So here's something that's been on for a while as I think more and more about my childhood and where I've come from. I'm wondering why some of us show signs as kids, and others don't, and trying to make sense of it all. As BS as the primary/secondary transexual thing is, I'm still curious why for some people it's obvious in retrospect that they were trans as kids, and for others it seems to come right out of the blue. What was your experience like? Why do you think it was what it was? What are your thoughts on this whole issue of showing signs, and why only some of us do? I thought it would be an interesting discussion to start.
Personally, though I can't say I actually knew how to describe what I was feeling, I showed all the signs in the book: I was always very feminine, preferred the company of girls, cross-dressed whenever I had the chance, played with dolls, and I did have some vague signs of physical dysphoria too. I would imagine myself as a queen on her throne (not a princess-I was and will always be an assertive gal!) and would sometimes even tie a cloth around my head pretending that I had long flowing hair-in retrospect, it's pretty insane that I didn't know what was going on. My family was never overt about trying to suppress it, but I didn't feel welcome to be myself around them or anyone else. After a while, I just sort of shut that part of myself away and my life went through a rough patch.
Why? I sometimes joke that it was weakness, that I wasn't strong or aware of how I was perceived well enough to pretend to be like the other boys. But, in a way there might be something to do that. I've always been less disciplined than I should be, sometimes too impulsive. I tried to be male; I just wasn't good at it. I mean, by the time I was fourteen I was wearing sequins again! I'm pretty upset with my family right now when I think about it-they always claimed to be "progressive" but did they take this seriously? No. They brushed it off as a phase. If they'd taken me to see a specialist, I might have gotten on blockers and then-but that's a dangerous line of thought for me. In any event, that's my perspective on it all. I never felt like I was being strong in being myself-there were other people, and I just couldn't be like them so I stopped caring.
I wouldn't say I knew when I was a kid since the concept of being able to transition to another gender was unheard of for me. I wouldn't say I went around wishing I was girl, just that I really hated being a boy and being treated by one and expected to do the things boys do. When I was 12 I was told that I was going to a boy's high school and, for reasons that made no sense to me at the time but which are fairly evident now, I suddenly burst into tears - there was no way I wanted to do that. How horrific (and it was).
Yep, I knew something around age of 4-5, but I learned very quickly that there things which could be said out and things which should be kept to oneself. When I figure out that certain behaviour would cause shaming or ridicule, I stopped displaying it publicly or talking about it - does not mean that I stopped doing this - I did it when I was home alone (cross-dressing as a small child), or in the deepest corner behind stocks of furniture - playing with my dolls and stuffed animals (yep, my parents considered that those OK-ish toys, btw) and being a princess to them - and stopping the game immediately when someone came too close. I do remember some very intense physically-emotional pains from that- I would assume now it was how GD manifested itself, but being a small child I had no idea what it was or what it meant.
When I was a kid I told my parents I wanted to have a sex change. My sense of gender was SO strongly geared towards being a girl that I literally had trouble realising that I wasn't female.
Primary school pretty much destroyed that part of me though, and these days I am having trouble feeling ANYTHING.
So... that's depressing.
I can just imagine what my life would have been like with a supportive family...
In telling my dad about being trans, he revealed to me that I had always been different (mom's word) or unique (his word). I never really realized what about until recently though I did prefer male company to female and never played with dolls or cared to play house etc. Because my uniqueness also comes from being deaf and visually impaired (yes, I wear hearing aids, and I'm legally blind in my right eye) I thought for a long time that my personal quirks and missed social cues were because of that. Now... I'm not so sure.
Like Grace, I lacked the knowledge of the concept and vocabulary of transgender, and Painter, I think this may have been part of the issue in your family. Many times family just don't see things, or lack the tools to do something material.
From the time I was 8 years old I used to dream I was a girl, mainly at night before I fell asleep. And from a similar age I would try on my sister's clothes, and wish I could just wear them. I wouldn't say I was a girly boy, but I was delicate, gentle, and sensitive, basically an oddball in a country where as a boy you either played sport obsessively or you were labeled a queer or a communist. There were constant flickers of my being transgender all through my childhood and adolescence, but no obvious smoking gun. No playing with barbies and being best friends with girls, but a boy who liked to wear androgynous pretty clothes, plenty of pink, with earrings, and a tiny touch of makeup.
Looking back, I did spend the first 25 years of my life desperately trying to suppress the girl in me. Then a breakdown thankfully brought all the strands of gender and sexuality together.
Julia
AP, I've had the same curiosity. I did NOT know at a young age, though I was always different and seem to lack the aggressiveness that other boys had. The first time I remember having any feelings at all about my gender was as a teen, when I had a vague unhappiness that I didn't have the parts that my girlfriend had.
I've often brooded on why I didn't know while so many of my transgender brothers and sisters did. I mean, how clueless does one have to be not to know one's own gender?
Quote from: suzifrommd on January 12, 2015, 05:01:31 AM
AP, I've had the same curiosity. I did NOT know at a young age, though I was always different and seem to lack the aggressiveness that other boys had. The first time I remember having any feelings at all about my gender was as a teen, when I had a vague unhappiness that I didn't have the parts that my girlfriend had.
I've often brooded on why I didn't know while so many of my transgender brothers and sisters did. I mean, how clueless does one have to be not to know one's own gender?
Don't worry, I didn't know until a few months ago and I'm 32! Dad saw signs, and looking back I see them too, but in no way did I KNOW!
if I look back at my childhood I can pick out things that I would consider to be "signs", but back then I had no idea. even when I was a young teenager crossdressing in the mirror, I still had no idea. I dont think my brain was ever able to admit to itself that it wanted to be female, not for a little boy raised in a world where you're taught to be glad you're not a girl, and constantly told to "be a man".
even after I learned about transgender people, I still didnt think I was one. the fact that they existed just kind of scared me actually. on some level I guess I was afraid that I did know all along.
I knew...something since I was 4 or 5. Not really that I was transgender, but that I would have loved to be a girl. The first time I heard of a "sex change operation" it intrigued me a lot. However I wanted to be a girl long before I knew there were even differences between men's and women's genitals and why we are different. I wanted pretty dresses and long hair.
Puberty kicked my butt and I pretty much spiraled way down.
I showed some signs but transphobic society kept me well closeted. I did have a few people who enabled me to dress when I was growing up though. That was release and it felt pretty good.
