Ok, so I guess this might be an unusual question but it's sort of a "spin off" of the "tomboys" thread.
At the age you hit puberty or at least when your body began to noticeably change, did you initially embrace the changes? Or was it an "oh god why?" kind of thing? Were you sort of passive about this since, for some, it was an unavoidable consequence of being born "wrong"? Maybe for awhile you accepted it even if your mind was telling you it was horribly wrong?
How did you feel when your body started changing?
Quote from: wolfduality on August 10, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
Ok, so I guess this might be an unusual question but it's sort of a "spin off" of the "tomboys" thread.
At the age you hit puberty or at least when your body began to noticeably change, did you initially embrace the changes? Or was it an "oh god why?" kind of thing? Were you sort of passive about this since, for some, it was an unavoidable consequence of being born "wrong"? Maybe for awhile you accepted it even if your mind was telling you it was horribly wrong?
How did you feel when your body started changing?
Once puberty hit my brain and body did not connect at all. Things were very confusing for me. I did not want the changes to occur but had no way to stop them from happening. I remember getting in trouble for sitting with my legs open, burping, farting, not shaving, wearing my pants/shorts too low, etc. I kept telling myself that I was a boy even though my body was female. I knew that I couldn't tell anyone how I was feeling because no one would understand. I remember getting mad at people when they told me how beautiful I was becoming. It would make me sick to my stomach. I would look in the mirror and say to myself that the person that I was looking at wasn't me. The only thing that I could look at is my eyes, I think my eyes are very nice. When parents/relatives would show me pictures of me I could only look at my eyes, never at anything else. Now that I look more male, its easier for me to look in the mirror.
I hit puberty around age 13. I basically cried myself to sleep every night for about three years straight and used to bind my chest with duct tape. It used to give me huge skin blisters and raw skin patches but back then I'd rather deal with the pain than wear a bra. Once I was about 17-18 my body had basically settled into what it was going to be, and thankfully I never developed large breasts. I'm 22 now and i measured my chest once a few weeks back (I've never bought anything besides small sport bras) and I am a 34A apparently. I basically at this point just lost all association to my body and I disconnected from it mentally.
At 18 I thought well maybe I'm just an androgynous lesbian and really tried to adopt that identity for a few years. But every so often the dysphoria would come back and I would hit depressions and try to ignore the fact that it was the dysphoria and not something else.
I should add, for myself, it was "unique". Initially, I started to panic and feel the frustration growing inside me. I began to develop about a year before my first period but it was slow. My family noticed and pointed things out but I could just shrug it off as nonsense. Then, at 13, I had my first period at school. Not only was I traumatized by events at school, I was now BLEEDING. I knew what was happening because of my mother's very open dialogue about puberty but I was still mortified.
I went to a teacher trying to fight tears because I didn't know what to do since I was at school unprepared. The "talk" with the nurse was horrible but not because it was "private" but I didn't want to acknowledge what was going on. Many teachers took sympathy on me and explained "all girls get their periods" which made me disgusted with myself. I even found out that my mom told all her coworkers about my dang first period! The shopping for hygiene supplies was uncomfortable especially since my mom just shoved me down the aisle with a simple "hurry up and pick up something you like".
Every month reminded me of my body not matching my brain. It seemed like my body was all too happy with this as I'd get agonizing cramps and sometimes get vomiting fits during my periods. Of course, everything else changed and I tried to be positive. If I had to be a woman, I better look like an average woman. That didn't happen. I didn't get pronounced hips/waist, my breast barely grew (despite genetics leaning toward melon size instead of "cherries" I now have), my voice didn't drastically heighten, my figure didn't get soft (though my face is marshmallowy:/), and so on.
Pretty much I got enough changes to mentally disturb me but not enough to be "womanly". It really messed with me but I should count my blessings as, given the fact I could pass with the right gear and presentation.
That was the darkest time of my life.
Before I started puberty, I read a book about what kind of changes will happen during puberty was so shocked and scared.
I thought I could be a boy forever and nobody would know, so physically developing into a woman was the most scary and painful thing I have experienced in my life.
