Everytime I hear people talk about it, they say they've felt that way since childhood, but I don't know if I can say that I have, and that's the biggest reason that makes me question myself.
I was effeminate, but, I never doubted my gender. I would play with my friends in school, but when I got older I would become embarrassed if someone observed my behavior. In high school right now I quickly close off on my conversation if someone else comes close at all. The only transsexual behavior I can think of was around my preteens I considered getting a sex change if I ever became in trouble with the law lol, but I also felt awkward at first when I had to change in front of guys, and when I became a teen I began having issues with taking off my shirt in front of people.
When I first began using an internet forum, I got mad at this guy, so I made a female alias to cuss him out. Then I joined this pointless little forum in another section of the site and identified as a guy at first, but that... I guess "bored" me? I reused my female alias and eventually I never used my former one on that forum again. I constructed a story for her, I'd rather not go in detail because those people from that old forum might be lurking around >.> lol. But part of me began to feel upset that this girl wasn't real, and part of me wished to be her.
When I became older my attitude became a little more masculine, and I was proud of it. I pictured my future self as a well-fit man much more outgoing and masculine than I was now (with many blasian children lol). I started playing wow when I started high school, exactly half my characters were male, and half were female. I never pretended I was female like I did before, if they asked, I'd say I was male, but I'd feel a little disappointed I guess. When I did play female characters, I didn't mind being called she, though I might have acted like I did. But I think 'he' was a little bit bothering.
A few years ago I was reading about transsexuals, and I came across Harisu, an mtf Korean singer. I thought she was gorgeous, I became obsessed a little with her but I kept telling myself I wasn't transsexual. One day I was in gym class I was imagining what being a transsexual at my high school reunion would be like, and then I just crashed in my mind and "accepted" that I was transsexual, which stressed me out. A few days or weeks later, I told myself it was a phase and moved on. Didn't think about it again for a year.
It came back a few months ago, and since then a day literally hasn't gone by where I don't think about it. But also, my mind feels more at ease with my emotions. Before I thought my life was going nowhere and I would just live the way I do the rest of my life. Another part of me questions if I'm just using transsexuality to escape this, or if I'm truly a woman. But I feel that if I did go through with this, I would be a much stronger person than I am right now.
I really want to get this all sorted out in therapy.
Oh and I'm sorry if my typing doesn't make sense. :-\ though the fact that the page kept sliding up when I pressed a key didn't help much with that lol
You seem to have a lot of questions about your gender. To be frank, that you're asking these questions indicates they are there.
I sometimes imagine if I had been a more social person, had friends and spent timewith them, how things would have turned out.
But the what if question is part of being human I suppose.
I remember imagining what it was like to have breasts when I was 7 or 8. it only happened one time, though.
I think it was when I was 11 that I started wearing some of my sister's shoes. that's a little embarrassing to say, but I knew from that point that I wasn't like a normal male.
I don't think that there has not been a day when I did not think about it. Some days were really bad. Even now I have bad days, but those are mostly from being so close to SRS. And having it just out of reach. *sigh*
I knew the day I broke down in tears in the toilet becuase it finally dawned on me that I wasn't going to grow breasts. before that, i think i knew on some level, just not consciously.
Erm, I'm just like you. I have not had it all my life which is a cause or major doubt and frustration for me...being I want this so bad. I too did the online thing. I acted as a guy online and I loved it to put it blunty....it made me feel good in ways being a girl has never felt...something I do not want to give up.
I mean, I did go through a period when I was younger of wanting to be a boy...[I was trying to convince myself I'd grow a penis]...but then it went away for years and I didn't question my gender since...until I started pretending to be a guy online.
So right now I'm trying to figure out if I'm transsexual or if I'm androgynous.
So I understand where you are coming from.
Best of luck!
-Alex
Quote from: ~RoadToTrista~ on February 11, 2011, 03:43:14 AM
Everytime I hear people talk about it, they say they've felt that way since childhood, but I don't know if I can say that I have, and that's the biggest reason that makes me question myself.
Nobody is the same, every story is different. Sure, some are similar but try not to get caught up in the fact that your story doesn't match up perfectly with any number of others.