The desire to be female never really went away. There was just so much shame, I never acted on it. I figured I would be a good man and that was that. I dreamed and fantasized so much. I also felt horrible about being an ugly, short man.
Married twice, kids and now I'm now full circle.
i was fairly oblivious till my teenage years. but then again, i dont remember hardly anything from prior to 11/12 years old. but didnt become a very noticeable issue till after 18/19. and even then i just put up with it cause i didnt really know what the significance of it was or how badly it would become till 24 when i finally learned about gender. if i knew then what i know now... mmm.
I knew something was very different about me compared to other boys(I was born in 1957) but this was the not so swinging 60s and kept quiet about it and tried to be a boy.I fooled very few people even though I never went a week without getting in a fight during my last 4 years at school.
I never realised I wasn't a cisboy I don't think, for until I started menstruating and developing. I felt disconnected from it and it felt weird, but I kind of accepted it and also, my mental health has been really bad. I'd always look in a mirror and feel wrong... If I were topless, I'd hold my chest down. I felt profoundly uncomfortable in more feminine roles...
But I never really questioned my gender until my early twenties when it became bad because I was struggling with my sexuality on top of having intimacy issues.
severe cross dressing at 4 until present , boy friend at 6 , castration nightmares at 9, 10 ,11, massive meltdown at puberty onward. The circuitry of my brain was firing female since birth and has never stopped . I was just unlucky to be born at a time when psychology saw this as a aberration, so I didn't get what I needed as in transition in grade school.
My older sister named me Tessa as a 3 yo and treated me as her sister for years. i have very little recall of those days but my older brother and mom were aware of it. So I felt it, acted it out but had no vocabulary for it while others may have recognized something in me even then. I just had this certainty that someday a magical change would make me a mom. As others have noted, we can be disabused of these ideas by a brutal school and social system.
So we learn to cope with what we seemingly cannot change. I had plenty of clues and signs along the way but putting it all together and finally accepting the total reality of that truth took decades. Glad to be here now!
Quote from: suzifrommd on January 12, 2015, 05:01:31 AM
I've often brooded on why I didn't know while so many of my transgender brothers and sisters did. I mean, how clueless does one have to be not to know one's own gender?
It can happen. It happened to me. Of course I can't say why it was true for you, but the reasons for me in retrospect are quite clear. I grew up in an extremely repressive home. It wasn't just "horrendous" stuff like ->-bleeped-<- that was repressed there. Lots of things were--e.g., just being a kid.
The book or film "The Remains of the Day" is extremely painful for me. It's hard to look at the butler (played by Anthony Hopkins in the film) who was so thoroughly repressed that he never even thought of the possibility of love, that he never noticed a good woman was in love with him, that he never considered the possibility that he might be in love with her. It is possible to submerge thoughts and feelings so completely that you can't even imagine they're there.
Some of my memories: putting on a dress for the first time at the age of 4 and being assured that that would never happen again. Lying in bed at night with the blankets wrapped tightly around my legs so that I could pretend to be wearing a long dress. Being invited by a neighbour girl to put on one of her dresses and wanting so badly to do it but declining because I knew it was wrong.
I was never seen as a girly boy. With hindsight I can see that the feelings were there. But at the time I was hardly even aware of them and when they did come up, I shoved them back down. I think I can honestly say that if my parents had found out, I would have ended up like Leelah Alcorn. I instinctively knew that I couldn't afford to let them find out.
I think I would have fit in with the there were signs group rather than knowing for sure. But I think that may be mainly down to a lack of almost any knowledge on the area, pretty much up until I came out as gay and explored the queer community.
Think my most obvious sign would have being five in school. Had a massive teary breakdown after break. Was always one of the popular sporty guys, but I just knew I didn't fit in at my all boys school. This continued throughout all my school journey. But I kept my mouth shut after that one incident.
Always preferred hanging out with the girls.
But all the things I loved or wanted to do I kept secret because as a child I thought there were the boy rules and girl rules and stepping outside of them would be bold. Or something like that.
I've always adored pink. But always said I hated it as a kid.
Wanted to steal mama's clothes and makeup and try them but was too afraid of getting caught and thinking it was wrong. Plus in my good dreams I was always female.
Was never seen as a girly guy though really growing up mainly because I played sports and such. But I think everyone still knew I was a little different.
Had a lot of other signs and things too.
Just had very little knowledge or info on the topic up until the last few years.
I think I understood things better when I was 4-5 and then became more socially aware of how I didn't fit it. But I didn't come to realize that the feelings I had as a young child weren't typical of my peers until in my 20's.
I remember being very sure I was a boy at that age and arguing about needing to wear a shirt because "boys don't have to" with my parents. I remember praying every night that I would wake up with male genitalia, trying to pee standing up, hanging out with the boys and when we would play house, I was always "the boyfriend". And I was always a happy kid, my parents didn't force me to change much (other than at some point they stopped allowing me to wear boys underwear).
Once puberty kicked in, I went through some major depressive times. I never really found that happiness within myself (though I was happy about things, my attachment to myself was never the same) until recently. I have finally found at least some of that inner peace again since starting hormone therapy and having top surgery. I will never be the "complete" man I always prayed for as a child but I am able to make peace with that as I begin the "restart" of my life as the man I always wanted to be.
I wanted to wear girls' things when I was 4. Most of my friends as a child were girls. I did a lot of things that weren't typical for "boys" and was frequently lectured about what is and isn't "appropriate for boys". I got beaten up a lot for being effeminate and had little desire to fight back. And yes, as soon as I heard about "sex changes", it was like "HELLO!" When I was ten or so, I even asked my mother what my name would have been if I was FAAB. Needless to say, when my sister was born when I was 14, I was insanely jealous.
Unlike a lot of us, I never actually wore women's clothing until I was 43. I wanted to all along on some level, but that was a can of worms I was very afraid of opening. Our transphobic society's attitude toward anyone straying outside the strict binary really did a number on me, I suppose.
I think my parents knew something was off about me. My dad did everything he could to remind me, every day, for years, that I was a boy, and telling me how to act like a boy, look like a boy, talk like a boy, pushing me into doing boy things. If I tried to swerve into something even remotely feminine, I'd just get checked right back into line. After my parents divorced, I was in counselling for a while, and I actually said something to my counselor about feeling like a girl. She didn't really seem to think it was that big of a deal, and we never really talked about it, again.
