So here's something that's been on for a while as I think more and more about my childhood and where I've come from.  I'm wondering why some of us show signs as kids, and others don't, and trying to make sense of it all.  As BS as the primary/secondary transexual thing is, I'm still curious why for some people it's obvious in retrospect that they were trans as kids, and for others it seems to come right out of the blue.  What was your experience like?  Why do you think it was what it was?  What are your thoughts on this whole issue of showing signs, and why only some of us do?  I thought it would be an interesting discussion to start. 

Personally, though I can't say I actually knew how to describe what I was feeling, I showed all the signs in the book: I was always very feminine, preferred the company of girls, cross-dressed whenever I had the chance, played with dolls, and I did have some vague signs of physical dysphoria too.  I would imagine myself as a queen on her throne (not a princess-I was and will always be an assertive gal!) and would sometimes even tie a cloth around my head pretending that I had long flowing hair-in retrospect, it's pretty insane that I didn't know what was going on.  My family was never overt about trying to suppress it, but I didn't feel welcome to be myself around them or anyone else.  After a while, I just sort of shut that part of myself away and my life went through a rough patch. 

Why?  I sometimes joke that it was weakness, that I wasn't strong or aware of how I was perceived well enough to pretend to be like the other boys.  But, in a way there might be something to do that.  I've always been less disciplined than I should be, sometimes too impulsive.  I tried to be male; I just wasn't good at it.  I mean, by the time I was fourteen I was wearing sequins again!  I'm pretty upset with my family right now when I think about it-they always claimed to be "progressive" but did they take this seriously?  No.  They brushed it off as a phase.  If they'd taken me to see a specialist, I might have gotten on blockers and then-but that's a dangerous line of thought for me.  In any event, that's my perspective on it all.  I never felt like I was being strong in being myself-there were other people, and I just couldn't be like them so I stopped caring.

I wouldn't say I knew when I was a kid since the concept of being able to transition to another gender was unheard of for me. I wouldn't say I went around wishing I was girl, just that I really hated being a boy and being treated by one and expected to do the things boys do. When I was 12 I was told that I was going to a boy's high school and, for reasons that made no sense to me at the time but which are fairly evident now, I suddenly burst into tears - there was no way I wanted to do that. How horrific (and it was).

Yep, I knew something around age of 4-5, but I learned very quickly that there things which could be said out and things which should be kept to oneself. When I figure out that certain behaviour would cause shaming or ridicule, I stopped displaying it publicly or talking about it - does not mean that I stopped doing this - I did it when I was home alone (cross-dressing as a small child), or in the deepest corner behind stocks of furniture - playing with my dolls and stuffed animals (yep, my parents considered that those OK-ish toys, btw) and being a princess to them - and stopping the game immediately when someone came too close.  I do remember some very intense physically-emotional pains from that- I would assume now it was how GD manifested itself, but being a small child I had no idea what it was or what it meant.

When I was a kid I told my parents I wanted to have a sex change.  My sense of gender was SO strongly geared towards being a girl that I literally had trouble realising that I wasn't female.
Primary school pretty much destroyed that part of me though, and these days I am having trouble feeling ANYTHING. 

So... that's depressing.

I can just imagine what my life would have been like with a supportive family...

In telling my dad about being trans, he revealed to me that I had always been different (mom's word) or unique (his word). I never really realized what about until recently though I did prefer male company to female and never played with dolls or cared to play house etc. Because my uniqueness also comes from being deaf and visually impaired (yes, I wear hearing aids, and I'm legally blind in my right eye) I thought for a long time that my personal quirks and missed social cues were because of that. Now... I'm not so sure.

Like Grace, I lacked the knowledge of the concept and vocabulary of transgender, and Painter, I think this may have been part of the issue in your family.  Many times family just don't see things, or lack the tools to do something material.

From the time I was 8 years old I used to dream I was a girl, mainly at night before I fell asleep.  And from a similar age I would try on my sister's clothes, and wish I could just wear them.   I wouldn't say I was a girly boy, but I was delicate, gentle, and sensitive, basically an oddball in a country where as a boy you either played sport obsessively or you were labeled a queer or a communist.  There were constant flickers of my being transgender all through my childhood and adolescence, but no obvious smoking gun.  No playing with barbies and being best friends with girls, but a boy who liked to wear androgynous pretty clothes, plenty of pink, with earrings, and a tiny touch of makeup. 

Looking back, I did spend the first 25 years of my life desperately trying to suppress the girl in me. Then a breakdown thankfully brought all the strands of gender and sexuality together.

Julia

AP, I've had the same curiosity. I did NOT know at a young age, though I was always different and seem to lack the aggressiveness that other boys had. The first time I remember having any feelings at all about my gender was as a teen, when I had a vague unhappiness that I didn't have the parts that my girlfriend had.