My story started out trying to figure things out at the age of 27. Later on I found out there were issues from my past I had blocked out but still....everyone is different ;)
Looking back, I guess mid high school is probably when I started getting a "this is not right" feeling, though I've only been able to pin down what it is over the past year or so. That's when I started to understand that people liked it when I dressed and acted feminine, so I went along with it. Bad idea. Anyways, my parents talk about a lot of things I did when I was little that make me think I knew a lot earlier than I realize. I guess that gender really sets in at age 3-4, and my parents describe me as suddenly becoming introverted around then. We've always wondered about it, and now I'm curious if it is gender related.
I do remember when I was little knowing something was different, but not really sure what it was. Then there was a while where I pretty much put it back, and basically did my best to ignore it and try to be "normal". That pretty much made things worse. Now I've come to terms with things, going to call next week to make an appointment with a therapist.
Quote from: Alex201 on February 11, 2011, 11:43:50 AM
Erm, I'm just like you. I have not had it all my life which is a cause or major doubt and frustration for me...being I want this so bad. I too did the online thing. I acted as a guy online and I loved it to put it blunty....it made me feel good in ways being a girl has never felt...something I do not want to give up.
I mean, I did go through a period when I was younger of wanting to be a boy...[I was trying to convince myself I'd grow a penis]...but then it went away for years and I didn't question my gender since...until I started pretending to be a guy online.
Pretty much the same here.
I'll admit that my story sounds slightly similar to yours, Trista, although my 'initial' presenting online happened for reasons I truly don't remember, and I don't think I've really looked back since. Presenting as male began to feel wrong, and I spent years shying from myself. My Facepage and MyBook accounts never had a picture of me as default, and I lived - for maybe a year or two, perhaps longer - what felt like a double life. I'd wake up and go to college/work as male, and come home and be female online. I'm living it again now, but the female aspect feels more natural, especially as I'm letting it into my life through near constant 'cross dressing' (i.e. I wear items of female clothes under my male ones).
I mean I still sign up for a number of things - especially ones involving money or deliveries - as male, but I'm slowly showing myself as female more and more. On one news site I frequent, I signed up as female and I don't think anything of it. It's how I'm comfortable being seen, both by myself and others. When I've been looking in the mirror recently, I see less and less of a male and more and more of a female. It's amazing how subtle it is, too.
I'd say I started to recognise it between... Well, I'd say 19-20. I'd had hints in the years preceeding that, but it's really only been something I've truly acknowledged in the past two or three years.
Thanks for your comments guys, it helps. :)
That last part I said about my emotions isn't true. Today my day was full of stress, and I was nervous about what comments would come up here. There's this one girl at my school, she's so free spirited. I became kinda jealous, and I wondered if I would be that open if I was born a woman, and I became upset that I had to live my teenaged years like this.
I have been transitioning for 2 years. I was questioning my gender probably 3 years ago, i started dressing andro, and playing with my gender, then i realized that I was transgendered.
I am not one of the typical 'childhood' transgender people. i wasn't a girl or a boy when I was a kid, i mean, yes i was actually a girl, but i didn't really act like either, or think about being a girl.
I didn't seriously start questioning until late in life, probably because I was taught to have such a poor view of women when I was young that being a woman wasn't anything I could consider.
Not sure if I fit the 'norm' of early childhood realization or not, because quite honestly I tend to remember very little from that point in time.
I did start cross dressing around the age of 8 or 9, though it was my early to mid teens when I realized there was a chance something was seriously not right with me.
I remember crying myself to sleep quite a bit during my teenage years, because I wanted to be a girl so badly.
Most of my earliest memories involved gender. I suppose I remember them from the intense shame they caused.
4 years old. Riding cross country with my Mom and Brother. My brother says his lips are dry and my mom puts lip gloss on him. She tried to offer some to me and I recoiled. I knew that was a girl thing and if I did it she would see that I liked it and hate me.
6 Years old. I find one of my Mom's half slips by her bed. It seems too short for her, I thought it was an evening gown for me. I thought.."She knows, she left this for me." and I looked for her to talk to me about it at any time...she never did.