I'd have this surface up again in 2001, but I was in such a deep self-denial about it that I'd tell people I was simply going through a goth phase. After 9/11, when people got seriously spooked over every little thing, I was basically given the big intervention by the church folk, who didn't take kindly to the all the black makeup and hair dye. No one every said anything about cross dressing. They thought I was going down this Marilyn Manson path. So I gave up. Tossed the makeup and the fishnets, removed the nail polish, bleached out my hair, and went back into full repression.
There was a few things I did sexually that felt very tied into my feminine identity with a girlfriend I had, also in 2001. It didn't go well. She kind of only did it because she thought if she did, I'd turn around and become the man she wanted in bed. All it did was hurt and make me feel even more uncomfortable and alienated. She didn't even care, she wasn't gentle or loving about it. And I still feel horribly stupid for ever trusting her with this, because she just kept using it as a weapon against me throughout our relationship.
Looking back, it all makes so much sense, now, but it was never anything I could have picked out on my own then. Maybe because I was young, but also because trans awareness was so... nonexistent. I think that if I had been born a decade later, I'd have been able to piece this together sooner, have a better chance of expressing how I really felt to that one councilor when I was 13 and was able to say, maybe for the first time to anyone, that I felt like a girl.
By the time I was 5, I knew something was off about me. Most of my friends were girls, but I didn't connect anything. I remember playing Wonder Woman with my friends and I always had to be Steve Trevor. I wanted to be WW, but they said I couldn't because I was a boy. That hurt!
I remember watching the TV show "Soap" at age 7 (my older brother was there), and Billy Crystal's character was going to have a sex change operation. My eyes lit up. I couldn't believe you could do that. So I decided that's what I wanted. I told my cousins who I was close to, and they laughed and laughed. I pretty much hid it after that feeling ashamed.
Quote from: androgynouspainter26 on January 12, 2015, 02:20:09 AM
Personally, though I can't say I actually knew how to describe what I was feeling, I showed all the signs in the book: I was always very feminine, preferred the company of girls, cross-dressed whenever I had the chance, played with dolls, and I did have some vague signs of physical dysphoria too. I would imagine myself as a queen on her throne (not a princess-I was and will always be an assertive gal!) and would sometimes even tie a cloth around my head pretending that I had long flowing hair-in retrospect, it's pretty insane that I didn't know what was going on. My family was never overt about trying to suppress it, but I didn't feel welcome to be myself around them or anyone else. After a while, I just sort of shut that part of myself away and my life went through a rough patch.
I have dealt with my gender dysphoria all throughout my childhood as soon as I figured out that there was a difference between boys and girls. At first it was all cutesy but then it turned ugly as soon as my parents realized that it wasn't just a dress up game anymore. I honestly didn't know the physical differences between boys and girls at that age, I just knew that I would prefer to be treated like a girl and not a boy. The crazy thing is, I never knew what the physical differences between boys and girls downstairs, but I still insisted on sitting down to pee for whatever reason. They literally had to beat it out of me to get me to stand up to pee, it was that ingrained in me.
I seriously tried to be the son they wanted it just wasn't in the cards. I couldn't make myself into something I wasn't. I cross dressed a lot more when I hit my teenage years and subsequently took a lot of heat for it both from school and at home. When I was finally able to get my own clothes when I hit 16 and started my own secret stash of female clothing that I could wear. At first it was under the boy clothes but that just didn't work. I needed people to see me for who I was, so I started dressing up more and going out.
If a shrink had asked me in my childhood if I had gender problems I am pretty sure I would have clammed up and said nothing to avoid a beating back home. When I was a teen I figured I was a pervert or a ->-bleeped-<-got and honestly I didn't know why or what I was doing wrong. Was wearing a pair of panties or jeans that much of a sacrilege that I earned the name calling that was doled out to me? I didn't think so. I couldn't stop either. I would swear off the girl clothes and be back at it the next day. It only changed for the next 12 hours, that's it.
I did have a brief period in my 20's when I was able to totally shut down my gender dysphoria for a while by becoming a crazy workaholic. As long as I worked crazy hours and kept myself busy I was okay. It still surfaced from time to time but I managed to cope. Until the coping mechanisms began to fail and the only way I could put it is I froze. I can still remember that day when I realized that I had to do something about my situation I just had no clue how to do it.
I'm not sure about others, but I can say this about myself. There has to be some truth to this male-female brain business even if we don't understand it. How could I have known from an earliest age to want to be treated one way, when I couldn't even know what it is was I was trying to say? I couldn't have even formed the words I was trying to think of. There were no words I knew that explained how I was. I wanted to be a certain way and it was okay for a while, got worse and finally got ugly. But I am still here, and finally fixed the mistake that was thrust upon me for no reason.
It sounds like a lot of us knew to some degree. When I was four, I remember seeing an episode of Sesame Street, where there was a mom and her daughter swimming. There were a lot of underwater shots. I remember thinking -- not really in these words -- but thinking that's who I wanted to be. (I just remembered I think I had a dream about this last night, but I don't remember...)
ANYWAY, at four, I also went swimming at my cousin's house. I wanted to wear one of her bathing suits. The grown-ups tried to talk me out of it. I was very insistent, and I got my way. Très heureux.
At seven, I think, I learned that there was such a thing as a medical procedure to become female. Back then, it was called a "sex-change operation." (I feel like I'm explaining this to children in the 2020s.) Immediately, I got a wave of "oh, wow!" And desperately wanted that. One night I sat in the bathtub, singing "Goodbye penis, hello vagina," to this tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJdFxTOysjo
I never told anyone, though. Not until I was in my late 20's, and some female friends helped bring it out.
My earliest memories from 3 or 4 are of taking my sisters clothes to put them on. I remember watching all those classic disney movies like Cinderella and Snow White and wishing I could be the female characters in them. I don't ever remember not knowing that I wasn't supposed to feel that way. I always did it all and felt it all in secret. I remember the total shame I felt at 5 years old when I coloured my nails in red pen and then couldn't scrub it off before my Mum saw it. The fact this stuff is so repressed has really messed me up. I was good at being a guy at school and as a teenager but I always had so much shame about who I was. I always thought that I'd just inherited insecurity and lack of confidence from my parents or something because outwardly I didn't have anything to be ashamed about in my life. I know now it was the shame of knowing deep down that I wasn't quite a 'normal' guy. But outwardly I would say there was no signs at all. My friends were boys and I was obsessed with sports. My interests allowed me to repress this feeling even further. I was so excited and interested when I read about a transgender girl in one of my sisters magazine at 13 but I didn't really know why. I was a happy guy going to school during the day then lying in bed at night and wishing I'd wake up a girl and I still didn't make the connection that I might be transgender myself until the last few years. It's amazing what you can hide from yourself.
