I am 18 and have only begun considering that I might be trans in the last year or so (sortof because I didn't know that trans people even existed for most of my life) but I've been reading the forums here and quite a few people have mentioned that they knew they wanted to be a boy when they were very young. So I was wondering how old you guys were when you realised.
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It was right around my 19th birthday, I think.
I was 12, and I would have figured it out a lot later if I hadn't met an FtM guy at work.
There obviously needs to be a lot more education in Elementary schools about gender identity. :/
I was 17 or 18, like you I hadn't known anything about the transgender world. All I would have thought about it was that it meant guys in dresses - no offense meant, I just never had any education on the subject before.
I was 18 too
17. The age of the internet lets people know and explore this much younger than before.
Don't remember not knowing. I discovered other people like me existed and that you could medically transition at 13.
I sort of always knew but I didn't think there was anything I could do about it. I just had to be a girl. I was about 16 at the time i discovered medical transition. I was freaked out by it though so I hid it away. I've realized it completely now at 19.
Quote from: Brent123 on March 31, 2011, 04:44:19 PM
I sort of always knew but I didn't think there was anything I could do about it. I just had to be a girl. I was about 16 at the time i discovered medical transition. I was freaked out by it though so I hid it away. I've realized it completely now at 19.
This is exactly me. Exactly.
I knew something wasn't 'right' at age 6, realised I was trans at 15, refused to come out of the closet and repressed it and re-realised it at 17.
I knew when I was 6 (at least that's when I have memories from).
Discovered what transsexualism is, and that "sex change" was possible when I was 11 (whee, newspapers).
Stopped denying it when I was 21, but still freaked out about transition, kept trying to live as female.
Accepted it fully, came out and started trying to pass at 25, 9 months ago.
I knew exactly what was wrong when I was 11, though I'd had a feeling of something being wrong earlier than that, probably when I was 9 or 10 and started developing (early puberty). Didn't know I could transition, thought anything I could do about it would be way too expensive or ineffective. Investigated gender as much as possible when I was 15 because I'd reached a breaking point, realised I could transition, transitioned when I was 16. I had a year of denial when I was 13 or 14, but when I snapped out of it everything was worse than before.
I knew something was wrong before but I didn't realise what it was till a few months before my 18th. I didn't know trans men existed before then, i'd only heard of trans women and even then I just thought they were crossdressers taking it to the extreme. :-\
Quote from: Nathan. on March 31, 2011, 06:56:15 PM
I knew something was wrong before but I didn't realise what it was till a few months before my 18th. I didn't know trans men existed before then, i'd only heard of trans women and even then I just thought they were crossdressers taking it to the extreme. :-\
That was me too, except I just learned about FTMs this year at 36.
I felt like I should've been born male when I was a little kid (6 or younger, idk), but figured there was nothing I could do about it so I repressed it for years. When I was 15 I found out that transmen actually exist, but I couldn't accept that I was trans. At 18 I knew I had to do something about it but was scared of social rejection, so I figured I'd just be a very butch lesbian since I was already openly gay. At 19 I came to terms with it all, but I was worried about timing my transition perfectly so I could live in stealth, and figured I wouldn't transition until several years later. Now I'm almost 21 and I've decided to be out and proud shortly after I get my own apartment, and I'm hoping to start T before my 21st birthday. Or I could start taking T on my birthday, that would be a good present for myself :)
Knew I wanted to be male or whatever... and wanted the operations since i was 7, 8? Didn't really think it wa a feasible option with my family.. til I eally stopped to consider gender idenitty this past summer, and realize how fed up I was.. and realized changes needed to be made.. So I guess I decided to accept that I was transexual last summer.
I'd kinda been living part time ->-bleeped-<- most of my life without knowing it (going in the boys groups and not telling the adults I was a girl, letting people I believe I was a boy, etc. through a good portion of my childhood.. always thinking that I was suited to be a boy, dressing male, cutting my hair male, doing the guy acticities.. people always mistaking me for a boy through my teenage years.. then into failed girl mode in my 20-21 then back to ->-bleeped-<- mode.. haha.
I knew something wasn't going right when I was six or seven years old, I discovered the term transgender at age twelve and soon after that I came to realization that I was transgender.
i knew something was off since preschool. age 4. i couldn't figure it out from fear and denial and lack of education about gender issues so i couldn't come to terms with it/ accept it until last May at 24.
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I've had a constant "Something's not right" feeling since somewhere in my early teens. It has been becoming more concrete over time, but I didn't pin down that I am trans until last year (age 23). I knew that I hated my chest, and randomly wrapped it all flat. I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen, but I'm sure it wasn't the "Oh my god, that's it!" reaction that I had. :laugh: It's good to know that I wasn't the only one who had this impression that trans people were guys in dresses. All I have to say is thank god for the internet.
