I thought it would be cool to hear people's earliest signs of trans-ness.  I myself never really felt trans until college-- until then I just saw myself as a tomboy.  But when I was little I used to read books or watch movies and I'd always picture myself as one of the male characters and want to be like them.  When I'd picture myself grown up, I'd imagine myself like one of he strong masculine heros in my books and movies.  Until I realized I could never be like them because I'm a girl and then I'd get really upset.  I didn't recognize it as a sign of anything back then, but I'm starting to think it might have been an early, consistant sign.

Anyone else have anything like that in their lives?

One of the earliest signs, which my mom confirmed after I'd come out was that I always hated peeing sitting down. I wanted to pee standing up like my dad which made potty training me very difficult.

Also things like wanting to go out without a shirt on and being told I couldn't. My mom would say things like "girls don't go out with their shirts off. Look at me I keep my shirt on when I go out" and I'd get really upset saying I didn't have boobs and I shouldn't have to keep my shirt on.

I always, always played the part of a boy when we played pretend.  I remember one time playing house with some girls at school, and as usual I said, "I'll be the brother."  But one of the girls insisted, "You can't be the brother, you have to be the sister."  I went along with it for about 5 minutes, and I remember this intense anger building up inside of me at the indignity of being forced to play the sister.  I ended up refusing to play anymore, and went off to play Astronauts, or some such thing.  To be honest, I never much saw the point in playing house. How deathly boring!  I much preferred playing rock stars, or astronauts, or jungle adventurers. 

My earliest memory regarding gender, however, was when I was about 2 1/2, and we were going out to dinner with another family who had a boy about my age.  We were pretending to be dogs, and I was getting really annoyed because I kept getting tangled up in my skirt, and tripping on my hair.  I noticed that the boy wasn't having these problems, and I asked why I had to wear this stupid skirt, when he got to wear pants.  I think that was the day that I decided that dresses were pure evil, and I never again wore one without pitching a fit.  You'd think my parents would have eventually gotten the hint, given I almost never pitched a fit over anything else, but to this day my mom claims that she had no idea I hated wearing dresses so much.    But I remember feeling deeply angry and humiliated, every time I was forced into one.  Especially since, inevitably, that was when the camera came out and my humiliation was captured and preserved for eternity. 

I told my parents[and others too I'm sure]  on multiple occasions that I was a boy stuck in the wrong body from the age I could talk through about 2nd or 3rd grade.  After that I stopped saying it, but it obviously never went away.  Every year my elementary school would do something called "dig"  each grade did research into another culture be it a time period or a location or both.  In kindergarten I was a cowboy, in first grade I played the cat because I refused to be a russian girl or wear a dress or skirt, in second grade I was the first man to walk in space [there was a girl astronaut hat and a boy one... I choose from the boys]... ect. btw yes I did go to an awesome [and very open-minded private "hippyish"] elementary school.

I remember always wanting to swim shirtless and being pissed that I couldn't.  I even remember one specific occasion that my baby sitter let me swim shirtless [or maybe it was running through the sprinklers.... iuno it was some water play that involved bathing suitness] and how wonderful it was.

I'd rather not discuss the frustrating things at this current moment just because I'm not in a head space where I care to be thinking about those things in at all right now[besides I've got enough positive ones really I think,] but of course there were plenty of awful things too.

When I was in 7th or 8th grade, I got a cold that made my voice get all crackly.  I got really excited and asked my dad if it was because my voice was changing. Then I got really dissapointed when he said that my voice wouldn't change like that because it only happened to boys.

All the girls in my neighbourhood were boring, so I tried to play with the boys, even though they kept telling me girls were not allowed.

When I was 12, I learned what happened to guys when they went through puberty and thinking how awesome their puberty was compared to ours then being jealous and scared that my little brother would end up being bigger than me because I wanted to be the big strong one of the family.

Then went I was younger than that I use to tell my grandma that I wished I was a boy every time I had to have something done to my hair, I wanted it cut short so I wouldn't have to do anything to it.

