I thought it would be cool to hear people's earliest signs of trans-ness. I myself never really felt trans until college-- until then I just saw myself as a tomboy. But when I was little I used to read books or watch movies and I'd always picture myself as one of the male characters and want to be like them. When I'd picture myself grown up, I'd imagine myself like one of he strong masculine heros in my books and movies. Until I realized I could never be like them because I'm a girl and then I'd get really upset. I didn't recognize it as a sign of anything back then, but I'm starting to think it might have been an early, consistant sign.
Anyone else have anything like that in their lives?
One of the earliest signs, which my mom confirmed after I'd come out was that I always hated peeing sitting down. I wanted to pee standing up like my dad which made potty training me very difficult. :P
Also things like wanting to go out without a shirt on and being told I couldn't. My mom would say things like "girls don't go out with their shirts off. Look at me I keep my shirt on when I go out" and I'd get really upset saying I didn't have boobs and I shouldn't have to keep my shirt on.
I always, always played the part of a boy when we played pretend. I remember one time playing house with some girls at school, and as usual I said, "I'll be the brother." But one of the girls insisted, "You can't be the brother, you have to be the sister." I went along with it for about 5 minutes, and I remember this intense anger building up inside of me at the indignity of being forced to play the sister. I ended up refusing to play anymore, and went off to play Astronauts, or some such thing. To be honest, I never much saw the point in playing house. How deathly boring! I much preferred playing rock stars, or astronauts, or jungle adventurers. :D
My earliest memory regarding gender, however, was when I was about 2 1/2, and we were going out to dinner with another family who had a boy about my age. We were pretending to be dogs, and I was getting really annoyed because I kept getting tangled up in my skirt, and tripping on my hair. I noticed that the boy wasn't having these problems, and I asked why I had to wear this stupid skirt, when he got to wear pants. I think that was the day that I decided that dresses were pure evil, and I never again wore one without pitching a fit. You'd think my parents would have eventually gotten the hint, given I almost never pitched a fit over anything else, but to this day my mom claims that she had no idea I hated wearing dresses so much. ::) But I remember feeling deeply angry and humiliated, every time I was forced into one. Especially since, inevitably, that was when the camera came out and my humiliation was captured and preserved for eternity. >:(
I told my parents[and others too I'm sure] on multiple occasions that I was a boy stuck in the wrong body from the age I could talk through about 2nd or 3rd grade. After that I stopped saying it, but it obviously never went away. Every year my elementary school would do something called "dig" each grade did research into another culture be it a time period or a location or both. In kindergarten I was a cowboy, in first grade I played the cat because I refused to be a russian girl or wear a dress or skirt, in second grade I was the first man to walk in space [there was a girl astronaut hat and a boy one... I choose from the boys]... ect. btw yes I did go to an awesome [and very open-minded private "hippyish"] elementary school.
I remember always wanting to swim shirtless and being pissed that I couldn't. I even remember one specific occasion that my baby sitter let me swim shirtless [or maybe it was running through the sprinklers.... iuno it was some water play that involved bathing suitness] and how wonderful it was.
I'd rather not discuss the frustrating things at this current moment just because I'm not in a head space where I care to be thinking about those things in at all right now[besides I've got enough positive ones really I think,] but of course there were plenty of awful things too.
When I was in 7th or 8th grade, I got a cold that made my voice get all crackly. I got really excited and asked my dad if it was because my voice was changing. Then I got really dissapointed when he said that my voice wouldn't change like that because it only happened to boys.
All the girls in my neighbourhood were boring, so I tried to play with the boys, even though they kept telling me girls were not allowed.
When I was 12, I learned what happened to guys when they went through puberty and thinking how awesome their puberty was compared to ours then being jealous and scared that my little brother would end up being bigger than me because I wanted to be the big strong one of the family.
Then went I was younger than that I use to tell my grandma that I wished I was a boy every time I had to have something done to my hair, I wanted it cut short so I wouldn't have to do anything to it.
I have a feeling there were earlier signs than this, but when I hit puberty, I used to stand in front of the mirror and press my breasts flat and think, "I would feel much better with a flat chest."
I also didn't get why I wasn't allowed to go out shirtless as a kid.
I was recently told that the one and only time I'd ever scream as a kid was when I was 2-ish, and my mother tried to shove me in dresses.
Apparently I never threw a temper tantrum for any other reason. Which, as far as my memory serves, sounds about right (I won't go into why I know this, but I did have an unusual upbringing).
Pretending games, I was always a man (usually the man I wanted to be when I grew up). I always assumed I'd grow up that way.
I've always had a male name (well, since about 3), because my birth name never felt right.
I also brushed my hair as if I had a short back and sides (and kept imagining that I did - I kept seeing a boy in the mirror), wore boys clothes, played with "boys toys", and was rather attached to my mens casio wristwatch (a hand me down from a male relative).
I have a scanned pic of me when I was a kid, and I actually do look like a boy with a very long mullet. It's awesome! :laugh:
My best friend was a matchbox yellow cab named Lionel... 'cause I sure as hell didn't relate to any of the other children. The girls were ikky and boring, and the boys would have nothing to do with me.
On my 6th or 7th birthday (I forget...) , I got 2 swiss army knives, a full set of camo and a bootleg VHS of Terminator 2. It was the "bestest birfday evarrrrr!" :laugh: (I assure you, in reality I'm actually a left leaning, very liberal pacifist).
