This was partially inspired by Natasha's thread about childhood.

I firmly believe that peeps born with gender-body mismatch experience severe dysphoria and consequences in childhood.
I do not believe such an individual could come out of childhood unscathed.
I believe this condition manifests in childhood.
Call it a sense of 'victimhood' or what you will, but I don't believe a man-child raised as a girl or a woman-child raised a boy could even simulate normalcy at all.

Did anyone came out of childhood unscathed? Most of my wishes for life were based on childhood misunderstandings of the world and have since been revealed as unstable.

Quote from: Nero on December 26, 2007, 08:01:13 PM
This was partially inspired by Natasha's thread about childhood.

I firmly believe that peeps born with gender-body mismatch experience severe dysphoria and consequences in childhood.
I do not believe such an individual could come out of childhood unscathed.
I believe this condition manifests in childhood.
Call it a sense of 'victimhood' or what you will, but I don't believe a man-child raised as a girl or a woman-child raised a boy could even simulate normalcy at all.

Yes it's manifested in childhood.  Who's saying that it isn't? maybe those peeps that say that it isn't aren't transsexual but something else.?

LOL,

Childhood was easy compared to the teen years! Hum, no wait...both sucked big time!

As a child I was constantly having problems with my parents and those around me because I didn't behave 'as expected' about all the time...well by their standards I guess, not mine. God if my step father told me one more time 'don't walk like that', 'you throw like a girl', and perhaps the most frequent one 'STOP CRYING!!'

So, yes I would say that gender problems develop early in life and that it's about impossible to emerge without some form of emotional scares.

Now, try going through high school as the opposite gender...THAT give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Hell on earth'...

Peace and love,
Izzy

Quote from: Isabelle St-Pierre on December 26, 2007, 08:13:53 PM
LOL,

Childhood was easy compared to the teen years! Hum, no wait...both sucked big time!

As a child I was constantly having problems with my parents and those around me because I didn't behave 'as expected' about all the time...well by their standards I guess, not mine. God if my step father told me one more time 'don't walk like that', 'you throw like a girl', and perhaps the most frequent one 'STOP CRYING!!'

So, yes I would say that gender problems develop early in life and that it's about impossible to emerge without some form of emotional scares.

Now, try going through high school as the opposite gender...THAT give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Hell on earth'...

Peace and love,
Izzy

There is no way that I could have come out in the later 1960s, when I was in high school, or before.  It took me until I was 51 to really do anything to begin my transition to the female person I was born to be and knew of since childhood.

I didn't come out of childhood without substantial psychological damage that I did not start to repair until I could actually do it, so it stayed within and caused me lots of pain.

Wing Walker

Quote from: Wing Walker on December 26, 2007, 08:23:50 PM
There is no way that I could have come out in the later 1960s, when I was in high school, or before.  It took me until I was 51 to really do anything to begin my transition to the female person I was born to be and knew of since childhood.

I didn't come out of childhood without substantial psychological damage that I did not start to repair until I could actually do it, so it stayed within and caused me lots of pain.

Wing Walker

Ah, but you did suffer some emotional scars...for you it was the act of keeping it bottled up and hidden...for me it was my lack of a filter and just being me...we both suffered some form of psychological damage from our gender problems as children...they just manifested themselves in different ways.

I am not sure which is worse to deal with...the emotional scars inflicted by others or those we inflict upon ourselves....oh heck...both suck to deal with don't they?

Peace and love,
Izzy

there is a part of me that wanders if i had the chance to go back in time and to have a talk with my bitter child self, if i could change things. I wander if i could convince that person of way back then that what they ( i ) felt then was OK. how my life might have turned out happier. 

maybe then i was not ready then to come to terms with the real me. it took 20 more years to realize.  but i surly felt it since a kid.


-Natalie

Quote from: natalie on December 26, 2007, 08:59:01 PMthere is a part of me that wanders if i had the chance to go back in time and to have a talk with my bitter child self, if i could change things. I wander if i could convince that person of way back then that what they ( i ) felt then was OK. how my life might have turned out happier. 

maybe then i was not ready then to come to terms with the real me. it took 20 more years to realize.  but i surly felt it since a kid.

