Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I ask this question because i would like to know from all of you who decided to finally transition. For me I only started feeling like a female since 1997, before that i felt more like a male. However even during that time before, i would still occasionally cross dress and had times i pretended to be female. But something changed in me in 1997. I had a lot of stress from work and life in general and after cross dressing again, its like a light switch went off in my head, and I started realizing I am really female, even though still today i will admit to being gender fluid mentally.

There were three major milestones for me:

• Age ~9 - realised I wanted to be a girl ( without knowing why )
• Age 26 - realised that I have a female mind
• Age 33 - realised that I can do something about this

I've always just been 'me'. Now I know there's a label for people like me :)

Also, I've CD'd at various times since the age of 4 or 5. So the first realisation didn't just come out of nothing.

i did not cross dress till I was 10, i wore my mom's pantyhose then, but she never knew. I don't even remember how I was able to get away with it.

I grew up in a very sheltered Religious home but surprisingly my parents did not allow stereotypical female toys in the home. I thought I was a boy until puberty. My parents just thought I was a tomboy and would eventually grow out of it. Puberty was a rough time for me. I wore tight sports bras, baggy clothing, and jackets to hide my chest (even in the Summer).

When I was 15 I cut my hair off, started shaving my face, and bought my first pack of tighty whiteys, lol. At 17 I started living full time.

The strange thing about myself is due to circumstances out of my control (health issues) I had an elevated T level. Funny as it sounds now, there was a time where I thought maybe I had willed myself somehow into a more masculine existence. I have lived as a male now for 14 years and have just accepted the fact that I am trans. I knew it...I'm not oblivious but I never accepted the label.

I knew I wasn't right at around 4, but I had no idea what trans was until about 20 to even come to that conclusion.

I was pretty much oblivious to gender differences until puberty kicked in and then I started and male hormones started making changes to my body, I started having a variety of fantasies in which physically I was transformed into a female with only my imagination to know exactly what that entailed.

The short answer is that I knew between 5 and 7 years old, so I chose "before I was 8."

But I just wrote it off as "I was born a boy I'll just have to be a boy." I had no idea that I could change. Puberty was an odd time, and I used to wish and pray that I could get a bizarre disease where the only possible life-saving cure would've been a sex change.

I got married young and wouldn't explore gender identity till I was about 38. At first I thought I was a cross-dresser. Then androgyne. The genderfluid. Finally MTF. I began transitioning in earnest at about age 41.

Quote from: Constance on December 21, 2012, 08:38:28 PM...and I used to wish and pray that I could get a bizarre disease where the only possible life-saving cure would've been a sex change.

me too!

My first word i spoke was my big sister's name. Annie (2 years older), which was more like nani whenever i said it. We were best friends and we played house and barbies together. she would do my hair and makeup also when  i was a toddler. So apparently at that age i realized i was trans.

fast forward to the onset of puberty and i began secretly "borrowing" her clothes. also at this age i learned of srs. i had sent an email to some surgeon, which my mom ended up finding out about. OOPS! can't remember what i told her but i'm sure it was some stupid excuse.

and fast forward thru catholic highschool and after graduating college i think i'm finally starting to face my internalized transphobia which has been the one thing holding me back from starting my life. its like, now that i've graduated (and paid it off!), traveled overseas (south africa, swaziland, mozambique, zambia), i have began to think for myself. much different than the previous mode of operation where i would do what parents and society wanted me to do. I've began remembering my dreams and having neat visions every now and then. i'm very happy to start becoming self-aware. sure beats self-concious ;D

unfortunately i've got tons of friends and acquaintances who i think i'll lose if i go forward. or perhaps thats just my transphobia chipping away at my self-esteem. either way i think here soon i'll overcome my fear of having to get a whole new group of friends and start my life over. better at age 25 than later!

Age 7 I can remember wanting to be a girl
Age 13 I first cross dressed
Age 21 I realised I was transexual
Age 31 I saw a Doctor
Age 32 started self medicating and electrolysis,living as woman at nights and going to LGBT bars
Age 33 saw Gender Identity clinic and started living and working full time
Age 37 had GRS

I remember around the age of 3-4 praying every night I would wake up a girl. I didn't know what "trans" was until I saw something in a magazine about it when I was older. But when I saw that it was a light bulb moment.

 I realized that I wanted to be a girl at seven. Up until that point, my gender was a non-factor. I was essentially genderless, as I saw myself.

Well i see so far in the poll there are few people like me, that were not sure until being a young adult. But it seems like there's a larger potion that knew earlier. I wonder what would explain all that?

