I think I just developed a trans identity as time came on... was pretty obsessed with androgyny and was an outcast among my male peers though

This topic thread reminds me of the value of a real education about gender identity and sexuality.  Stuff that did not exist in the 1950s.  In the absence of factual information we kids just filled in the blanks, made stuff up and tried to make sense out of what seemed impossible.  Sort of like what the ignoramuses of our current world do; disregard the facts and make stuff up.

How much better it is to now to recognize educated parents who see the bright possibilities and potential for their transgender children.....

Quote from: Tessa James on May 20, 2016, 04:02:12 PM
This topic thread reminds me of the value of a real education about gender identity and sexuality.  Stuff that did not exist in the 1950s.  In the absence of factual information we kids just filled in the blanks, made stuff up and tried to make sense out of what seemed impossible.  Sort of like what the ignoramuses of our current world do; disregard the facts and make stuff up.

How much better it is to now to recognize educated parents who see the bright possibilities and potential for their transgender children.....

I'm not sure i understand i'm slow i apologies could you try rewording that?
I got lost on the part "The value of a real education about gender identity"
do you mean what is taught to kids about gender?

Tysilio --

Has anyone ever told you you look a lot like Sean Connery? 

Having recently met him I can safely say he is quite the gentleman to share a toast with;D

Quote from: Midnightstar on May 20, 2016, 05:41:35 PM


I'm not sure i understand i'm slow i apologies could you try rewording that?
I got lost on the part "The value of a real education about gender identity"
do you mean what is taught to kids about gender?

As a frequent volunteer I tell people "I am slow but I work cheap"

I suggest there really was no education about gender identity or sexual orientation when I was a kid growing up in the 1950s.  Since we did not know much, we kids filled in the blank spots with what we imagined was correct.  Therefore I thought I would turn into a girl at puberty.  I was hugely disappointed to find out I was wrong   There is far better access to information for kids and parents these days.

We now know that our gender identity is not immutable or directly corresponds to anatomy.

probably gonna forget most but some i remember are

i remember, when i was young enough to, my father would take me to the men's loo because it's faster that way. but when i turned the age where i cannot go anymore, i got disappointed. i kept asking when i wanted to go to the toilet if dad could take me to the men's, but my mother would refuse and i would feel very sad for no reason (well, no reason for little me).

then, when i was at school, i would play with the boys more than i played with the girls, and when we split up for separate lessons based on sex, i would have no friends to play with because the girls don't know me well.

i remember being way more energetic and more trouble than my brother, but then again he's very tame even as a kid.

only one out of the many, many stuffed toys i have was "female". everyone else is male! might be my need to play with boys and not girls.

i developed a crush on a girl and told girls that lined up behind me (we lined up separated by sex and height, and i was fairly short as a kid so i was the first three/four, while the girl i had a crush on was one of the tallest of the class. so there was a good amount of girls sandwiched between us) to tell her i wanted to kiss her on the lips. got real excited when she said yeah. didn't kiss her though, haha.

you know how when you were kids, doing something cool was enough to impress all the girls and get them to like you? i got some tips on how to run fast by one of the fastest runners in the class so i could run fast too and "impress the girls".

i always liked running and playing soccer. told my mom and dad i wanted to be a soccer player and even kicked around a tiny soccer ball at one end of the hallway in our apartment to the tiny goal at the other end. they said people who play soccer have short stubby legs and girls aren't pretty with short stubby legs. i was confused but that didn't stop me from kicking the soccer ball. them throwing it away made me stop though.

i loved messing up my brother's stuff. i pretended i was king kong and stepped all over his model streets and picked up his road signs and flipped over his cars. i picked up playing with model cars/buses from him.

i was really into video games. i asked my parents repeatedly but they never let me play. not until one of their friends "gave" his xbox for us to "keep" because he got himself an xbox 360. he also gave us five games, two car games, a tennis game, a soccer game and a shooting game. they obviously didn't let me play the shooting game because they think it's too "violent". i kept that one mcdonalds game they gave out in happy meals, the one where you're shooting hoops. i got really upset when they threw that away too.

