I had the same experience with 'trying to be female'. For 6/7 months I wore make-up to school, but it was just a hassle in the morning, and I didn't want to wear it, I just wanted to feel like I wasn't so out of place with all of these other girls. When we hung around together in a large-ish group I'd always get so self-concious, because I didn't feel like I should be in that group with all of these people I didn't fit in with, or couldn't relate to.

I tried that too, I wore make up and wore girly clothes for a while I think it lasted for about a year. Makes me cringe looking at my passport photo because the photo was taken in my trying to be a girl stage. Need to get a new one but can't afford it.

I suppose I've known on some level or other for most, if not all, of my life.  But I neither knew there was such a thing as being trans, nor did I have the language to express it.  I've been pretty ambivalent about it for the past 2 years or so, most recently IDing as
genderqueer, then finally as FTM.  Before that, I was IDing as female, although way back in middle school, I told myself I wasn't a "girl" (which made me sound weak), but not a boy either ("boy" sounded more macho than I felt...not to mention the different body).  Instead, I settled for a short time on the term "kid."  It was androgynous, so I felt much less pressure to be female or male, weak or macho.

I actually shopped in the young men's department when I was in middle school.  I claimed that the baggy clothes were more physically comfortable.  I'd always been something of a non-conformist, so of course I wouldn't want to wear the skimpy things other girls were wearing.  I've kept up appearances pretty well, though.  The difference is that now I see how unhappy presenting as female is making me.

Anyway, I guess I was finally able to ID as FTM, without doubting myself like I have for most of the past two years, when I recalled some fleeting thought I had had years ago.  Probably back in 2nd or 3rd year of high school (I'm gonna be 23 this September, so it would've been about 6 or 7 years ago).  The thought (which I'm surprised surfaced after all this time) was "I'm gay."  I hastily add that I knew - not thought, not wondered, knew - that "gay" was, in this case, the adjective form of homosexual male.  When I remembered it, I felt the same conviction regarding the phrase's connotation.  I knew all along since that first time the notion came to me  (though I had suppressed it back then) that I'm a gay man.  The female body just makes it more confusing for others to understand.

It was only a few days ago that I recalled this notion.  I've had to dress up for work this weekend, which meant wearing an underwire bra, but believe me, I wanted to wear my tightest sports bra.  It's the best I've got, since I neither can afford a binder, nor can qualify for the big brothers used binder program.   

Sorry it's so long; I tend to write dissertations when I get carried away....   

~Alex

I don't really know for sure. I know that I've always wanted to be a boy. I used to have lots of male friends growing up, I used to do all the boys things and I got really grouchy when I couldn't do football and rugby at school. I don't wear dresses and I feel so uncomfortable when I'm forced to wear girly clothing. I always thought I was a butch lesbian, but the more I read about things, the more I come to realise that I am male.

It's a difficult question as children vary in their experiences of the same and opposite sex.  And I think this determines when one feels ones is "in the wrong body".

So, for example, from my earliest memories (3 or 4) I knew that I didn't like playng the games my sister did, or wearing the clothes (dresses!  Long hair!  No!).  However, my best friend was a boy and I was well aware that my anatomy was not the same as his.  So I didn't think I was a boy.  I just thought I was some sort of weirdo.

And, as many others have already said, it all went haywire when puberty struck and I knew I really, really didn't want breasts or hips or periods.  But I got them all the same.  And so I dressed in traditionally male clothing or just clothing that disguised my body.  However, I don't think I actually said "I am a (gay) man in a woman's body" until I was in my twenties (20 years ago now.  Phew!).  I know I implicitly knew it well before then, just never made it explicit.  Having acknowledged that, I ended up in a femmy, glam stage which felt like being in drag (which was was fun).

And one thing I have to differ with everyone else on.  There is one incredible thing that I can take from having spent so long to decide to do anything about this; my children.  No, being pregnant didn't feel "natural" and neither did early motherhood.  But, ye gods, they were worth it.  And both were experiences I would not have done without.  So, now I have used my female body for it reproductive purposes, I am safe to live the second half of my life as me!

