Kia Ora,
No doubt a similar thread has been done before (again possibly by yours truly)...
Well for me, it was in 1972 when I read a story in the Sydney Morning Herald (The Sunday addition)...The story was about "The 'He-Shes' of Singapore " (one has to remember back then terms such as he-she was quite common)...The article mentioned that some had saved enough money to have 'sex-change' surgery performed...
So how about you...when did you first discover such a thing was 'physically' possible ?
Metta Zenda :)
I can remember in high school (early 90's) hearing about "sex changes" and it was usually used as a way to insult another guy. Although secretly I wished I could have one.
It wasn't until the early 2000's that I discovered the Andrea James and Lynn Conway websites and really learned more about it. Although transition just didn't seem possible for me at the time.
At around age 6(?), I asked my mother if boys could ever become girls, and she described the procedure to me in explicit detail. :-\
Quote from: Gwynne on January 20, 2014, 09:01:35 PM
At around age 6(?), I asked my mother if boys could ever become girls, and she described the procedure to me in explicit detail. :-\
Kia Ora Gwynne,
Blimey :o
Metta Zenda :)
Quote from: Anatta on January 20, 2014, 09:05:43 PM
Kia Ora Gwynne,
Blimey :o
Metta Zenda :)
She also told me that neovaginas are incapable of sexual feeling, transsexuals live wretched and oppressed lives of despair, and that most transsexuals are rejected by their families.
Small wonder I didn't share why I asked. ::)
Quote from: Gwynne on January 20, 2014, 09:13:37 PM
She also told me that neovaginas are incapable of sexual feeling, transsexuals live wretched and oppressed lives of despair, and that most transsexuals are rejected by their families.
Small wonder I didn't share why I asked. ::)
She said that to a 6 year old? Gosh! I can't imagine saying anything of the kind to my 6 year old.
Quote from: katiej on January 20, 2014, 09:19:11 PM
She said that to a 6 year old? Gosh! I can't imagine saying anything of the kind to my 6 year old.
My mother is a strange cat that way.
I don't believe in censorship, but there is such a thing as too much information.
Quote from: Gwynne on January 20, 2014, 09:01:35 PM
At around age 6(?), I asked my mother if boys could ever become girls, and she described the procedure to me in explicit detail. :-\
0.0
That's quite direct...dayum.
For me, I learned it "twice" so to speak.
First out of a textbook when I was in Middle School where there was a little blurb somewhere about Christine Jorgenson. As I never heard about anyone else doing that before (and I was a naive little kid), I assumed that no one else has ever gone through with that.
The second time, I was in late 11th grade and caught a glimpse of a mention of sex reassignment surgery somewhere online, I went into a research spree and discovered my emotions weren't crazy and there were others like me out there and there was indeed something I could do about my feelings.
About 8 years ago.
The first time I heard about it was in a local Sunday newspaper somewhere around 1980.
According to the probably fictional report, some guy had dreamed of being a woman, had the 'sex change op', then had another one back to being male after being raped (every woman's nightmare). It didn't fill in many blanks in this seriously dubious change of bizarre decisions.
I remember it quite vividly, down to the pictures used of him before her after and him post post op. I also remember reading furtively so no one knew I was interested in it.
I was about 10. My reaction was 'oh so it's possible then' and I did my best not to want it too much.
Of course there wasn't really any way to research it then so I didn't know in detail how it was done until about 6 years ago
I can't say I remember the first time I became aware of the existence of surgery - but I do remember the first time it really sunk in. I was 18, in a first year psych lecture at uni - the lecturer was speaking about the ratio of trans women to trans men (although this was 1984, so they definitely weren't using those terminologies). She was a feminist and was saying that it seemed odd that there were "so many more trans women than trans men, given that a trans woman is effectively transitioning from a privileged gender to one that is generally worse off financially and socially, repressed and treated like a second class citizen". She then went on to surmise that "the number of women choosing to transition to be men was less because it was easier to make a hole from a pole than the other way around". Yes, she actually said those exact words - much to the amusement of the lecture hall. Not very sensitive I know, but those words burned into my brain - I still remember that moment with incredible clarity (even to the point of knowing where I was sitting and in which lecture theatre). So if I wasn't aware of the surgical possibility before I sure was from that point onwards.