My upbringing was a little different in that I lived with two sets of family. One allowed me to dress the way I wanted and even present as male to the public. The other tried to force me to be a girl by making me wear certain clothes, nagging me about wearing boots, walking like a man, ect. By the time puberty hit, I had moved back with the accepting family for obvious reasons and was able to more or less ignore those...effects. So I would say puberty never even really bothered me as much as most, just because I was able to ignore it more or less.
By the time 18 and so on rolled around, I was really starting to feel it though, because obviously that's when most boys have good beards rolling in along with the muscle and voices. That's when I started really feeling desperate and finally got on T. I don't know what would have happened if I'd had to wait much longer than I did. Rhetorical question actually, most of us have thought it at least once if not a thousand times.
I can honestly say I gave being a "girl" a shot. I went to the Military Ball in a very "old fashioned/southern belle" type dress, hair, makeup, ect, done and it sucked. I also ended up getting my period at that ball. Not a great time. I hid my period for a long time (I got it when I was around 16) before my mom figured it out and started leaving tampons and pads in the bathroom discreetly. Thank god for that. The puberty/sex talk after I got my first serious boyfriend (that I ended up marrying and am still living with) was humiliating enough, but even just wearing girl clothes came with a sense of WRONG WRONG WRONG. I would put up with it until I couldn't take it anymore and I'd go home and tear all those clothes off.
I'd seen shows about transmen, but they were all with women, so I brushed it off as "that can't be me, I'm not attracted to women" (this was before there was any light on gay transmen)
I hit on just being andro for the longest time. I'd grow my hair out, then cut it off, grow it out, cut it off. I finally ended up saying screw it, and just started keeping it short after I'd moved out of my parents house.
They just thought I was a tomboy and didn't like "girly" stuff, but I couldn't explain to them that that sort of the physically repulsed me, and the only reason I wore it/put up with any of it was because I was/am attracted to guys. It took a long time (and therapy) to realize that I was totally not a girl, and could play the game, but it wasn't me. Andro was looking better and better, and so I did that for a while, no HRT, just dressing more male than I already was, but everyone assumed I was just a butch lesbian, which, no offense, but I have no interest in females. It wasn't until I had some sort of breakthrough at like 3am in the morning researching androgyny that I realized transmen COULD LIKE GUYS and STILL BE TRANS.
That was a holy crap moment for me. I didn't look back after that. How could I? Going back to the farce of pretending to be a girl at this point, I think it would kill me. I couldn't do it. Nearly a year and a name change later, I'm finally close to being able to afford top surgery and I couldn't be more excited than if you'd gift wrapped me a 4x4 Jeep Rubicon and put it in my driveway.
But of course, as a young kid, I was interested in horses and dogs, and being slightly horse crazy probably didn't help the "not a girl thing" :p My mother is still in denial, because I never said anything to her about wanting to be a boy, or not being a girl, but I knew when I realized it that that was a taboo thing, and you didn't talk about it. Ignoring it in the hopes that it would go away was the route I chose.
I knew what was going to happen long before it actually did as my mother had "the talk" with us when I was very young. So when it did happen, I was horrified and it was the beginning of my spiral downwards.
My experiences may be a bit different from most people's, because I had a precocious puberty: I started showing the first signs of puberty when I was about 6 years old. By the time I was 7 I was growing breasts, and by the time I was 9 my hips had spread. I started periods when I was 12. :'(
So that thing you call 'puberty'? For most of you, it probably started around your early teens, when everyone was starting to get (or want) boyfriends or girlfriends. For me, puberty was a long, slow, drawn-out car crash that screwed up my childhood from age 7. It happened way too early for me, so my physical development happened long before my brain was ready to cope with any of it. As a result I only had a year or two of carefree childhood that I can remember before my body started messing me around, and men started paying the wrong kind of attention to me. As you can probably understand, I don't associate puberty with teenagehood for that reason.
Anyway... when I hit my teens head-on with all of puberty's delights already in place, I was the most miserable scrap of humanity you could imagine. I used to wear big, baggy clothes to hide my body as much as possible, and the only reason why I always wore black was because they hadn't invented a darker colour... or better yet, clothes that could make me completely invisible.
My experiences were similar to Charlie's in that when my sexuality started to awaken I realised I was very attracted to boys and desperately wanted a boyfriend... and of course, we all know that the easiest way to get a boyfriend is to be a pretty girl, right? ::) So I went through a phase of trying out girls' clothing (and feeling wretched whilst doing so), and trying out make-up and high heels. That sort of stuff got me a few boyfriends, but the problem was that they were focussed on the wrong parts of my body; the parts I was ashamed of and didn't want anybody to know about. They were the wrong sort of guys for me.
