Just curious....
For me, one sign that I was trans was that around age 14(ish) I suddenly found myself rather uncomfortable with having my chest exposed. As a result, I found myself refusing to go swiming without a shirt on. Some would have looked at that and said I was self concious about my body, and yes that was true, but not for the reasons they might think. It was because sub-consioucly something deep inside me told me that my chest should not be exposed, that it was indecent to have it uncovered for everyone else to see. Why does a male feel that way? That is not a modesty common for males, but rather is a more feminine inclination. Anyways, all that to say, and ask, if anyone else out there had any simular experiances? Where you suddenly found yourself highly uncomfortable with having your chest exposed and didn't know *At least at the moment) why?

I used to be  uncomfortable with my shirt off but i put it down to being shy and self concious about being so skinny, i also thought i walked wrong but again put that down to social anxiety because but now i'm starting to rethink my motivations a bit.

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Welcome to Susan's Place. Yes to shirts but even worst was the urinals and the absolute worst was PE class. We had to change and shower in a single large room. The only way to avoid the shower was with a note from your parents and there was no way I could have got one without a huge amount of explaining - something I wasn't ready to do at that time. The fortunate thing was the last time I took PE was in grade school. I was terrible in sports anyway so I skipped PE in high school and college.

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There is a great thread about hindsight where a lot of people share this exact experience.  Here's a link...

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,228906.0.html

Bari Jo

Quote from: Dena on October 20, 2017, 10:17:02 PM
Welcome to Susan's Place. Yes to shirts but even worst was the urinals and the absolute worst was PE class. We had to change and shower in a single large room. The only way to avoid the shower was with a note from your parents and there was no way I could have got one without a huge amount of explaining - something I wasn't ready to do at that time. The fortunate thing was the last time I took PE was in grade school. I was terrible in sports anyway so I skipped PE in high school and college.

Oh god. I never entered the boy's locker room at my school. I would either do gym in my pseudo-uniform (collared shirt and khaki type pants dress code), have shorts and a tshirt on underneath and literally just remove the outer layer sitting in the bleachers, or wouldn't participate at all. No one really seemed to care, which is surprising in retrospect. Urinals too, I go into a stall no matter what.

Anybody else do the thing where you put a second shirt over the one you're wearing, then pull out the one underneath through the collar of the second to change without ever having your shirt off?

Growing up i was super isolated... To the point of being homeschooled (almost all though school) and my only real social outlet was church. In seccond grade (one of the three years that I actually went to school) I was living with my grandma and found some of my aunts old clothes and started wearing them. It felt perfectly natural. Then I started having these issues as well (not swimming without a shirt or wanting to be seen naked at all, using the stall instead of the urnals, and a bunch more little things that should have been indicatiors) I too put the idea that it wasn't "normal" onto my social/mental issues. Honestly I thought I was the only one, and that something was wrong with me. Mostly because of not even knowing that being this way existed ( again severely isolated ) let alone that I was/am. Years later I found the truth and a long time after that before I could accept it... But those are long stories in themselves.

Long story short you are not alone, even in the "little" things and thank you for reminding me.

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Yep felt the same. Search the thread called "20/20 hindsight" were we shared things of the past that make sense to us now as trans people. That was one of the things I wrote about myself, and a few people said the same.


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I've experienced the same discomfort but never associated as a gender thing, i just never really felt confortable with my body in general.
That's an interesting idea though.

I was sorta lucky at that time did gym last class.. and used the excuse I am jogging home and had a note..

I never went shirtless unless forced. PE class was the worst. In middle school not that many boys took showers after PE class, but in high school it was a different story. I was so afraid of anyone seeing me naked that I never showered after PE. Sometimes we would play football and it was 'shirts vs skins', one team would be shirtless. I truly hated that. I was never comfortable letting anyone else see my body less than fully clothed, and I was uncomfortable even seeing other guys partially unclothed.

After I came out, someone commented that now it makes sense as to why you always wore a shirt in the pool. My excuse had always been sun exposure  fears (which is true also.) Come to think of it, I guess I was terrified  of someone seeing my lower anatomy back in school. I was mortified of any thoughts of showering.  I remember coming to school late once and finding that I had to go to the school doctor by myself for the old hernia, turn head and cough routine. The class was already done with it. So I go in, do the routine, and on the way out I hear the doc tell the nurse that I was a good example of micro-penis. I had been that nervous that it was trying to hide I guess. I never had that condition in truth. Oh, if that doctor could see it now after GCS. He would feel vindicated, I'm sure! lol Funny thing was, when I heard him say it, it made me feel good, not bad.
Moni

I never liked being on the 'skins' team in PE class.  I never thought about why.  I never showered after PE class.  To be honest, not many kids did.  The teacher told us at the beginning of the term that we were supposed to, but it was never enforced.  I was relieved because I don't think I could have handled that.  At the swimming pool, I preferred changing in a cubicle if one was available.

Especially in high school, I was uncomfortable being naked in the changing rooms.  I was aiming for a masculine persona and my body was neither as masculine as the other boys nor as feminine as a girl's.  Not all of the boys believed that I had well-developed pectoral muscles.  Anyway, trans people are by definition uncomfortable with their bodies.

The thing about girls hiding their breasts is entirely cultural, though.  Until I was about 10, girls my age thought nothing of swimming topless.  I have also visited a number of communities in different parts of Africa where even adult women often went topless - some of the rural Zulus in South Africa, Himbas and Tjimbas in what is now Namibia, San in Botswana and some of the more remote Samburu in Kenya, as well as Hamar, Mursi, Karo, Konso and Dassanech in Ethiopia.  I am old now, so things may have changed since then.

Quote from: MaryT on October 21, 2017, 07:38:10 AM
The thing about girls hiding their breasts is entirely cultural, though.

I also remember an issue of National Geographic in which there was a photo of a typical American high school classroom with typical teenagers - except that the girls and boys were topless.  It was, of course, American Samoa.

Quote from: Daisy on October 20, 2017, 09:51:07 PM
Where you suddenly found yourself highly uncomfortable with having your chest exposed and didn't know *At least at the moment) why?

Well yeah... but for the opposite reason. There were things there I felt shouldn't be. And they get a lot of attention compared to most other body parts, stuck out as they are. People's eyes on them can't be avoided really

On the whole though this feeling extended to most of the rest of the body too. I'm known for covering it all up and never having a tan.

Probably mostly cultural. After all there are cultures where women spend the whole of their lives topless and nobody cares or ogles them the way that would happen here. With trans people it's probably more that they are hyper-aware of body issues and shape, it's not for other people that they cover up, but for themselves. If you've ever loathed the thought of eyes all over a body you can't stand, and those eyes judging you based on that, you know what I mean