earth, and broke up with me soon after.  I never understood why she was so grossed out by my wish, and not hers.

My parents stuck me in counseling over my professed orientation, and doubled-down on it when I told them I wanted to be a guy.  Unfortunately, it was Catholic counseling.  I was told that some people are naturally lesbians, and that it was my job from god to try and ignore that.  I asked about wanting to be a guy, and I was told it was down to being a lesbian.  I pointed out that I was bi, and I was told that TV had told me to say that.  The biggest shame I feel in my life now is over the fact that I believed all that nonsense for so long.

Then came college...  My roommate convinced me that, "even though you're too short and chesty to do real work, you can make a lot of money doing this..." and I started catalog modelling.  I stayed firmly in denial land, laughing off every bad thought I had about my body as being due to the pressures of my part-time job.  It paid well, and it certainly made my parents happy, and it gave me that perfect false target for all the reasons I was so dissatisfied with my body.

As college faded into grad school, I started having more sexual relationships, and wow, this sounds familiar:

QuoteProbably TMI, but sexually I was never interested in my own sexual pleasure until I figured out that I'm male. I loved giving others sexual pleasure but I just felt weird and uncomfortable having my partner's focus on my body, rather than on their own pleasure.

THIS.  I had no problem going down on boyfriends or girlfriends, but I flat-out refused to let anyone return the favor on me, and any time anyone wanted penetration, I made them "use the back door."

Once I was out of school and living alone, working a sedentary job, I put on a lot of weight, and again, all the bad thoughts about being female I attributed to my weight gain, and not to my not being the correct gender.  This was definitely me:

QuoteI started to imagine myself with short hair and wearing whatever I wanted, thinking of myself as a butch lesbian. But then I realized that I wanted MORE. I didn't want to just look like that, I literally wanted to become the man in the relationship, go beyond the butch lesbian look, etc.

I started being more and more butch, whenever I went home, my parents begrudgingly accepted me as butch and bi, and life went on.  I finally managed to secure a job that matched my education, and most of my coworkers, like a lot of my fellow students in college, were male.  And then one day, I was talking with the only other physical female in my department (a cishet woman), and she started bringing up all of the family pressure she felt to follow her life path.  And at the end of the conversation, she just blurted out, "a good little punjabi girl should want to be a good engineer and mother, and not go to art school - just like how you are a good little catholic girl and you don't become a boy like you want to."  I was floored.  I couldn't believe I was that transparent.  I couldn't believe she knew.

After that, I got over my fear of therapy, instilled by the crazy catholics when I was younger, and I started going to see a real therapist.  I lost all the extra weight, and started heavy lifting and boxing, seeking a more masculine physique.  I started researching transitioning, and waivering on whether I would take the plunge, out of fear that I've just got too female a form to really do it.  Five years on, I am 32 and I'm finally ready to admit that I'm a man, and I want to be one as wholly as possible.  I hit a massive roadbump with the first endocrinologist I saw, which prompted me to join this board, and well, that's it.  Tons of hints, tons of denial, and now - well, now is the time for the truth.  I wish I'd listened harder to what all of those little incidents were telling me, and to myself.

A big one for me, that I only remembered recently, is quite NSFW but I'll go ahead.

When I was about 14 I had a friend who was very masculine, if you thought stereotypical male he wasn't far from the ideal.
One day he showed me an... adult's special interest video on his phone. It was of a woman, perhaps early twenties, 'enjoying herself with the tools at her disposal'.
My friend was loving it, and asked me if I found it as hot as he did. I replied yes but I wasn't getting any enjoyment from watching it - I was just jealous over the fact that she had a vagina and I don't.

Still gets to me.

Sometime in my teen years my little sister had a dance recital.   We boys were told to dress nicely - meaning a coat and tie.  It made no sense to me at the time, but I just refused to put on a tie.  It just seemed wrong.   I remember my Dad chasing me around the house and eventually forcing me into the car.   I think this stands out b/c I was always the good kid, the one who did what he was told.  But that day I just blew up.

  And I never even knew why I felt that way.

Until my recent discovery I an trans this incident had gone missing.   I don't know if I was jealous that my sister got to do dance or that I had to wear the tie (I always hated ties), but it was just wrong.

Quote from: Kaydee on July 01, 2014, 08:14:35 PM
Sometime in my teen years my little sister had a dance recital.   We boys were told to dress nicely - meaning a coat and tie.  It made no sense to me at the time, but I just refused to put on a tie.  It just seemed wrong.   I remember my Dad chasing me around the house and eventually forcing me into the car.   I think this stands out b/c I was always the good kid, the one who did what he was told.  But that day I just blew up.

  And I never even knew why I felt that way.

Until my recent discovery I an trans this incident had gone missing.   I don't know if I was jealous that my sister got to do dance or that I had to wear the tie (I always hated ties), but it was just wrong.

So I wasn't the only one with an extreme aversion to jackets and ties.   I always got really pissed off when I had to "dress up".  And OMG, the dreaded tuxedo.  Don't get me started...   I'm going to hate the way I look- guaranteed!   I feel so much better in a cute dress and shoes.