So like Charlie, I had an epiphany in which I realised that just because I like guys, that doesn't mean I'm 'really a girl'. It's entirely possible to be both gay and trans, so those gay longings I've felt since I was a teenager are finally starting to become a reality for me. Thank goodness.
I don't really remember reacting much to the changes, I think I kinda tried to block them from my mind but if I spared a thought to it, it was the "OH GOD NO" kind.
I was really young. I started my period at 9, and I remember thinking I had hurt myself. I didnt know a thing about puberty and I didnt really understand it enough to be bothered. There were several points until I was 23 that I was hyper feminine but only three of those spurts were 'purging' events where I knew about myself. I was pretty confused about myself until I was 19, so I just sort of existed in a strange haze of grey. Of course, I had a lot of things I was contending with (addict parent and abusive parent, raising three younger brothers who called me mom, school, running a house) that I really didnt have much spare time to think about me as a whole. It probably saved me a lot of anguish in that department, though I had a lot of stress in others. I knew about trans people from a book and I had thought that was me, but I never had the time or resources to learn about it. When I was just starting to learn about LBGT stuff, I was 16 and I ended up running away from home.
All that being said, I was a pretty happy kid. I didnt really dwell on things that made me sad (my own discomfort about myself being a big one) and invested a ton of energy in things that made me happy. It's worked out well for me. I'm an incredibly happy person and if I had had no choice, I could have lived a full life as female. If not for any other reason than I only get one life and honestly, it's sh*t wall to wall, so I might as well get all the happiness I can.
So I guess I accept that I'm female bodied genetically and by birth. I accept my socialization and I accept that I have a lot of feminine traits. I haven't forgotten living as a woman and I doubt I ever will. I don't like it per se, but I have accepted it.
But I am VERY happy I have transitioned.
I started noticing changes in my thighs first. My initial reaction - what the heck is going on! I need to stop eating so much! Even though I was skinny enough to disappear when I turned sideways. I didn't understand much about the secondary sex characteristics so I had no idea what was happening. I developed depression very suddenly around this time which I attribute to my brain malfunctioning on the sudden estrogen running through me. It just wasn't wired for this and I've been depressed ever since which meds haven't been able to touch even slightly. Th'other thing was I hopped that shark week would never happen - I hoped that somehow I had contracted something horrible that would mean I never had to endure it. But on the morning of my brother's wedding, and I had to also be a bride's maid, nature finally ran its course and I just balled my eyes out in the bathroom. I felt dead. I can't really say I embraced it at all. Eventually I gave up on medical transition because I didn't know much about it and thought people would kinda be stuck in the middle and stuff and I just said, "Well, if I can never be a man, I guess I should just get used to being a wom- a gir- a *gag* female" and started wearing makeup and stuff. Funny, even though I felt incredibly exposed and ashamed and disgusted with myself, I didn't clue in that I didn't have to dress that way. Ah well, at least things are better now :)
I don't remember much about my puberty other than my first period and when breasts started to come in. I remember even when they were coming in, I hated wearing bras and I always got irrationally angry when I heard someone call me beautiful. I hated that word. I knew I always wanted to be a boy but it didn't seem normal to be thinking that way so I gave being a girl a couple of years, thinking it might just be a phase. How wrong I was.
I did acquire a slight feminine side which I can't deny that it was from trying to be female.
A bit of both. On the one hand, I hoped I would somehow end up at least part boy somehow and was uncomfortable about the changes, but I pushed them so far out of my mind that I was more numb to it than anything. I was just kind of disconnected from my body and my reflection and it felt more surreal than upsetting. I chalk that up to deep denial.
On the other, I was a pretty weird kid and wanted to be normal and fit in. It was normal for girls to want boobs and stuff, so that's how I acted and tried to be. Obviously, trying to be normal didn't work since I ended up with extreme anger issues and other psychiatric problems anyway.
Quote from: Neospector on August 11, 2014, 08:50:05 AMI did acquire a slight feminine side which I can't deny that it was from trying to be female.