There was a posting a while ago, on this issue where the poster referred to some of us as, 'Those who knew before we were 5'. I don't think it was as resentful as it sounds, but perhaps I should clarify my own experiences at 4 years.

In essence, I just knew there was something wrong. I knew girls were different from boys but didn't know why. It never occurred to be they might have different genitals. I thought babies were sent to hospital by God and handed out from there.

In my case, I played with girls. I had the choice to play with boys or girls and chose the girls because they did the things I wanted to do.

My first realisation that something was wrong was about 4 years when I was told I should be playing with boys. I tried so hard but they were rough, smelled funny and were frankly nasty and competitive.

I suppose I just treated it in the same way as if my friends had gone home and so I chose to play alone.

Started school at 5 or so. Seem to remember being told to stay away from the girls because they didn't like me. I do remember showing off to them a bit, but I think that was more hoping they would accept me.

My attempts to alter my appearance came a little later, but not sure when. My first memory of that was when I was 7 years. For various reasons, we lived in a house, at the time, where I had my own room. My father came to say good night and discovered I had taken some towels and wrapped them around myself. Around my nether to hide the ugly bit and push my bottom out a bit, but also over my head so I could pretend to have a lot of hair.

The next thing, my Father, mother and elder brother and sister burst in, hauled me out of bed and made me take the stuff off. Actually, thinking, it probably just dropped off.

I soon ended up in a Hospital in Seattle. I was there for about 5 days, for tests. They said there was nothing wring with me and my parents just needed to man me up.

They took this to mean they should beat me them make me stand there and not cry.

The psycho-analytical might look at all sorts of sources for my situation from that. I take the position that if reasons were relevant these people wouldn't need to endlessly earn fortunes reciting the same old crap.

I am now in my mid 50s. My physical health is not good. I have absolutely no chance of achieving anything form myself, even if I still had any inclination.

Can't wait for it all to be over, just had enough!

I'm 24 now.   I knew something was off when i was a teenager,  but I wasn't willing to research or accept anything until a few months ago.

I always knew that there was something different about me. I wasn't 'normal' but I really didn't know what was so different about me. I remember paying my brother to let me play with his toys (army toys and cars) and I was so desperate that I actually would pay him. But at the same time I did like playing with dolls etc so that made the 'typical' girl I suppose. My room was pink and I had Barbie plastered all around my room. This was until I was about 8-9. I then started to really feel different to every other girl my age. I remember vividly being at my Auntie's one day and her saying to me 'you should have been born a boy'. That set off something in my head and I thought yes, I should have been. It would have made me 'normal'. I also remember wearing some boys' trousers when I was about 9 and they had an elastic trim around them similar to boxers and my mum's friend said to me 'why are you wearing boys pants?' and I was thinking 'well that's what I'm supposed to wear' but even then it still didn't make sense. Ever since I was old enough to dress myself I hated wearing girls clothes and begged my mum to let me wear stuff that was remotely masculine. I was always known as a tomboy and people used to make comments in the street if I was a boy or girl. For some reason that always hurt, but I still don't quite understand why. When my chest started growing I hated it. At about 14 years old I started to bind my chest when I was alone. I'd find any way to do so just to make me a bit flatter. Even though I knew I wasn't supposed to be a girl many many years ago, I finally stopped suppressing it and denying it about a year ago. Most things make sense now, and I know that I'm trans. I was supposed to be born a boy, I am a boy. There are still some things that don't make sense, but I'm still young and working them out. I know what I am now though, and I'm a teenage boy.
Joey

I think I always felt sort of different from both genders. I don't remember much from childhood, maybe therapy would trigger me to remember more. But I know I felt pressured to act differently than I felt inside when I was about 9, and remember rather being alone. I don't really know if that had something to do with gender - what is gender anyway? I don't know anything else than that I just don't feel like I am a girl. That truth I discovered consciously during this autumn, when I just started to try things that made me look more like a boy, and I've liked every last one of the changes so far. If I look back, I know though that the few times I cross-dressed as a teenager felt like coming home, they were so comfortable and I couldn't understand how I and that "role" were thought of as different by others.

I knew there was something about my gender from a very early age. I started crossdressing at 8.
After a lot of circular thinking and a big big big confusion about my gender, I decided I would do something about it at 21. Shortly after taking very seriously the idea of transitioning, I hid it under the rug.
Years passed by with ups and downs, trying to fit in as a male. Couldn't take it anymore, so I'm starting to transition now, at age 28. No hormones yet, still into full time. Hopefully, HRT will begin in February :-)

Some of you have answers to this that resonate deeply with me. Until this past summer, I had no clue that there was a word to describe me, and people like me. Up until this past summer, I always thought the word "trans" was only used in a derogatory fashion to throw hate at those who worked as female impersonators, or feminine acting gay men or those who claim the queer designation.