I have a feeling there were earlier signs than this, but when I hit puberty, I used to stand in front of the mirror and press my breasts flat and think, "I would feel much better with a flat chest."

I also didn't get why I wasn't allowed to go out shirtless as a kid.

I was recently told that the one and only time I'd ever scream as a kid was when I was 2-ish, and my mother tried to shove me in dresses.

Apparently I never threw a temper tantrum for any other reason. Which, as far as my memory serves, sounds about right (I won't go into why I know this, but I did have an unusual upbringing).

Pretending games, I was always a man (usually the man I wanted to be when I grew up). I always assumed I'd grow up that way.

I've always had a male name (well, since about 3), because my birth name never felt right.

I also brushed my hair as if I had a short back and sides (and kept imagining that I did - I kept seeing a boy in the mirror), wore boys clothes, played with "boys toys", and was rather attached to my mens casio wristwatch (a hand me down from a male relative).

I have a scanned pic of me when I was a kid, and I actually do look like a boy with a very long mullet. It's awesome!

My best friend was a matchbox yellow cab named Lionel... 'cause I sure as hell didn't relate to any of the other children. The girls were ikky and boring, and the boys would have nothing to do with me.

On my 6th or 7th birthday (I forget...) , I got 2 swiss army knives, a full set of camo and a bootleg VHS of Terminator 2. It was the "bestest birfday evarrrrr!"  (I assure you, in reality I'm actually a left leaning, very liberal pacifist).

When I was 14 or so my voice semi-cracked. It would squeak and slightly drop and do all sorts of crazy things. I was happy that it such an unusual thing was going to happen to me. I was hoping that it meant I was IS.

There's a heap of other tiny little events and a crapload of dysphoria I'd rather not go through again.... so I think that's enough for now .

Childhood was good. I didn't have any social things to alert me to it, since I've always been socially inept. Lot of girls simply rejected me as a friend so I was alone.

Before puberty happened I was given that speech in school about what would happen to me. But I never quite believed it. It wasn't happening, and it wasn't going to. In fact I expected the male changes of greater strength, deeper voice all that. Height. But it never happened and I feel stuck in limbo.

A lot of this thought started with my friends though. When I finally did make some friends, they were male as I got along with them a lot better. They weren't unpredictable, they liked the same things I did, and other such things. But I was not like them. I remember thinking over and over, questioning why I wasn't a male. I didn't think so differently for all of this separation.

I realized the separation was not the problem I had, because it wasn't that there were no differences between the sexes which I was trying to justify all of this time. It's that I don't belong on this side of the fence.

Hmm, not much in the way of early signs. I'll bring some stereotypes. Didn't get along with girls, identified with my father and not my mother, played video games, hated my femininity. Liked to build things, as opposed to cuddling/nurturing dolls or whatever.

Anti-signs: Played with dolls (my mom loved Barbies and bought a small collection.) Didn't oppose my sex until puberty. Not an active kid (well, I did like running but that was about it.)

I think this all started when I examined things more closely and found actual sexual dimorphism (yeah, maybe it should've happened sooner but I've been known to be completely oblivious.)

I remember when I was about 6 I thought I would just wake up and magically have a boys body.
I had loads of dreams of this happening, pretty devastated when I woke up.
I always wanted to walk around shirtless.
Didn't like peeing sitting down.
I called myself Adam in my head.
Pretended I was shaving my face in the morning...with the end of a toothbrush haha.
All my friends were boys, they actually used to let me borrow their toys because my parents never got me any boys toys!

With my friends, when I was really little my best friends were the two boys who lived across the street and the two boys who lived next door.  We played house sometimes, but I can't remember whether I was a boy or a girl when we played.  But our jobs were always "rock quarry workers" and we'd take the soft rocks from my friends house and smash them into dust with other rocks and collect the dust.  I'd play school A LOT.  Not sure if that's a male or female thing, but it was a healthy mix of regular school and basketball school or karate school or army school.  I guess that's why I became a teacher.