Pre-school. I would trick girls in school to trade clothes with me. "It'd be really funny." Then I would wear a dress for as long as I could and play with the girls. One of the girls had peel off nail polish. I stole it.
Not a day in my life went by that it didn't bother me. I would coat my lips with ketchup, steal girl's clothes. In middle school I got a hold of some makeup and would come home from school and wear makeup and women's clothes every day for an hour or two until my parents got home. I only hung out with girls at school.
I'm not sure how old I was when I started masturbating but I couldn't touch my penis.
I got severly depressed in 9th grade when I started to become male. I grew my hair long and got a perm which made me feel a little better but I started to withdrawl. I'd act out in class but mostly was depressed. I wore tights and panties under my clothes.
--------------------------------------
I've learned to live a good life but I often get depressed about how little information there was then. I had no idea what I was or why I did what I did. It was just a very very bad secret. I was 20 when I moved to a city and went to a club and started to understand things. By then I was 5' 11" with broad shoulders and a receding hairline. I could never be a girl. I've spent the next 16 years in and out of therapy and living a pretty successful life with a terrible empty feelings just under the surface.
I never felt pressure to conform to a gender and always sort of did what I wanted to. I started wearing boy clothes exclusively when I was maybe...9 years old with the exception of things like swimsuits and when I felt like dressing up in a skirt or dress. The first time anybody mentioned something about me being different was when I was in maybe...9th grade (age 15?). I was on little league and was the only "girl" in the league. I played alright but this one guy had a problem with me being on the league. He asked if I thought I was a boy. I really didn't think or feel I was a boy, I just knew I liked playing baseball. I never associated a gender with the things I did. I was also very ignorant of my body (still am). I didn't even know that transgender men existed until I was 17 or so and started doing some experimenting with my identity and presentation. Identified as genderqueer for maybe 2 years and male/man for 4 years after that. Right now I'm sort of swaying back and forth between genderqueer and a male identity in terms of my gender, and a sex queer/male identity in terms of my sex identity.
I didn't feel that I was transsexual until I was about ten years old. But it took a year or two before the dysphoria really became a problem. By the time I was thirteen I had started to get suicidal thoughts. I spent the next eight years escaping into games/books/fantasy/daydreaming. It was the only thing that kept me alive.
Before puberty, I never had any concept that I was different or that anything was wrong. I didn't have any problem identifying as a boy, and I didn't have any desire to be a girl. All of that came within about a year or two starting with puberty.
While there were hints throughout my childhood, the first clear one was about age 12, when punerty began. I saw myself in a mirror and was horrified, but resolved that whatever was wrong, nothing could be done, so I'd accept I had to live in a deformed body, hide it away, and try not to think about it. Throughout my teens, I wished to be a girl, dreamt about it, etc., but because I didn't know about trans stuff, I thought it was a creepy and perverted sexual thing (being asexual and knowing nothing about that either, I figured there had to be some sex stuff up there, and identified the trans stuff as such), and was ashamed of it.
I only realized the truth when I connected the dots between all the different issues I had and found that they corresponded to the stuff I saw trans people write online. The shock was bad enough that I couldn't eat a bite for a week. I was 22.
I knew something was off at a very young age. About the age where people started telling me to put my shirt on cause "girls don't run around shirtless." Before that I didn't really see the world in Male and Female. I just saw people who were my friends, and everyone else. It took years to finally realize that I wasn't just someone who was weird and wrong, I was male, trying to present as female because that's what matched my body.
I got bashed a great deal in high school for not conforming to the popular type girls. Hid under layers of gothiness with a very male twist. Got hit on by loads of girls who thought I was a butch lesbian. Went out pretty much exclusively with bi or closeted gay men, but always ended up dumping them because somehow in the back of my mind I never felt right for them. I felt happy, but seriously inadequate/unworthy of their affection.
I didn't really figure it out until about 23. Connections were finally really made when I started writing on a daily basis. I think the happiest day of my life was when I got my first packer in the mail. I think I was testing myself to see if it really was that I wanted to be outwardly male, or if I was just fooling myself into an "easy answer" (WTF about this is easy?) Stuck it in my underoos and suddenly felt complete.