I first made the assumption of being trans at age 19, which struck me as more suiting than the person I identified as at the time (gay male). I suppose the 'signs' as they are so called were always there and no one, not even myself, picked up on them.

My father would recall times about how he had to stand in the outfield with me during baseball games (which he enrolled me in because that's apparently what healthy males do when they're young Christian children in the south) to keep me from looking for four leaf clovers when I should be waiting for a ball. I've also always taken an interest to such things as weaving and sewing (currently practicing to finally hone those skills ).

I suppose those are really kind of "oh, males can do that too" kind of things, but to be honest it wasn't until my first kind of relationship that I knew the whole idea of gay was both right and wrong. It was right in the sense that "Yes, I want to be in a relationship with a male rather than a female," (at this point, hormones could potentially do wacky things to my sexual preference ) but wrong in the sense that "I want to be in the relationship AS a male."

I never really felt at all attached to my life as a male or my genitalia, and having been in an all-boys school I knew that I was different from the few kids who were gay and indeed the student body as a whole. (Trust me, I cried at night and asked my parents to transfer me to a co-ed school more than once).

So on the whole, I have felt this way for a while, but I never really had a proper definition until I figured out that transgendered people were more than just the stereotypical MTF 'man in a dress' that Hollywood portrays looking like a drag queen caught in the rain. (No offense to anyone I may have inadvertently offended )

It's cool to read that so many of the rest of you went through phases of trying to be female.  I did that for about a year and it was probably the most distressing time of my life!  I tried so hard as well, gorgeous boyfriend, designer handbags, long wavy hair, makeup, lingerie....  When everything that should have been perfect just felt like a big mask I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep that up forever   

I was about 7 when I first told a cousin of mine that I thought I should have been a boy. She told me I was being stupid and for years after that, I never said another word to anyone, fearing I'd get that same reaction. When I was about 10, I had really short hair. One time this woman came up to my mother and said 'That's such a good looking boy you have'. My chest puffed out and I was so ecstatic about that. But my mother replied, 'She's a girl' And that deflated things in my mind. Later when I was in high school I started to experiment wearing boys clothes, putting a hat on and going to stores that people wouldn't know me to see if I got called a boy. Well, after a bit of puberty though, things just seemed to go the wrong way in how development was and I thought that there just wasn't anything I can do about it, so may as well do the 'girl thing' and make everyone happy. Got married, had kids and all that till one night I was sitting down watching 'Boys Don't Cry'. I looked over at my husband, who knew I was a little different anyway and said, "That's me" Ever since then I have been looking up things about it and started the hormone therapy and such and I've been so much happier since. I'm now divorced with the man that I was married to, he couldn't be with a man, but we're still friends. And my kids have been very supportive...

Quote from: Bones on June 17, 2010, 05:18:07 AMOne time this woman came up to my mother and said 'That's such a good looking boy you have'. My chest puffed out and I was so ecstatic about that. But my mother replied, 'She's a girl' And that deflated things in my mind.

I had similar situations.  People would refer to me as male when we'd go out in public to the store or a restaurant.  My mom always got offended and corrected them, but secretly I always loved being mistaken as a boy.

My mom never corrected anybody when I IDed as female(ish) and was called he or anything by other people. I went to some clothing store and a guy was taking measurements to figure out what size I would be and he kept saying I was handsome and stuff...my mom just went along with it and after we left she said something about it.

Ahh, you guys, thanks for taking the time to reply so much!
I don't ever remember being called a boy when I was younger though I always had quite long hair (at one point I think it was down to the bottom half of my back/my butt) and plats until about 12/13, so it would be a bit odd if I was, I suppose.