When I got into school my friends were mostly tomboys.  Starting in first grade right up until college my best friend was another tomboy, who's now a really butch lesbian, so it was kinda like hanging out with a boy.  And all the friends we had together were usually boys and we played mostly with the boys at recess, or we'd spend countless recesses just standing alone over by the woods coming up with very detailed and thorough plans on how we were going to run away and live in the woods and become self-sufficent like the kid from My Side of the Mountain.

My earliest memory (I think I was about six or so) was when I was in the bath. We had a bottle for washing our hair, so I filled it up once, stood up and held it to my crotch, imagining I was peeing like a man ^_^

I did have girl's toys, but always wondered what I was meant to do with them. What happened instead was, I'd play with my brother's toys, and we'd play together. Lego, stickle bricks, Transformers - I loved those cartoons. That and Thundercats, Super Ted, that kind of thing that we'd both watch together.

We role-played sometimes, but it was after the cartoons - when we weren't doing that, we climbed trees, played football, rode our bikes - I taught him how to ride, in fact. I was allowed to take off my shirt during summer and always did so, right up until my Gran looked at me one year and said "I think you'd better start keeping your shirt on." I was about to ask why when I realised I was starting to develop down there.

Everything was great 'til I got to school. Got so much crap during that time, I decided "fitting in" was more important than staying how I was, but of course it didn't work. Didn't have a clue about make-up and just wasn't interested, but for the sake of trying to blend in, I tried it. As the need to fit in diminished (after finally escaping from the South of England and leaving all that crap behind), so did the will to "tart myself up", and I only shaved my legs when I knew I'd have to wear a skirt - something else I didn't do unless I had to (work, etc.). I haven't worn a skirt now for about three years and counting

I was really pretty androgynous as a little kid, and definitely acted fairly girly, but I think the reason for that was that my parents never tried to force me into gender roles, so I never associated girly things with having to be a girl. (If that makes any sense.) I wore dresses in the summer because they were comfy and cool, and because I could wear pants or shorts whenever I wanted to, and my parents let me run around the neighborhood shirtless until I actually had a reason not to. I pretty much did whatever I wanted regardless of whether it was thought of as male of female, which is something I'm really grateful to my parents for.
Things really started to go wrong when I hit puberty. I got the impression that it was something all the other girls in my class were happy about, that they liked growing boobs and all, but I really hated the whole thing. Pretty much got worse from there...

thinking back I can recall a lot of things that were probably some early signs but probably weren't looked at twice by my parents or whoever else.

Alot of basic things when I was little like hating dresses, nail polish, makeup, pink, not keen on dolls, liked toy cars and lego and digging in the backyard and playing with worms and millipedes and other bugs, climbing things, being dirty and messy and gross I liked my hair short when i was little, but outgrew that for a few years because I didn't feel like i fitted in.

I remember when I was about 5 i wanted to walk around topless all the time and couldn't understand why mum wouldn't let me. I remember saying to my mum once 'Why can't I?! Rod (our neighbor) does!' and my mum would tell me that that's not what little girls did, but I just thought.. 'and?' I thought I was like Rod.

At primary school when we played games I was usually the boy/dad etc, lol, and got really upset when I wasn't. and in tv shows and movies I would imagine myself being the main, male, character.

I used to love my dads shaving cream and would put it on my face and shave it off. I loved it, it was so fun and I wished I could do it for real. but it stung my skin so I didn't do it much.

then puberty, ick. I hit puberty at about 11, earlier than most of the girls at my school. they were all jealous. I couldn't understand why. I hated everything about puberty. I would always wear big jumpers and sports bras, usually two, to get them flatter, this was at 11-12, so i was pretty much binding then. I told my mum I was definitely getting a breast reduction when I was older. At the same time I was watching shows and wanting so much to be the male characters, no idea why. I kind of taught myself how to talk in a deeper voice. And I used to go online and pretend I was a boy and talk to people and It felt amazing 'pretending' to be a boy.

oh yes, and motorbikes!

when i was a kid-

My mum told me i was a girl, i thought no im a boy.
I called myself Tom in my head after Tom and Jerry.
I refused to wear, skirts, dresses, tights, anything pink and anything with flowers on it.
I was obcessed with growing arm muscles.
I loved every thing my dad did including :cars, DIY, weights, football, rugby and F1
I preferred playing with guys because we could play fight and they wouldnt cry.
I adored my cars and would buy toy guns everytime we went on holiday.
i loved having a flat chest and always wanted to take my shirt off

I remember being  about 7 and nearly dribbling over my legs for around a year because they were just like my friends (who was a boy) and looked ace in shorts.

