Hey,

I see how differently schools, councillors, parents, and doctors treat transgender kids today, and it's so positive, but hard on my mind.
Sometimes between being glad for them, I ache to be able to have had that amazing opportunity.
What would have I said if teachers had taught the gender spectrum to me at 10?  What conversation would I have had about it with my friends, and parents?  What would I have explored openly in school?  How would I have been supported?  Could I have taken T blockers, and seen how I felt?  Could I have taken a light dose of E, and seen how that made me feel?  Could I have chosen something so personal for myself, and taken a new path without the damage to me from T?
Who would I have been?  How could I have felt?
The questions haunt me, and I'm so glad that the children today get the chance to find themselves, at the same time.  Their stories give older transgender people a place to really imagine having gotten it right, vicariously.
What would you have done?  What would it have been like to be accepted by a majority of people while doing it?  It's a beautiful head space.



Lauren

I would have transitioned in middle school or high school.  I would have gotten better results than I am getting now.  Plus I would have been able to live my entire adult life as who I am.

I would have transitioned sooner.

Hopefully, I would have had access to blockers in my teens.  I would have had GRS after graduating high school.  I would not have joined the Air Force, so I would have missed out on a short but amazing career.  I would have done something else instead - who knows what?

I think I would have socially and medically transitioned when allowed if I could move the clock back to the later teen years, if I felt the way I do now, that I am a woman. 

Chrissy

I wouldn't have been so worried about people finding out what I wanted to wear.  I don't think I would have transitioned back then, as I had no desire to.  I also had never heard of such a thing.

"What would you be able to do, if you could relive your teens today?"

Stay up past 7:00? 

Go out partying maybe twice on 2 consecutive days without even thinking about work the next day!

Many have said they would seek transition earlier, but how many really would have the confidence, mentality
and especially support from families etc..   

My family would have supported me right into some sort of religious conversion therapy arrangement.  "Trans, gay, potato, potato.  Just read scriptures and beat him until he snaps out of it."

BUT assuming that didn't happen, I imagine my life would have been more peaceful but a lot less interesting and/or exciting.  I might have even applied myself in high school.

I was a dancer in my teens and a pretty good one at that. I won a few "modern dance" competitions including placing in regional finals. I was not discouraged by my parents at all but more so my friends. I fell into that "odd" category as far as they were concerned. I would most likely have pursued that into a career if I was cis female, as it was I ended up as a nurse...one of 5 AMAB's in my class of 86 nursing students...you can well imagine the flack I got for that!! LOL 

I am happy for those who get to be themselves now and I hope things only get better. To think about it for myself would be pointless, who knows what my life would have been like. I did come out to my family when I was 13, it did not go well even though they have always known about me. Was forced out to the world 6 months later and it was even worse. 1984 was a really bad year for me. I wish that I did not have to go through that but I did, more than 30 years later I don't want think about what might have been. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. If I was born a girl, if I could have transitioned as a teen, if I was super smart, if I was beautiful, heck if I could even sing so that my cat doesn't look at me like I am torturing him! I would rather daydream about the guy that smiled at me while I was shopping today, or the perfect boots that they didn't have in my size. I am where I always wanted to be, just took a tad longer is all.

I knew I was trans as a teenager, but honestly, I'm not sure I would have come out to my parents as a teenager if I had to do it all over again. I definitely thought about telling my parents that I wanted to see a therapist. But things were still horrible back in the late 80s for transgender folks trying to transition, and it would have come in the middle of my parents getting divorced. It would have been a dreadful experience for everyone, including me.

I think if I had to do it again, I would have come out and transitioned a couple years after college - I definitely had the opportunity then and thought about it, but chose a different path. Instead I waited until my mid-forties - that was the bad move.

On the other hand, if we had had today's more accepting attitudes back when I was a teenager, I would have come out and transitioned in a heartbeat.

Quote from: EllenJ2003 on March 30, 2019, 09:01:17 PM
I'm kind of conflicted about this (mainly because [as I found out from the surgeon who did my SRS] due to the state of the art for SRS in the 70s, and 80s, would have meant that my surgical result would have been poor at best, due to me being microphallic), but hey I might as well mention it - I tried doing it in my teens.

