Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hey guys and dolls,

This poll is to get an idea of what ages people were aware of transition from the birth sex to their target sex being physically possible. It's not about what age you knew you were transsexual or what age you transitioned, but what age you knew it was possible to transition.
Poll is for ages 18 and up.

Elaboration encouraged.
Thanks.

When I was 15. Oprah show.

The subject started coming up in elementary school. I didn't believe it was possible until later though  :P

I was like 25 to 27. I had 4 kids by then and no cash and no "self". I had just gotten my first computer for home and dial up internet. The fact that I could transition saved my life then and gave me hope during the long wait for my children to be adults. Oh to have had my children be safe and transition earlier but that was not to be and now I want it all right now.

I was 17 when I realized transition was possible.  I had heard the term transgender before but didn't really understand what it meant, and definitely didn't think it was possible to go from female to male.  I found out by meeting one of my girlfriend's friends and after he left she told me that he was born a girl, which completely fascinated me and I started researching.  I'm 19 now

i don't remember exactly when but it was around my first psych exam for gender issues about 10 years ago when for a moment, i really got deep into the info (then proceeded to try and sweep my issues under the rug...  :-\ )

before that it was from trash tv and radio that i got "info"

When I was 9 my teacher told us it was possible. But she told us it was something we had to be commited to.

I was 14.  I saw a two-part series late at night on the Discovery Channel, one on MTFs and the other on FTMs.  When I saw the results of the guy who had top sugery done I almost cried upon realizing that something like that was possible. 

I knew I could transition at 8 years old but couldn't do anything about it because I thought my parents wouldnt accept me and kept it away till 12-13 from them but really gave her by 17

I think it was at age 18, nearing 19 and I ran for it as fast as I could, started at 19.
Then had an unwanted stop of estrogens, still had antiandrogens, until age 20 and a half or so.

Now I am back completely about 2 months since re-start of estrogenn!

Not until age 25 which was 15 years ago. Small town and I am just old I guess. Internet sure has made a difference in the  world.
Cheers,
Myles

Quote from: Nero on September 27, 2009, 08:42:07 PM
Hey guys and dolls,

This poll is to get an idea of what ages people were aware of transition from the birth sex to their target sex being physically possible. It's not about what age you knew you were transsexual or what age you transitioned, but what age you knew it was possible to transition.
Poll is for ages 18 and up.

Elaboration encouraged.
Thanks.

age 18-24 (I am currently age 25-34)  8) 8) 8)

Found out about MTF when i was really young, assumed one could also go the other way.

Found that it wasn't as easy to go the other way when I was 15, and discounted it because I was convinced I was too short to ever make a convincing man (or so other people kept telling me).

</Face palm>

Was looking at it now and then (when times got rough and I couldn't adapt to birth sex) until I was 25 going "Nah, surely not! That seriously can't be my problem..... can I really do that?"

Here I am, 25 and height be damned :laugh:

Bummer, I'm still a teen so I can't vote!  :(

Oh well...I figured out about it at age 11, I don't know how--It just came inside my mind. Hard to explain...

Sometimes in my teens is all I know (I'm currently in my 30's).

Okay, I feel officially stupid now.  :laugh: I knew about Mtfs (but thought they were a type of extreme drag queen) but never made the connection that one could go from physically female to physically male (or at least develop the secondary sex characteristics of a male). I didn't have any frame of reference really. I seriously thought I was the only male alive born this way. Made me feel kind of special actually. I had this dark secret that made me feel like a lovely and tragic mythical beast.  :laugh:
I did look into breast reductions, but they wouldn't do one flat enough for my taste. (I didn't want them smaller, I wanted them gone.)

When I was 27, I got clean and was spending a  lot of recovery time reading when I came across a passing reference to 'gender identity disorder' and instantly knew that was me. I looked up, then got online and learned about transition and the rest is history.

God, it just never clicked. I mean there were butch dykes around but I knew I wasn't one of them and the mtfs around town didn't blend in, so I had no clue about medical intervention.
Wow.  :eusa_doh:

So, when do we get to see the stat.s (results of the survey)?  :)

I knew about MTFs long before I knew about FTMs. I'm assuming that you want to know when we found out that transition was physically possible for ourselves? 'Cause that's how I answered. I was twenty-five or twenty-six when I found out that there was such a thing as an FTM transsexual. I was so excited...

...and scared...

...that I couldn't deal with it and promptly became a cross dresser.