When I was 14 or so my voice semi-cracked. It would squeak and slightly drop and do all sorts of crazy things. I was happy that it such an unusual thing was going to happen to me. I was hoping that it meant I was IS.
There's a heap of other tiny little events and a crapload of dysphoria I'd rather not go through again.... so I think that's enough for now :).
Childhood was good. I didn't have any social things to alert me to it, since I've always been socially inept. Lot of girls simply rejected me as a friend so I was alone.
Before puberty happened I was given that speech in school about what would happen to me. But I never quite believed it. It wasn't happening, and it wasn't going to. In fact I expected the male changes of greater strength, deeper voice all that. Height. But it never happened and I feel stuck in limbo.
A lot of this thought started with my friends though. When I finally did make some friends, they were male as I got along with them a lot better. They weren't unpredictable, they liked the same things I did, and other such things. But I was not like them. I remember thinking over and over, questioning why I wasn't a male. I didn't think so differently for all of this separation.
I realized the separation was not the problem I had, because it wasn't that there were no differences between the sexes which I was trying to justify all of this time. It's that I don't belong on this side of the fence.
Hmm, not much in the way of early signs. I'll bring some stereotypes. Didn't get along with girls, identified with my father and not my mother, played video games, hated my femininity. Liked to build things, as opposed to cuddling/nurturing dolls or whatever.
Anti-signs: Played with dolls (my mom loved Barbies and bought a small collection.) Didn't oppose my sex until puberty. Not an active kid (well, I did like running but that was about it.)
I think this all started when I examined things more closely and found actual sexual dimorphism (yeah, maybe it should've happened sooner but I've been known to be completely oblivious.)
I remember when I was about 6 I thought I would just wake up and magically have a boys body.
I had loads of dreams of this happening, pretty devastated when I woke up.
I always wanted to walk around shirtless.
Didn't like peeing sitting down.
I called myself Adam in my head.
Pretended I was shaving my face in the morning...with the end of a toothbrush haha.
All my friends were boys, they actually used to let me borrow their toys because my parents never got me any boys toys!
With my friends, when I was really little my best friends were the two boys who lived across the street and the two boys who lived next door. We played house sometimes, but I can't remember whether I was a boy or a girl when we played. But our jobs were always "rock quarry workers" and we'd take the soft rocks from my friends house and smash them into dust with other rocks and collect the dust. I'd play school A LOT. Not sure if that's a male or female thing, but it was a healthy mix of regular school and basketball school or karate school or army school. I guess that's why I became a teacher.
When I got into school my friends were mostly tomboys. Starting in first grade right up until college my best friend was another tomboy, who's now a really butch lesbian, so it was kinda like hanging out with a boy. And all the friends we had together were usually boys and we played mostly with the boys at recess, or we'd spend countless recesses just standing alone over by the woods coming up with very detailed and thorough plans on how we were going to run away and live in the woods and become self-sufficent like the kid from My Side of the Mountain.
My earliest memory (I think I was about six or so) was when I was in the bath. We had a bottle for washing our hair, so I filled it up once, stood up and held it to my crotch, imagining I was peeing like a man ^_^
I did have girl's toys, but always wondered what I was meant to do with them. What happened instead was, I'd play with my brother's toys, and we'd play together. Lego, stickle bricks, Transformers - I loved those cartoons. That and Thundercats, Super Ted, that kind of thing that we'd both watch together.
We role-played sometimes, but it was after the cartoons - when we weren't doing that, we climbed trees, played football, rode our bikes - I taught him how to ride, in fact. I was allowed to take off my shirt during summer and always did so, right up until my Gran looked at me one year and said "I think you'd better start keeping your shirt on." I was about to ask why when I realised I was starting to develop down there.
Everything was great 'til I got to school. Got so much crap during that time, I decided "fitting in" was more important than staying how I was, but of course it didn't work. Didn't have a clue about make-up and just wasn't interested, but for the sake of trying to blend in, I tried it. As the need to fit in diminished (after finally escaping from the South of England and leaving all that crap behind), so did the will to "tart myself up", and I only shaved my legs when I knew I'd have to wear a skirt - something else I didn't do unless I had to (work, etc.). I haven't worn a skirt now for about three years and counting :P
I was really pretty androgynous as a little kid, and definitely acted fairly girly, but I think the reason for that was that my parents never tried to force me into gender roles, so I never associated girly things with having to be a girl. (If that makes any sense.) I wore dresses in the summer because they were comfy and cool, and because I could wear pants or shorts whenever I wanted to, and my parents let me run around the neighborhood shirtless until I actually had a reason not to. I pretty much did whatever I wanted regardless of whether it was thought of as male of female, which is something I'm really grateful to my parents for.
Things really started to go wrong when I hit puberty. I got the impression that it was something all the other girls in my class were happy about, that they liked growing boobs and all, but I really hated the whole thing. Pretty much got worse from there...
thinking back I can recall a lot of things that were probably some early signs but probably weren't looked at twice by my parents or whoever else.
Alot of basic things when I was little like hating dresses, nail polish, makeup, pink, not keen on dolls, liked toy cars and lego and digging in the backyard and playing with worms and millipedes and other bugs, climbing things, being dirty and messy and gross :P I liked my hair short when i was little, but outgrew that for a few years because I didn't feel like i fitted in.