Heh, I have a few...
-As a little kid, I was bizarrely obsessed with being really masculine and strong. I would run around really fast, and challenge all my male relatives to arm wrestle me, and make my parents and friends feel my muscles.... I was a weird kid, haha.
-I always identified really heavily with male characters on TV and in movies, especially (as a little kid) Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible and (as a preteen) Dr. Cox from Scrubs (don't laugh...)
-I always had way more male friends than female, and really hated being grouped in with girls in places like Sunday school. I insisted on wearing pantsuits to formal events and loved going over to my male friends' houses more than anything because I could play with their LEGOs and lightsabers and video games and such
-I literally said to my mom once when I was a preteen that "I wanna have kids, but I don't wanna be a 'mom'... I really wanna be a 'dad' instead?"

I hated haircuts.  I would scream my head off as a kid.  I grew it out as a teen, and if I showed you a picture you would swear from my glasses and clothes I was a cis lesbian.  I then proceeded to date a string of bi girls.

The earliest thing I can actually remember was probably when I was 5, but then again idk how old I was, but it was the first time I tried on girls cloths because I had the strange feeling of wanting to. I grew up religiously, so I was told a lot not to do that stuff. But growing up, I couldn't ignore this feeling. I avoided it, but still had it. I thought I must be homosexual, but that couldn't be, because I had no attraction towards guys. I can't remember when it was but I was online and did research, took a little test thing that told your sexual orientation. I answered the questions, and feared the results saying, guess what, you're gay. But they came out to transsexual, which is when I learned about what that was. I know that I used to always walk real feminine as a child, and my dad told me to stop walking like that. I asked why, can't remember what he said. But I stopped. I was never able to break the habit of crossdressing, even though I tried many times. I just couldn't help it. Haircuts where a dreadful day. I hated them more than anything. I would run away and hide somewhere in the hose, and get dragged to the chair where my dad would cut it. It's been 3 months now that I have officially refused to get it cut. I constantly get bragged about it, but I will not let them cut it again this time. I look back at some of my pictures as to when I was a little boy, and I can clearly see in the photos that I was not a normal little boy. I really could see that the way I was standing or sitting, or anything in the pictures was very feminine for a boy. Sometimes I wonder if my parents saw that too, and know that there's something up with me, but don't tell me they know. Try that one for a nightmare.

When I was about three or four, my cousins and I often used to play pretend games where we were animals. And in my imagination, I would invariably always be a female animal, never a male. The fact that I was always female in my imagination wasn't really something that I was particularly conscious of at the time, and it wasn't something that I was pretending to be because I thought it was cool or fun, as the animal itself was. It was just something that felt logical and natural; if I were an animal I ought to be female because I took it for granted that as a human I was also female. Had you asked me at the time why the animal I was pretending to be was female, I probably would just have told you that the animal was a girl because I was a girl. ^^'' I think that's probably the earliest memory I have of directly and unmistakably identifying as a girl.

I believe I was around 7 years old when Mrs Doubtfire came out. I watched it dozens and dozens of times without ever really knowing why. Days of thunder, I wore out the vhs watching the scene where the stripper pulls them over and checks Tom Cruise for hidden weapons. My family found out and assumed I was watching because of her boobs. I was far more interested in Tom's hidden weapon ^^

My parents are religious nutters, but they were very absent parents so I was able to play with my sister and her Barbies for years. I loved dressing Barbie up in all the different outfits. And of course I loved helping Barbie meet a rugged,  handsome Ken and have his babies. ^_^

I can look back today at various things that definitely have pointed in this direction, but at the time it didn't really register, like dressing up in my mom's things and trying on makeup. I wasn't thinking as a kid that I wanted to be a girl, I just did what I wanted to do because I liked it. I had different phases of expression, and different moments that made me come across as very sensitive rather than tough. There was never a moment where I thought of myself as either gender, though. I had one period of time in high school where I wore eyeliner and nail polish, but it didn't last long.

I always had crushes on tomboyish girls, and eventually became aesthetically drawn to androgyny after seeing Velvet Goldmine and getting into Placebo, so I thought maybe I was bisexual, but that wasn't the case. I really don't have sexual attractions. I just obsess over beauty.

Eventually I started to really hate male pronouns, and would say, "I'm just a sentient being inhabiting this vessel," but that wasn't getting anyone to think of me as such. So, I eventually came out as genderqueer (androgyne, specifically), but that's still not completely right, and I still get "he" and "sir" and "mister" and "him" and "uncle". A friend of mine said last night, as we were all outside smoking, that I was looking sassy. Another friend said, "yeah, he's a sassy man." NO. "Man" is incorrect. Stoic, perhaps, and often very quiet, but I do not fit the role of male.

Straight women often want someone who is dominant and physically strong, and that's not me. I'm drawn to beauty, feminine expression, I will cry every time I watch What Dreams May Come, my speech and mannerisms are not manly, I can't stand it when male friends of mine talk about the girls they want to bed, and there are even physical things about me that suggest what could be androgen insensitivity and/or more estrogen in my system than the normal male biology should have.

I often wonder if I could continue on without transition, and sometimes feel like I could, but then something or someone reminds me why that's not a good idea. Luckily, both of my parents are supportive, and every friend that I've told, but in this form I still have to endure the wrong pronouns, and that stings every time.

Anyway, I wish we could tap into all of our memories and scan over the moments that were paramount to the present moment, but do we really need that kind of validation?