Oh and I've dreamt I was a girl for as long as I can remember. Suppose that's a sign too.
Quote from: androgynouspainter26 on January 12, 2015, 02:20:09 AM
... why for some people it's obvious in retrospect that they were trans as kids, and for others it seems to come right out of the blue. What was your experience like? Why do you think it was what it was? What are your thoughts on this whole issue of showing signs, and why only some of us do? I thought it would be an interesting discussion to start.
Maybe because some of us were just different. Maybe there was no "retrospect". Maybe there were no "signs". Maybe we just knew.
Quote from: ChiGirl on January 12, 2015, 04:09:43 PM
By the time I was 5, I knew something was off about me. Most of my friends were girls, but I didn't connect anything. I remember playing Wonder Woman with my friends and I always had to be Steve Trevor. I wanted to be WW, but they said I couldn't because I was a boy. That hurt!
Funny I used to pray to my Wonder Woman doll that I slept with to make me a girl and to take me to Paradise Island to learn and to live. That was when I was 9 or 10. Ironic
Just many of you, at my 5 or 6 I remember myself wearing once my mom's pantyhose. I didnt know at that time why I did it, I could say it was by instict, like saying doing something appropriate but the strange thing is that I got caught by my dad and tried to hide my legs under a table (I was laid down on the floor of our house) looking at him embarassed like I was doing something that I shouldnt, strange isnt it?
After that, I was a typical boy, playing boyish games, being on "war" with the girls at school etc etc, but still seeing my moms clothes was a big tickle for me, with any change I was wearing them and the sensation was something which I cant compare with something else (except the sex itself).
At the age of 13-14 that I realized that that little thing between my legs isnt just for peeing, the combination of wearing female clothes and using my genitals was the ultimate pleasure. I couldnt stay only to that, almost again instinctively was feeling the urge to look sexier and sexier as a female, I was digging in my dad's pockets for few bucks to buy things which my mom didnt have in her wardrobe. My private sessions got so stimulating with that, plus I started fantasizing having sex with men. But this is so weird, I never looked back at a another boy at the streets, I never felt attraction for any male, but just in my fantasy. Girls were always a locked target for me, not because I had to as a male but because I WANTED them all.
But in my fantasy the idea of me being a woman and having sex with males was always a majority.
In my 38s now, whenever I have the chance to feel like a woman, I grab it from the hair, but always privately as my wife is fanaticaly female, if I will ever caught up, you all with feel the earthquake under your feet, no matter where you live lol
Well to summarize all these, for the last 20 years Im trying to explain to myself the big "why", but I cant find the answer, its so hard to step your feet on 2 boats, things would be so nice if this urge could vanish at once and fit my life with my male body OR things would be different and get the decision earlier to be transformed before setting my life as it is now.
Now someone could say "hey, things are just in your mind, a game of your mind, you just need to dress up occasionally and thats all). Well, as I said above, I havent find the answer, but I did find out something else that I keep telling to myself always:
I was to drunk before getting to this world, too drunk that the pink and blue buttons were blurred in my eyes, pushed the blue one, I made a terrible mistake!
:-\
I got caught with a bowtie I put in my hair at age 7. I was pretending to be smurfette in my little imaginary world. I already knew it was "bad" somehow, so I made my dad promise not to tell anybody. I hid it all pretty well and kept the turmoil mostly in my head till I was I think 14 and got caught w girls stuff agn. All I wanted was just to grow up to be a girl and it wasn't working! But it turned out in the end that I did afterall :).
I showed so many signs between the ages of 4 and 12 that it was ridiculous. It still makes me shake my head when my mom brings up my childhood and I rattle off everything and she says: "we thought it was just a phase". Sure, everything's cool now. But, it just blows my mind that she would think that. Even though she does remember the conversation that she and I had when she busted me on having her clothes in my room for the 1000th time. She asked me point blank if I wanted to live as a girl. I wanted to scream, "YES!", so friggin' bad. But I knew that my dad never would go along with it. He still has issues with using the correct pronouns. Oh well...maybe someday he will get a clue. I will just continue to live my life until then.
My dad asked me a very similar question when I was 16ish, but there was succh fire in his eyes, saying yes just was not an option :(. Ofc years later when I came out for reals he was like, but there were no signs! I was like.. Uh what? Don't you remember those terrifying "talk"s you gave me through the years? Selective memory is pretty cool.
Quote from: Zumbagirl on January 12, 2015, 04:50:45 PM
I honestly didn't know the physical differences between boys and girls at that age, I just knew that I would prefer to be treated like a girl and not a boy.
Yes, and this is a significant point. Lots and lots of children don't know the physical differences between boys and girls until they get a bit older. But that makes no difference as regards their gender identity. A (cis) boy knows he's a boy, and a (cis) girl knows she's a girl, even if they know nothing about what makes them a boy or a girl. And we transkids would know that we were trans if people didn't work so hard to convince us that we were the boys or girls that they wanted us to be.
This answers a point that so many trans opponents make: that transkids cannot possibly identify as trans at a young age because they don't know anything about sexuality, i.e., their private parts. You don't have to know anything about the genitalia in order to know what gender you are.
Quote from: Zumbagirl on January 12, 2015, 04:50:45 PM
I'm not sure about others, but I can say this about myself. There has to be some truth to this male-female brain business even if we don't understand it. How could I have known from an earliest age to want to be treated one way, when I couldn't even know what it is was I was trying to say?
Exactly. It's in the brain. Another point that trans opponents don't want to acknowledge.
My mom told me she had no clue even though as a child she caught me dressing many times. Oh well she accepts now, don't really care about the past.
I'd known I was meant to be agirl from about age 5. Rather than playing with cars and boy stuff I preferred to play with dolls, house, and EZ Bake ovens. I wanted so bad to know why I couldn't have dresses and learn to put on makeup. I've always been a girl.
