My older sisters had dolls, I played with them. I got an "Action Man" doll instead, not quite the same thing. I think I had a certain amount of "counselling" from one of my older brothers, probably intended to stop me from being too "soppy", he was very aggro about things in general. I didn't really latch on.

Playground stuff was weird - I wasn't into "girls' games" as I'd been given a bit of conditioning in that area, but I was kind of not very good at football either. Mostly I'd run or skip around and feel a bit bemused.

I remember the local paper reporting on a male civil (public) servant who'd "had a bet" at work regarding dressing as a woman to work for a week. I'm not clear whether the bet was "lost" or "won". There was a photo of this person, dressed in 70s finery, on the front page with the headline "Sybil Servant". It fascinated me - and I could "read" the paper and look at this instead, for that evening at least.

There were a number of tv programmes in the 70s and 80s on broadly trans issues. Some better than others. I recall my stepmother telling me not to watch one "Play for today" as it was "disgusting". I think this was already my second time of watching it (good old repeats, no VCR or pvr in those days).

Puberty meant a locked in fascination with being female. Whilst I liked looking at women it was not in the "Urrr, uggg, look at that!" way, but an interest in how the looked what they were wearing, and how I might look in that. But it was too hard for me to really accept this. I was different, but at 16 that's something you avoid. Or sit miserably in the corner, reading Jude the Obscure, and being "moody". I would then cheer myself up by reading Sylvia Plath.

On one level I think I "knew" but I didn't know what to do, it was simply too scary at that time.

So much of this thread rings so true for me.  I was always a male character if allowed to be (Lisa Squirrel - I wanted to be Braker Turtle )

I'm not sure if I actually remember it, or if I'm only constructing a memory based on my mother's repeated telling of the story, but apparently the only huge tantrum I ever threw as a small child was at 4 years old, when I freaked out about having to take ballet and not being allowed to play t-ball.  I used to play He-Man games with two neighbor boys from 5-8, and I convinced them to let me be He-Man for the longest time, because I had the same haircut as him    Then came an incident when I was 10 and cut off all of my hair, and my mother flipped.

Then came puberty: I felt like I was mutating into some sort of freak creature in middle school.  Long before I knew what binding was, I tried substituting a tight ace bandage for a bra when I was 13.  Unfortunately, I fell out of it in the middle of gym class...

I've always been more apt to jump and cheer or cry over the smallest things, so I always figured my personality matched my body - except that I never wanted to discuss specific emotions with anyone, as most girls seemed to.  I always knew that I was into both genders, so I figured my hatred of my chest and my growing dislike of my other parts was down to my not being straight.  Then one night, my first girlfriend (also bi) and I were looking at magazine photos of different men and women, commenting about how they were all so hot, and she pointed out some actress and said, "I wish I looked like her."  I pointed to a pic in the same magazine (I don't even remember of who) and said, "I wish I looked like him."  She gave me the most disgusted look on earth, and broke up with me soon after.  I never understood why she was so grossed out by my wish, and not hers.

My parents stuck me in counseling over my professed orientation, and doubled-down on it when I told them I wanted to be a guy.  Unfortunately, it was Catholic counseling.  I was told that some people are naturally lesbians, and that it was my job from god to try and ignore that.  I asked about wanting to be a guy, and I was told it was down to being a lesbian.  I pointed out that I was bi, and I was told that TV had told me to say that.  The biggest shame I feel in my life now is over the fact that I believed all that nonsense for so long.

Then came college...  My roommate convinced me that, "even though you're too short and chesty to do real work, you can make a lot of money doing this..." and I started catalog modelling.  I stayed firmly in denial land, laughing off every bad thought I had about my body as being due to the pressures of my part-time job.  It paid well, and it certainly made my parents happy, and it gave me that perfect false target for all the reasons I was so dissatisfied with my body.

As college faded into grad school, I started having more sexual relationships, and wow, this sounds familiar:

QuoteProbably TMI, but sexually I was never interested in my own sexual pleasure until I figured out that I'm male. I loved giving others sexual pleasure but I just felt weird and uncomfortable having my partner's focus on my body, rather than on their own pleasure.

THIS.  I had no problem going down on boyfriends or girlfriends, but I flat-out refused to let anyone return the favor on me, and any time anyone wanted penetration, I made them "use the back door."