I have had GID since before 4 years old.
However, some of my trans friends didn't question their gender until their teens. I have even read about a case where GID didn't begin until age 21. So I guess it varies.
Quote from: E on February 13, 2011, 11:47:18 AM
While there were hints throughout my childhood, the first clear one was about age 12, when punerty began. I saw myself in a mirror and was horrified, but resolved that whatever was wrong, nothing could be done, so I'd accept I had to live in a deformed body, hide it away, and try not to think about it. Throughout my teens, I wished to be a girl, dreamt about it, etc., but because I didn't know about trans stuff, I thought it was a creepy and perverted sexual thing (being asexual and knowing nothing about that either, I figured there had to be some sex stuff up there, and identified the trans stuff as such), and was ashamed of it.
I only realized the truth when I connected the dots between all the different issues I had and found that they corresponded to the stuff I saw trans people write online. The shock was bad enough that I couldn't eat a bite for a week. I was 22.
This is my history almost exactly, except I didn't connect the dots until I was 35. But the rest could be taken word-for-word from the storybook of my life.
When I was younger I didn't really think about it at all. I just did what I wanted. Puberty was the first time I started to have problems with my gender.
People who say they were 4 or 5 and thinking about gender, I can't sypathize with. I honestly didn't care either way. I played with who I wanted, did what I wanted. I even did "boy" things like riding motorcycles/dirt bikes and playing with cars. However I was also a very emotional and feminine child.
I just chalk all this up to me mentally being a tomboy growing up. Since I was interested in some boy things, I never felt any GID until the bodily changes came.
I remember since age three really wanting to be a boy and not understanding why I had a girls body. For a few years as a teenager, I tried to fit in as a girl, but it didnt work, an about 2 years ago I realized I had GID.
I never felt good among boys, but I also dont think about gender until late puberty
I was always girly, crying at summer camp, wearing cute things until others starts to laught at me
I never named the feelings I had in childhood. they just felt awkward and it felt like I had to really do my best to be a boy. It's only much later when I realized that I'm a woman that all these feelings from back then started to make sense. It was like a puzzle being solved
I remember feeling dismayed when my mom and sisters pointed out that I was different and that I had to start acting like a boy just before I started elementary school
Then I was constantly jealous of my sisters because they got the princess treatment while everyone was going to toughen me up and make a man out of me in some way
It was the 6th grade when things started to really heat up though... People commenting and making fun of how girlie I was and calling me a ->-bleeped-<- and trying to beat me up
I didn't have any idea what GID was yet but I knew even though I liked girl stuff I had better start "acting" like a boy as best as I could
So that's what I did... But the comments and name calling and general harassment never did stop really until my step dad started teaching me the martial arts he'd learned in Viet Nam
At the risk of being thought a troublemaker I am not sure that I ever really did - in the terms that it is defined by your DSM anyway, and certainly since the mid 80's when I had my surgery I haven't had it.
But if you are asking when did I start my journey of transition that was in 1964 or 1965 aged between 4 and 5.
I have suffer off and on for years. Even since puberty. Before then I was just being a kid. Elementary school began the separation between boys and girls, and I always wanted to go with the girls. That was when I began to learn what bulling was.
Quote from: Janet Lynn on February 20, 2011, 05:20:45 PM
I have suffer off and on for years. Even since puberty. Before then I was just being a kid. Elementary school began the separation between boys and girls, and I always wanted to go with the girls. That was when I began to learn what bulling was.
Apart from public bathrooms and changing rooms, there was no separation between boys and girls over here, so that may have contributed to why it took me as long as it did to figure out.
not in a physical sense. More in that they did not socialize together. girls would go off and so would the boys.
Quote from: Janet Lynn on February 20, 2011, 05:35:31 PM
not in a physical sense. More in that they did not socialize together. girls would go off and so would the boys.
Ah, I see. We had that, yeah. However, since I was always the moving force behind the games we played, and I'd include everyone, that part didn't apply to me - girls and boys alike played the games I made up.