-Natalie

I can understand your feelings...I think most of us often think about if we could go back and change things...but you know what?? Everything that I have lived through, done, etc is that has made me who I am today. To go back and to change past events is like pulling on that one loss thread in a sweater...the more you pull on it...the sweater falls apart...and it becomes something else. So, while there are things in my past that I would love to change...would I?? Not if it would change who I am today...for I am finally happy within my own skin and happy to be me. Yes, life sucks big time at times, but I am finally the me I was supposed to be.

Perhaps Pink's "Conversations with my thirteen year old self" says best what you're feeling....

You're angry
I know this
The world couldn't care less
You're lonely
I feel this
And you wish you were the best
No teachers
Or guidance
And you always walk alone
You're crying
At night when
Nobody else is home

Come over here and let me hold your hand and hug you darling
I promise you that it won't always feel this bad
There are so many things I want to say to you
You're the girl I used to be
You little heartbroken thirteen year old me

You're laughing
But you're hiding
God I know that trick too well
You forget
That I've been you
And now I'm just the shell
I promise
I love you and
Everything will work out fine
Don't try to
Grow up yet
Oh just give it some time

The pain you feel is real you're not asleep but it's a nightmare
But you can wake up anytime
Oh don't lose your passion or the fighter that's inside of you
You're the girl I used to be
The pissed off complicated thirteen year old me

Conversations with my thirteen year old self
Conversations with my thirteen year old self

Until we meet again
Oh I wish you well oh
I wish you well
Little girl
Until we meet again
Oh
I wish you well
Little girl
I wish you well
Until we meet again
My little thirteen year old me

Peace and love,
Izzy

Izzy, thanks.

Quote from: Kiera on December 26, 2007, 10:47:56 PM

Quote from: Valentina on December 26, 2007, 08:06:21 PMYes it's manifested in childhood.  Who's saying that it isn't? maybe those peeps that say that it isn't aren't transsexual but something else.?

Hummm - Oh? Like what? Dealing with the effects of being TS, the causes of which are rooted who knows where, manifests itself in as many ways as they're individuals and, if nothing else I've learned from being here this past year, each and every one of us deal with it according to their own life experiences, pace and way.

Took me a long time, over 30 years to be precise, to truly understand that even though I considered myself "transgender" long ago I am NOT REALLY LIKE anybody else on this board in any way and I certainly would not want to be either . . .

Yes, we may share some common life experiences, preoccupations and femme feelings - "birds of a feather do tend to congregate together" - but you are not me!

Please, keep your "certainties" for your therapist. One cannot even say "transition" is always the correct fix for TS individuals otherwise you wanna know why she was so relieved when she found out I was "older" and more "mature"? Apparently the "suicide rate", especially among younger TS patients, is very high indeed!



(sorry, I've been wanting to get this OUT!)

Posted on: 26 December 2007, 23:25:02

---

Quote from: Isabelle St-Pierre on December 26, 2007, 09:22:47 PMEverything that I have lived through, done, etc is that has made me who I am today. To go back and to change past events is like pulling on that one loss thread in a sweater...the more you pull on it...the sweater falls apart...and it becomes something else.

Highly Agree Izzy!

Hi sweetie.

This wasn't meant as an 'early vs late' debate. I just meant that a TS childhood is vastly different than a cisgender childhood.

Quote from: Nero on December 26, 2007, 08:01:13 PM
This was partially inspired by Natasha's thread about childhood.

I firmly believe that peeps born with gender-body mismatch experience severe dysphoria and consequences in childhood.
I do not believe such an individual could come out of childhood unscathed.
I believe this condition manifests in childhood.
Call it a sense of 'victimhood' or what you will, but I don't believe a man-child raised as a girl or a woman-child raised a boy could even simulate normalcy at all.

I had no sense of normalcy during childhood.

I did not fit into being a boy.  Everything seemed wrong.  I thought I was alien.  While I was not completely conscious of my gender identity, it was there subconsciously and was apparent to everybody something was strange with me. 


I was picked on constantly.  Beat up, abused in every way possible by my peers.  I cried constantly.  I hated it.