i loved wearing caps backwards.

i love guns and i really wanted to shoot things. my mom hates it when people use the gun handsign but i always did. i even youtubed how to make a paper gun. had it half-way made until i gave up because it was all secretive.

i get really upset when i have to wear a dress for school, and when i was old enough (toward the end of the primary school years), i started wearing PE kit always.

never seen a boy as a potential date. i tried imagining it before, me dating/being with one of the boys in my class. but it felt weird and boring and the woman in the picture was never me. after that weird moment, i only ever thought of a guy as a friend, or even a brother if we were that close. had one bro confess he had a crush on me and that weirded me out very much.

got really excited when i got an (albeit wrong) description to my "condition". a tutor called me a tomboy, after learning what it was, i got really excited and i said "YEAH THATS ME" but my tutor said that's not a good thing and that i would grow out of it.

identified with only boy characters in tv shows.

didn't understand why they put me with the girls to get the "sexual organ talk". made silly jokes about the pads they gave us.

was really proud that i was one of the last girls to got their period.

then i got really sad when i got my period. like, really, really sad. hated it when my mother talked to me about it.

and then i joined high school. a few months after that i actually went and googled what i felt. that was five years ago.

Quote from: Tessa James on May 21, 2016, 11:26:18 AM
As a frequent volunteer I tell people "I am slow but I work cheap"

I suggest there really was no education about gender identity or sexual orientation when I was a kid growing up in the 1950s.  Since we did not know much, we kids filled in the blank spots with what we imagined was correct.  Therefore I thought I would turn into a girl at puberty.  I was hugely disappointed to find out I was wrong   There is far better access to information for kids and parents these days.

We now know that our gender identity is not immutable or directly corresponds to anatomy.

Oh yea, very true i'd agree
Heck i actually started this because iv'e always liked hearing how others new or what helped them maybe realize looking back things like that. But if it is helpful in other ways and then great i'm glad.
For me personally i think i new what would happen at puberty but the reality didn't hit until later....i wonder if i did the same but instead of hoping to turn into it i ignored it and refused to believe it was possible in general.

In elementary school, I was always more interested in whatever the boys were doing than the girls (the guys would play football or soccer, the girls always talked about boy bands like the Jonas Brothers (this was like 4th-5th grade, since I can't remember any further back)), and I never wanted to wear dresses or skirts or look pretty in general (which frustrated my mom endlessly). Much later (and it took a while), I discovered I had a vagina (no one bothered to tell me about it), and I didn't like it at all. I know I was pre-pubescent at the time and didn't know much about it, but it was just weird. I felt like I shouldn't have it. As soon as I was allowed, I cut my hair really short.

The dysphoria didn't start until after I hit puberty. I hated my chest, and the fact that I had a period every month even though the thought of carrying children never appealed to me. I used to try to wear really baggy shirts to hide my chest, but it never really worked.

~Axel

-Kept calling myself my parents' "Daughter".  Always thought I was just mixing up words.  lol
-I've always made friends with girls much faster and almost exclusively.
-I've always been really into cooking and sewing.
-Really wish I could get pregnant
-Have seriously considered trying to use hormones to breastfeed. (Before giving any thought to transitioning.)
-When I was 20 and grew my hair long for the first; I felt ENLIGHTENED. 
-There's a question I've asked every male friend I've ever had. (What would you do if you could have a woman's body for 1 day?)
-Whenever men would talk to me about Sportsball or the way they think of women (I am a lesbian BTW), It would always make me feel so isolated or like I'm talking to some kind of alien. (Assumed it was just because I'm nerdy.  lol)

I have this image of trying to think back to signs, it's like pulling thread on a sweater, and it just keeps going.

I hated getting my hair cut, because I wanted long hair. I was drawn to dolls at the toy aisle, but most of the stereotypical boy's toys, I had no interest in.
I wore a sham cloth used for polishing cars over my head to resemble long hair. There was a ton of things...