I'm not sure. As far as I remember I've always considered myself male, despite what people have told me. A very young age, I would say is how old I realized. Now, accepting it took longer considering I live in a very homphobic and transphobic town. To be honest, I realized when I was very young, yet only recently have I accepted it. I didn't even know what a transgender was until I was about thirteen. I confused my gender identity with my sexualiity for a long while, too. But now I know both and I'm okay about it.
From the first memories I have maybe as early as 3 - I always thought I was a boy.
I can remember being 5 and asking to be called a boy's name and asking for a "sex change" from Santa for Xmas.
I repressed the feelings for many years lived as best I could as a masculine "woman" always, always being "mistaken" for a man but trying to forget the feelings.
Then at 24 I really looked into the possibility of medical transition after seeing something on youtube - then there was no stopping me.
I would finally start to go through the right puberty at 25 after I came out to myself and just about everyone I knew.
Out of the gate, I guess. Asked nurse for a shot to turn me into a boy at age 5 or 6. In the 60's, this request would get you a motherly smile because "kid's say the darnedest things."
Had no idea there were FTMs until Chaz Bono decided to transition, lots of years later. Yay, Chaz. Thank you.
17/18. It was in the month of my birthday.
Unnecessary details to follow. It wasn't until I had gone through puberty that things had become weird. I still, however, identified as a lesbian from then until this age. All the while claiming that I was just a man because girls never really made sense to me. I had also been thoroughly thrilled at how people would assume I was a boy when I had gotten a short haircut at about 11. Later on in life I was also usually taken for male, despite apparent small breasts and long hair. I continued to appreciate this and it would make me feel comfortable up until someone corrected them. Then there had been the issues around the feminine sort of things: clothes, hair both head and body, all which I avoided like the plague. I said "Screw that stuff." And went on with life. Etcetera, etcetera.
I have felt off and can remember wondering why I wasn't a boy (and wishing I was one) since about puberty*, but I had a very sheltered childhood so it wasnt until I was 17/18 that I learned such thing as transgender existed. Right before I turned 19 I realised all the things I had been reading and researching applied to me.
*I remember logically understanding why I was going through female puberty (I got the biology of it), but not understanding why it was happeneing to me.
Realized I was a boy- 7 is my earliest memory of that but I don't remember much of anything before that age
Realized I could transition and identified as a trans male- somewhere between end of being 14 and turning 15
Quote from: JohnAlex on March 31, 2011, 04:57:15 PM
This is exactly me. Exactly.
This is me but change ages around a bit. I always knew, thought I'd have to deal with it. Younger, I had no idea anything could be done, a bit older I thought results can't be that good, then maybe I knew about it but... Thought it would be like hiding under another mask... And then at 17 I was like WAIT T CAN DO THAT???? I had no idea what a transsexual was until I was 17 though. I agree that education on this stuff should... Happen... But obviously that won't happen >:(
I sorta knew when I was a little kid, to an extent. When I was eight I told my mom I wanted to be a boy. She mentioned that people could get sex changes, and I just said, "NO! I want to have been born as a boy. Otherwise it's just weird." Honestly, the only reason I thought it was "weird" was because I knew I'd get mocked if I said I wanted to become a guy. And I was right, what do you know. Besides, for years I barely even knew FtMs existed.
I dreaded puberty for years. Once I actually started going through puberty, I hated everything about it, and then I REALLY wished I was a guy. I told my parents about it, and they said it was just a phase and that I'd get through it eventually. What a load of BS. From then on it only got worse.
The end of middle school was the most painful, confusing time of my life (I was around thirteen years old then). I started to despise my body even more, and I couldn't stand being a physically weak girl. To compensate for it, I became extremely violent and uncontrollably angry all the time. I wanted to be a man but I couldn't bring myself to admit it.
TL;DR: I guess I always knew to an extent, but didn't admit it until I was fourteen. That's when I stumbled across a webcomic with a transman in it, and I realized how much I could relate to him and it just carried on from there.
when i was around 3 or 4. i was felt something wrong with me and my mom gave me dolls but i refused it because thats not me...until 17 i started to realize that im being guy. thats how i knew
I was 4 when I knew I was supposed to have been born a boy.
I always knew something was off, but I didn't know what. I attributed it solely to my dysfunctional family for a while. Then I began to deal with the family stuff, and realized that dealing with those issues wasn't fixing the most painful things... and through the self exploration brought on by dealing with my family I began to realize that my gender identity/ expression were the real problems.