It was when I watched an episode of a popular TV program called "What Would You Do?" with John Quinones and a transgender woman who played a waitress in a restaurant for that program. When I was younger, I saw a sex change surgery video on an old VHS tape. I knew that was what I wanted, but didn't know why, and didn't know what it meant for me, even though I felt female from the time I was younger and, therefore knew I was different.

The past months since summer have been big months for me because of being able to finally put it all together, and seek the medical help I need to transition. Something else that helped me prior to going for therapy and medical help for transition, and prior to going part time was doing research and running across videos by JesslynGirl on Youtube. I knew then for sure that it was finally ok to give myself permission to finally be myself, start coming out to people I knew I could trust.

I have known no better freedom, and known no such anxiety and stress at the same time, since I was in my early teens when I became suicidal over what I can now recognize as gender dysphoria. Until these past recent months, I knew nothing about gender dysphoria. Until these past recent months, I didn't know there was anything to describe what I was feeling all these years in regards to anxiety, stress, and depression.

To be honest, my anxiety and depression and stress also have other causes in the form of PTSD, but now I have the proper help with it, and I am thinking much more clearly.     

I became really conscious of it at 9 years old. Before that, I knew the difference between boys and girls but never really thought about it. I recently realized that I need to do something about it because it's one of the things that hinder my progress in life.

I really only knew that I was trans about a few years ago. I'm 25 now so I would be about 23 then. Before that I was a very repressed person and I believe that I basically couldn't deal with the fact that I identified as female so suppressed everything.

Now that I have accepted myself as I am I can see a whole lot of "signs" in my past that should have clued me in to my gender dissonance earlier on, but I was so oblivious and in such denial that I didn't see them.

Then when I first started to entertain the thought that I might be trans, I would go back and forth not really knowing who I was. Eventually I was able to push through all the self doubt, but there's still a little bit of it lingering here and there. Not that I think that I would ever go back to believing that I was male. That seems completely impossible to me now.

Oh and I guess that I started realizing that I was different from most boys around middle school (maybe around 10 or 12), but I really had no idea that it was because I was trans.

I didn't know I was "Trans" until last spring at age 50, or at least that's when I had a word to call it. I've known since I was a teenager that I've wished I could become a woman. It took meeting some actual everyday ordinary MtF full-timers to realize it actually was a possibility for me.

I only have a couple of random memories before I was 10.  So I'm not sure how I felt about my gender when I was a little kid.  I do remember wearing my sisters clothes through my teens and even earlier I think.  I have been cross dressing my whole life and new something was different about me but never realized I was trans until a couple of years ago.  So I voted didn't know till I was an older adult.  I think I repressed and denied the obvious most of my life. 

In fifth grade I started getting jealous of other girls and questioning why i wasnt born one then i subsequently began repressing those feelings. It took me until a couple years ago to tell myself I have gender problems and earlier this year that I'm actually transgender

Humm...

I remember feeling not different but not right. Started dressing when I was 5 or 6 and have my entire life. Began dreaming of changes and wanting changes around 8. Repressed everything into myself after being caught by my father.

Attempted different things all my adult life dressing and admitting to partners. Married my wife 17 years ago and came out to her this year. I am lucky she is so supportive.

I am now 48 and moving toward transition. I never knew I was until this year 2012. I just thought I was a perv.. and sort of a freak.

I started about3 or 4, got caught in my mums slip and pantihose by age 5, kept cross-dressing on and off for many years, trying to deny how I really felt on the inside, no luck there I know I is a girl! When you grow up in a small mining town that is full of drunken pigs and the so called poofter bashers that live in this town, then it be a scary thing to go out dressed up  :(  Lucky it gets dark and I have a car to drive to a different town or city. :D

I remember being in fourth grade, I would lay in bed waiting to go to sleep and I would dream that I would wake up a girl too. It's weird too, because there were a lot of things about myself that I always thought were unusual and I chocked it all up to being a weird person. I would sneak into my mother's room and 'borrow' panty hose and make up. My little sister caught me with make up on when I was fourteen. I always heard about 'men who were trapped in women's bodies' and I just sort of thought that was lame. Then, I guess one day I started to venture out on the internet, looking for things I never thought I would be looking for. Lo and behold, I realized that I was definitely in a minority, but far from alone.