No sense of normalcy is dead on, it describes my entire childhood. 

I guess I haven't answered the problem perfectly correctly. Before the age of ten I was very happy and lived a normal life mostly. I had friends at school, though preferred adult company as they had more interesting things to say. The adults around me found me an odd serious child, but I had a great time although I was desperate to grow up so I could become a proper part of the world and not just a child.

It was about the age of nine or ten and childhood started to fade that problems started. Childhood in itself was fine, it was the unrealistic expectations of adulthood that did it for me. My scars are from that learning process.

Quote from: Isabelle St-Pierre on December 26, 2007, 08:13:53 PM
LOL,

Childhood was easy compared to the teen years! Hum, no wait...both sucked big time!

As a child I was constantly having problems with my parents and those around me because I didn't behave 'as expected' about all the time...well by their standards I guess, not mine. God if my step father told me one more time 'don't walk like that', 'you throw like a girl', and perhaps the most frequent one 'STOP CRYING!!'

So, yes I would say that gender problems develop early in life and that it's about impossible to emerge without some form of emotional scares.

Now, try going through high school as the opposite gender...THAT give a whole new meaning to the phrase 'Hell on earth'...

Peace and love,
Izzy

Very well summed up Izzy....

I would have loved to have been able to transition in school years. I went to an all boys school in the mid 1970's and was beated black and blue everyday for looking and acting like a girl. It wasn't anything as nice as a High School and it would have helped my whole life if transiton could have been achieved much earlier...

I left School early at 16 and again got bullied at work. During this time I nearly got raped twice and it was much harder looking like a girl and being employed as a boy. Throughout those years people would always be confused as to what gender I was which made it fairly impossible to conform. Most of us are emotionally scarred from childhood and my scars are very deep and I hated my early life and it still brings me to tears when I think about it...

One of the things I don't like about how things are just now, or at least how they were, is the kind of habits the "social system" teaches a Trans kid.
I learned to steal, lie, sneak, and all sorts of other things just to get by.

I don't like that, I think I would have had an easier time in a lot of ways if I had been more accepted a lot.

I never really got beat up, I could defend against that, but I was teased a lot, in a really nasty way, and you cant defend against words the same way you can against a punch. It really sucked. I hated it after Columbine too: they (the system, [schools, teachers, etc.]) started picking on all the kids who didn't fit in or were picked on. So it wasn't bad enough that kids gave me a hard time every day, suddenly the teachers took part too, just in a different way.

I think the only useful thing I learned in Highschool was how to draw.

That and maybe learning about how mean people are capable of being

People really are great. It took a long time to see that.

Quote from: Sarah on December 29, 2007, 11:19:02 AMOne of the things I don't like about how things are just now, or at least how they were, is the kind of habits the "social system" teaches a Trans kid.
I learned to steal, lie, sneak, and all sorts of other things just to get by.

I don't like that, I think I would have had an easier time in a lot of ways if I had been more accepted a lot.

I never really got beat up, I could defend against that, but I was teased a lot, in a really nasty way, and you cant defend against words the same way you can against a punch. It really sucked. I hated it after Columbine too: they (the system, [schools, teachers, etc.]) started picking on all the kids who didn't fit in or were picked on. So it wasn't bad enough that kids gave me a hard time every day, suddenly the teachers took part too, just in a different way.

I think the only useful thing I learned in High school was how to draw.

That and maybe learning about how mean people are capable of being

People really are great. It took a long time to see that.

I would have to agree here too...in order to survive my daily life I learned to sneak, lie, and all sorts of things to just get through the day...although I never did steal...but most likely could if I really needed to. But you also for get the walls we build up between ourselves and the rest of the world to keep them out and from discovering out true inner person. I believe a lot of trans people tend to lead a rather seclusive life...reduces the chance of being exposed for ourselves...

I wasn't as fortunate as you, in that I did regularly get beaten up just for being who I was. Verbal abuse was a daily fact of life for me too...

Can't say that much of any good came out of high school for me; well except perhaps for my love of words,  poetry, and such...

Great points.

Peace and love,
Isabelle St-Pierre