I remember when I was about 5 i wanted to walk around topless all the time and couldn't understand why mum wouldn't let me. I remember saying to my mum once 'Why can't I?! Rod (our neighbor) does!' and my mum would tell me that that's not what little girls did, but I just thought.. 'and?' I thought I was like Rod.
At primary school when we played games I was usually the boy/dad etc, lol, and got really upset when I wasn't. and in tv shows and movies I would imagine myself being the main, male, character.
I used to love my dads shaving cream and would put it on my face and shave it off. I loved it, it was so fun and I wished I could do it for real. but it stung my skin so I didn't do it much.
then puberty, ick. I hit puberty at about 11, earlier than most of the girls at my school. they were all jealous. I couldn't understand why. I hated everything about puberty. I would always wear big jumpers and sports bras, usually two, to get them flatter, this was at 11-12, so i was pretty much binding then. I told my mum I was definitely getting a breast reduction when I was older. At the same time I was watching shows and wanting so much to be the male characters, no idea why. I kind of taught myself how to talk in a deeper voice. And I used to go online and pretend I was a boy and talk to people and It felt amazing 'pretending' to be a boy.
oh yes, and motorbikes!
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg413.imageshack.us%2Fimg413%2F7566%2Fmotorbike.jpg&hash=5888b068c876104da7620e64c2d67ea899448190) (http://img413.imageshack.us/i/motorbike.jpg/)
when i was a kid-
My mum told me i was a girl, i thought no im a boy.
I called myself Tom in my head after Tom and Jerry.
I refused to wear, skirts, dresses, tights, anything pink and anything with flowers on it.
I was obcessed with growing arm muscles.
I loved every thing my dad did including :cars, DIY, weights, football, rugby and F1
I preferred playing with guys because we could play fight and they wouldnt cry.
I adored my cars and would buy toy guns everytime we went on holiday.
i loved having a flat chest and always wanted to take my shirt off
I remember being about 7 and nearly dribbling over my legs for around a year because they were just like my friends (who was a boy) and looked ace in shorts.
Then puberty came, i tried to fit in i didnt and i spent all my spare time studying guys and thinking if i was one i'd want to be like him cause he has really good broad shoulders and hes tall etc.
JUst a general comment- no matter what our backgrounds, whatever our experiences, whatever our similarities and differences, we all seem to have had the urge to go shirtless. Even now at 38 that is one of my biggest things, just want to be able to take my shirt off in summer
Around the age of three, I used to pick fights with all the other boys in the neighborhood. I'm not sure why, but I apparently beat the crap out of them.
I didn't fully understand that I was being read as a girl until I was around six. When I was five, I guess I knew it intellectually, but I didn't really grasp it. I remember being in kindergarten and thinking that there was some rule or other that girls all had to have the same kind of name--something sorta femmy that ended in a "y" or "ie." So the girls in my class were named Susie, Cindy, Terry, Debbie, and Jenny. I remember setting myself apart from them. I couldn't keep them straight. But they were girls and didn't matter.
Of course, I didn't see that there were boys' names that ended in "y," like Bobby and Billy and Timmy and Tommy. But those were obviously boys' names.
My name? It ended in an "a" and didn't really diminutize in any way. And my middle name was unisex but ended in a "y."
I guess I fell flat on my face in my early attempts at taxonomy.
I just knew I was a boy. As soon as I knew that children were divided socially into "boys" and "girls," I knew I was a boy and not a girl.
You know how they say that we're socialized as female, because the people around us treat us like girls and expect us to conform our behaviour to the 'girl' standard? I don't get it. I internalized the 'boy' expectations automatically, from the very beginning, to the point that I even internalized a fair amount of homophobia. I was quite distressed at the effeminate aspects of my personality and even more distressed when I began to be sexually attracted to boys.
I remember painting with a group of kids at school when I was 4 or 5 years old and this girl told me I had to marry a boy named Jeff so I asked why and she said, "because that's what boys and girls do. You're the girl so take care of the baby and he is the boy so he works."
I think that was the first time I ever felt social anxiety. I remember putting my head down and feeling so awkward. I didn't reply. It was terrifying lol.
Awwwwww, Ryans picture just made me smile heaps! ;D
Hmm, this wasnt too loong ago actually :P but from what I can remember...when I was 3 years old, I used to play "doggies" with my sister. And this involved putting a pair of jeans or long pants over your head for the massive ears! And my hair used to always annoy me! I used to the excuse of not wanting to tie it up for school later on in life, to get it shorter :) I remember buying this hat at 6 years of age, and every time I wore it to the shops, I tucked the rest of my hair inside it, only hoping someone would mistake me as being male 8)
Same with the "house" and imaginary type games, I always wanted to be the boy, and got really annoyed when I was forced to be the girl instead >:( I used to just tell myself in my head that I was still the boy tho, that seemed to work ;) I got really angry when my dad said my sister was stronger than me, and that one day...my brother was gonna be taller.
