I'm 19 and I'm at this point in my transition I'm living half an half, once I'm living full time or post transition I plan on hiding and concealing my past to the best of my abilities, and I would assume most young people like me would be trying to do the same.

Quote from: Rejennyrated on August 22, 2015, 04:09:02 PM
Yes well I guess I was just a bit pushier than you. Transition at 5, brief detransition from 17 to 24 due to lack of blockers, SRS at 25, and in between I never stopped talking about what I "really" was, so of course I got into all sorts of strange situations with people.

You are also a kid at almost 10 years younger than me and started your transition about 5 year after me. Not to say it was any easer for you than for me but treatment was going through a great deal of change around that time.

Quote from: Dena on August 22, 2015, 04:17:25 PM
You are also a kid at almost 10 years younger than me and started your transition about 5 year after me. Not to say it was any easer for you than for me but treatment was going through a great deal of change around that time.

Blimey 10 years older - so you are 65 now? In which case if your avatar is a recent pic you are doing incredibly well - I'm genuinely shocked. Well done.

Quote from: Rejennyrated on August 22, 2015, 04:31:25 PM
Blimey 10 years older - so you are 65 now? In which case if your avatar is a recent pic you are doing incredibly well - I'm genuinely shocked. Well done.

No, the picture is about 30 years old. I have done a pretty good job of staying behind the camera and that's the latest one I have from before I was scalped. Expect another picture in a few months that will show a few more wrinkles and gray hair that hasn't been permed.

Quote from: Ms Grace on August 22, 2015, 03:22:23 AM
I think that for a lot of people, even if they recognise they are transgender they fight against it because of social and family expectations. Our society is also not very kind towards "effeminate men" and women are frequently seen as inferior. A common story is that many transwomen try to "man up" through various macho activities in the hope they can macho the trans out of themselves. Also at that age it can be difficult to sort the various challenges of transition out unless you have a lot of professional and family support. I started to transition at age 23 but after two years I pretty much imploded due to the lack of both those.

I think that nails it.

In my country there was exactly one prominent early trans woman from my era and she was basically a pariah. Everyone else hid, gave up or moved overseas (me).

Good question, I know for sure I have wanted to transition since I could even understand what that meant, but being raised fundamental Christian and being involved in the community's church and having society place so many expectations on you I had to hold it off till this year. (I am 31)

Truth is I wish I could have started HRT back when I was as young as possible, but I feel happy I was able to start them while in my '30s because I am still young enough. I think we will find in the upcoming years as trans people gain more attention and are (hopefully) more accepted it wont be a big deal.

In fact at my Universalist Unitarian church which accepts trans people, a mother introduced me to her child who was gender fluid and they seemed to be like 6 years old and super proud. So us 'dinosaurs' will become more of a rarity as society progresses and people will probably be fascinated by those MtF ladies who literally lived two lifetimes.

I officially started my transition at the age of 21, SRS at 25 and I am 26 now.

I do wish I had started earlier, I secretly wished I was female from about the age of 5 (imagining what it would be like to wear the pretty dress), started cross dressing at 13 (ok wearing pantyhose, later a panty too and even later a cheer leader skirt)... at 19 I decided to explorer my gender issues and also started cross dressing seriously. By wearing full outfits, breast forms wearing makeup, started growing my hair, started shaving my legs and even got my ears pierced. I started seeing a therapist too. I remember during college I often would wear a sports bra or panties under my guy clothes.

21 I started hormones and went full time.

Do really wish I could have transitioned as a teenager and been able to experience being a teenage girl. I know transition as a teenager would have been difficult.

I started at 13 and i'm 16 almost 17 now, I know how you feel. There are a lot of older MTF people who transitioned pretty early, and it's great we have people like them or older MTF's in general because they've seen it all, and usually have good advice. That said, it does get pretty lonely not meeting people your age going through your struggles. The only other MTF my age i've met in person was my girlfriend.

The best ninjas are the ones you never see...

Think about it; that should answer your question, OP.

I'm still fairly young. I came out at 25 and started hormones at 27. I just transferred down to a community college from a somewhat relevant university (ASU), to get closer to UCSD/UCSB and into a more tolerant environment where I can get some procedures covered. It took me a while to come out because I was in the military, but I might never have come out if life hadn't gone to hell there and I was more or less forced out of the closet lol. At any rate, I like to stay stealth for a lot of reasons. It's not safe out there, it seems to be harder to pass as a girl if you were born male, and people really hate "men dressing as women" and "men using women's bathrooms." I think it's a smaller battle and it takes more courage than I have to get up and fight them (especially in person), but I'm looking for ways to end the war. That part is a story for another time though.

To me it seems like one of the biggest expectations of men is that they must treasure their masculinity above pretty much everything else. Many see being physically, mentally, and emotionally male as good things that come with high expectations, and as the pinnacle that any human being can reach. It's why our language has the term tomboy but not a gender appropriate "tomgirl" term, if you will. Anything that applies to a fem guy is pretty much a negative comment or derogatory insult, where as tomboys are seen as being just adorable because they're trying to take steps forward, not backwards as we are. Lots of people still think that men are destined for better things - lots of dreams of having a baby who's going to be a CEO or a president seem to go out the window when someone has a female child. Many men also seem to value female fertility with a heck of a lot of importance.