I figured out I was TS in the summer of 1977 (when I was 13), and spent most of the summer in the public library, trying to learn what little info. there was at the time, via digging up basically magazine articles. In late 1978, at the age of 15, after almost getting caught with an article about three Milwaukee area transsexuals, that I had appropriated from the news magazine of what was the Sunday edition of the Milwaukee Journal (which my parents subscribed to), I came clean about my being TS to my mom.  The response - "are you sure? People like that have a lot of problems, and usually wind up living awful lives."  Of course she told dad, and and they both basically tag teamed me - things like: "you're really a boy;" you're not like those people who have sex changes;" "now you're going to get over this nonsense right?"  Oh yeah, and mom literally watched me throw away (tearing up in the process), any magazine articles I copied, science fiction novels with sex change themes in them (I had a paperback copy of Robert Helinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil"), etc.  Also, as I found out to my chagrin about 10 months later (late summer 1979, when mom found a piece of fan fiction I'd written [and thought I'd hidden well enough] based on Jack Chalker's "Well of Souls" series, where I was the protagonist who went from male to female, and blew up about it in front of my dad, sister, and brother - not cool!), my mom went all police state, and made it a habit searching for anything I might have hidden that had transsexual subject matter.

So, me transitioning as a teenager was a definite no-go for me in the late 70s and early 80s.  My parents constantly watched me, to make sure I wasn't straying from the proper path (being a boy), and would get rather nasty, if they saw any "indications that I still thought I was/wanted to be a girl.  It was not fun, and I seriously contemplated running away - I actually made an abortive attempt to do so, after I had to stop my dad from hitting my mom, when he was drunk, a month and a half after my mom's blow-up (when she discovered my little piece of fan fiction).  My brother and sister (who basically treated me like I was some kind of weirdo/freak after they learned about my TSism), stood there doing nothing when my dad did the nasty drunk thing (dad was decent when he was sober, but he could be a very unpleasant person when he was drunk - thank goodness he quit drinking when he got cancer in 1990), so that left it to me, to stop dad.  It sort of became the straw that broke the camel's back. 

I was fed up with the intimidation I got from my parents for being TS, and I was angry at the fact that my mom, while she would be angry with my dad, would probably be nowhere near as angry with him, as she'd been with me a month and half earlier when she discovered my fan fiction.  So feeling beyond upset, I hopped on my 10-speed bike, and left, with no intention of ever returning home (I learned from my mom last year, that her and dad started wondering the same thing [I had left home for good], when didn't return home in a couple of hours or so).  I did not calm down until I was almost 40 miles from home.  At that time I realized that I had no money, and would wind up on the streets as a just shy of 16 year old runaway, with a more than likely nasty fate awaiting me.  So, as much as I hated to, I turned around, and went back home, where I put up with my parent's crap.  Oh yeah, when I got home I didn't talk to my mom for at least a week, and I didn't say a word to my dad for almost 2 months.

Yeah, trying to transition as a teenager was a flop for me.  Still, it would have been great to transition then (despite the probably poor post-op SRS results).  Aside from the usual prevention of major amounts of testosterone damage, it would have been great to go to the prom as a girl (I NEVER even considered doing it in boy mode), dating as girl in both high school & college, possibly getting married in my 20s to Mr. Right, etc.

Oh well, that's the way things go.  You know what's funny, my mom knew that I was already cross dressing at age 12.  Despite that, her and dad always hoped I'd "come to my senses."  Dad even thought I'd gotten over it, until I told him in early 1999, that I was transitioning (he was unhappy to say the least).  Luckily for me, both mom and dad did come to terms with what I was doing a few weeks before my SRS in 2003, and as a result my parents and I ended having a close relationship (I took care of my dad a few days before he died of cancer in 2015, and my mom and I are still close to this day).

Wow! You think it is just you and then, just wow!

Easiest first I guess. "I Will Fear No Evil". I did a book report on that in the fifth grade! I didn't even remember that until I read your post. "Friday" was my favorite Heinlein book but I didn't read that until later. Of course the book report lead to another conference with my grandma I think, I don't actually remember but I think it did, they happened so often. I know so many here wanted to be a girl, sad to say that I wanted even more to be human, "Friday" was so much more appealing to me then. Probably why "Bladerunner 2049" was so amazing to me, my favorite character in any book or movie was Joi. My friends all make fun of me for being a geek so don't bother, I have heard it all before. Just wow! Someone else read that book.