I always use to wish that girls could have been called boys, and that boys could have been called girls, just so I could have been called a boy :P
Other than that, it was always the peeing that got to me. I was extremely jealous of boys, and wanted to copy what they did! I use to use the hose to imitate peeing, or an old baby bottle to shove down my pants. I went through one summer where I actually practised standing to go outside ::) this didnt actually turn out too bad :P
Somewhere in the back of my mind I had always thought that I "should have been born a boy" but didnt realise that I was trans till just last year when I turned 14! I had a great childhood! Enjoyed every last bit of it, and for the most part ignored gender totally all the way through ;D Things have changed since puberty has hit tho!
Speaking of peeing...this story is a little weird, I guess, but when I was six or seven, my father taught me to pee standing up. I pretty much had to straddle the bowl, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.
I'm not sure what precipitated this event. Had I been bugging him about it, or was it one of those occasional inexplicable weird moments between us?
Guess I'll never know.
Post Merge: April 18, 2010, 05:00:35 PM
Quote from: Ryan on April 18, 2010, 03:08:19 PM
I LOVED being shirtless. I would go out and play around the estate in nothing but my shorts.
Sigh. I used to love it, too, till my mother realized why I liked it so much. She put a stop to it when I was seven, maybe eight. I like to think that my father would have reasoned with her, but he was out of the house at that time.
Harlee - I did the tucking hair inside hats thing too. I wasn't allowed to cut my hair, even as a teenager...there were times when I thought of just hacking it all off myself with sewing scissors, but I never had the guts.
And peeing...God, I think the first obviously "trans" thing I remember doing was trying to pee through various tubular objects. Age five or six, I think.
Quote from: kyril on April 18, 2010, 05:34:48 PM
Harlee - I did the tucking hair inside hats thing too. I wasn't allowed to cut my hair, even as a teenager...there were times when I thought of just hacking it all off myself with sewing scissors, but I never had the guts.
I didn't cut my hair short because my mother told me I'd look terrible (and I never had the courage to say 'I'm doing what I WANT' because I believed her that no one would respect me unless I looked feminine). So instead, I always, always wore it in a ponytail. That way, at least from the front, it
almost looked like I had short hair. I didn't even realize why I hated wearing it down until recently.
I think that might be why cutting my hair shorter than it's ever been felt really liberating to me. Even if how it's cut now isn't that masculine, it's more masculine, and I wear it down-- which means I can actually show myself instead of feeling like I was forced to put it up just to stay teetering on the "feminine" side of things.
Quote from: brainiac on April 18, 2010, 05:39:20 PM
I didn't cut my hair short because my mother told me I'd look terrible (and I never had the courage to say 'I'm doing what I WANT' because I believed her that no one would respect me unless I looked feminine). So instead, I always, always wore it in a ponytail. That way, at least from the front, it almost looked like I had short hair. I didn't even realize why I hated wearing it down until recently.
I think that might be why cutting my hair shorter than it's ever been felt really liberating to me. Even if how it's cut now isn't that masculine, it's more masculine, and I wear it down-- which means I can actually show myself instead of feeling like I was forced to put it up just to stay teetering on the "feminine" side of things.
I am/was *exactly* the same way.
Quote from: brainiac on April 18, 2010, 05:39:20 PM
I didn't cut my hair short because my mother told me I'd look terrible (and I never had the courage to say 'I'm doing what I WANT' because I believed her that no one would respect me unless I looked feminine). So instead, I always, always wore it in a ponytail. That way, at least from the front, it almost looked like I had short hair. I didn't even realize why I hated wearing it down until recently.
I think that might be why cutting my hair shorter than it's ever been felt really liberating to me. Even if how it's cut now isn't that masculine, it's more masculine, and I wear it down-- which means I can actually show myself instead of feeling like I was forced to put it up just to stay teetering on the "feminine" side of things.
Awww really! I only had it cut to my shoulders for years. It was only recently that I faked the day home sick from school, and rode my bike to get my hair cut without parental permission! Oh I was in trouble, but oh I wanted it so badly done! Mind you the ride was a tough one :P But worth it in my eyes!
Quote from: kyril on April 18, 2010, 05:34:48 PM
Harlee - I did the tucking hair inside hats thing too. I wasn't allowed to cut my hair, even as a teenager...there were times when I thought of just hacking it all off myself with sewing scissors, but I never had the guts.
Something Mum rarely lets me live down is that, when I was little (I don't even remember this), I
did cut it off myself! She had to tidy it up to a more respectable haircut - good job she has some hairdressing skills.
Also, I just got an email back from Dad. He actually said he feels more comfortable calling me Sam as a bloke than he ever did using my female name. Just goes to show, huh?
Mine were all to do with my make-believe worlds. I was always the boy characters. Was never interested in girly games or dolls but liked cars and animal toys. Mostly though I was extremely imaginative and used to pretend to be anything but me. Animals and male characters usually. I also had a massive phobia of the thought that women had babies. When girls would talk to me about marriage or having kids of their own I just said having children was killing the environment (yes a 7 year old hippy!) and said I would never, ever do that.
There wasn't too much during my teens actually, I think when I hit puberty I just tried to follow the crowd. But when my mum had a hysterectomy I said to her that I wished they could do that to me. I started fancying boys when I was in my teens so I figured that I had to be just like everyone else after all. But the fantasising about not being in a female body didn't stop. It wasn't until years of trying out different types of relationships and getting all upset about sex that I realised for sure that I am trans.