Once I was out of school and living alone, working a sedentary job, I put on a lot of weight, and again, all the bad thoughts about being female I attributed to my weight gain, and not to my not being the correct gender.  This was definitely me:

QuoteI started to imagine myself with short hair and wearing whatever I wanted, thinking of myself as a butch lesbian. But then I realized that I wanted MORE. I didn't want to just look like that, I literally wanted to become the man in the relationship, go beyond the butch lesbian look, etc.

I started being more and more butch, whenever I went home, my parents begrudgingly accepted me as butch and bi, and life went on.  I finally managed to secure a job that matched my education, and most of my coworkers, like a lot of my fellow students in college, were male.  And then one day, I was talking with the only other physical female in my department (a cishet woman), and she started bringing up all of the family pressure she felt to follow her life path.  And at the end of the conversation, she just blurted out, "a good little punjabi girl should want to be a good engineer and mother, and not go to art school - just like how you are a good little catholic girl and you don't become a boy like you want to."  I was floored.  I couldn't believe I was that transparent.  I couldn't believe she knew.

After that, I got over my fear of therapy, instilled by the crazy catholics when I was younger, and I started going to see a real therapist.  I lost all the extra weight, and started heavy lifting and boxing, seeking a more masculine physique.  I started researching transitioning, and waivering on whether I would take the plunge, out of fear that I've just got too female a form to really do it.  Five years on, I am 32 and I'm finally ready to admit that I'm a man, and I want to be one as wholly as possible.  I hit a massive roadbump with the first endocrinologist I saw, which prompted me to join this board, and well, that's it.  Tons of hints, tons of denial, and now - well, now is the time for the truth.  I wish I'd listened harder to what all of those little incidents were telling me, and to myself.

A big one for me, that I only remembered recently, is quite NSFW but I'll go ahead.

When I was about 14 I had a friend who was very masculine, if you thought stereotypical male he wasn't far from the ideal.
One day he showed me an... adult's special interest video on his phone. It was of a woman, perhaps early twenties, 'enjoying herself with the tools at her disposal'.
My friend was loving it, and asked me if I found it as hot as he did. I replied yes but I wasn't getting any enjoyment from watching it - I was just jealous over the fact that she had a vagina and I don't.

Still gets to me.

Sometime in my teen years my little sister had a dance recital.   We boys were told to dress nicely - meaning a coat and tie.  It made no sense to me at the time, but I just refused to put on a tie.  It just seemed wrong.   I remember my Dad chasing me around the house and eventually forcing me into the car.   I think this stands out b/c I was always the good kid, the one who did what he was told.  But that day I just blew up.

  And I never even knew why I felt that way.

Until my recent discovery I an trans this incident had gone missing.   I don't know if I was jealous that my sister got to do dance or that I had to wear the tie (I always hated ties), but it was just wrong.

Quote from: Kaydee on July 01, 2014, 08:14:35 PM
Sometime in my teen years my little sister had a dance recital.   We boys were told to dress nicely - meaning a coat and tie.  It made no sense to me at the time, but I just refused to put on a tie.  It just seemed wrong.   I remember my Dad chasing me around the house and eventually forcing me into the car.   I think this stands out b/c I was always the good kid, the one who did what he was told.  But that day I just blew up.

  And I never even knew why I felt that way.

Until my recent discovery I an trans this incident had gone missing.   I don't know if I was jealous that my sister got to do dance or that I had to wear the tie (I always hated ties), but it was just wrong.

So I wasn't the only one with an extreme aversion to jackets and ties.   I always got really pissed off when I had to "dress up".  And OMG, the dreaded tuxedo.  Don't get me started...   I'm going to hate the way I look- guaranteed!   I feel so much better in a cute dress and shoes.

Heh, I have a few...
-As a little kid, I was bizarrely obsessed with being really masculine and strong. I would run around really fast, and challenge all my male relatives to arm wrestle me, and make my parents and friends feel my muscles.... I was a weird kid, haha.
-I always identified really heavily with male characters on TV and in movies, especially (as a little kid) Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible and (as a preteen) Dr. Cox from Scrubs (don't laugh...)
-I always had way more male friends than female, and really hated being grouped in with girls in places like Sunday school. I insisted on wearing pantsuits to formal events and loved going over to my male friends' houses more than anything because I could play with their LEGOs and lightsabers and video games and such
-I literally said to my mom once when I was a preteen that "I wanna have kids, but I don't wanna be a 'mom'... I really wanna be a 'dad' instead?"

I hated haircuts.  I would scream my head off as a kid.  I grew it out as a teen, and if I showed you a picture you would swear from my glasses and clothes I was a cis lesbian.  I then proceeded to date a string of bi girls.