Same.
I don't really remember my exact feelings as it happened when I was around 13 or 14. But I always hated shark week, it was just a mess every month and I never felt comfortable. I also hated my breasts so I never just wore a t shirt and nothing else as I hated them showing. My dad's gf taking me clothes shopping didn't make me feel happier either. I just remember constantly feeling uncomfortable in my body. I guess I made a sort of effort when I started buying clothes myself, but never knew what to buy (girl's clothes look all the same to me) and made sure they completely covered myself up. I did buy foundation but never used it and a girl's magazine to try and fit in, but only looked at the real life story section., not the girly bits.
no trans person is born wrong. the problem is not physical unless born intersex.
Quote from: victoria n on August 11, 2014, 09:58:12 AM
no trans person is born wrong. the problem is not physical unless born intersex.
1. What does that have to do with the topic?
2. Actually, studies indicate that being trans is physical seeing as brains are physical organs.
Quote from: victoria n on August 11, 2014, 09:58:12 AM
no trans person is born wrong. the problem is not physical unless born intersex.
I dunno; I'm in two minds about this. It all comes down to the old trope about 'being born in the wrong body'.
See, I
wasn't born in the wrong body. I was born in the only body I could possibly have. Unfortunately, that body came with chromosomes and genitalia that were at odds with my brain structure - and since I was labelled and raised according to a midwife's cursory glance at my genitalia rather than the structure of my brain, that's definitely a physical problem for me.
I embraced my femininity but I never embraced being female. I wore makeup, women's clothes, read girly romance manga and so on but I always wanted to do that stuff as a guy.
I had my first period at nine or ten after saying I couldn't wait for it, because I thought that getting your period meant you were going to grow a penis. I started upstairs development shortly thereafter and cried myself to sleep a few times because I knew it meant I'd never be able to go outside shirtless again (although my mom had curtailed that behavior when I was seven, I still had hope for it that she was wrong and once this puberty nonsense was sorted out, everything would be better). I think I was eleven when it hit me that things were not going right, because an older gentleman at my aunt's church said I was a polite young man, and my mother took umbrage to it. I of course was like "mom he thinks I'm a boy!"
I resigned myself to my fate around fourteen, and then people around me started dying, so I had more important things to focus on. I did fight with my mom about wearing a dress to my grandmother's funeral. The conversation went something like "I hate wearing dresses!" "I hate that my mother is dead, put it on!" So I did. I didn't even fight about it when my dad died. I hated it, but I didn't fight with her.
I tried the "being a girl" thing for a couple months, but it never sat right. I remember trying my mom's makeup one night while she was working and crying in the bathroom because it was so wrong, but everyone expected me to wear it.
I wish I had figured out what the T in LGBT meant in high school, because it would've saved me a lot of heartache as I got older. For someone who was very into LGB rights (I have a paper about gay marriage from every year of high school), I sure managed to do that "ignoring the T" thing pretty well.
Puberty was the worst time of my life, for a lot of reasons, not all of them gender related.
Tl;dr: I fought it, tried to embrace it, and then said screw it and did my own thing.
Huge case of the OH GOD WHY!!!??? And then tried my best to be feminine. Didn't work.
Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! I drove my family nuts. I never wore make up or dresses, or even any type of girl's clothing. From an early age I kept asking my mom if I could chop all my hair off until she gave in when I was fourteen. The first time someone called me a boy, I was twelve, and still had long hair. My grandmother insisted I needed to "change the way I looked" if I were to get anywhere career wise. My dad told me that lesbians didn't have to look like boys. That he knew a lesbian, and she still did her hair and make up and wore feminine clothing. I wasn't a lesbian, and I know that now. I'd like to say that I went through something similar as a gay cis male would. I had a "girlfriend" all throughout high school because it was what guys are "supposed" to do. I put girlfriend in quotations because I found out a few years ago that my high school "girlfriend" is ftm too. Irony, you've got to love it ;D
One time a friend asked me if she could put make up on me, and when I said no, she held me down on the bathroom toilette and scribbled all over my face with lipstick. I resented everything feminine. I remember one time when I went to Ohio for a short time for college. I was sitting on my bed in shorts, and this girl who was trying to be friends with me because she thought I was a lesbian noticed that I did not shave my legs. She started to freak out a little, saying how gross it was, and asking me why I didn't shave. Then she asked me if I wanted to be a boy. I told her no. I don't know if it was that precise experience, but sometime after that I started really imagining what it would be like to be a boy. For about two years after that, I thought about it a lot, and started to realize that it would make me a lot happier.