Then puberty came, i tried to fit in i didnt and i spent all my spare time studying guys and thinking if i was one i'd want to be like him cause he has really good broad shoulders and hes tall etc.

JUst a general comment- no matter what our backgrounds, whatever our experiences, whatever our similarities and differences, we all seem to have had the urge to go shirtless. Even now at 38 that is one of my biggest things, just want to be able to take my shirt off in summer

Around the age of three, I used to pick fights with all the other boys in the neighborhood. I'm not sure why, but I apparently beat the crap out of them.

I didn't fully understand that I was being read as a girl until I was around six. When I was five, I guess I knew it intellectually, but I didn't really grasp it. I remember being in kindergarten and thinking that there was some rule or other that girls all had to have the same kind of name--something sorta femmy that ended in a "y" or "ie." So the girls in my class were named Susie, Cindy, Terry, Debbie, and Jenny. I remember setting myself apart from them. I couldn't keep them straight. But they were girls and didn't matter.

Of course, I didn't see that there were boys' names that ended in "y," like Bobby and Billy and Timmy and Tommy. But those were obviously boys' names.

My name? It ended in an "a" and didn't really diminutize in any way. And my middle name was unisex but ended in a "y."

I guess I fell flat on my face in my early attempts at taxonomy.

I just knew I was a boy. As soon as I knew that children were divided socially into "boys" and "girls," I knew I was a boy and not a girl.

You know how they say that we're socialized as female, because the people around us treat us like girls and expect us to conform our behaviour to the 'girl' standard? I don't get it. I internalized the 'boy' expectations automatically, from the very beginning, to the point that I even internalized a fair amount of homophobia. I was quite distressed at the effeminate aspects of my personality and even more distressed when I began to be sexually attracted to boys.

I remember painting with a group of kids at school when I was 4 or 5 years old and this girl told me I had to marry a boy named Jeff so I asked why and she said, "because that's what boys and girls do. You're the girl so take care of the baby and he is the boy so he works."

I think that was the first time I ever felt social anxiety. I remember putting my head down and feeling so awkward. I didn't reply. It was terrifying lol.

Awwwwww, Ryans picture just made me smile heaps!

Hmm, this wasnt too loong ago actually but from what I can remember...when I was 3 years old, I used to play "doggies" with my sister. And this involved putting a pair of jeans or long pants over your head for the massive ears! And my hair used to always annoy me! I used to the excuse of not wanting to tie it up for school later on in life, to get it shorter I remember buying this hat at 6 years of age, and every time I wore it to the shops, I tucked the rest of my hair inside it, only hoping someone would mistake me as being male

Same with the "house" and imaginary type games, I always wanted to be the boy, and got really annoyed when I was forced to be the girl instead I used to just tell myself in my head that I was still the boy tho, that seemed to work  I got really angry when my dad said my sister was stronger than me, and that one day...my brother was gonna be taller.

I always use to wish that girls could have been called boys, and that boys could have been called girls, just so I could have been called a boy

Other than that, it was always the peeing that got to me. I was extremely jealous of boys, and wanted to copy what they did! I use to use the hose to imitate peeing, or an old baby bottle to shove down my pants. I went through one summer where I actually practised standing to go outside this didnt actually turn out too bad 

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had always thought that I "should have been born a boy" but didnt realise that I was trans till just last year when I turned 14! I had a great childhood! Enjoyed every last bit of it, and for the most part ignored gender totally all the way through Things have changed since puberty has hit tho!