I probably would have figured it out sooner than my early 20s if I had known that trans men existed. Until last November, I was under the impression that mtfs, cross dressers, and ->-bleeped-<-s were the same thing, and sometimes really butch lesbians got mastectomies and took hormones. ::) As Lee said, thank god for the internet.
Probably during puberty, I wanted people to see me as male since I was like 10.
... But I don't really think you can know as child if you are trans, I went through so many different stages in my childhood, grown out of a lot of things, I can certainly imagine my life going different ways and me ending up being happy cisgender woman, but at 25 my personality is pretty much fixed for life and I still want to be seen as male and I'm still feeling uncomfortable with my female body so yeah, you might say I finally realised at 25.
Officially realised- 13. But I knew something was diffrent long before that, I remember I wrote my 'what i want to be when i grow up' story when I was 6, and I said i wanted to be a boy, but I never handed it in,I think I've still got it somewhere tbh....
Realized when I was 24. I might've realized something was wrong sooner, except that I thought it was normal for females to hate being female.
I've always felt like something was a bit off.
Didn't figure out what until about a year ago, and some time before that I was just really confused about it. I used to think that maybe I had two different personalities. One gay boy and the other a boyish girl. That wasn't it. xD
When I was 4, I knew I was supposed to be a boy,
but I didn't really fully understand what was going on until I was 14/15/going through puberty
Quote from: jmaxley on April 03, 2011, 05:20:53 PM
Realized when I was 24. I might've realized something was wrong sooner, except that I thought it was normal for females to hate being female.
i already posted, but yes, this!
when i first heard that feminist don't actually want to be boys, i just ignored it because i didn't know what to do with that information. ^-^
then i figured out that feminists (who are girls)
like being girls :-\
and that boys and girls aren't exactly the same... and i'm not a girl. i'm a bit slow sometimes ;)
I started to realize around 10.
i was 16 when i completely realized what was happening.
I was about 5-6 (it was in kindergarten, I know that much) when I realized I wasn't a girl, but it wasn't until I was about 12 that I realized I was a boy. (Haa, I've always been a genderqueer sort).
When I was 5-6, I thought everyone was like that, though, and that "girls and boys" were just meaningless words grown-ups made up. I was kinda happy when my mom spitefully told me about a FTM guy whom she referred to as a he-she. "Great, sex changes are possible, and he has a girlfriend, so love is possible!" XD Since we have ->-bleeped-<-ty sex ed and I didn't know anatomy very well, I thought I was intersex for some time. I was kind of upset when I figured out I wasn't. I couldn't figure out why it upset me. @.@
When people ask me this question I generally respond that there was never a time I didn't know. In my earliest memories I remember thinking I should be female like my sister, and I was incredibly jealous of her. I remember being 6 and lying in bed wishing that I would have some sort of accident that caused me to lose my penis, because I hated it so bad. I also remember when I was 12 we had a 2 day Sex Ed class and we learned about testicular cancer and that you may have to have your testicles removed if you had it... I couldn't wait to go home and check myself to see if maybe I had it so that I may lose my testicles.
Somewhere around age 20 I realized that you could actually transition with hormones, surgeries and so forth... and that's when I knew that I was going to transition. I planned out for 2 years to move away as soon as I finished college. Within a 2 months after finishing school I was living in Portland and on my way to starting the transition process =)
My earliest memory is of experiencing gender dysphoria at age 3 or 4.
It's never stopped since then.
At age 16 I finally learned the meaning of "transgender" and knew immediately that was me. Prior to that I just thought I was a lesbian and that all lesbians felt this way - blame the sheltered Christian upbringing, lol.
Stress about my body started at like 11 or 12, I think I figured it out when I was 15.
I always knew I was a boy. I think when I was younger I seriously was waiting for a penis to just grow. When my mom bought me a book at age 17 (Our bodies: our selves, or something similar...great book btw), everything finally made sense. I transitioned at 18, and am 29 now. I can never repay my mother for the information she gave to me and the life she allowed me to pursue.
As a side note, as a "thumbs up" to my family, they always knew I was "different" and when I came out it was cool with everyone. Yeah, my fam is pretty cool :)
Always knew something was off, assumed it was because I was a lesbian at 16, and came out as such. I was 18/19 when I finally worked out that this is what it is.
I was raised in the country so I rarely had to deal with people calling me the wrong pronouns and such because my grandad and I would always go into town and never correct anyone. It wasn't until we moved, maybe at 15 that I started getting pissy with people calling me "she" that I realised something had to go.