Well, I always assumed a surgeon could cut off my breasts and surgically create a penis. But I thought it was like...underground or something lol. And I felt like I'd just end up looking like a girl with short hair and a dick because I didn't know about T.
I kinda learned about the existence of T in 2007. I saw references to it and a few guys starting their transitions online. But I really had no idea what T was capable of, and I felt that since I looked so feminine, T wouldn't work for me. But as time went on I got more curious, researched more, and in the process learned about the actual surgeries available.
I have known ever since I was 4 when I saw a TV documentary, still clearly remember it all these years later. :-\
Back then my mum explained it all to me and how much happier would I have been IF I didn't loose her. :'(
in 2011 a friend of mine showed me a passage in a book she was reading, which was about a transwoman who had the surgery in a sort of underworld way. didn't sound very hygienic. but i didn't know it was possible the other way round too, since i was assuming that pole-hole concept. i never heard of top surgery until i joined susan's, but i had heard of breast reduction surgeries and was planning to have one someday in future. i knew nothing about hrt either until i googled 'gender variations' (i was in the course of discovering my gender. before that i hadnt heard of transsexuals) and i read the wikipedia article on transsexuals just out of curiosity and bingo! i found what i was and that i can actually transition into the gender i anticipated! btw in the old days i wasn't very keen on surgeries cos i believed had the right parts below my skin and that they'd grow in due time, sort of like getting your permanent teeth. i also thought i had plenty of T and no E, i didn't really know their functions then.
Twice,the first time was on 1st April 1971 so of course I didn't believe it when I read it in a seedy British newspaper.A few years before my cousin was taken in by a report in the same paper about the failure of the spaghetti trees so it had to be a joke.The next time was in the summer of 1973 when I watched an old Pathe news film of a car race where Roberta Cowell was racing.When it mentioned she was formerly Robert Cowell a Spitfire pilot I knew it was possible and there were others like me.I had something to look forward to at last.
I learned about Christine Jorgenson when I was 12. At that point I was still totally cisgendered. I hadn't even had my first thought about wanting to be a woman.
When I started wishing I had a female body, the thought crossed my mind, but I didn't want SRS (or "sex change" as it was called back then). I assumed it left the woman devoid of feeling, just like Gwynne was told. I also imagined I'd have to "convince" someone I was a transsexual, since, in my mind, I clearly wasn't one, since I didn't feel like a "woman trapped in a man's body", or indeed like a woman at all.
I also assumed it was the sort of thing that happened to one in a billion, since I had only heard of Rene Richards and Christine Jorgenson at that point. I had no idea it was 1:500 or so.
It was only a few years ago that I saw a video of a surgery being performed and I learned that they took a portion of the corpus cavernosa and formed a clitoris out of it that I started thinking it was something I might want.
I was just an early teen in the very early 1970's when I saw the Christine Jorgenson Story, a movie, on TV in glorious Black & White hiding out in my basement radio shack. After the movie was a public service announcement info-mercial which I guess was made by the Eric Erikson foundation. The next day a letter was in the mail for the literature. The pamphlet whose title I believe was "My Son is my Daughter" nailed my life long feelings exactly. Far different then what I saw in the CD type mags and papers around at that era
I was in such deep denial that it must have been almost 2000 before I finally found any written info in a libarary book - all of half a page!
I must have blanked off when the UK telly or press reported on the various sex changers who were outed by the mainly lesbian transphobes during the 60s 70's etc so I was quite surprised to finally get online in about 2001 and find a good deal of info.
I really can't remember. It's likely that I saw a news story on it when I was a kid, because I watched both Dateline and PBS documentaries a lot when I was a kid, and I seem to recall that by the time I was a teenager and actually started experiencing gender dysphoria, I kind of did know what a transsexual was already. I don't know. If not then, though, then I knew about it for sure by the time I was 14 or 15, in full-blown dysphoric mode, and did a lot of internet searches about stories where guys were turned into girls. I definitely stumbled onto information about SRS then, because I was definitely writing stories about it, and wishing that I could have it done, by the time I was in 10th grade.