That's not to say everything is all butterflies and sunshine for genetic men or FtM though. I'm not a believer in white or male privilege, at least in the way that most people toss them around as if privilege is exclusively theirs. Every demographic has perks, problems, and positive and negative attributes and generalizations. For example, white men have the highest rate of suicide of pretty much every demographic. The opposite tends to be true for black women in our society. Black men are often presumed to to be enormous and freakish experts in bed (which is something that  most men would like to have assumed about them lol) which is the opposite of what most Asian men get. I guess that's a bit of a tangent but my ultimate point is that it's a lot cooler to want and strive for masculinity than femininity.

Speaking from personal experience, when I was ready to transition at 18, I wanted nothing more than to be able to live in stealth mode.

Now, at 40, after 20 years of repression, stealth isn't important to me. I'd like to able to pass enough to function on a daily basis, but I plan on being upfront about who I am.  I don't know if this is common, but from what I've read, I'm certainly not alone.  But it is a different world than 20 years ago, so I think you'll find a lot more young women being more open.  Good luck!

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I am as young as I feel - and as old as you think I am.

That these two values do not always coincide is an example of Einstein's Law of Relativity.

Quote from: ChiGirl on August 23, 2015, 09:59:47 AM
Speaking from personal experience, when I was ready to transition at 18, I wanted nothing more than to be able to live in stealth mode.

Now, at 40, after 20 years of repression, stealth isn't important to me. I'd like to able to pass enough to function on a daily basis, but I plan on being upfront about who I am.  I don't know if this is common, but from what I've read, I'm certainly not alone.  But it is a different world than 20 years ago, so I think you'll find a lot more young women being more open.  Good luck!

I don't really want to be fully stealth. I just don't want being trans to come up in conversation. For everyone I haven't told, or hasn't known me from before, it simply hasn't come up.

They may know I'm trans, meh. I strongly suspect that many don't, based on interactions I've had with them (eg. I've been asked for hygiene products in the women's restroom). Now with the proper voice, even dressed like a man I won't easily pass like one unless I have a shadow, eg the week after laser, aka now.

But stealth is just too much. I don't bring up gendered terms in the past and after childhood there were few pictures of me. There were some in my adult life with kids but for the most part I'm the one behind the camera, so that worked out. I love some things in my past, and if I could take gender out of it I would. But I can't, so I just live with it.

I'm 21 myself.

I have a hard time deciding whether I want to actually go 'stealth' or not. I feel that there is still so much negativity coming towards us. As much as I want to be an advocate for transgendered individuals and as much as I want to help everybody, I have realized that I simply can't take all the pressure. I'm very strong, not only through this journey, but I will not let too much negativity into my life. I'm of a gentle nature and I don't understand all the hatred in the world.

I would guess I pass, I don't get weird looks, but I do have things I could improve on as well as most other people.
One thing I do know is that I don't go around telling people about my past, it's generally none of their business. I prefer being treated like a normal individual, don't we all deserve that?

I'm 17 years old myself, and have had inklings about myself being transgender for a while before I even began seriously questioning, but I would have to say that you see fewer of us at a young age because of how society tends to be more "accepting" (for lack of a better world) then non-conforming women (non girly women) or trans men that it seems to be the other way around; due to old stereotypes about men needing to be manly and tough and such; so trans women like me may be scared of coming out due to those types of things.

Quote from: Jasper93 on August 22, 2015, 03:13:07 AM
Hi everyone,

So, I'm mtf, which a lot of people don't believe, but I am. I'm also 21, and started transitioning at age 20, in early-college. I determined that I had to do this, as years of abusing steroids, as well as trying to embrace the gender I'm expected to be, only caused distress.

I've been through an unbelievable amount of hardship, as many trans women have, solely to be myself. But the thing is, I look gg, and a lot of the unacceptance has come from my then-family. If you're familiar with VICE on HBO, they interviewed me with my story the other day (which will be featured), mainly because I attend a pretty relevant university, fortunately.

And that's the thing -- attending the GLBT-receptive powerhouse that I do, one would think that I'd run into a lot of trans girls, especially considering that I live in their learning community designed specifically for transgender/gender-queer people. But I'm the only mtf here that I've heard about in the learning community, and one of three that I've heard about across campus (47k people). For every trans woman, there seems to be three or so trans men. For every trans man, there's like 2 gender-queer people.

Why in the world are there so few trans women, pretty much anywhere, who are in their late-teens early-20s??? I encounter many who started in their 40s, but I'm feeling pretty lonely unless I'm searching pretty hardcore on Tumblr.

I'm 17 and an mtf, so I understand how you feel. cx

-Naomi

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I'm 18 and mtf too, and I agree with you, I will start college and was assigned with a ftm guy as roomate, I dont know why but I thought I would have been assigned with a trans woman but apparently I'm probably the only one there, which is very meh, but whatever... I think a lot of trans girls either prefer to be stealth or do not have the support to transition, which is my case, I don't have support and I'm currently self-medicating, so yeah...

Oh just turned 20 here so I count I guess. Do you think I am primary or secondary?

I thought we stopped using this primary/secondary bull->-bleeped-<- long ago... 

Quote from: Ange on August 24, 2015, 07:28:46 AM
I thought we stopped using this primary/secondary bull->-bleeped-<- long ago... 

Agreed.

The problem with the primary/secondary theory is that those who use it will never view us as women. They either view us as straight men with a fetish or gay men who want to pretend to be women so they can attract men.

There are also numerous social factors that determine the age at which someone transitions, such as abusive parents and local culture.

They also base it on sexual orientation which doesn't make sense because there are young/teen trans people who are homosexual and in same gender relations.

So in other words, don't buy it. It's meant to divide and prop up egos as well as keep the status quo by justifying more gatekeeping which kind of gives you a clue as to why people bring it up.