When I was 6 I already hated being labeled as a "girl". From then on I was always extremely self-conscious and when puberty hit I would wear bras that were too small to bind my chest down to force it not to grow and I would always wear super baggy hoodies that I could hide in whenever I sat down. At around 17 is when I learned about trans* and decided to pursue my transition.
For me, realizing came in steps. It first started when I was a toddler being potty-trained but then it was just "I want to pee standing up, because that's how I should do it." And I got into an argument with my mother over the issue and learned when you want to do something, don't tell your parents about it...so I peed standing over the toliet. xD I always considered myself a boy - however, I was also Alice in Wonderland, so when I was called a girl, well, it was part of pretend, and in pretend I was always a boy, but that was so much more real to me. As a kid I didn't care about pronouns one way or another.
Puberty brought me closer to "getting it". The first thing I did was reject EVERYTHING, then come to see that I was only rejecting it because, well, it wasn't the puberty I wanted to happen, and I prayed every night that my boobs wouldn't grow bigger. So, online, I clicked the 'male' box and lived through it. I hid a "civil war in my crotch", denying it until about a year and a half ago, when I risked being dragged to a doctor and possibly getting called out on lying.
Once I learned changing was possible, it's on my mind 24/7, and that was, oh...when I was 16 or 17?
It was definitely 5 or under..I recall asking an aunt if she knew where you went to have sex change operations at that age.......
Quote from: Lee on April 01, 2011, 03:04:20 AM
It's good to know that I wasn't the only one who had this impression that trans people were guys in dresses. All I have to say is thank god for the internet.
this. I knew something was very wrong, even when I was as young as 8-9, but repressed it, overcompensated, for years because of this. Even once I started questioning my gender at around 18, I wouldnt let myself venture to anything trans or ftm, and stuck to researching androgyny/genderqueer-ness. I didnt accept myself as trans until I was 21. Its amazing what internalized transphobia will do to your resolve to learn about yourself. Now that I've educated myself more its getting easier to deal with on a daily basis.
I always felt awkward 'playing girl'. My earliest memory could be when I was in kindergarten. Don't know why my parents didn't bother to dress me in pink and teach me things girl should do when I was growing up(thank god!) As I don't recall playing with other kids other than my little sis before, it was my first experience of social situation at age 5.
When I was six years old I announced to my mother that I wanted to 'grow up to be a man'.
When I was twelve I started minimal attempts at binding (mainly wearing as tight a one piece swimsuit as I could get under everything).
When I was eighteen, I was officially diagnosed.
Take your pick on which age I 'knew' at.
Age 10 when I got my first period. I was deeply shocked. I shut down completely. I somehow assumed that I was a boy, but the period made me realise that I was not. But I insisted on getting my hair cut short even then, even after I knew I was not physically a boy. Hated girls as a small kid, never played with them. Started falling in love with them from 11-12 though, so I just presumed that I was a lesbian for years. And I did not grow up in a country with a strong trans movement, heck, even homosexuality was outlawed till late 80s (I'm from one of the former socialist countries), and from age 19 I was moulded into a lesbian proper "You like girls?! We knew you did! You look like it! You gotta wear this, read this, listen to this!".... So I've only been coming to terms and accepting myself from 7-8 years ago, and I am 34 now.
Something always seemed off, increasingly so as I got older. Figured out what exactly it was at 13, was told I was full of crap, tried to forget the whole thing until I couldn't anymore--left the closet at 15 once and for all.
I was lucky to have been raised in a relatively open-minded bubble when it came to gender roles, esp. in the years before middle school, and had no clue that so much of the world was stuck in prescriptive attitudes. When I realized transitioning was what I had to/needed to do, I had no idea it would be such a big weird deal of a thing to relatives, friends, bystanders, etc. I thought, "okay, I have a condition, ignoring it won't work forever, so I've gotta fix it before it becomes even more of a pain in the butt. Lots of people have conditions, right?"
And when people started acting strange about it, I was jaw-drop dumbfounded. Completely shocked. I probably still am.
I kind of always knew, found out was transgender/transsexual was when I was eight, and then I realized that was what I was at around thirteen.
you could say i still don't "know" exactly. but all this gender confusion started for me about two months after my 22nd birthday.
3 when i knew i was a boy. 18 when i realized i could medically transition
13 but i always knew i was a boy i just didnt know that trans was a thing until i was 13. i started coming out when i was 14 and 15.
I have felt like I was female for as long as I can remember.......but, I guess the first time I ever came to the realization that I was trans was about 18-19. Without the internet, I don't know how long it would have taken me.
lol....wrong section...sorry...put my two cents in anyway.
Don't worry Hun
Wrong sections can be fixed by Mods.
So you look like a young woman in your pic. So you live FT ?
Cindy