I heard about Christine Jorgensen when I was in my early teens (around 1962) and found out where surgery was being done and the cost but the cost was like $25,000 U.S. which was about 3 years total income for a tradesman (my father) so it was out of the question. Nobody would ever help me with that kind of cost.

I didn't know how but I knew I needed to have surgery or I wouldn't survive so I started working at 13 and saved everything I could. I tried to get in to the Clarke Institute, Johns Hopkins, and any place doing "studies" but couldn't get in. In 1973 I heard about Dr. Biber's new practice and was GONE in a couple of months.

I never even knew you could transition from female to male - never heard of such a thing!  TV and the media seemed to only mention MTFs.  I started to figure stuff out (ie realizing transition was possible) the few months before Thomas Beattie became news.  And before then I'd only managed to find pics of pre-transition transguys.

Once I knew transition was possible, I still had no idea what that entailed, and figured I'd end up looking like a butch hairy woman.  No thanks!  Then I met a guy who transitioned 8 yrs ago.  WHOA!

And I jumped right off that cliff ASAP.


Jay

For me, it was 47 when I (DUH) discovered that transition was even a reality (that was about 3 months ago). Over the years I had heard the terms transgender and transsexual, had heard about sex changes and the like, but never really connected the dots, I had never associated those terms, conditions, and surgeries with the fact that I had always thought I wanted to be a girl and that I had always had this 'need' to dress like a girl.

I had been so deep in denial about myself that, I think, I completely refused to acknowledge the evidence that kept popping up that this is who I am and that there is a viable solution. It wasn't until I got laid off and stopped working 18-20 hours a day (to avoid the desire to fantasize, etc) and became extremely depressed and suicidal. I had also begun obsessing over becoming a girl so much that I just had to look into the possibility - lo and behold, there it was... Susans.org. My salvation, my solution.

Now I am working diligently towards my goal of finally fulfilling my lifelong desire. For some of us, it takes a good stiff kick in the head with a very big and heavy cast iron boot to get us to see ourselves. DUH!  :o

Deanna

Wow! You mean such a thing is possible? 


(sorry)(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc07.deviantart.com%2Ffs28%2Ff%2F2008%2F084%2F5%2F0%2Ffiery_evil_laugh_by_cdrummer.gif&hash=954105d405f52b56460b61a71605693fbb38874f)


(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi

Quote from: Kristi on September 28, 2009, 08:57:18 AM
Wow! You mean such a thing is possible? 


(sorry)(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffc07.deviantart.com%2Ffs28%2Ff%2F2008%2F084%2F5%2F0%2Ffiery_evil_laugh_by_cdrummer.gif&hash=954105d405f52b56460b61a71605693fbb38874f)


(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi

ROFL!

I voted under age 12 (I am currently age 45-54).

I heard hushed whispers about various people when I was a kid; Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards, Jan Morris... Wendy Carlos made the biggest impression because I'd listened to and loved her Switched on Bach record, first released under the name of Walter.

Z

I knew I wanted to live as a girl from a young age, But didn't know it was possible till age 14. Some how one day in health class our teacher told us the story of Tula. Lets see used to be a boy, than was in Playboy. I knew then things could really change for me to someday too. That was about 17 years ago, and now I'm finally starting my own change.

i don't remember when exactly but it was in elementary school.

I remember reading about it in a Playboy magazine back in the early 1970s when I was in college.  For some reason, I assumed that it was experimental and only a few people in history ever got one. 

Skip ahead, thirty years, when I became aware that dealing with transsexuality was what was happening to me.  My wife researched my need to underdress on the net and said to me, "You are a transgendered person."  She was really upset about it and I immediately knew she was right.  I had no idea about it and then dove into the net to find all about it.  That was ten years ago.

The information I found led me to analyze my thoughts better and I realized that I was a transsexual.  Now, I think I was so much in denial that I needed a sledge hammer to wake me up.  Honestly, I didn't have a clue why I needed to be feminine.

Maggie

I remember.
I was 15 years old and there was a news piece on television about the first Icelandic transsexual to have SRS.
Her name is Anna and she is a ship-"mechanic". That is to say, she worked running the engine room in a large fishing vessel. We're blog-friends on an Icelandic blog site.
I ran into her a few years later and didn't recognize her, it was in a bar. I remember what I said to her, cause she is just a touch taller than I am. I said "wow, so rare to meet another girl in my height category" (Being as I was trying to be a girl at the time).
She smiled and laughed and I walked back to the other nutbars at my table and she slipped into the ladies room.