I was never allowed to cut my hair short so I literally wore it in a ponytail until I was allowed to cut it when I was about 16. Then every time I got a haircut it just got shorter and shorter lol.
In make believe(which I always hated anyways) the other kids would always instinctively put me in male roles. When I played with my sister I was always the dad or the brother.
I also loved walking around with no shirt on.
Mine started around 4. I cut all my hair off, refused to wear girls clothes, and I wouldn't let anyone call me by my birthname. I went by a males name all through elementary school and Jr high. I had my first girlfriend when I was 7, in first grade. My case was very clear growing up. Around high school I tried to deny it and change a little bit, but I couldn't. I felt really weird in girls clothes, almost like I was doing something wrong when I was wearing them. So through high school i pretty much wore basketball shorts and hoodies everyday, but I did have long hair. After I graduated is when i really started realizing who I was and accepting myslef for who I was. But yes, I did have very obvious signs at a very young age.
Post Merge: April 19, 2010, 10:55:17 AM
I forgot I had this. I put this video together a while ago with some pics of me when I was really young. It shows "early signs" I guess you would say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HGM3RKtgI0# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HGM3RKtgI0#)
I guess the earliest sign was in my dreams when I was a kid, I used to be He-Man. LOL Then when I was about 10 I fantasied about being a guy even when I was awake. In my teens I was very tomboy and proud of it. I used to get called he/she all the time and didn't mind one bit.
When I had stuffed animals.. I would give them a name and a gender. I would always make them 'boys' I didn't want them to have to be females, because I thought that that was bad, and they wouldn't have to be girls, because it was better to be a boy.
During my school years I always wanted to go by my middle name (O'Neil) I had always liked it better.. now that I look back, maybe its because it is a male name.
For halloween, once I was old enough to make my own costumes I was almost always a guy character, peter pan, the grim reaper, frodo baggins, harry potter.. I thought that boys were better.. and 'why would anyone want to dress like a girl, when girls are stupid and inferior, why be a girl when u can be a boy' (I think im sexist.. even as a kid lol)
I used to slick my hair back, like those formal dudes with long hair, who mouse it back, I would do that with my hair and sneak up on my family and startle them with how boyish I looked.
I know there are more signs I just cant think of them.
I didnt realize I was trans until last summer, so Im a late bloomer too.
Quote from: Nemo on April 19, 2010, 05:27:50 AM
Also, I just got an email back from Dad. He actually said he feels more comfortable calling me Sam as a bloke than he ever did using my female name. Just goes to show, huh?
Sweet.
I did some of the crap you guys did with one major exception. Remember the times. Anyway, my parent cut my hair above my ears every year until jn high school sometime. I haven't cut it since. Well, I did a couple major trims tho, I cut 2 feet off a month back.
I remember rejecting the idea when I was a kid, that when people said, "you're a tomboy" I knew I was more than just a tomboy but couldn't explain why, and if I did, I got beat.
When I was in 4th grade, I started bringing my more androgynous clothes to school in my backpack and changing out of what my mom dressed me in before school, then changing back before my mom picked me up. One day my mom had to come to the office for some reason and I was sent down there, and she saw what I was wearing. Immediately made me leave and beat me for that, too. Wtf? That didn't stop me from expressing my hatred of my given gender though.
I played with the boys whenever I could during recess. I still remember playing kickball, and feeling like in that moment, they accepted me. That was until we hit middle school and the divide between boy/girl began...
I always yearned to play rough and tumble sports. I wanted to play football so bad, and seriously envied a girl who got to play in the community, middle school, and high school team...my mom wouldn't let me. I wonder to this day if that person was like me.
I still remember the feeling of a shirt against my flat chest. When my g'ma got her mastectomy, I told her she could have my boobs. I was 8. I didn't have any yet, but I was already dreading them.
I was pretty androgynous as a kid...though whenever I role-played it was always a cowboy or another male character. If I was with friends that wouldn't let me get away with that, (such as being forced to play house) I would insist on being the dog. I absolutely refused to play the 'mom' or sister or whatever...and if my friends wanted to 'marry' me to another friend, I made some excuse to go home. Hated dresses and any girlish clothes, and my mother always had to fight with me to do my hair or anything for school pictures. Beside all this, I was never really gender-aware until puberty...I was just tom-boyish and content to do my own thing. Puberty was when I really realized something was 'wrong' with me, because things weren't changing the way they were supposed to.
Had a few bouts of curiosity about ->-bleeped-<- over the years, but it's only recently that I realized it applied to me, and I wasn't just some unidentifiable freak. :eusa_doh: Crazy? Yeah. Alone? Thankfully not!
Quote from: Osiris on April 17, 2010, 09:11:40 PMMy mom would say things like "girls don't go out with their shirts off. Look at me I keep my shirt on when I go out" and I'd get really upset saying I didn't have boobs and I shouldn't have to keep my shirt on.
Hmm. Maybe my Mom was different than most but she didn't mind at all letting my sisters and I run around topless- even outside- when we were younger. I guess her thoughts were if there are no boobs than it's O.K. But... my youngest sister had a tendency to not go topless but go bottomless. ::)
As for my first memory I really don't remember. I identified as a male at such a young age I don't remember a defining moment... it just was.