You can't be a girl, that is what my grandma said to me over and over. The psychiatrists all said the same thing, you are a boy and you will never be a girl. I hated when they dragged me to different churches to have them pray for me the most.

I did leave, when I was 15. I was already broken then but there was too much between us. I was different, I didn't belong. They did help me then. Not a place to live, I had worked for a guy then for three years that owned probably a quarter of that crappy town and he rented me a house, she helped me to be able to stay in school and she spent part of every Saturday helping me clean, cook and teaching me everything that I had been denied until then. Unimportant, but I did leave and I understand how you felt. I am so glad that you worked it out with your parents, I never did. They were my grandparents but they were the only parents I ever knew. I don't think that it would have been possible to save my relationship with my grandfather but it was probably possible with my grandmother, she died within 2 years though.

Thank you for your post.

Quote from: Colleen_definitely on March 30, 2019, 05:00:37 PM
My family would have supported me right into some sort of religious conversion therapy arrangement.  "Trans, gay, potato, potato.  Just read scriptures and beat him until he snaps out of it."

BUT assuming that didn't happen, I imagine my life would have been more peaceful but a lot less interesting and/or exciting.  I might have even applied myself in high school.

I think my father would have reacted similarly, and with the best of intentions.

I don't think there is any way I could have endured what I would have had to endure to stand up to my parents. I think it may have been a blessing that I didn't know. I lost a lifetime of opportunity, peace and happiness; but I'm alive. If I had known about myself then, I'm not sure that would be the case.

But if I could have been then the person I am today? I'd have said, "Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead!" I know how to handle that kind of situation now. You simply refuse to submit, no matter what they throw at you. You may not live through it, but if not you'll die who you are, and not some sad caricature of yourself.

Escape my family and avoid the 'cure', transition properly while young and undamaged by unethical treatment, and live my life.

Not that this is something I've thought about much...

Wow girls,

The depth of your experiences, dam.  How could I have stood up to some of that I wondered.  I just hid my feelings, and thought I always could.
The stories from younger people are therapy to me.  Some issues, but real hope.  If only for me, but I'm so happy for them.  It's bringing up old pain, but some of it is healed for me each time.
OMG Ellen, sorry for bringing all of that up for you.  I liked your fantasy about going to Prom as a girl.  I would have liked ballet.
My thought was more along the lines of what it would have been like to have accepting parents also.  I recall the singer Cher talking of how she accepted her trans boy, but noted if she had had a trans girl, they would have had such fun in her closet together.  Wow Cher.
The fantasy helps at times.


Lauren

Quote from: Nightfall on March 30, 2019, 11:25:04 PM
Wow! You think it is just you and then, just wow!

Easiest first I guess. "I Will Fear No Evil". I did a book report on that in the fifth grade! I didn't even remember that until I read your post. "Friday" was my favorite Heinlein book but I didn't read that until later. Of course the book report lead to another conference with my grandma I think, I don't actually remember but I think it did, they happened so often. I know so many here wanted to be a girl, sad to say that I wanted even more to be human, "Friday" was so much more appealing to me then. Probably why "Bladerunner 2049" was so amazing to me, my favorite character in any book or movie was Joi. My friends all make fun of me for being a geek so don't bother, I have heard it all before. Just wow! Someone else read that book.

You can't be a girl, that is what my grandma said to me over and over. The psychiatrists all said the same thing, you are a boy and you will never be a girl. I hated when they dragged me to different churches to have them pray for me the most.

I did leave, when I was 15. I was already broken then but there was too much between us. I was different, I didn't belong. They did help me then. Not a place to live, I had worked for a guy then for three years that owned probably a quarter of that crappy town and he rented me a house, she helped me to be able to stay in school and she spent part of every Saturday helping me clean, cook and teaching me everything that I had been denied until then. Unimportant, but I did leave and I understand how you felt. I am so glad that you worked it out with your parents, I never did. They were my grandparents but they were the only parents I ever knew. I don't think that it would have been possible to save my relationship with my grandfather but it was probably possible with my grandmother, she died within 2 years though.

Thank you for your post.

I didn't think anybody would quote my post, but thanks.    I removed my post last night, because I began to feel a few hours later, that I was meandering, and it seemed to become a whiny rant (sorry about that).

To reiterate, it was not fun being TS in the late 70s & early 80s. 