I personally did not associate with stereotypical girl activities. In fact I had girl and boy friends with whom I enjoyed playing anything from dolls to GI Joes. But I definitely remember asking my mom why we couldn't choose the sex we are born in because I would have chosen otherwise ! As I grew up, I knew I was different and felt like I had to act out being a boy especially as I reached my teenage years. I started dreaming I was a girl and when I heard of people crossing the bridge, I couldn't but wish I could. From then on I tried to repress that idea and keep to my intellectual endeavours until recently, when it became clear I would not win the battle this way.
I my (very) humble opinion, if one's association with a given gender identity is topped with a strong inclination for associated stereotypical behaviours, chances are the feeling of oddness will be amplified. This might explain some of the differences in our testimonies. Gender identity and gender expression are certainly correlated but this does not imply causality.
Ok gotta stop being such a science geek...
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I thought I was a little girl until my first grade teacher told me to move to the other side of the room with the boys. She said you a pretty little thing but you are a boy. I was so upset not to be with the other little girls. I cried to my mother later that day & asked her what was wrong?
As others have mentioned, one of my earliest memories is of crossdressing in my sisters clothes. I must have been 4 or 5. My mom caught me at one point when I was around that age and her reaction was extremely negative. So that's when the shame started. I never had overly feminine characteristics when I was young, but had I not been taught from early on that that kind of thing should be suppressed who knows. As a child I always preferred the company of women, men just freaked me out kinda. My dad would always make me help him do "guy" things around the house and yard and all I ever wanted was to be inside helping my mom cook or just getting lost in my imagination. Still, I never had a strong desire to do stereotypical things like play with dolls or anything, but as I said I knew from so early on that that was just not ok according to my parents. So I showed very few outward signs. I mean one thing I remember is always wanting to be the princess when I played Super Mario :)...I continued to crossdress as I grew up but I think I was probably 12 the first time I knew that trans* people existed. It was when I saw a Donahue or Geraldo on trans* people, so of course the guests were caricatures and behaving badly, but that show was definitely enlightening for me.
I had my "epiphany" at 23, I always wondered why I didn't know before.
When I was really young (like 3 or 4) I would do this thing where I would refer to my brain in the 3rd person, and it would always be a 'he'. My mom asked me why one day and I said, "I'm a girl but my brain is a boy!"
I've heard of trans folks (and it seems there are plenty here) who went through their childhoods believing they were truly the gender they identified as, and only realized they weren't a girl/boy when puberty hit, or something like that. I never had the luxury of believing I was a boy. My mother from an early age forced girly clothes and activities upon me. I was pretty when I was living as a girl, and I think she wanted to live vicariously through me since she hadn't been as pretty as me. To me it was hollow, but I tried to please her because to do otherwise would have been inviting trouble.
I used to love dressing up as a pirate and painting a mustache on my face. I did it every chance I got. To me that was my outlet. I always identified with male characters in books and movies. I liked the fact that I took after my dad because I secretly hoped I might grow up to look just like him.
Once puberty started, I was shocked and miserable. I withdrew into myself. I tried to wear the baggiest clothes I could find, trying to conceal myself even while my mother insisted I wear tailored clothes because I looked better in them.
When I was 13 I discovered there was such a thing as 'transsexualism'. I tried to tell my mother, I said "I want to be a boy." Right away she said "you're just going through a phase." Looking back on the expression on her face, it was almost like she was prepared for it. I knew better than to bring it up again. Hedwig and the Angry Inch and The Rocky Horror Picture Show were about 'perverts' according to her.
My teenage years were a mess. I thought I was lesbian. I would fluctuate between wearing tight, ultra-feminine clothes trying to fake it till I made it, and taking my dads old jeans and sweaters which I could relax in and often wore till they fell apart. I hated my body, I missed the way it used to look before puberty and tried starving myself (it didn't work, I'm not really cut out for an eating disorder). My face looked wrong to me, I used to cover it in tons of makeup until I didn't even look like myself (drag queen style, really) and somehow that made me feel better. Sometimes, when I was alone, I would go in the bathroom and draw a beard on myself. It made me feel better and I'd look at my reflection until I had to regretfully wash it off. I started living vicariously through movies and the male characters I admired in them...as long as I was watching a movie I could forget about how wrong everything else felt.
Halloween continued to be my outlet after puberty. I always jumped at the chance to cross-dress because it was the one day when it wouldn't be weird. One year I was at a school Halloween party hanging out with my male friend dressed as Eddie Vedder with a fake beard and someone thought I was my friend's brother. That was a really awesome feeling. I experimented with chest binding, but I never let myself consider that I might really be trans again because it was too scary. Intimacy issues forced me to deal with it later on when I was 23, and I realized that even though I'd been stuffing my feelings down they weren't going to go away. It was terrifying.
Funny thing is, after I came out to my family nobody seemed that surprised. My brother was very blasé, he said "I've always thought of you as a dude anyway." And even my mom (!!) said it didn't come as a huge surprise because I'd been doing things that hinted at it since I was little. She really did a 180...I wish she'd said that when I was 13.
I never really "knew" for sure what exactly was going on, but I always knew there was SOMETHING not quite fitting right. From being huge into dinosaurs, Hot Wheels, getting dirty and almost exclusively having male friends as a child, I suppose I just thought I was a tomboy, and my parents did, too. I very much liked dressing up in feminine Halloween costumes (Belle, Buttercup, Mulan) so it was hard to understand why I couldn't stand wearing dresses or skirts or ever take bags/purses with me.
In middle school, I started to realize that I'm not quite the norm, and through high school, I finally figured out that it was my gender, and not my sexuality(went back and forth from gay to straight to pansexual to asexual, trying to find out what fit me). In hindsight, I was always a bit too masculine to really be a girl lol, I should have known! I guess my love for hyperfeminine things really threw me off all that time. Always so much anxiety as a tween about it, too.
I wish I had known earlier. :(
I did not 'know' either until a few weeks back, and one part of me is still waiting to see if it is a phase which just passes by, but the rest of me just believes that at least some signs were always there which I never really put together.
Never liked stereotypical boy or girl activities, but was always fond of books. And in that, I found it easier to relate to female protagonists like Nancy Drew instead of male ones like the Hardy Boys. Never been good at any sports. Was not too much into any household activities, but I liked taking care of infants and other such things which wouldn't alarm my parents too much. Never gathered the courage to wear anyone else's clothes, but started getting my own and CDing recently. Mostly been around boys since school and never fit in, but I always attributed it to simply being a geek. Did not know much about physical differences between genders almost until puberty, and have always been attracted to girls since then. I'd seen effeminate boys being bullied and called 'gay', which I knew meant guys who like guys, and I knew that was not me. So all in all, there was almost no way of knowing until very recently how gender identity and sexuality were different and what it could mean for me.