Ever since I was little i'd always try and play with the boys, they had nicer toys then I did although I did have an action man lol, the boys didn't really want a girl hanging around them so I was stuck with the girls mostly but whenever I could i'd be doing 'boy' stuff. I was always a shy kid so I spent alot of time in my imaginary worlds and I was always male in them. Also not sure how old I was but I went around singing that Shania Twain song Man I feel like a Woman with a friend but instead of woman we changed it to man, my friend just found it funny but I really meant it.
I made my first packer at the age of 4.
I liked to run around shirtless too. I remember getting caught when I went swimming and got into so much trouble.
Oddly enough, I really liked having long hair.
I did hate wearing skirts and eventually refused to wear them to church in my teens.
I HATED puberty. It was horrible. I was the first person in my class to grow the dreaded chest appendages. :-\
I never did the whole packing/peeing standing up thing. I have three sisters, so I had no idea penises existed for the first decade or so of my life. I did cry the day I got my first period, though and I've always hated my boobs. Even while I was going through my "try to force myself to be girly" phase I hated them and I was known to wear a sports bra with my choral gown because I could never stand underwires and how prominant they make the chesticles.
I feel a bit left out. I never had an urge to go shirtless, but I've always been a chubby person. I hit puberty at 9 due to this fact and it was only then that things started to go a bit off track.
I had always been a bit more tomboyish, but I wore what I was given and didn't pay much heed to it all. In 5th grade, age 10, it was all uniforms and I wore polos and khaki pants. It was awesome. Then a girl I knew since kindergarten mentioned that I needed to wear a bra and I held off on that for as long as I could, which I think was about the end of that school year. That year was also when I realised that I liked girls and I didn't know if that really meant anything. I asked a friend and she told me it meant I was a lesbian and I still didn't really know what to think of it.
From then on everyone just sort of cast me out, or at least the followers of society did. I had a few select friends, typically boys, and I just survived from then on. It wasn't until about my sophmore year that things took a more male turn I guess. Legs I stopped caring about in middle school, but my mom continued to try and make me look feminine. So here I was in 10th grade, finally denying my mother of her feminine fancies and taking hold of my own appearance. This is all purely physical since I've basically been taking on a more male dress since I was in 5th grade.
I never really thought of myself as male specifically. I had seen different trans things, but never thought that I'd be in such a position. Does that make me strange? Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm a big phony, but I honestly believe that there is no other option. I am male. I cannot see myself continuing on in life as a woman in however a masculine role/appearance. It just doesn't click.
There are some things I relate to. I can relate with is seeing myself as a boy whenever I thought of myself in the future or was pretending. I played with boy toys all the time, especially with my two close cousins who were boys. I loved video games, even to this day. I think that's about it. I've always been rather masculine though, acting tough, wanting to be muscular, I had times of practicing binding and packing. That's about it I think.
So that's my story. Sorry if I went off a bit from the whole point of the thread and/or made a very long post.
Quote from: Wolf Man on April 20, 2010, 09:02:08 PM
I never really thought of myself as male specifically. I had seen different trans things, but never thought that I'd be in such a position. Does that make me strange? Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm a big phony, but I honestly believe that there is no other option. I am male. I cannot see myself continuing on in life as a woman in however a masculine role/appearance. It just doesn't click.
Like me. I don't think we're that strange.
Hmm, except for the masculinity. I've always had an inexplicable disdain for masculine women.
Quote from: SilverFang on April 21, 2010, 03:09:44 AM
I've always had an inexplicable disdain for masculine women.
You and me both.
I think mine stems from (in the past) them assuming I am one of them, and me fighting not to be assumed female.
In the past they've tried to find some sort of "sisterhood" or understanding with me, or salute my "unconventional femininity". That sort of crap made me very uneasy (not being female and all :laugh:).
Also, I've had some pretty psycho butch lesbian stalkers when I was a teenager.
Quote from: Teknoir on April 21, 2010, 03:48:34 AM
You and me both.
Make that three of us.
For me, it's partly hating the "woman" identity (and the fact that I think butch lesbians have a particularly strong femaleness about them that's actually accented by the lack of femininity). But it's also partly that I'm not really all
that masculine, and the assumption that I am because I might look a little like them is strange.
Quote from: kyril on April 21, 2010, 05:37:13 AM...(and the fact that I think butch lesbians have a particularly strong femaleness about them that's actually accented by the lack of femininity).
I've always thought that too even though I never said anything because most people would think it odd. Plus many lesbians (especially butch ones) seem to be man haters, which I've
always despised (duh). Not meaning to stereotype but that's just my experience.
Most strangers always assumed I was a little boy growing up... Family and friends called me a tomboy.
I remember being 4/5 and asking Santa (like in my prayers/head etc) for a 'sex-change'...
I remember playing house or whatever with my cousins anywhere from 4-10 and always being the father or the brother...
I remember being about 8 and asking my family to call me Jonathan...
I remember all throughout school so like 5-13 not understanding why I couldn't just wear pants or shorts...
I had one girl friend until I was 13 - all the rest were boys and we always played footy, cricket, soccer etc - never played skippy or elastics or understood any of that stuff...
I remember being like 7 and refusing to wear my school dress and insisting on being able to wear shorts and a t shirt sports uniform...
I just always knew there was something not quite right about me. I always felt in the middle like neither label fit me... Whatever! All water under the bridge now huh!!