I've often brooded on why I didn't know while so many of my transgender brothers and sisters did. I mean, how clueless does one have to be not to know one's own gender?

Quote from: suzifrommd on January 12, 2015, 05:01:31 AM
AP, I've had the same curiosity. I did NOT know at a young age, though I was always different and seem to lack the aggressiveness that other boys had. The first time I remember having any feelings at all about my gender was as a teen, when I had a vague unhappiness that I didn't have the parts that my girlfriend had.

I've often brooded on why I didn't know while so many of my transgender brothers and sisters did. I mean, how clueless does one have to be not to know one's own gender?

Don't worry, I didn't know until a few months ago and I'm 32! Dad saw signs, and looking back I see them too, but in no way did I KNOW!

if I look back at my childhood I can pick out things that I would consider to be "signs", but back then I had no idea. even when I was a young teenager crossdressing in the mirror, I still had no idea. I dont think my brain was ever able to admit to itself that it wanted to be female, not for a little boy raised in a world where you're taught to be glad you're not a girl, and constantly told to "be a man".

even after I learned about transgender people, I still didnt think I was one. the fact that they existed just kind of scared me actually. on some level I guess I was afraid that I did know all along.

I knew...something since I was 4 or 5. Not really that I was transgender, but that I would have loved to be a girl. The first time I heard of a "sex change operation" it intrigued me a lot. However I wanted to be a girl long before I knew there were even differences between men's and women's genitals and why we are different. I wanted pretty dresses and long hair.

Puberty kicked my butt and I pretty much spiraled way down.

I showed some signs but transphobic society kept me well closeted. I did have a few people who enabled me to dress when I was growing up though. That was release and it felt pretty good.

The desire to be female never really went away. There was just so much shame, I never acted on it. I figured I would be a good man and that was that. I dreamed and fantasized so much. I also felt horrible about being an ugly, short man.

Married twice, kids and now I'm now full circle.

i was fairly oblivious till my teenage years. but then again, i dont remember hardly anything from prior to 11/12 years old.  but didnt become a very noticeable issue till after 18/19.  and even then i just put up with it cause i didnt really know what the significance of it was or how badly it would become till 24  when i finally learned about gender.  if i knew then what i know now...  mmm.

I knew something was very different about me compared to other boys(I was born in 1957) but this was the not so swinging 60s and kept quiet about it and tried to be a boy.I fooled very few people even though I never went a week without getting in a fight during my last 4 years at school.

I never realised I wasn't a cisboy I don't think, for until I started menstruating and developing. I felt disconnected from it and it felt weird, but I kind of accepted it and also, my mental health has been really bad. I'd always look in a mirror and feel wrong... If I were topless, I'd hold my chest down. I felt profoundly uncomfortable in more feminine roles...

But I never really questioned my gender until my early twenties when it became bad because I was struggling with my sexuality on top of having intimacy issues.

severe cross dressing at 4 until present , boy friend at 6 , castration nightmares at 9, 10 ,11, massive meltdown at puberty onward. The circuitry of my brain was firing female since birth and has never stopped . I was just unlucky to be born at a time when psychology saw this as a aberration, so I didn't get what I needed as in transition in grade school.

My older sister named me Tessa as a 3 yo and treated me as her sister for years.  i have very little recall of those days but my older brother and mom were aware of it.  So I felt it, acted it out but had no vocabulary for it while others may have recognized something in me even then.  I just had this certainty that someday a magical change would make me a mom.  As others have noted, we can be disabused of these ideas by a brutal school and social system.

So we learn to cope with what we seemingly cannot change.  I had plenty of clues and signs along the way but putting it all together and finally accepting the total reality of that truth took decades.  Glad to be here now!

Quote from: suzifrommd on January 12, 2015, 05:01:31 AM
I've often brooded on why I didn't know while so many of my transgender brothers and sisters did. I mean, how clueless does one have to be not to know one's own gender?

It can happen.  It happened to me.  Of course I can't say why it was true for you, but the reasons for me in retrospect are quite clear.  I grew up in an extremely repressive home.  It wasn't just "horrendous" stuff like ->-bleeped-<- that was repressed there.  Lots of things were--e.g., just being a kid.

The book or film "The Remains of the Day" is extremely painful for me.  It's hard to look at the butler (played by Anthony Hopkins in the film) who was so thoroughly repressed that he never even thought of the possibility of love, that he never noticed a good woman was in love with him, that he never considered the possibility that he might be in love with her.  It is possible to submerge thoughts and feelings so completely that you can't even imagine they're there.

Some of my memories: putting on a dress for the first time at the age of 4 and being assured that that would never happen again.  Lying in bed at night with the blankets wrapped tightly around my legs so that I could pretend to be wearing a long dress.  Being invited by a neighbour girl to put on one of her dresses and wanting so badly to do it but declining because I knew it was wrong. 