My parents forced me to come home from college after that one semester. I decided that I wanted to volunteer at the LGBT center in my area, and I met my fist MTF. I remember wondering why this woman, who looked completely like a woman in all regards, had a prominent Adams apple. I remember staring at it (and I really hope I did not offend her) but the thing running through my mind was, is it possible for a girl to become a boy? After that, I started researching tranmen which sent me on my path to transition. Due to social anxiety issues, I never did volunteer after that first meeting, but I wish i could meet that woman again and thank her for being there that day.
My experience was a lot like FTMDiaries describes. I started sprouting hairs at about age 6 too, far too young to know what was happening. I just thought it was kind of interesting that I'd grown a bunch of new hair. Then it all stopped being interesting and started being horrible. Female puberty felt wrong to me. I sprouted lumps I was sure I shouldn't have and of course there was shark week. It felt like my body had gone crazy and started turning into something it shouldn't be (which of course it had).
Then my sex drive fired up and I went through a phase of wearing girl clothes and sometimes makeup when I was out on the town trying to get laid. I figured that if I had to have a pair of double D's I might as well get some use out of them, and at that stage I was mainly interested in guys because I was scared of girls. I've become more interested in women as I've become more comfortable with myself, though I think I might always be primarily attracted to men.
I never tried to be a girl/live as a girl. I always had a lot of insecurity around whether I could be a "real" man because I thought I was quite girly, but I never thought of myself as female and never made any attempt to be female or convince myself that I was. As I said, I sometimes tried to look like a girl, but I always thought of that as just wearing a disguise.
(Edit)
I guess sort of. I liked having the satisfaction of dressing the way I liked which would be considered tomboy. But other then that I knew deep down inside I wasn't like other girls or a typical tomboy for that matter. Even my body wasn't typical girl. All my life I been skinny and athletic. While most of the girls going through puberty had wider hips and bigger chests and they loved it, I always said if my body got like this I'd kill myself.
But my body was never typical female.
(Thank you God)
But I was incredibly jealous of the changes that happened with my bros. Because I had a hope before puberty. some magical night I would wake up and it turns out all my life I was a boy and all this time I been dreaming lol.
Heck no! I tried to pretend like I wasn't going to get breast, but once my mom told me I had to start wearing training bras, I knew that it was unavoidable then, so I just had to let nature happen and not fight it. I tried not to think about it, but it made me very depressed. I really wanted a male's puberty, not a female's but I had to deal with it. I was upset when I heard the other boy's voices crack and get to see them develop with their height, broad shoulders, facial hair, etc. I didn't like my thighs, but they weren't too much of a problem (being particularly feminine that is) because I'm a fat person so the fat made them look less feminine.
I was pretty lucky because I started puberty right before middle school and besides the terrible cramps that came with my period I didn't really develop at all. I didn't have too much dysphoria from them either once I discovered tampons and no longer had to deal with icky bloody pads. I didn't even wear a real bra till freshman year and only because I felt pressured to. But all my friends started wanting to wear makeup and dress nice, so I followed, or at least tried. I was pretty terrible at it and gave up numerous times and would try again. I remember my hair was super long though because in my head I had this goal of a classic girl and I was trying to achieve it.
I had uniforms from 7-10 grade so fashion wasn't a big deal. I wore makeup occasionally and cut my hair super short just because I liked it. My family always let me dress however I want. It wasn't until I transferred to public school and really felt the pressures of being feminine that I tried my hardest to be a girl. Like others here, I liked boys and I wanted them to like me. This lasted about a semester and then I came across a video of a trans guy and I had a realization that that was me. Then I embraced my masculine side, though I still had to dress feminine occasionally. I never really hated being a girl either. When I had to be I tried my hardest to dress nice, because if I was going to be a girl I was going to be a pretty one. It always felt like a costume though. Like playing dress up. When I finally embraced being a dude I realized I did like girls too. The only reason I hadn't was because I couldn't see myself in a lesbian relationship.