Jay
I remember growing up I absolutely hated keeping my shirt on espcially when I slept my dad taped a video of me when I was five or so dancing around in nothing, but a beanie and jeans to that song "Can't touch this" which by the way still totally makes me want to groove when I hear it, but I'd rather not break things while attempting to dance.
I also never actually saw myself at least in my head as a girl. I knew that's what people wanted me to be but all I wanted was to grow up and be a dad. I used to call myself Luke which made my family think I had some sort of imaginary friend and drew pictures of how I wanted to look when I grew up which I'm very glad I didn't grow to be or I'd have bright blue hair and be a stick man with some braces that look mysteriously like some sort of torture device.
I also was extremely guilty of stealing my older brother's clothes and random cologne samples that came in the mail for him when I was a kid. Really I didn't start acting even vaguely feminine until high school which eventually caused me to skip school all the time and drop out because it just felt wrong to me.
Quote from: Devin87 on April 20, 2010, 08:00:12 PM
I never did the whole packing/peeing standing up thing. I have three sisters, so I had no idea penises existed for the first decade or so of my life.
I didn't really know about penises either, when my dad was teaching me how to pee standing up. I had contact with a penis when I was molested (I was just turning eight, I think), but I blocked out the experience and continued to be ignorant of male anatomy for another year or so, when I started reading a book about human reproduction. And then it was just line drawings--cutaway, to boot--so I didn't fully make the connection to real people.
I was pretty sheltered, but it was the late sixties/early seventies.
i ran around shirtless all summer until the age of 10 when i couln't do that anymore. i refused to wear dresses from age 5. i considered myself a boy in all play situations, stole my older brother's clothes when i went out to play, i played cowboy or prince. from age six i had these imaginery alter egos which were always male (like for a while i would drift off in this dream world where i was a little boy i had seen in a western movie, then i turned into a young prince from a novel, then luke skywalker, etc)
when my mom said jokingly that raising me was like raising three boys, i took it as a compliment, and whenever someone old and short-sighted accidently said "young man", that made my day.
when at age 10 i heard there was something called "sex change operation", i had the same day dream for over a year - that i went to hospital and got surgery and when i woke up i was a boy
i cried my heart out in front of the mirror wanting to cut my hair (my mom wouldn't let me)
when my boobs started growing a little bit i tried to push them back in with a 2000 pages-roadmap-compendium. when that didnt work too well i started drooping my shoulders so much my mom took me to an orthopedist. when the orthopedist told me i should try to stand straight like a soldier, the only thing i liked about his comment was, that soldiers are boys.
[quote author=Nemo link=topic=75971.msg520003#msg520003 date=1271672
Also, I just got an email back from Dad. He actually said he feels more comfortable calling me Sam as a bloke than he ever did using my female name. Just goes to show, huh?
[/quote]
bending the topic slightly- nice one nemo
Quote from: emil on April 21, 2010, 03:23:46 PM
from age six i had these imaginery alter egos which were always male (like for a while i would drift off in this dream world where i was a little boy i had seen in a western movie, then i turned into a young prince from a novel, then luke skywalker, etc)
Yeah, I always did that... Hell, who am I kidding, I still do. ;D
Let's see... I have some similarities and some differences from everybody.
QuoteI had three sisters, so I had no idea penises existed for the first decade or so of my life.
Same here, no knowledge of the male anatomy and yet I also tried to pee standing up. When I was about 14 I tried my hand at packing too, but only in the privacy of my room.
I hated dresses and hated going to church for this reason. I think I would have liked it better if I'd been able to wear what the boys did.
My first best friends were two boys.
I was a tomboy and wore loose T-shirts and home-made pants, actually. I would pick out cool fabrics from Walmart and my mom would make me shorts. ;D I wore these until I got into high school and the other kids were especially mean about my pants and my hairy legs that I refused to shave. Then I switched to men's jeans, because they fit better on my stick figure than women's jeans. I also wanted to be the male heroes in movies, (Yay, Luke Skywalker! ;D ) when my sister and I played pretend with movie or book characters I was always a boy, and although I wasn't allowed to dress up for Halloween, I never would have considered dressing as a girl character.
Puberty was terrible. I didn't want what was happening and thought my body would eventually realize that and revert back, but it didn't. I also couldn't understand how the other girls could be remotely happy about what was going on. (It still seems impossible to me.)
I guess I'm different because I loved having long hair and I got very upset when my mom would cut it. I'm also a prude and I never had the urge to run around without my shirt on. I actually used to have nightmares about arriving at school without any clothes on, and even if I got top surgery (which I would LOVE) I think I would still feel too naked to go shirtless. :D
I've also been mistaken for a boy all my life; the most recent occurrence being last year. I was 18, my hair was long enough to sit on, and I wasn't doing anything to hide my (admittedly small) chest other than a snug sports bra and loose T-shirt. My mom gets indignant and corrects people, but I've always been secretly pleased.
Also, since I've always been boyish my family likes to tease me about how I'm actually a boy and how my mom has two sons instead of one. I don't think they have any idea... I want to tell them because I think it would make perfect sense, but I'm not sure how they'd take it, so I just enjoy the "teasing."
So...I'm not weird because I wanted to be Luke Skywalker?
(I called myself Luke in my head from age ~ 6-10)
If it makes you weird then I'm weird too, because I still want to be him. :P
(My dad actually calls me Luke as a nickname...)