Quote from: cindy16 on January 14, 2015, 10:57:37 AM
I did not 'know' either until a few weeks back...
Quote from: zukhlo on January 14, 2015, 09:17:05 AM
I had my "epiphany" at 23, I always wondered why I didn't know before.
This is something I find fascinating. It took a mini gender and orientation breakdown in my 20s for me to realise what in retrospect is reasonably obvious.
I wonder how much of this has to do with social conditioning, repression, naivety or something else besides. As a kid, whenever I heard the words "sex change" it set off some quiet bell inside me, but for some reason the penny only dropped in my 20s.
as it has been, i was drugged to the gills as a 'ritalin kid' all through elementary and middle school on all kinds of 'legal' drugs, ritalin, adderall, wellbutrin, probably also an SSRI or two in the mix (fortunately, i didn't go batshpit insane and shoot up a school or commit suicide, although there were days where i was literally razor-edge close to the latter.) Im sure that my body was a child at one time, but i don't remember being a child, so, from my mental perspective, i was never a child, and i was otherwise directly born as a later teenager/ adult.
Was i showing signs of gender dysphoria before the public fool system put me on the meds ? i don't know, and i suspect neither me or anyone else will ever know. That is gone. Lost to the sands and winds of time. Forever.
I suspect that there might have been signs, but the people around me were just too stupid to notice it and realize what was really going on. Instead, they stuck me on meds as a matter of SOP, and all but overtly mind-wiped me.
Ironically, it also prevented the public fool system from formatting my mind and doing arguably worse damage to me as a person. I awoke into highschool with the ability to read and understand things well beyond my 'normal' peers, and while they were struggling with 5th and 6th grade reading materials in 'regular ed' classes, i was reading fully adult material (you got a smutty mind, you know that ? :P) about as easy as breathing.
i was a first class freek-nerd in high school, and after being absolutely socially destroyed in freshman and sophomore year (by both boys and girls), i eventually learned to keep very strictly to academics (or whatever other business-at-hand there was) and avoided being social, at all costs.
Eventually, i had to reluctantly accept and internalize my 'perpetual outsider' status, and began to think of myself more as some form of humanoid space alien, rather than really human, and i tend to equate 'female-ness' with 'humanity', sexist as that may sound.
When I was in first grade, one lunch all the kids in my class decided to play a game called Cooties where the boys and girls would split up and the girls would chase the boys to tag them and knock them out of the game. Since I had been conditioned to think I was a boy, I joined the boys team and ran from the girls. At one point a girl yells out to me, "Stop! Wait! I want to talk to you." So I stopped, turned around, and she said something that blew my mind. "You're on the wrong team. You should be on the girls team." At that point some other girls overheard and voiced their agreement. I stopped to think about it for a second and realized they were right. It was at that point that I just "knew". It's funny to think that they knew before I did. I became friends with that girl for a short time before she moved away. I hope to find her someday and thank her.
I knew something was amiss when I was really young.. But I didn't think in terms of "I am a girl." I just was. I wore dresses when I could, always wanted long hair, kept my nails as long as I could prevent my parents from forcibly cutting them, pretending to be a witch always, faeries, a mermaid.. playing with dolls, connecting to female film and tv characters super strongly. Of course I was also a self proclaimed scientist, and loved biology, and paleontology (Thanks Jurassic Park!) But I never associated those things with maleness anyway..
Puberty is what set off my dysphoria like crazy. I hated the changes, my shoulders got way broader and this really upset me.. I was super hairy legged.. arms too. I actually fought my voice change for several years, speaking and singing in a falsetto. And the changes downstairs were NOT welcome.. I felt like a box of yuck. I still didn't know exactly what was going on, but by the time I was 15 or so I think I was getting an idea. I knew of transgender people at this time, but I think the prospect of transitioning was just in the realms of fantasy for me.. It just happened to some people who were lucky, and I thought I'd never be so lucky. Of course now I kick myself for not starting 5 or 6 years ago.. But I suppose I wasn't ready then.. Not sure if I'm ready now, but somethings happening and it's not gonna be "Staying the same!" lol!
Quote from: Ms Grace on January 12, 2015, 02:28:22 AM
I wouldn't say I knew when I was a kid since the concept of being able to transition to another gender was unheard of for me. I wouldn't say I went around wishing I was girl, just that I really hated being a boy and being treated by one and expected to do the things boys do. When I was 12 I was told that I was going to a boy's high school and, for reasons that made no sense to me at the time but which are fairly evident now, I suddenly burst into tears - there was no way I wanted to do that. How horrific (and it was).
Almost identical to me except the part about crying having to go a an all boys h/s. (That came afterwards) Growing up in the 50's & 60's you didn't have the option of being girlie. Especially not in an mostly eastern European first generation blue collar city. The boys h/s was just another well known expectation since I was the baby of the family and my big brother was already through the mill
I kept on living up to those expectations for another 40 years
For myself, there were not super obvious signs. The only signs were quite ambiguous, one was a desire to cross-dress starting around puberty, which I didn't do until college, and only with underwear, another was a desire for a more effeminate appearance, another was being accused of having some effeminate mannerisms in school which some people interpreted as "acting gay", which was weird because I am mostly attracted to women. I am not sure I would have known even in a totally accepting family and society because my social awkwardness would easily mask any trans feelings. I would be happier as a woman at age 24, but ignored the thought for over year, and it came back, this time with the pain of gender dysphoria.
Quote from: Ms Grace on January 12, 2015, 02:28:22 AM
I wouldn't say I knew when I was a kid since the concept of being able to transition to another gender was unheard of for me. I wouldn't say I went around wishing I was girl, just that I really hated being a boy and being treated by one and expected to do the things boys do. When I was 12 I was told that I was going to a boy's high school and, for reasons that made no sense to me at the time but which are fairly evident now, I suddenly burst into tears - there was no way I wanted to do that. How horrific (and it was).
I shared that feeling and was a real disappointment to my folks. My mom especially tried grooming me to become a priest as the status of those guys was then at a peak. Seminary classes and a catholic military high school were part of why i left home at 16. That was just when the world was getting a look at some guys called the Beatles and long hair made a come back. Many of my personal tormentors were right anyway. I was a sissy girl!