I have almost no memory of anything before I was 5.  According to my aunt, when I was 3 or 4 I told everyone that I wanted to be a princess and they couldn't dissuade me from it.  My first memory of something being off was probably when I was 6 and had and extreme case of envy over my sisters Jasmine costume.  I was never comfortable with the paperwork in school you get where you would have to check M or F and left them blank.  But as for actually knowing what I was, it wasn't till I was 19, probably because I retreated into the world of fiction, spending almost every waking hour with a book in my face between the ages of 9 - 17(and I only walked into a telephone pole once!) although I did trip down a flight of stairs on occasion...

I was 10, watching a TV show and I wanted to be like one of the women characters.  I lived the next 39 years in various levels of denial.  I knew what I was and some of the women I dated knew.  I believe that when you sleep with someone, they know.  Some were OK, some were not.  Only one ever talked with me about it, right before she left.  I knew she was right, it just triggered more denial.  There were two things holding me back - I like women so I figured sex with a woman would be better/easier if I were a guy and the money needed to transition.  I decided to look into transitioning in Feb. of 2012.  Then in March, before I got things started, my body took the initiative. 

I've known for since I could remember, my memory isn't very good so its very patchy. I've cross dressed on and off for a couple of years now. But i think the first time I cross dressed was when I was around 14. I really didn't have an idea why I had different feelings and emotions deep in me but I tended to just keep them suppressed.

Only in the last few months have I come to realize who I actually am, slowly I've been telling others though. Its kind of a mixture between embarrassment, relief and shyness when I talk about it.
I mustered up enough courage to tell my mum about a week ago now. I've told a single colleague at work and 2 of my close friends. However expressing myself physically rather than just mentally is almost impossible for me. As I still live at home with my parents, 2 older brothers and a younger sister cross dressing outside of the bathroom is so embarrassing because of my brothers reaction to do it on a more than on and off basis.

But I know now that I am trans, all my dreams start to make sense now, or at least more sense than they did before. But I still hide myself in video games with my headphones on. Always a female character and I love having a selection of outfits and clothes to experiment with to my hearts content. Its just embarrassing when my brothers friends are round and see me browsing through female clothes. I sometimes blush when that happens or most of the time I will quickly switch the screen off and walk away.

When I was 9 the thought of being a girl first hit my mind. But it was more of a fascination rather than something I related to. It wasn't until I was around 12 when I realized I wanted to be one. Started crossdressing at 14, and it really dominated my mind by 15.

I remember being 12 and getting my first computer. I started researching m-f related stuff. Before then I thought I invented the idea. Nope! It was quite established, and I was very excited. I think that's when it set in me, when I realized wanting to be the opposite gender was actually something.

It's weird though because the more I think back to my early childhood, the more I remember being pretty effeminate. It just never occurred to me that I would want to be a girl until I learned it existed.

Before 6 (no idea of the specific year) -- knew I was a girl
12 -- Realized I am different from the boys
15 -- Wanted to dress in female clothes and keep long hair (and was rejected by teacher and scolded by family)
23 -- That mind came back again and appeared stronger. Bought my first own piece of female clothes. Began to learn how to dress properly and how to do makeup.
26 -- Out of the control of my family and began to know I can do something. Then I told the doctor.

Strangely I thought I was a girl till I was 5 when my mom made me wear a dress she made for someone else and then when she saw how happy I was - she jokingly said "I wish you were a girl"

That's when my lightbulb flicked and I realized I was in the wrong body. Even then I still preferred and could not help preferring activities and games that girls played.

I'm not overly feminine, and I thought that for many years I was able to pass in guy circles comfortably. I guess when I started to confront the fact that even though I didn't 'act like a girl' or do a lot of girly things, I was pretty much always just 'passing' among the guys!

I was in the military, and then later on I did a lot of work over seas, and I was around the manliest of manly men. Hunters and warriors in the truest sense, and the entire time, except when it was raining shells and rockets, I would be soooo bored. And in certain countries the women cover themselves up and it was only afterwards that I realized the irony of it.

It was just a little overwhelming and kind of exciting when could look back and see my life as a whole, and that for my entire life, since I could remember, I just always wanted to be a girl. And then it started to make sense.

Diana,

I am the same way. I have been in in the same situations. Not with bombs and all but with those alpha male types. I was able to pass but I was never comfortable. I could never get the lingo down or follow the conversations about this or that. I am the queen of the nod and chuckle, or the redirect question.

Erin,

      That's so true. I just nod and smile so much of the time. I was with my Mom a year ago and we went to visit some of her friends and I didn't think anything of it. We all went out to lunch and it seemed very normal and enjoyable. The only man, an older guy, excused himself as soon as he could but not before he had turned to me and made some kind of quiet joke to me about how he couldn't stand it. I nodded and agreed and I had to figure out that he meant being surrounded by talking women, since we were at a restaurant on the beach. I thought he was making a different kind of joke until I realized that I was completely comfortable and this man was in some sort of agony.