Looking back there were a few signs in my childhood, but I think overall I was a pretty normal little girl. My mom still loves to remind me that I used to like wearing dresses when i was little. I had dolls that I liked, and stuffed animals. My best friends growing up were all boys, so if we played anything that had a girl in it, I was always the girl, and I was okay with it. Two of my favorite things growing up was a pink bigwheel and my pink and white bike (which I was faster on my bike then all the boys, 'cause I'm cool like that!) so I think I had a pretty normal girl childhood. I had hotwheels and toy cars, racetracks, legos, toy tools and sports stuff, but I was never told that I couldn't play with a certain thing because it was only for boys. I wore a mix of boy's clothes and girl's clothes, pretty much whatever I wanted to wear as long as it was appropriate if I was going to school or something.
I did used to wish I could pee standing up, and there were times when I wanted to cut my hair into a boy's cut, but ended up with with a shortish girl's style, even after explaining what I wanted to the person cutting my hair. Other than that, I didn't ever feel out of place or anything, I was just me.
It wasn't until puberty that I realized that I was going to grow into a woman, and that was NOT what I wanted! I wished I had boy hormones to make my periods stop and make my boobs stop growing. I hid my boobs with tight sports bras under baggy clothes, and hoped if I kept my chest area tight enough they wouldn't be able to grow.
So I guess the earliest I ever realized I wasn't 'normal' wasn't until 11ish.
Quote from: Farm Boy on April 24, 2010, 03:12:07 AM
If it makes you weird then I'm weird too, because I still want to be him. :P
(My dad actually calls me Luke as a nickname...)
ME TOO. (Well I don't get called that as a nickname, but I've always wanted to be Luke.) I find it pretty funny that we've all got this in common. :laugh:
Colormyworld- I'm right there with you, up 'til 11 it was all good. Loose shirts, tight sports bras. Never shaved my legs either...
Earliest sign: Hated wearing dresses and pink around five. Hated wearing shirts. when I hit puberty I hated guys and I became sadistic... now that've I've realized my physical problem I'm not nearly as volatile. I always hated I couldn't be friends with them when I was little and I had to be stuck with the girls. When I was little I'd be the knight in shining armor, too, haha.
I was a tom-boy who liked to cut up tree branches with my pocket-knife.
I'd try to make tomahawks by tying stones to sticks as a kid.
I played tag at recess with the boys all through elementary school.
I wore backwards hats and got made fun of for sitting with my legs open in 5th grade.
I got grass stains on my flower girls dress rolling down the hill with boys at my moms wedding.
Every picture of me below the age of 10 I am glaring because I hated dresses.
I realized I liked women at 8 and it didn't occur to me that this was different until I was 13, and was upset to put 2 and 2 together and consider myself a lesbian, as a "female" attracted to women.
I've been called "Jimmy" since age 13.
All through middle school I wanted a dick so badly for awhile I could "feel" one there when I got aroused.
I've always felt that women should be submissive, even though I am one and would hate to be, which is some weird form of misogyny or projected self-loathing. lol
Post Merge: April 30, 2010, 05:23:48 AM
Quote from: Wolf Man on April 20, 2010, 09:02:08 PM
I never really thought of myself as male specifically. I had seen different trans things, but never thought that I'd be in such a position. Does that make me strange? Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm a big phony, but I honestly believe that there is no other option. I am male. I cannot see myself continuing on in life as a woman in however a masculine role/appearance. It just doesn't click.
I don't think you're strange and I relate to that. I feel like a phony myself sometimes. Or I accuse myself of overreacting.
Sometimes I think that the reason why I reject myself as trans is because I feel cheated or I feel that I shouldn't have to make myself the way I feel. Like, I shouldn't have to justify it with the changes or the label: that I'm not a transsexual, I am a male; that its who I am.
Its frustrating because a lot of gender is a social construct, so its hard for me to get my head around about what really is "off" about me (needs changing) and what is just people misunderstanding me. Yet, again and again, it returns to the feeling of, "I wish I had been born male." so I think that's mostly me being bitter. ;)
Quote from: kyril on April 24, 2010, 03:07:49 AM
So...I'm not weird because I wanted to be Luke Skywalker?
(I called myself Luke in my head from age ~ 6-10)
I'm weird, though. I wanted to be Hawkeye Pierce in HIGH SCHOOL. I was 14 years old and I bought a bunch of Korean War era army clothes and a bucket hat (like Hawkeye wore in the movie) and on Halloween I dressed all out like him and went around introducing myself as "Pierce comma Hawkeye". I also put a sign on my bedroom door that said "The Swamp"... Yeah.
When I was REALLY little, according to my parents I stuck mostly with little girl things. When I was three I thought I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and when my parents bought me a dog I named her Toto. I can't remember that, though. All the characters I can remember imagining myself as were male. Or I was genderless in my fantasies-- I was female just because that's how I knew myself, but I did very male things and was all tough and strong and I was always in the male platoons in my Army fantasies...
i was always the baddie when we played Charlies Angels (the original series) cos it meant i got to run around with a gun acting tough
Quote from: al james on April 30, 2010, 08:34:22 PM
i was always the baddie when we played Charlies Angels (the original series) cos it meant i got to run around with a gun acting tough
I was Charlie