I'm about the same age as Janet. Back the late 50's and early 60's when Janet and I went to elementary school, there was a separation of boys and girls during the lunch recess on the playground. There were some interaction during gym. Even though I felt more girl-like, I tended to like boys' activities anyway. This manifested during puberty when the girls were developing breasts and I was wondering "where was mine?", even though I knew that boys just don't have breasts. Age 6-7, before my parents had their D-I-V-O-R-C-E!
Joelene
A bit younger, but back in the 70ies - when I was in the elementary school - everything was separated: there was a girls-school and a boys-school, girl-scouts and boy-scouts shared the same venue, but when the boys were there the girls were elsewhere so our paths basically never crossed. The only thing I remember that was mixed were the swim-team trainings, but I suspect that was only because they didn't have enough trainers for our age group. But even during the training, the boys would swim first and the girls would follow.
Come to think of it... no wonder I felt lonely as a child
I was thirty-five when I first felt like that. Up until then I had never been particularly satisfied with myself as a male, but had no idea why. I remember I wasn't pleased about the changes occurring in my body in puberty, but I had no idea why. I had never even heard of the word transgender, had never seen a ->-bleeped-<- or drag queen (I thought Edna Everidge was a woman!).
Even though it seems most people realise by their early teens, I know at least two others like me who were not crossdressers earlier and who hadn't thought of themselves as anything other than male (though again, not completely satisfied in the role) until later in life.
I just knew that I was a girl. I suppose I first put it into thought when I was 4 years. That's when I first realised that I really was a girl. You know how, sometimes, you feel you are a twin or something like that? It wasn't like that. The possibility of having a lost twin was always a fantasy. I just knew I was suppose to be with the girls and not the boys.
I spent many years, trying to think of why. Nothing really made any sense.
In adulthood, I've found ways to come to terms with it. I accept that the world precieves me as a male in the same way as i accept the world precieves things that may not be true. But I know I'm female, even though I look male.
It would have been nice if the world was a bit different when I was younger. The opportunities there are now, while imperfect and difficult, are so much better.
Since I was ten. It was just simple things like how I preferred to be called a "him" rather then a "her" online since it left me more gender neutral. Then it slowly esceladed once I turned twelve, when I began questioning my gender. The dysphoria didn't begin until I was thirteen.
Now that I think back to my childhood, the 'tomboyish' behavior of mine seems more like male behavior.
Probably around tween/teens. I started raiding my Moms closet. A few years later I was involved in what he thought were gay encounters. I though figured out that something was wrong, with me. Not wrong, wrong. More like I was in the wrong body. I wanted to be more than just a Fem bottom. It was than that I began to think about just how one changed their physical sex.
So I guess I have known for a fairly long time.
I was always weird as a kid but the actual "I don't feel right" probably didn't sink in all the way until highschool. I didn't even know there was a name for it until a few years ago. Growing up my huge dream was to be a night, lol. I wanted to save princesses and everything. I remember beating down a guy for picking on a girl I liked in third grade, all sorts of stuff like that. I still liked my hair long though, I played with action figures AND dolls, and pretty much anything appealing to me. My parents never forced me one way or the other and let me pick out clothes until I got stuck in a private school. Throughout highschool-I don't remember much of the time in private school beyond some horrible memories, I've actually got a bit of brain damage-I always felt I had to explain to people "I've got a male brain, I'm a guy trapped in a girls' body" but I guess I never realized how serious I was about it. I felt disgusting in dresses, felt like I was wearing a costume that didn't fit right. I tried to force myself to be ultra-feminine and be a "normal girl" and it nearly killed me. I tried to hang myself twice in high school and kept myself so doped up on painkillers and uppers that half the time I didn't know my own name until I had no money and no way of getting it. I got angrier the longer I was sober, I started to feel how I used to.That feeling of wrongness got heavier and heavier, my rage at myself and at a lot of women got bigger and darker and a lot more vicious.