So long story short I did embrace being a girl or at least my idea of one. It didn't work very well though and I'm much happier as a guy. I think I missed a lot of anguish because my body was always androgynous.
Kind of. I gave it a half hearted shot...enough to think I passed as a female and avoiding suspicions, but I was still considerably more masculine than a lot of the girls around me.
When I was 5 I wanted a mohawk. As a young child, I screamed that I'm a boy. My mind eventually dissociated itself (I ended up growing boobs in the 2nd freaking grade) and my mind had a completely different image of myself than my physical body had. I started getting periods at 11 and was in hell. I was so frustrated, why did I have to put up with those? It felt just wrong. I was mad when anyone called me a tomboy because wasn't it obvious that I was a regular boy?
The summer before the 9th grade, I started wearing makeup. It felt like dressing up a mannequin when I had to put on a bra and panties. It wasn't my body. This wasn't me. The badass person who lived inside my head didn't look like this. This was just... Well, other people must have seen that really I'm actually a tough crazy guy and the makeup isn't me. They had to be able to see that. (I was a bit delusional).
It made me sick whenever anyone assumed I was female or like a girl. It still does. My boyfriend (now my fiancé) always used to say that chicks are crazy "Except you," he told me, and my mind wondered why he considered me a girl in the first place. He called me sexy, I wanted to be badass. People called me beautiful, I wanted to be one ugly b*stard. Now he calls me a sexy man and it turns out he was actually gay all along. He was thrilled when I got my first real binder, and we're looking forward to T and eventual top surgery. This makes me happy :D
At the end of my tenth grade year it clicked into place. I'd heard about trans people before, and wondered, and eventually stopped being in denial. I'd always loved my broad shoulders, deep voice, and peach fuzz mustache, but I'd wanted more male qualities all along. And with T and surgery I can have those :) Fortunately I can pass sometimes pre-T. When people call me "sir" or "man" I rejoice.
Ironically, when I stopped forcing myself to be physically feminine, the more feminine qualities I had mentally stopped being repressed. Now I'm not weirded out by talking about clothes or hair, because my hair is awesome now and I can wear suits and be a dude.
I always had never been able to figure out why and how I felt differently from other girls around me. I never assigned much importance into considering the matter. As far as I knew, I was a girl (maybe?...) that didn't like "girl" things as much as "boy" things/mannerisms and preferred hanging out with the guys. I felt like I was one of them, yet wasn't at the same time. Puberty served to only pronounce this feeling. I was begrudgingly aware of the fact I could do nothing to change it (or so I thought at the time) so I accepted it passively. I often didn't really entertain substantive thoughts on the issues that run deep under the still waters of gender like most of my peers, however. It was happening and I went on with life feeling odd or out of place with unknown cause. I would often comment during my teen years "I'm a gay man in a woman's body" without being aware of the actual impact and insight expressing that lived experience had, and here I was using it sans knowledge of the social context of gender and sex and all that goodness.
In some ways during that time I appreciated that my body formed in a very visually pleasing way. It never felt proper for me, but I wasn't really hating what I saw in the mirror anytime soon. Even up to the time I got them removed on June 10th I still thought I had an attractive physique with them. I was never short compliments on my looks and I cut an amazing figure in some outfits. Ultimately though these all proved to be hollow yet pretty words that never mattered to me because all the while deep down a secret war raged between who I felt I was and who I was meant to be and attempting to groom myself to become after denying I ever could do anything about my life circumstances. Every time a new person was attracted to my body, I felt like it was some sort of lie or pretense I had to keep up no matter how tiring it was to wear the mask and perform the act all the time.
At first all it was was menstration. I didn't really gain a bust until later on, like around 15. So I just continued doing whatever and dealt with the bleeding. I wouldn't say I ever embraced it so much as when I gained breasts, everyone around me pressured me into being femminine and I thought sometihng was wrong with me so I pressured myself to be as well. Ultimately I made myself miserable by doing so. I did a great deal of experimentation though while doing this. I learned a great deal through the experimentation that I'm thankful for today. So I wouldn't say I embraced it so much as forced it upon myself.
