Age 6-7. I was in the second grade.  The teacher had the class (parochial school) pray silently for something, then went around the class asking what each student had prayed for.

"I want to be a girl."

*WHACK*  A yardstick across the wrist, for asking God to do something sinful.

I learned to hide it, got caught dressing at age 15, was "cured' by testosterone injections and the parish priest, and stayed 'cured', successfully repressing my 'sinful perversions', while I went to college, military service, and got married.  The cure started coming undone in my late 20s.

At age 32, while interviewing persons for my engineering team, I interviewed a woman obviously in transition.  By the end of our day-long interview process her 5 o'clock shadow was showing.  At one point, I thought "She's so brave.  I wish I could do that."  Wait.  What?!??  My subconscious had outed me to myself.  I managed to keep it hidden and repressed, for another 30 years for the sake of my wife and small children, now grown.  Then I had my meltdown, came out, and find myself here.


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Quote from: Michelle_P on December 16, 2016, 11:01:04 PM

*WHACK*  A yardstick across the wrist, for asking God to do something sinful.

It is pretty sad, I just came back from a rather miserable site, with rather miserable people who seem intent on insisting that TG people are forcing TG on people, when it is quite the opposite.  I tried to explain that, but of course, it fell on deaf ears.

I'm sorry you had to go through that, if only these people had known what sort of impact this would have had on our lives.

Quote from: zamber74 on December 16, 2016, 11:07:20 PM
I'm sorry you had to go through that, if only these people had known what sort of impact this would have had on our lives.

I wish they were alive now, so I could show them in detail what miserable failures they were.  Debate format, nice and public, or something more... intimate... would be fine.

We all have our little fantasies.


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By the age of 13, I knew that I didn't fit. It took 30 years to work out why...

Sno

between the age of 4/5, I have memory's of asking my mum why I cant be a girl and wear a skirt to school like the other girls and look at the catalogue and ask for females clothes and toys, I also remember being in the Doctors and her asking about this as she was getting worried, the Doctor told her it was a phase that a lot of boys go through, what he did not say its a phase that would last all of my life.

Most of my childhood was completely carefree, just being a child, playing outside with my older brother, or with our toys and legos and home made castles/houses for our action figures/dolls. It wasn't really until I was about 5 or 6 years old when I was sexually assaulted and learned firsthand there was a physical difference between boys and girls, that it all started to spiral out. We started learning about sexuality and gender in school and it only got worse. Suddenly there was this awful realization that I was 'flawed.' I was a mistake. That extra hardware down there shouldn't be there. At the onset of puberty, I began to have nervous breakdowns where I'd either harm myself or shave EVERYTHING. Arms, legs, face, eyebrows, head. (My brother and I were never allowed to have our hair longer than a quarter inch. We'd be shaven like sheep if ever it grew longer than this. I spent most of my life looking like Eleven from 'Stranger Things.')

Gender really didn't matter to me but my older sister named me Tessa at age 3 and we played together as sisters.  My original family consisted of 13 children and I did not make other friends till well along in school.  I liked being with my sisters, baking cookies and treats and reading books.  I simply had a deeply secretive and unwavering feeling that I would some day be a mom.  Catholic school was the start of segregation and the rigidly enforced gender roles.  I wanted to be with and play with other girls.  A punishable offense that was not allowed and the boys were also able to see me as a sissy in a culture where sports and jocks were king.  I was actually afraid of those stupid footballs (obviously not designed to catch) and anything thrown at me made me duck.  Hilarious to the boys   I hated school and finally left at age 16, preferring to be homeless and joining the army at 17 yo.  I once believed puberty would be when the magical but undetailed  "change" would happen.  Not hilarious any more and with no knowledge or language for how I felt I did what I assumed everyone did.  Live by coping with self loathing and shame and make the best of it.  Like so many of us, I made that work until I was depressed enough that life no longer really mattered.  I was not actively suicidal and seemingly successful in life.  My shadow girl was so deeply submerged I might have drowned completely.

Oh yes, life is better now and there is no better time to recognize ourselves.  If we look at some of the legal victories for transgender people we can see that many of them were recently won by children with supportive parents.  Don't we wish we could of all had that early recognition and loving support??  My parents never really knew me.

There is one good thing about suppressing one's "real" gender, though...the person can experience, for a while, acceptance, live a "conventional" life, and have children. People who transition at puberty seldom reproduce. But hard to make the call. The suffering may not be worth it.

Even as a partial transmale I suffered depression and bewilderment, wondering why I wasn't behaving in an accepted manner. And because females are allowed to be "tomboys" in US society, I didn't suffer the rejection a transwoman would.

I suppose one reason parents choose to ignore it when children declare themselves trans or gay..they subconsciously fear losing the possibility of grandchildren.

I knew I was different in the first grade, but I was 9 years old and in the third grade when it REALLY started to hit, and I learned about the changes that females go through.

At the age I am now, 29.

I've never felt 'right'. Every single memory I have of me being younger has a sort of footnote to it, saying "Obviously this would have went differently if Mark was a 'normal' child". However, it has only been this year that I was able to understand WHY that was. I have suffered from debilitating OCD for my entire adult life, so any genuine emotions/feelings/identifying thoughts were either suppressed or lumped in with the 'intrusive' thoughts. This year we changed my medication and, while I'm still affected by other forms of anxiety, the intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviours completely stopped. I could think clearly for the first time in... Well, in my memory.

And one thought kept coming back to me. Like, I'd wondered before how my life would have turned out if I was a woman, but had always just skipped on to the something else before really considering it. With no distractions or 'noise', though it started to all make sense. Looking back at me, looking back at 'Mark's life, everything just became clear. I wasn't 'Mark' at all. It's almost amusing looking back how obvious it all seems now, but also a bit sad that I've lost so much time to not really connecting with myself... That's why I don't want to wait any more.

TL;DR - 29. And not a moment too soon.

for me, it was maybe when i was 5... i knew that i had something between my legs that shouldnt be there... i didnt know much about boys or girls at that age... i just knew that what i had did not belong there.. even i my youth, i would try on whatever female clothes i could find when my parents werent at home...

Erm lets see now, wishing i was a girl around age 4ish or 5 i have my earilest memories, mild dysporia here and there at age 13 and big dysporia that kills me at age 19 :3

I was 32. I was finished with transition within 11 months, and I've been grateful ever since. Not everyone knows when they're a kid (I do believe the people who say they did!), and so I like to tell my story so that someone else like me might not have to wonder if they were faking it because they *didn't* realize as a kid.

I must have been around 5 or 6 when I first felt that something was wrong. However, I must have been about 8 or 9 when I first saw and examined girl parts (my sister).  After that, I had frequent revelations of me having girl parts.

SRS is probably not a possibility for me but I would at least like to have a beautiful smooth crotch with a proper urethra relocation.  I would then seek to find clothing that fits properly.  I would even look forward to being comfortable using the female restrooms and other facilities in spite of having an "M" on my legal identification.

I started feeling weird around 6, then accepted who I was internally when I was 17. It wasn't until this year (26 years old) that the dysphoria got so bad I felt like transition was "do or die."

Around 6-7 I guess, and it hit me proper around puberty when my body began doing things I'd hoped it never would

It wasn't until I was 22 years old

The earliest i can remeber i was about 6 or 7. i didnt find out but transgender was untill i was 11 though.