College in the 80s wasn't much better.  Despite going to a major university (complete with a medical school), there was zero for resources, and information (other than a lot of stupid ->-bleeped-<- porn).  It didn't help that the mentality that permeated my so called progressive/left wing alma mater (yes, left wing, there was rioting at the University of Wisconsin in protest of the Vietnam War [a couple of students even took swan dives off of the 20 story admin building], Sterling Hal was bombed as a protest against the Vietnam war, there was a lot of support for the communist Sandinistas when I was attending the UW, etc.) was very much in the vein of "being an effeminate gay male is OK (after all you're just showing your unjustly suppressed feminine side), but being transsexual is a no-no (sort of in a milder, and mutated version of the TERF mindset of Janice Raymond - you're just an altered male, and are deluding yourself that you're a woman; you just believe that you can only act in a female manner, and keep society as a whole happy, if you physically present as female)."  Ugh! 

I wouldn't be surprised if I suffered academically because of this situation (oftentimes I very much was on autopilot just trying to get through the day, because I felt generally depressed in a low grade way).  So much for receiving a diploma from the Dean of The College of Engineering on Graduation Day, with my proper name on it (though I was able to get my college transcripts changed name-wise after my legal name change 13 plus years later - the diploma itself?  Nope, they won't do that).  So much for dating guys (I did not date in either high school or college), and (though it was a very long shot, but it did happen for a few college attending transsexuals back then) possibly falling in love and finding Mr. Right.

This may stretch out but I will try to keep it as short as I can. No one needs to read it though, just putting it down in words helps me to work through things.

I never talked about all of this stuff, I had a made up life that I told people. I was so sure that no one could possibly like someone like me. Not just being trans but everything. I was not a bad kid, did get into more than my share of trouble then taking on anyone who had a problem with me wanting to be a girl, but that only happened after I was 14. That is not enough, there was so much to that, so much more to all of my childhood but it is pointless to talk about. I am only just now discovering that, will get back to that closer to the end.

I feel like I came from a different world, not like I am an alien or anything , just that my life was soooooooo different from anyone I have ever met. There is no one thing I could point to and say there, that is what sucked, that was the problem that caused all of this. Not even being trans. Sure they say I spent most of my time dressed as a girl until I started school, that wasn't the problem though. My older brother went through all of the same stuff I went through until then, abuse, parents that tried so hard to get rid of us. He had it worse in a way, I don't think my father ever hit me, then again he never had an older brother that abused him like I did. Again there is soooooo much more to that. Could it be at my grandparents then who finally gave us stability but for me it was more torture because I was not allowed to be a girl. I was so afraid of the orphanage that my grandparents argued about sending me to. Wanna know why my thoroughly awful older brother was my hero? I remember so little of my childhood but one thing I will never forget. We had been playing hide and seek, I think I was around 8, I hid in the coat closet inside the door. My grandparents came in the door and they were arguing about me, again, I don't remember everything they said but it ended with. "You have to quit coddling the boy." My papap said. My grandma yelled,"He is not a bad boy! Why should I not be good to him!" My papap sighed then and said, "No he is not but you know what he will become if we can't change him. Is that what you want for him? You have to quit coddling him or he will have to go." That was my time with my grandparents, how do you deal with that as a child? My brother that evening when I asked him if he would come visit me at the orphan home said, "It has always just been us, we will always be together. If you get sent away I will go too." Yep, he was my world back then. Twice in my life he was there for me in such a big way that I will never be able to repay him, that was one. Not it though, shouldn't that be enough? It could have been what came next. My grandparents retired when I was eleven and they were moving back to their childhood home in West Virginia and I was not to come along. My brother had straightened out and was a mostly good kid but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't be boy enough to make my grandfather happy so they had to find something to do with me. They ended up sending me to live with my aunt and her husband who had just bought a hog farm upstate. He had been molesting me since I was seven every time they visited, I didn't know how to tell anyone that though and it had to be better than the orphanage or foster care right? It didn't turn out that way. It was so charming and nice to everyone but that was just to those that didn't live with him, found that out too late. It was a very, very bad year for me. It ended when his best friend caught him with me and I was back living in a state home waiting for foster care. That definitely could be enough to end anyone right? No, not the end. My mom if you can believe it drove from the very bottom of West Virginia to the very top of Pennsylvania to get me. It was doomed from the start, my stepfather no longer beat me, he had spent too much time in jail for that when I was little. It was not them this time, it was me. I am not even sure how human I was then, I couldn't be around people. I got headaches so bad at school and they kept calling my mom from work to take me home. Finally they set aside a cot for me in an empty room that I could go to when the headaches got really bad. It was too late though, I had to go. They dropped me off at my grandparents again and back with my older brother. He became an even bigger hero to me then. That summer it was just him and me, we did our work and ate with our grandparents but other than that we were alone together. I never talked about what happened, I couldn't then, never did after either until I was two years or more into transition. He let me cry, he let me yell, he let me speed talk for days, he let me go without talking at all for even longer. Might not sound amazing but we were so different and though we lived together we never spent much time together before. He was in no way bad to me and we could play together okay but it was rare, we had nothing in common. That summer we were together every minute of every day, I think he saved my life, I know he saved my sanity. Anyway I told my grandparents that I couldn't be a boy anymore a year later, then my life got really bad. You know, I was stupid enough to believe that I could handle whatever happened. I could not. The mental hospital and all of the shrinks were pretty bad, having people pray for god to remove your evil really sucked but eventually we made peace, I don't dress as a girl, date a guy or do anything to make people think I wanted to be a girl and would stop trying to fix me. Then somehow everyone at school found out about the mental hospital and psychiatrists and why. Then I found out what hell could be like.