Definitely an "oh god why" for me and I never saw a single thing about myself that was "feminine." I knew technically that puberty would happen since we started sex ed in Grade 4, but in my head I never considered that it would happen to me. I think it really burst my bubble in a lot of ways, because up until that point I figured that one day my genitals would be swapped out lol And when puberty did happen ->-bleeped-<- really hit the fan and felt like my life was turned upside down. Could no longer go around in my uncle's cut off shirts, couldn't wear the boxers my mom had got me at certain times of the month and overall just felt gross about the whole thing. And nope I never embraced it. There was maybe a month long period when I began high school where I "tried" to be somewhat feminine...felt gross so went back to being me. I was lucky that my mother didn't try to force femininity onto me too much, with the exception of formal events which were always a battle.
this might be odd, but i never really noticed changes happening. i have a small, weirdly shaped chest and i was a pretty chubby kid, so they don't look much different than how they did when before puberty, honestly. i remember getting hairier, though and i was really happy about that. all my friends were like "oh no! now we have to shave!" but i embraced my body hair and i'm really lucky to have as much as i have without having started T yet haha.
i don't know, i just never saw any part of going through puberty as "female" for me.
After reading how so many of you felt when you puberty hit, I had to write about mine. I played with the boys growing up, on the ball fields and in the woods. When they needed to pee they went behind a tree and were back shortly, I had to run home and back. As couple of have said, I thought one day I will grow the parts and I can do that too. The summer before 8th grade I got my period and even thou the amount of blood was small to start out, it hit me hard for I knew everything was changing. It did discover tampons that fall and they made life so much better for me, as I didn't have to feel and see that pads all the time. I did develop cramps for a day each month; OTC meds worked fine for me. That summer I still did many of the same things with the boys, but a couple of them were taller than me as I was always been one of the tallest and I could see my relationship with them was changing.. Before school started my mom said we need to go shopping for school clothes and you probably need a couple of little bras now. I somehow did know that my nipples were growing and getting a small hard area behind them; I think I just didn't want to accept that my chest was growing too. My mom and two grandmas were very interested in buying me all kinds of girly things now. I never liked feeling a bra around my chest. My first two years of high school I did try to be like many of the others girls and joined in with them on many things. Somehow many times I felt different from them and how they talked and saw things. My last two years of high school I was more finding out who I really was.
I liked attention. Girly-me got more than tomboy-me ever did. So I did what I was "supposed" to do and felt like I fit in more than I had before.
...sort of?
I've always had a very strong sense of 'Oh god, I don't know what I'm doing?!' in any situation where there was some kind of expected behaviour, social, gendered, or otherwise. As a response to that, I've always tried to do what other people told me was expected.
I hit puberty early, and needed a bra by 10, which was horrifying and confusing for me. I never fit in with or understood the girls, but my twin sister did, so I cautiously followed her lead in most social situations, occasionally slipping away to play with the other boys when the girls got sick of my awkwardness.
By the time I hit 13-14, the other boys started getting awkward about me playing with them, and mounting social pressure (including unnecessarily gendered things like the school not letting girls take wood shop) made me try even harder to follow my sister's lead and 'be a proper girl' but I never managed it. I just really wanted to be normal and fit in, so I kept trying, going through waves of increasing the intensity of my attempts at femininity and failing miserably, until I just couldn't stand it any more. I mean, I tried really hard to make myself be a girl, because people were expecting that of me. I'm not sure that counts as 'embracing femininity' as OP puts it.
I was a painfully late bloomer, not getting my period until I was 14. When the changes started, I was so relieved because I thought there was something wrong with me up until that point.
It's hard to say whether or not I embraced femininity, but I certainly didn't know I was trans until I was 24. I definitely enjoyed dressing up and male attention for a lot of years, although I can't say it came from a very genuine place.
I think there is a real danger around trans male circles to devalue the feminine in our need to distance ourselves from it. Part of transitioning for me has been accepting a feminine side of myself, and now that it doesn't have all the baggage attached, I'm finding my gender expression to be a lot more genuine in its blurry gray zones. I have tried to maintain a real appreciation for femininity and the femmes in my life, and to realise that distancing myself from femininity won't push me any closer to my masculinity.
HAH. no... no I did not embrace any sort of femininity.
I (literally) embraced my femininity by binding my entire torso that I was no longer able to look at by unspeakable way that I could get my hands on all alone without any support from anyone.
I wish I knew about binders back then at least.