I was one of those children who started out with absolute faith in my gender, much to my mother's chagrin, and it took 8 years to shake my faith in who/what I was. From then through my teens I was simply confused and my quest was to follow the same trail as Christine Jorgensen. That eventually led me to SRS in 1974 at age of 24.
Quote from: Tessa James on January 16, 2015, 12:12:43 PM
Many of my personal tormentors were right anyway. I was a sissy girl!
One day in 8th grade during my usual beating from my go-to bully, he exclaimed, "You're such a f***ing WOMAN!" And yes, my name in junior high school was "Little F****t Sissy Boy".
I wanted to be a girl from a very young age, but I didn't realise that was even a possibility until I discovered that transition was actually a thing. From that point it took me 4 yrs to come out to my parents and another 4 to get on Hrt. I don't blame young me for not speaking out earlier, I was just trying to be a good child and not cause too much fuss, and while I would've liked to have had a girl-hood I would probably have ended up significantly worse looking then I will now.
T may be poison,, but I have it to thank for the fact I'm 5ft 9 instead of 4ft 10, the cheekbones aren't that bad either ;)
Ages 3 to 6 : I knew something was 'off' with me at a very early age. I remember thinking I'd be a lot more comfortable if I were a girl, but... I don't remember any kind of strong feeling of hatred of my body though.
Ages 7 to 10 : I played with girls so much that my mom found me a bunch of male friends to play with, and even though I had a hard time relating to how the other boys behaved, I did enjoy the 'male' sports if you will, hated all the 'rites of passages' I had to go through to prove , and I'd often get very very upset if someone questioned my boyhood or called me a girl. I was very feminine looking at that age (before puberty), and my mom would often butch me up before she'd let me go out.
That's all I can really remember. The first time I had any signs of bodily discomfort was at the age of 12 when I had weird dreams were my top half was female, after that it grew and grew and grew. It got so bad that it lead to me tirelessly searching the internet for answers and that's how I found out I was transgender.
I would say that I knew at a young age that I wanted to be a girl. Unfortunately it took 20 years to start the process due to family and then the military. I believe that some people can recognize at a young age that they are different. For some of us we knew what was different and what we wanted to change. For others they might have known they were different but didn't know what that meant. This could be for multiple reasons whether its family, friends, society etc. I don't think there is one set reason as everyone is different.
It might be that some of us are actually tomboys, or similar. We fit in enough to not fully realize how different we were.
I liked (and still do) a lot of typically male things. Doesn't make me any less a woman because of it.
It wasn't until puberty that I started to internalize and barricade my female side in, and by then the self denial was starting. Still can't believe I was able to deny to myself that I was transsexual while crying myself to sleep almost nightly wishing, hoping, and praying to be a girl. *sigh* *facepalm* It was so obvious to me when I had my 'aha' moment just this last December.
my 2 cents,
Jess
Looking back now, I can see that there were signs, but at the time I definitely didn't realize. I didn't think so much that I was a boy, only that I wasn't a girl. I remember praying that god would give me a penis when I was about eight and being disappointed when it didn't happen. I would have thoughts like "I can't do that, someone might think I'm a girl!" Oddly I never thought this was strange. I hated dolls, and pink and most girly things. I didn't want to be treated like a girl. My family never noticed anything because both my mother and my sister are fairly androgynous as well. It was normal for a girl to act like a boy in my family, it would have been more strange to act like a girl.
I didn't start thinking of myself as male consciously until my late teens, before that I kind of saw myself as kind of gender neutral I suppose. I didn't label myself as trans until about my mid twenties because somehow before that my only concept of trans was that it was only MtF and didn't go the other way??? I don't know how I came up with that but that is how I thought.
So I guess in some ways I knew young, I just didn't consciously recognize it.
hm, my main proof, if I can call it that, of me being trans is a memory of being super young and having my female dolls "go through sex changes". I also used to dream of being able to use the bathroom while standing up, and tried to do so many times. in elementary school and earlier, a lot of my friends were guys and I never really felt like one of the girls. I also would watch baseball with my dad and had a recurring fantasy about somehow becoming male and joining a pro baseball team. I always felt really uncomfortable in my body, I have for as long as I can remember, and when puberty hit, my discomfort hit an all time high. I'm just now realizing that I think all of that is due to dysphoria. I missed having a flat chest more than anything, I was so ashamed when I had to ask for bras and when I had to tell my mom that I'd gotten my period. it all felt so wrong to me, and now I really understand why.
I've really had to dig these memories up from the back of my mind recently as I've become more in touch with my gender identity. and technically I'm still not an adult, so maybe my current experiences could count as signs :o
Quote from: Jessica Jaclyn Reimer on January 24, 2015, 10:10:18 PM
It might be that some of us are actually tomboys, or similar. We fit in enough to not fully realize how different we were.
I liked (and still do) a lot of typically male things. Doesn't make me any less a woman because of it.
very true! I didn't think I could be a trans guy at first because when I was growing up, though I did like some stereotypically male things, I definitely wasn't the antithesis of femininity. gender roles can really warp your self-perception and it's awful but sadly our society still drills this into our minds.
I would dress up and stuff when young, but didn't know until 10 when I saw an episode of spin city where a childhood friend came back as a girl. I realized what transgender was and it clicked. Growing up I combated feelings by always having an "angry face" and being anti social. i did it sub consciously to blend in and keep people away from me. But alone, I would cry and hurt inside. I would dress up secretly and felt good about myself. I would envy other girls and when puberty set in, things became a living and walking nightmare. I wanted death and had very suicidal thoughts. Not only did I look angry, but inside I hated everything. You can say I became the definition of evil. I didn't express this by dressing up in goth or being emo or getting tattoos or piercings, because inside I knew who I really was. Trying to get out. From 18-20 I thought maybe i was gay and tried dating a guy who i was with for a year, but alas I didn't enjoy anything with my current body. It was very uncomfortable. After this, I figured I was a liar to myself and was a phony and fake. I pretended transgender was an option for people who liked trapping and faking. I spent a few years from about 20-23 learning to ignore myself and become part of the low class work world, where I would spiral into depression both career wise and identity wise. I'm now 24 and started making progress last year from self sufficient means. The cogs may finally be turning, but I have a long way to go.
FYI: I'm IS.