I am done, sorry for all of that. You see, my life wasn't one thing and it definitely wasn't all bad. No one needs to feel bad for me, being completely honest, I did not know another life. I knew other people were so different and had such different lives but I didn't really know what that ment. I had no reference and I knew that I was different so I just thought that was the way different people lived. I happen to know people that had it much worse. The one person that I spent any time with that brief stint with my mom was a neighbor girl that her father was the same to her as my uncle was to me, her mother was a drunk though and she had no one to love her. My mom told me when I asked about her later in my life that she committed suicide not more than a year after I left, she was 12 years old. I know that my life can sound awful and it was, it was just my life though, when you are going through it and you have never known another way to live, it just is. I lived through it, eked out moments of happiness and finally made my way to where I am today. It is all still there though even worse, I don't have the trans issue anymore to distract me. So I talk about it too much. I say I won't but I do. I don't want to but I will. No one needs to feel anyway about it at all, just something that comes out sometimes. That really is my life, I don't understand why all of that should happen to one person but it did. You know what really seems unfair though, you would think that I could at least have had an easy transition, nope, not for me. I got so many of those things that people are afraid of when they transition.

So there, that is why I am so ridiculous when it comes to abusing you nice people with my sad life. I hate it, I can't even be myself around my friends anymore, not completely, no one wants to hear about my life but I won't lie anymore. How would you react as my friend and you ask why I smile all the time but I cannot smile for a picture and I tell you the truth? My uncle was only not hitting or yelling at me when he was molesting me, but he kept taking pictures of me and making me smile for the camera until I couldn't smile anymore, after that he wasn't even nice to me then. Tell you what, I found out that sucks all the happiness out of the room quick. I won't lie, but no one wants to know the truth so I keep quiet, or just say that it's not worth talking about. I don't trust therapists, I have had waaaaaay too many bad experiences and my therapist now is a good one but when she pushes me I just shut down. There is a child crying in the back of my head and there is nothing I can do for her. Then occasionally I drink a little and start writing, then it gets to be more information than anyone needs or wants and the next day I feel horrible about it. I feel so, so, so bad for writing anything at all. If I do, please don't think about it is not worth the time and know that I am sorry to the bottom of my soul for subjecting anyone to it at all.

The only answer I should have gave is.

I really don't know how my life would have been different, my imagination isn't that good.

Anyhoo, laters,
I am going to hide away in shame for a while.

Nightfall, thanks for sharing your story.  While things were pretty rough at times for me, they were a walk in the park compared to what you dealt with.  Here's to hoping you reach the light at the end of your tunnel, like I reached it at the end of mine.   

When I was 17, I thought about transition. That was back in 1967. The only information I  had available to me was from newspapers, magazines and television. Needless to say that information was worthless.

If I ever get a redo in life, then I would have transitioned as a teenager. No need for any FFS and I could have lived my entire adult life as I wish.