Eventually, I crashed. I thought about being an old woman some day, about being buried in a dress, about having to check F on every legal form I ever filled out again, and things started making sense. I realized why exactly I hated my full name, why it felt like such a harsh insult. I realized why I felt natural liking girls but odd about liking other guys. There's bits and pieces I don't remember well, and probably some parts I screwed up, but that's more or less my five minute explanation.
My therapist gave me a worksheet to complete while we talk about HRT, here's my answer to that question...
I struggle to answer the question of when did I first become aware that my gender identity was different from other people. As a young child I openly engaged in crossgender behaviors with my female cousin such as painting our finger nails and engaging with her as my primary playmate on a number of occasions. I had a doll, complete with stroller, but I also played with action figures and a variety of "army" style games. Privately I began crossdressing about age 6, and did so off and on until about age 11 when it became a much more regular activity. I don't know that I fully questioned my gender identity before then, as I look back on it now, I recall periods, prior to 11, wondering what was wrong with me – recognizing that most boys didn't do the things I did, or rather didn't enjoy doing the things I did though I'm not clear I associated it with expressing my gender identity until later on.
As for the stock "my whole life" answer, that's a throwback to when that's what it took to please the gatekeepers. That's not really true for anyone, at least not anymore.
I'll be 61 this year ............. I can honestly say I have had these feelings since I was at least five . I finially came out and went full time as of 1994. I'm not looking back and I'm looking at the future and trying to teach the ill informed and the closeted as to who we are . Ellen
Forever...it was relatively benign as a child. I was pretty comfortable in boyhood, I never truly believed I would grow up to be a "woman" one day. The idea of me being a girl was just to surreal; it never truly sunk in until puberty. Puberty involved a lot of tears...followed by a backlash of overcompensation. I felt that God made me this way because I was meant to be a servant. To not be myself, just to work for the benefit of others. Be the quiet girl who never spoke back, be feminine because it was the best thing for everyone around me. Being masculine, being myself, being the boy meant hurting others.
that lessened when I came out as liking women. Now I feel a lot of anger and resentment to those who contributed to my feeling that way. That I should just be a silent backdrop in life, that everyone else should have their dreams, be who they are and not me. F-ck.
Well I'm sorry. I never suffered from GID. So in a sense, I agree with Rejennyrated, but a lot more so. The question you might be asking is, how come? Well, for starters wanting to be a girl or female from around the age of 5 was just natural part of me growing up. I was never told anything differently. Not that others had the chance to correct what I thought, because even from that age I kept these particular thoughts to myself. I just do not know why I ever did.
Maybe its just because I'm a quite person by nature, a private person, maybe my natural instinct made me kept quite on these particular thoughts, better still this was my natural disposition (I was a girl) and my thoughts and feelings reflected this, even though I was growing up in a different environment.
Again you may ask why did I not have the 'never ending conflict' thoughts in my mind, hence resulting in not being able to cope with these diametrically opposed thoughts, hence suffering from anxiety, depression or even suicide. The only thing I can think of in this regard is that my mind is 'very stable' or I just did what I did, because it made me happy or contented and I never questioned it.
Why? Because it was the right thing to do, I also thought along the lines of, "I was not going to let society dictate to me how I should run my life" and this particular thought pattern did not stem from my 'gender issues'. Not that I ever considered, that I had gender issues. I just did not have the appropriate knowledge at the time to resolve it sooner. More than likely I was doing it because that was what females did.
Well to cut a long story short, I realised I was female. I then did what needed to be done so that I could function as a female in society. I find it extremely abhorrent that I can be labelled 'mental ill', because that is what GID (and its variants) means coming from the DSM. I have lived my life as any other normal highly functioning person does, without any medication, without any therapy before and after.
I have an inalienable right to live my life free of the stigmatization of "mental illness" or "perversion" perpetrated by the medical community or societies. It is irrelevant whether or not my behavior is a "choice" or "innate," because I have a basic human right to live my life, however I wish.
I'm not the only one who considers that the classification of GID should be removed from the DSM and its not the only 'disorder' that is being challenged in the DSM.
So, So how long have you felt that you had GID? I have never suffered from GID
Kindest regards
Sarah B