I asked and got a strawberry shortcake doll for my Christmas present, wanting to be Wonder Woman every time me and friends played super hero's to name a few.

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It's amazing reading all of these childhood experiences and tendencies. For me, I always hated getting my hair cut. My parents thought they were being helpful when they let me pick my own out of the salon's book. Unfortunately, I didn't feel comfortable telling them I didn't like any of the hair styles, and I wanted to look in the girl's book instead. Once I was in college, I stopped cutting my hair and grew it out long. People asked why, but I could never really come up with a reason. I usually said that I like heavy metal and they accepted that answer. It never was the real reason, but I didn't understand the real reason until more recently.

I never really got along with girls. They always thought I was creepy and wanted to stay away. I was teased incessantly by the boys, so I was a loner most of the time (which didn't help me reduce my creepiness).

I wrote a lot of fiction stories, all of which had female main characters and males were only seen as minor characters or extras. I loved coming up with female character names (I had lists of them) but had a lot of trouble coming up with male names I liked.

The problem I have with this exercise of remembering childhood experiences is whether I'm ascribing connections and reasons to these random events and tendencies, like someone who experienced something traumatic and is fishing for reasons why it happened. I'm glad I have a good therapist to help sort this out...

Quote from: Michelle_P on May 08, 2016, 10:01:38 PM
Praying that I would wake up being a girl, at age 7 or thereabouts.  I attended a religious school, and one time the teacher had us all pray, then went around the classroom asking what we had prayed for.  My answer earned me a yardstick broken across my wrist.  Now I'm agnostic bordering on atheist.

Good times back in the 1950s...   

I too prayed that I would wake up a girl.  So God hzc the Doctor prescribe Spiro for a heart problem. and 25 years later I have a decent set of man boobs. No I am no Dolly Parton. I spent a lot of time praying.

Does owning the entire 6 seasons of Dawsons Creek (and the special edition DVD of the last episode) as box set count?

On a more realistic level - wearing my moms bras and nylons and feeling so much better around the age of 7...

Quote from: DawnOday on May 25, 2016, 09:29:57 AM
I too prayed that I would wake up a girl.  So God hzc the Doctor prescribe Spiro for a heart problem. and 25 years later I have a decent set of man boobs. No I am no Dolly Parton. I spent a lot of time praying.

Well, it's funny how these things work out.  I had a urology problem for which the doctor prescribed finasteride, a weak anti-androgen, several years ago.  With several years of college biochem, I knew stuff about the actual means of operation of the drug.     I got a pretty good set from this.  Spiro would have been easier.  I'm still waiting to start official HRT, but I did have someone in group ask me how long I had been on HRT.     Side effects can be wonderful.

The bladder outlet obstruction problem has returned, alas.  I clearly need a stronger anti-androgen, Doc!  And that triggered a dream the other night.  I had to get a trans-uretheral prostatic resection (TURP, where a thin tool is slid up the urethra and bits of the prostate are whittled out to unblock things).  In the dream, the doc wakes me up in the recovery room and tells me there was a little problem, and they had to remove the male genetalia.    Oopsie...   

Looking at woman's and girl's clothing and jewelry in the Sears catalog. Spending hours of dreaming of which outfits would look good on me. Had no interest in looking at anything else in the catalog. Had no interest in boy's things. Never got interested in men's things even now. And my dad try really hard to get me interested whatever was male associated. Sports, boating, working in the yard, etc. I could never accomplish or reach a level of competence that satisfied my parents. No one ever stopped to think about what I might like or want to do or be at that time.

When I was little I somehow got the notion that women weren't breastfeeding much anymore and therefore would quickly evolve to no longer having breasts. I got scared that if I were to reincarnate and come back as female that I would not have any breasts.

I obviously did not have a firm grasp on science at whatever age that was.

In fourth grade i wished everyone in the world was the other gender except friends,family,etc. basically i wanted to be a boy and have everyone i cared about stay their own gender