I haven't thought about that in years. ^^

Don't know about mtfs, but I knew about them way before I realised that you could be ftm.

Thomas Beatie was the first transguy that I had heard of.

So I picked 13-17.

Quote from: Kristi on September 28, 2009, 08:57:18 AM
Wow! You mean such a thing is possible? 

Kristi, now I understand that secret little smile in your avatar pic.

I was 9 when news of Christine Jorgensen's surgery hit the press in 1952/53.  I was still naive enough to think that my change would come naturally, since it was natural that I should be a girl.

Finding out how to get a "sex change" was next to impossible, the cost was prohibitive, the stigma beyond anything I could handle.  And from an early age I was good at suppressing things.

- Kate

Quote from: K8 on September 28, 2009, 08:03:43 PM
And from an early age I was good at suppressing things.

- Kate

I learned about suppression at an early age also

Quote from: Virginia Marie on September 28, 2009, 08:30:31 PM
I learned about suppression at an early age also

OMG  Me too!   I buried enough of this to start a toxic waste dump.

I just remember feeling in awe of Renee Richards when everyone else was making fun of her.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi

Thanks to having access to the internet even if it was 56k.  I learned at a very young age and started to look around and read.  I did not fully understand the costs but I knew it was possible to make it happen.  Tried a few times without success.  Not being able to do anything about it and knowing about it made it all far worse.

Quote from: K8 on September 28, 2009, 08:03:43 PM
And from an early age I was good at suppressing things.

- Kate

I learned that all too well!

Quote from: Kristi on September 28, 2009, 08:43:18 PM
I just remember feeling in awe of Renee Richards when everyone else was making fun of her.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fganjataz.com%2F01smileys%2Fimages%2Fsmileys%2FloopyBlonde-blinking.gif&hash=4545ddf8251cf9c32ae6074d56e48bc34a755857)Kristi

I had the same regarding Wendy Carlos, everyone else was making ignorant comments about her, I admired (and longed for) what she was doing!

Z

I only knew of MTF for a long time and even then I thought they were just extreme drag queens who got breast implants. I knew nothing of hormones, I just thought they naturally looked like that or worked out in a certain way or something I dunno :P

Aged about 17 there was an interview with Buck Angel in a magazine (Bizarre) and that was the first FTM I'd ever heard of, but still it was never something I thought would happen to me. It seemed like an extreme fetish sort of thing (understandable considering he's a porn star)

Age 19, I decided for some reason I was going to play a joke on a friend and convince him I was born a man - I did research in to how it actually worked so I could be a convincing troll. I came across FTM stuff too and I was like, HOLY CRAP, IT'S ACTUALLY POSSIBLE?

I came out like a month later and kicked myself for never having thought of it sooner ::)

I was young, right around 12 actually, and I think it was on TV or something. I can't really remember exactly when. Of course when I first heard about it I acted like I hated it, but really it was fascinating to me. When I was younger I used to spend a lot of time thinking about how much I looked like a girl, and this seemed like it would be "cool"...I guess. I don't know, it was fascinating, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

Somehow I knew you could "take hormones" and "change into a guy" at about age 19, I remember talking with a friend about it in the Army, lol.

Quote#  age 13-17 (I am currently age 18-24)

There was a program on TV about it! And I was like... AHHHHHHHH thats me!!!!!!  ^-^

Jay

i saw random things about trans kids on TV and stuff when i was little, but it never clicked, then i met a MTF on an unrelated forum and was like "WOAH... can i have a penis?!"  then i just started doing a ton of research.  (and to my dismay, no, no penis.  at least not how i meant it in the first place)

i was 17 when i knew i could medically transition and im 18 now.

I was about 10 or 11. I used to watch tons of documentaries as a kid and ones on transitioning fascinated me just as much as the rest. I watched with some envy and now I understand why.

I knew it was POSSIBLE at a young age. My father was a newspaperman, and had a habit of keeping newspapers from things like the moon landing and such. While nosing through these in our basement one day, I discovered that he had kept an ancient article about Christine Jorgensen. I have always wondered why he did!

Also, Renee Richards and all that tennis stuff was news when i was a kid. BUT, although i realized it was possible to transition, it didn't seem like something one could actually do one's self. it seemed to me to be treated like a circus sideshow, something for the Odd News page.

I didn't think transition was genuinely possible, on a personal level, until I was about 35 or 40. By then I had a life in place, a family. It took me until seven years ago to act on it.