      Then I think about all the times that I would spend around guys talking about sports, poker, fight scenes in movies, war video games and I was never the least bit interested in any of it but felt like I better pretend I did. I would make up excuses for why I didn't share these interests like, 'I'm just too competitive' or 'I don't take losing well' to make it seem like I 'would' like these things but I would 'like them too much' which couldn't be further from the truth.

      It's funny how things eventually start to make so much more sense.

      And I know what you mean by the redirect questions!

I only recently realized I was trans. When I was younger, I would be so frustrated with my female body. I remember telling my dad I wanted to be able to walk around without a shirt on like boys got to (at the time, I was 6 or 7, so I wasn't anywhere near developing in my chest). He finally let me for a few minutes in our back yard, though he wasn't very happy about it. I felt for the first time that I had become what I always wanted, even if only for a little while. I could be a boy, and enjoy the same luxuries they took for granted. That ended quickly. I had no idea there was a word for feeling like my body didn't match what my mind told me my gender was. I experimented with it over the years. I had more male clothes than female, I hated dresses, skirts, and pretty shoes. I loved it when I would be mistaken for a male, I wanted a masculine nickname to catch on (it never did), I had almost exclusively male friends, and I loved playing some sports. I never missed a ball when I batted and I was faster than most of the boys. I hated never being let onto the boys' teams because it felt like I wasn't playing with my peers. I soon developed my art instead to cope with it.

It wasn't until high school that I told some close friends about my desires. They accepted me right off without batting an eye. My male friends would call me "bro", tell others how I was more of a man than they were, and make jokes about how my balls were enormous and displaced to my chest (I have double d's). It felt great. I met my now husband there. He saw right through my outer shell to the man within. He was very supportive. It wasn't until after I graduated that I had an idea of what trans meant, or that surgical possibilities were out there. I looked into them, was dissatisfied with the pictures I found, and tucked my desires away, realizing I would probably never get to act upon my wishes. I tried so hard to be a better woman, but found I couldn't get the hang of some of their nuances. I did pick up some of their habits, but just enough for me to be considered a femme guy. Now, five years later, I found I couldn't repress the feelings anymore. I now embrace my identity as a trans-man and have been gathering information every chance I get. My husband is still supportive of me, and cheers me on constantly when I start to doubt myself.

I knew I was "different" around age 8 or 9, and  I started crossdressing when I was 10 or 11. I went through a lot of doubt and uncertainty and didn't know for sure that I wanted to transition until I was in my early 30s.

I first remembering trying on my mothers clothes and at night wishing I would wake up a girl in the morning a lot. Throughout my teenage years I continued to repress these thoughts and crossdressed occasionally, then at 20 I finally allowed myself to realize who I was, and that was a girl. In hindsight, it totally makes sense, makes me feel like an idiot!

I'd say I started feeling pretty weird about gender around 9, and by 11 I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of living as a male, and I started borrowing clothing from my sister.  Puberty did enough to my body that I stopped feeling comfortable with that, and I felt enough shame for it that I tried to do the whole 180 and be a really masculine guy.  I don't feel a lot different about it now than I did when I was 11, but at this point I'll never really see myself as either male or female, regardless of how I wish things had gone.  I've been transitioning in a sense, but not really all the way.  I may never go that far, especially with some of the issues I've run into during the whole process.

When I was really young, I just ran around with my friends and really didn't consider gender. I had equal amounts of male and female friends, though most of my female friends were tomboys.

I freeeeeaked out once my breasts started budding, though. I knew that it'd happen eventually, but the thought of puberty'd always made me anxious for a reason I hadn't been able to pinpoint. Something was off, I knew it.

Older friend of mine, a transguy himself, was the first non-cisgender person I'd ever met. He helped me through a few rough spots unrelated to my gender. But when I was introduced to the concept of transgender it kinda... really held my attention for some reason, though I denied being trans.

Then eventually I could no longer deny that something was up with my gender. Came out to my now-girlfriend and said I'd been beginning to seriously think that I wasn't cisgender, that I wasn't quite comfortable with my body as it was. But... it was hard to completely reject the notion of me being "female," so I called myself genderfluid for a time, more often masculine. Then "genderqueer, but really would be more comfortable in a male body." Then, I stepped back and said "...what am I doing? I've been asking to be referred to as male. I'm dysphoric about my body, and really want a male body. I'm just clinging to remnants of being 'normal.'" So I stopped clinging, and accepted that I was trans. It was like a big weight was lifted off my chest, haha. (And now I just need to get the real weights lifted off  ;) )