I always knew I wanted to be a girl from the point I discovered I was being treated differently to them. I was always wishing to magically change. Then when I was 12 years old, I discovered a medical book in my mum's library that described the surgeries, with a photo of April Ashley. It was a little over ten more years before I decided to enact on transition.
It would have been about 1958, around the age of 9, when I first heard about Christine Jorgensen and that started my quest. By the mid-1960s I knew surgery was being done in Morocco and Belgium but the cost was astronomical - about the annual gross income of a white collar professional. It wasn't until December of 1973 that I heard about Dr. Biber and 4 months later I was GONE!
I'd say around 1978-9, when I was 9 years old.
1988.
I think I was 10 or 11. I was watching a rerun of WKRP in Cincinnati where one of the characters slept with a woman who used to be a high school buddy of his.
I asked my mom about it and she explained quit compassionately how some people are born with a condition where they were in the wrong body and that they could get an operation to fix that.
At the time I didn't say anything because I thought it was like anything else medical and the doctors would tell me that I needed a "sex change".
What? I just learned on this thread!
I found out when I was about 7. A school friend told me that a transsexual had moved into town and what that meant. Unfortunately I never asked my mother about it and developed a prejudice that lasted until well after a friend of mine came out as trans. Apparently I was railing against what I feared the most about myself.
Kia Ora,
And thank you to all those who have commented so far....
It's interesting to see how long some of us have carried around this knowledge, but failed to act on it for quite some time...
I guess in a sense, subconsciously it was comforting to know it was actually possible to physically change ones sexual characteristics ....
Metta Zenda :)
It was comedy fodder back in the 80's, I was born in '77, then I was certainly aware of it at a young age. It was many years before I connected that it was something I could, and then I should do. My dysphoria was present and self noted around 6 or years old('83), I was closeted and hiding when I was 8 due to transphobia in my family. It was a long time before I gained enough independence to really consider possibilities in my 20's.
About 1964 when Christine Jorgenson was in town being interviewed by a local prime time talk show host. My mom told me and my sibs that she was not gay.
Joelene
1999, when I was 30.
I went looking for porn & found ->-bleeped-<-s ... which led me to the AnneLawrence website & a TS chatsite.
Ever since then, every time I went looking for porn, I found myself reading forums & other websites about TG &/or TS.
And I still didn't figure it out until 2013 .... doh!
Quote from: TessaMarie on January 22, 2014, 10:16:14 AM
Ever since then, every time I went looking for porn, I found myself reading forums & other websites about TG &/or TS.
I had a very similar experience. I always wondered why I wasn't into porn like a lot of other guys. I figured it was just my religious upbringing...now I know that my lack of interest was because I wasn't really interested. :)
Since finding in library and reading Mirror Image circa 1979 . . .
Around 20 years ago, a freshmen in high school.
That's when I knew I should be female.
I read an article about transsexualism and plastic operations in popular science journal when I was ~13 y.o. (yes, I was reading science journals at that age :D). It mostly focused on surgical part of the issue (chopping some parts off and buffing other parts up ), it did not mention either GID, hormone therapy, transition and psychological-mental impact on life. From that moment onwards I knew that I was a transsexual. Unfortunately, article did not say that this will never go away - I wonder if I knew that, if I would have done things differently.
I believe I first found out about it when I searched something about being a boy on the internet and it came up. I had very little knowledge on what 'transgender' was so I read up on it and I knew that's what I was and having sex reassignment surgery sounded great to me.
For me it was around '89 ish. Family sitting around and somehow a conversation sparked up and my uncle looked me right in the eyes and said "well you could always get a sex change" and then laughed in a snide way as if it was a foolish idea. I clearly remember the laugh, and hearing my other family members laugh along with him.
It was mind blowing and soul crushing all at once in the span of about 3 seconds.
I can still hear the laugh when I think about talking to family members about how I feel.
I read about it in a magazine when I was around 14-15 years old, which would be around 1996-97. It felt like all the pieces finally came together; I had kind of accepted that I was biologically male despite hating it, because I thought it was impossible to change. But even before I was done reading the article (in a hospital waiting room), I heard people commenting on how "wrong" it was - it was on the front page, so it caught their attention. Needless to say, I closeted myself immediately, and tried to repress everything for more than 15 years. Which of course was disastrous. Now I just wish I had read that article alone, where people couldn't have influenced me.