I had a lot going on in my life when I hit puberty, and while I was not by a long shot immune to its effects, I didn't really notice it or think about it much. Everything else was really crazy. My first period was memorable. I got it on an airplane over the atlantic, and when I landed I asked my dad what to do and he cluelessly bought me some pantyliners. Obviously those were not helpful, and I didn't realize that the bleeding would keep on after I cleaned it up the first time, so that first period was a mess. We had gone over menstruation in sex ed but I hadn't listened because I didn't think it would happen to me.
Everything else about my body was kind of background noise in my teens. It's hard to look back on now and see how insane my life was, but all the upheaval was at least distracting enough that I didn't have to suffer too much from puberty.
I made a few token efforts to attract men using boobs and makeup. Never really worked, never got used to it, never felt good about it. Aside from trying to be liked, I never wanted anything to do with feminine things. I even avoided punk feminism social groups and activities (Riot Grrls writing zines and sewing DIY punk rock clothes) that I didn't realize might have made me happier, because I saw them as girly things.
I didn't make many friends, but I had the wittiest slogans on my mens t-shirts.
Quote from: wolfduality on August 10, 2014, 11:02:03 PM
Ok, so I guess this might be an unusual question but it's sort of a "spin off" of the "tomboys" thread.
At the age you hit puberty or at least when your body began to noticeably change, did you initially embrace the changes? Or was it an "oh god why?" kind of thing? Were you sort of passive about this since, for some, it was an unavoidable consequence of being born "wrong"? Maybe for awhile you accepted it even if your mind was telling you it was horribly wrong?
How did you feel when your body started changing?
I just passively accepted it. Having more of a male physique (no hips, broader shoulders than most females, tall, etc), also helped, though. I had a large chest though, but I was a late bloomer in those growing (by then I was in college, so I just wore tight sports bras). I was also fortunate that I grew up during a time (1980's) when wearing men's rugby shirts and men's polo shirts (think golf shirts) were the fashion for females, so I didn't really have to deal with having to make the choice of either wearing something feminine or standing out like a sore thumb if I didn't. I was also popular in school, so my not really wearing any makeup (I wore a little bit of mascara sometimes) and not having "girly" hair was accepted.
I guess I didn't really answer the question, though! What I am saying is that no, I did not try to look feminine when I hit puberty, and it didn't impact me socially. I guess I am assuming the reason why some guys embrace their femininity is to fit in, but I didn't do that. I guess some also do it in an attempt to fight the feelings of being a guy, but I think I just always felt kind of genderless and my body dysphoria wasn't triggered due to the fashion style at the time, so I didn't think it terms of trying to be the opposite as to how I felt in order to "fix myself", if that makes any sense.
Wow, I just actually had a conversation with a few other trans guys about puberty not that long ago. Well as for how mine went, I was panicking even before I started puberty. I think I was about nine or ten when our class was split up, I remember feeling so out of placed with the girls. Then the teacher started to explain how the girls body would grow and develop into a woman. I remember being absolutely terrified, the thought that my body was not supposed to grow that way since I had always known I was a boy. I actually got some ace bandages from my friend who was an early bloomer and started binding, hoping to prevent them from growing. Though, I actually got away with going to public swimming pools wearing only shorts till I was about 12 and I loved it. Even with long hair (I wasn't allowed to cut it) I was always gendered as a little boy.
Then about a year and a half later, BAM! Period... Jumped up to a B cup in about two months, hips came... The first year or so of puberty I sunk into a major depression, I never left my room and all I did really do was sleep. On my 14th birthday my dad got me make up, a skirt and some girly top for my birthday with the instruction I needed to wear all that to school the day after because one of his friends kept on telling him that I was a girl and I'd better start acting like one. Didn't help with the puberty thing...
I tried for a while to make everyone happy, wore skirts and such and tried to wear make up (which luckily for me it turns out I am allergic to most brands and such). I tried a lot to embrace the changes but in the end I never could.
One of the horrible things was when one of my little sisters kept on telling me she wished she had my size and how awesome 'boobs' I had... By the age of 20 I had gone up to a G cup. But, I am happy to say that they have gotten smaller after some weight loss and such. I don't know, at the time living it was not the best but I am trying to look back and see it as not all that bad, its hard, but I'm trying.