I was never seen as a girly boy.  With hindsight I can see that the feelings were there.  But at the time I was hardly even aware of them and when they did come up, I shoved them back down.  I think I can honestly say that if my parents had found out, I would have ended up like Leelah Alcorn.  I instinctively knew that I couldn't afford to let them find out.

I think I would have fit in with the there were signs group rather than knowing for sure. But I think that may be mainly down to a lack of almost any knowledge on the area, pretty much up until I came out as gay and explored the queer community.

Think my most obvious sign would have being five in school. Had a massive teary breakdown after break. Was always one of the popular sporty guys, but I just knew I didn't fit in at my all boys school. This continued throughout all my school journey. But I kept my mouth shut after that one incident.
Always preferred hanging out with the girls.
But all the things I loved or wanted to do I kept secret because as a child I thought there were the boy rules and girl rules and stepping outside of them would be bold. Or something like that.
I've always adored pink. But always said I hated it as a kid.
Wanted to steal mama's clothes and makeup and try them but was too afraid of getting caught and thinking it was wrong. Plus in my good dreams I was always female.
Was never seen as a girly guy though really growing up mainly because I played sports and such. But I think everyone still knew I was a little different.

Had a lot of other signs and things too.
Just had very little knowledge or info on the topic up until the last few years.

I think I understood things better when I was 4-5 and then became more socially aware of how I didn't fit it. But I didn't come to realize that the feelings I had as a young child weren't typical of my peers until in my 20's.

I remember being very sure I was a boy at that age and arguing about needing to wear a shirt because "boys don't have to" with my parents. I remember praying every night that I would wake up with male genitalia, trying to pee standing up, hanging out with the boys and when we would play house, I was always "the boyfriend". And I was always a happy kid, my parents didn't force me to change much (other than at some point they stopped allowing me to wear boys underwear).

Once puberty kicked in, I went through some major depressive times. I never really found that happiness within myself (though I was happy about things, my attachment to myself was never the same) until recently. I have finally found at least some of that inner peace again since starting hormone therapy and having top surgery. I will never be the "complete" man I always prayed for as a child but I am able to make peace with that as I begin the "restart" of my life as the man I always wanted to be.

I wanted to wear girls' things when I was 4.  Most of my friends as a child were girls.  I did a lot of things that weren't typical for "boys" and was frequently lectured about what is and isn't "appropriate for boys".   I got beaten up a lot for being effeminate and had little desire to fight back.  And yes, as soon as I heard about "sex changes", it was like "HELLO!"  When I was ten or so, I even asked my mother what my name would have been if I was FAAB.  Needless to say, when my sister was born when I was 14, I was insanely jealous. 

Unlike a lot of us, I never actually wore women's clothing until I was 43.  I wanted to all along on some level,  but that was a can of worms I was very afraid of opening.  Our transphobic society's attitude toward anyone straying outside the strict binary really did a number on me, I suppose.

I think my parents knew something was off about me.  My dad did everything he could to remind me, every day, for years, that I was a boy, and telling me how to act like a boy, look like a boy, talk like a boy, pushing me into doing boy things.  If I tried to swerve into something even remotely feminine, I'd just get checked right back into line.  After my parents divorced, I was in counselling for a while, and I actually said something to my counselor about feeling like a girl.  She didn't really seem to think it was that big of a deal, and we never really talked about it, again.

I'd have this surface up again in 2001, but I was in such a deep self-denial about it that I'd tell people I was simply going through a goth phase.  After 9/11, when people got seriously spooked over every little thing, I was basically given the big intervention by the church folk, who didn't take kindly to the all the black makeup and hair dye.  No one every said anything about cross dressing.  They thought I was going down this Marilyn Manson path.  So I gave up.  Tossed the makeup and the fishnets, removed the nail polish, bleached out my hair, and went back into full repression.

There was a few things I did sexually that felt very tied into my feminine identity with a girlfriend I had, also in 2001.  It didn't go well.  She kind of only did it because she thought if she did, I'd turn around and become the man she wanted in bed.  All it did was hurt and make me feel even more uncomfortable and alienated.  She didn't even care, she wasn't gentle or loving about it.  And I still feel horribly stupid for ever trusting her with this, because she just kept using it as a weapon against me throughout our relationship.

Looking back, it all makes so much sense, now, but it was never anything I could have picked out on my own then.  Maybe because I was young, but also because trans awareness was so... nonexistent.  I think that if I had been born a decade later, I'd have been able to piece this together sooner, have a better chance of expressing how I really felt to that one councilor when I was 13 and was able to say, maybe for the first time to anyone, that I felt like a girl.