I was raised in a 100% gender-free environment. Actually, my family let me choose my sex - when they bought me presents, they saw which ones I like and which I don't; the same for clothing; the same for everything else. So for example after once sending me to school with ponytails (which made me cry the whole day), they said "Ok, no ponytails" and they cut my hair short. Also in all my child pictures I look like a boy. My grandmother was actually calling me "son". Kids at school called me "man" because I had more muscles than some boys. Even my first poem - which I wrote when I was 8 - includes the sentence "I'm the smartest boy and hero" or something similar I was a male character for every single carneval. There were only two occasions in my whole life when I thought to myself, ok, let's express this femininity - for one new year, I put mascara on and 3 guys later hit on me, which completely freeked me out and I never used make-up again. And for my prom, I put the fake nails on. Ten minutes later, they were in the trash and the seeking of my female side was over.

So the fact that I was never bound to the female sex was why I didn't think about the wrong body until I actually started to use it; that is, from the second I became sexually active (with another person; even my masturbation seems more as jerking off than what females are supposed to be doing) I discovered something is really wrong.

Quote from: Berren on June 07, 2010, 10:06:24 AM
What age did you realise you were in the wrong body?
For me, I never really questioned it until puberty, and even then I was just unhappy without knowing why. People seem to think that because I didn't know from an earlier age (I've read about people who knew from being as young as 3) that what I feel isn't true, and that I shouldn't be acting how I am. What do you guys think?

This, exactly this, is what I've been experiencing. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who realized something was a bit off during and after puberty.

This is really... reasurring(?)to hear about other peoples experiences, because I too felt that maybe I was wrong since I don't remember having any issues with my gender at avery young age like I thought I was "supposed" to.

But, no, my story is pretty straightforward. Just didn't feel alright about puberty. I remember once my mom got mad that I didn't want to look very girly "You know what? If you hate your boobs so much you can get them cut off!" and thinking 'that's not so bad'. I tried to be a girl for my girlfriend for two years and after we broke up I was able to find myself and understand why I had been so unhappy. That's all not too exciting.

Quote from: Farm Boy on June 17, 2010, 10:12:10 AM
I had similar situations.  People would refer to me as male when we'd go out in public to the store or a restaurant.  My mom always got offended and corrected them, but secretly I always loved being mistaken as a boy.

I called myself a boy once (several years before I came out to myself) and made my mom laugh.  My parents have a picture of me when I was 2 and I was in a hawaiian like top and a skirt (which looked like shorts to me) and my hair had grown in a way that it looked like I had a mohawk and I saw it and asked my mom, "Who's that boy?" and she laughed and said, "that's you."  Looking back on it, I guess I should have paid attention to more my feelings...though I still laugh at the story.

I would say always. I didn't even know there was anything "wrong" with me until probably the age of 2 when my parents were potty training me and I remember wanting to stand and asking why the pee didn't come out of my "thing".

I always thought of myself as a "he".  I realized that my body was not a boy's body and that I'd have to live my life as a girl between the ages of 4 and 6, and it made me miserable.

I've known since I was 7. My friend asked me if I would ever act or dress like a girl, and I told him no, because I was just an underdeveloped boy.

I actually wrote that same thing in my coming out letter to my mom.

I didn't know I was trans until...this summer, actually. I mean, I had feelings of wanting to be a guy from as young as four, but I thought that was weird so I didn't think about it till I was about 11-13. Then, this summer, I began to get really depressed because I was a girl. I mean, it was there since I was 11 and started crying because, while she was fixing my dress for my Halloween costume, my mother told me I had cleavage. I screamed that I hated it. I've always wanted my boobs to disappear.
My depression of being female got to the point where hearing female pronouns made me want to cut my ears off or go deaf. It was like nails on a chalkboard. It's still like that, but at least I figured out how to make my body appear more male, to calm my conscious.

For a while, I remember thinking I was androgyne around...June or July, and I came to terms with the idea that I am trans. I don't mind. It's just who I am. I'll fix my body eventually, you know? I just have to deal with what I have. So, when did I know? I'd say age 15.

I guess I've always felt different in some way, for as long as I can really remember, but I didn't really know why.  I started being really not okay with my body around the time of puberty.  At about age 13, I started identifying as a lesbian and I started actively presenting more masculinely.  But that never felt quite right, either.  I had never heard the word transgender before, or at least I didn't know what it meant.  At about 17, I started learning about what it meant to be transgender, and I kind of instantly knew from there that that term fit me.