The earliest thing I can actually remember was probably when I was 5, but then again idk how old I was, but it was the first time I tried on girls cloths because I had the strange feeling of wanting to. I grew up religiously, so I was told a lot not to do that stuff. But growing up, I couldn't ignore this feeling. I avoided it, but still had it. I thought I must be homosexual, but that couldn't be, because I had no attraction towards guys. I can't remember when it was but I was online and did research, took a little test thing that told your sexual orientation. I answered the questions, and feared the results saying, guess what, you're gay. But they came out to transsexual, which is when I learned about what that was. I know that I used to always walk real feminine as a child, and my dad told me to stop walking like that. I asked why, can't remember what he said. But I stopped. I was never able to break the habit of crossdressing, even though I tried many times. I just couldn't help it. Haircuts where a dreadful day. I hated them more than anything. I would run away and hide somewhere in the hose, and get dragged to the chair where my dad would cut it. It's been 3 months now that I have officially refused to get it cut. I constantly get bragged about it, but I will not let them cut it again this time. I look back at some of my pictures as to when I was a little boy, and I can clearly see in the photos that I was not a normal little boy. I really could see that the way I was standing or sitting, or anything in the pictures was very feminine for a boy. Sometimes I wonder if my parents saw that too, and know that there's something up with me, but don't tell me they know. Try that one for a nightmare.

When I was about three or four, my cousins and I often used to play pretend games where we were animals. And in my imagination, I would invariably always be a female animal, never a male. The fact that I was always female in my imagination wasn't really something that I was particularly conscious of at the time, and it wasn't something that I was pretending to be because I thought it was cool or fun, as the animal itself was. It was just something that felt logical and natural; if I were an animal I ought to be female because I took it for granted that as a human I was also female. Had you asked me at the time why the animal I was pretending to be was female, I probably would just have told you that the animal was a girl because I was a girl. ^^'' I think that's probably the earliest memory I have of directly and unmistakably identifying as a girl.

I believe I was around 7 years old when Mrs Doubtfire came out. I watched it dozens and dozens of times without ever really knowing why. Days of thunder, I wore out the vhs watching the scene where the stripper pulls them over and checks Tom Cruise for hidden weapons. My family found out and assumed I was watching because of her boobs. I was far more interested in Tom's hidden weapon ^^

My parents are religious nutters, but they were very absent parents so I was able to play with my sister and her Barbies for years. I loved dressing Barbie up in all the different outfits. And of course I loved helping Barbie meet a rugged,  handsome Ken and have his babies. ^_^

I can look back today at various things that definitely have pointed in this direction, but at the time it didn't really register, like dressing up in my mom's things and trying on makeup. I wasn't thinking as a kid that I wanted to be a girl, I just did what I wanted to do because I liked it. I had different phases of expression, and different moments that made me come across as very sensitive rather than tough. There was never a moment where I thought of myself as either gender, though. I had one period of time in high school where I wore eyeliner and nail polish, but it didn't last long.

I always had crushes on tomboyish girls, and eventually became aesthetically drawn to androgyny after seeing Velvet Goldmine and getting into Placebo, so I thought maybe I was bisexual, but that wasn't the case. I really don't have sexual attractions. I just obsess over beauty.

Eventually I started to really hate male pronouns, and would say, "I'm just a sentient being inhabiting this vessel," but that wasn't getting anyone to think of me as such. So, I eventually came out as genderqueer (androgyne, specifically), but that's still not completely right, and I still get "he" and "sir" and "mister" and "him" and "uncle". A friend of mine said last night, as we were all outside smoking, that I was looking sassy. Another friend said, "yeah, he's a sassy man." NO. "Man" is incorrect. Stoic, perhaps, and often very quiet, but I do not fit the role of male.

Straight women often want someone who is dominant and physically strong, and that's not me. I'm drawn to beauty, feminine expression, I will cry every time I watch What Dreams May Come, my speech and mannerisms are not manly, I can't stand it when male friends of mine talk about the girls they want to bed, and there are even physical things about me that suggest what could be androgen insensitivity and/or more estrogen in my system than the normal male biology should have.

I often wonder if I could continue on without transition, and sometimes feel like I could, but then something or someone reminds me why that's not a good idea. Luckily, both of my parents are supportive, and every friend that I've told, but in this form I still have to endure the wrong pronouns, and that stings every time.

Anyway, I wish we could tap into all of our memories and scan over the moments that were paramount to the present moment, but do we really need that kind of validation?