In looking back at my childhood, I can say there where times when I probably showed signs, but I truly didn't know for sure until I was 14. See for me, and sometimes I still wonder if my Mom was aware that I was Intersex, because she raised both my brother and I in a mostly gender natural environment. And it's weird looking back, because there where a few times when she did not allow me to do something that girls would do, and I felt bummed about it but I really didn't understand why.
In about fifth or sixth grade, I started noticing that I was also different in a different way. This was around that time when I guess your suppose to start becoming attracted to other people. But for me, I was never attracted to ether boys or girls. I never had that reaction that boys are to have when they are attracted to someone (boy/girl). This was also the time, I started waking up in hell, if you know what I mean. I never understood why, but I hated waking up every morning, and thankfully it only lasted thirty seconds, but still it was hell for me.
And you know growing up, I really liked doing Mom stuff more than anything. I loved vacuuming, cooking, and baking the most. And a lot of the stuff my Mom and I did, would be considered more Mommy/Daughter than Mommy/Son stuff. We loved doing crafts. We even held hands in public, when we would go shopping, or walking around. We did this till I was about maybe fifteen or sixteen.
I kinda knew something was different too around ten. I remember I read this book about clothes from years past, and I remember reading that boys wore clothing that resembled clothing kind of like girls clothes. Skirts garments, and such. But I remember after that book, I wanted to wear girls clothes, but I never understood why.
And do you know what was so weird for me too? I really wasn't bullied that much at all. I mean, yes I was called names because I had Albinism, but no one ever went over name calling. In all the 15 years of schooling (Preschool, Kindergarden, and Sixth grade twice), I was never physically bullied. Even name calling died in middle school.
It was finally in high school, when I was able to put two and two together. It was a TV show about Transsexuals, and I finally kinda understood why I felt what I felt. So I assumed that's what I was. And so I went in the closet!
Quote from: DrummerGirl on January 16, 2015, 01:45:28 AM
When I was in first grade, one lunch all the kids in my class decided to play a game called Cooties where the boys and girls would split up and the girls would chase the boys to tag them and knock them out of the game. Since I had been conditioned to think I was a boy, I joined the boys team and ran from the girls. At one point a girl yells out to me, "Stop! Wait! I want to talk to you." So I stopped, turned around, and she said something that blew my mind. "You're on the wrong team. You should be on the girls team." At that point some other girls overheard and voiced their agreement. I stopped to think about it for a second and realized they were right. It was at that point that I just "knew". It's funny to think that they knew before I did. I became friends with that girl for a short time before she moved away. I hope to find her someday and thank her.
I love this story!
I was about 6 or 7, I would try on my little sisters clothes when nobody was around. As I got older I would sneak my mom's clothes. I didn't know anything about transgender at the time. While in the Navy I started learning more about what I was feeling and started accepting it. I had a difficult time in the Navy because I knew I couldn't talk to anybody, fearing discharge. I went through a period of depression that I think having access to a counselor of some sort would have been very helpful. As it went, I managed to make it through and after multiple purging sessions I have accepted who I am. Seems strange now that I think of it over 20 years went by before I was able to accept who I am.
Though I aM not 100% sure my child is Transgender I can say we started noticing around age 2. Not only was he into make up, nail polish and really cute heels but he was also talking about wanting to be a mom when he grew up etc. Now he is wearing bras (not all the time but a lot of the time that he is at home) and talking about wearing bikinis this summer. He's asked random questions about transitioning as well.
He is pretty open about it with me so I think if he decides to transition he will come to me. (He is only 9 now so I am sure we are a few years from HRT, etc.)
I always knew....I didnt always know there was a term for it, as I lived a VERY sheltered, Pentecostal childhood....but one of my earliest memories is fantasizing of being this model in one of my mom's JC Penny's Holiday Catalogs....I tore that picture out and just knew, even then, that THAT is what I was.
There are signs of me "not being like other boys" but I'm not sure if and how they could correlate seeing as how I still haven't figured out my gender questions. I have had mostly female friends as far back as I can remember throughout life, I can easily recall wanting to play with dolls and with my female friends' toys. I used to wear my mom's purple slippers around the house when I was very little. I liked the Care Bears well into middle school and even had some little stuffed bears in my room of them. I felt out of place in baseball/basketball/soccer when I played them throughout my childhood but I put on a good face and at times it could be fun. Really though, I just never felt manly enough to boys my age. I felt like there was something different with me. Like I said, I still have questions about my gender that haven't begun to be figured out but it's just a couple things I remember as a child.XR
Quote from: Ms Grace on January 12, 2015, 02:28:22 AM
I wouldn't say I knew when I was a kid since the concept of being able to transition to another gender was unheard of for me. I wouldn't say I went around wishing I was girl, just that I really hated being a boy and being treated by one and expected to do the things boys do. When I was 12 I was told that I was going to a boy's high school and, for reasons that made no sense to me at the time but which are fairly evident now, I suddenly burst into tears - there was no way I wanted to do that. How horrific (and it was).
Sort of describes me, except that the all-boys school for me was in 5th and 6th grade (age 10-11), which is the age at which the private school I was sent to split the boys and girls and started whipping the boys into the proper boy-shape. I didn't burst into tears at the time because I had no clue as to what was going to hit me, and besides, I already knew that "boys don't cry," and if they do anyway, they can count on being scolded and taunted and humiliated for it by everyone around them. I don't know how much of my wrongness at the time was gender-based, how much was me being kind of a ditzy space cadet (like my own sons at that age) and how much was my just generally not fitting in, but I can't think of a single respect in which I was able to be the right kind of boy for them. I've mostly repressed the details, but I'm fairly sure I didn't do anything
bad, I just couldn't do anything right, and that was enough to catch hell from the principal, the teachers, and the other boys. It seemed like I could get into trouble just walking down the hall.
I didn't fantasize about being a girl -- in fact, the idea of becoming a girl terrified me -- but I was fascinated by girls' clothes and everything about being a girl; I guess I could have been described as a cross-dresser in my heart. It's only very recently -- like in the last year or two -- that I ran across the idea that maybe my fascination with girls and women is wanting to
be one (which dudes aren't supposed to want), rather than wanting to
have one (which is what dudes
are supposed to want.)
I don't think I knew I was a boy. But I knew that I didn't feel comfortable being a girl. Often I felt awkward doing "girls things" and I felt insecure throughout school, and I never really understood why any girls liked doing their makeup, hair etc. But I didn't know about the possibility of transitioning. So I guess I kinda always "knew" in some way, but I just didn't have the information of what was possible I guess.